The Dell Tech Behind Kickass Storytelling

“Our goal for 30 Ninjas is to build new media through kickass storytelling and creative technology,” says Julina Tatlock, chief executive officer of the digital entertainment company that creates 360° virtual reality (VR) content for film and television.

Creators at 30 Ninjas working on 3D video on Dell workstations and monitors

If winning “Best 360 Series” at this week’s 2017 edition of The Lumiere Awards by Advanced Imaging Society and the VR Society is any indication, 30 Ninjas seems to be well on their way to reaching that goal.

Their scripted series Invisible, which won the award, employed an episodic approach and leveraged a number of editing techniques to cut between different locations. Pulp Lab reported that the entire crew, spent 8-12 hours a day in and out of VR headsets to develop the mini-series, creating and editing entirely in context of the 360 VR experience.

It’s great to see that our Dell Precision workstations played an important part in enabling them to do that.

“We got the Dell Precision 7910 and all of a sudden I’m watching full-res and we’re seeing stuff where it’s like ‘oh dude there’s a guy in this shot’ and we restructured everything because there’s all this stuff you never see,” said Lewis Smithingham, president and head of VR at 30 Ninjas.

In addition to film, 30 Ninjas is moving television into more immersive territory. In the video below, Tatlock tells the story of shooting four episodes of Conan O’Brien’s show live from Comic Con.

She says it was a very stressful project because television shows are used to their own technology and are not forgiving about any technical glitches. But there were no problems with the Dell technology that 30 Ninjas leverages.

“There were emotional breakdowns, but there were no machine breakdowns,” Tatlock noted.

About the Author: Laura Pevehouse

Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles. From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life. Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.