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[WOMAN SCREAMS] I’m done! I’m done! I’m done!
>> Hey, good afternoon. My name is Amanda Johnstone-Batt.
I am a CG Supervisor in Framestore
with our London office.
Today, I really want to talk to you about
how we are using Unreal Engine in theme park rides
and what the next wave of theme park rides
with immersive entertainment is going to start to look like.
But before I do that, I just want to give you
a little bit of background about me
and why I am here talking to you today.
This is baby me before she discovered hair dye
and got weird. I grew up really close to here
actually just next to Disneyland, in fact.
Theme parks were a regular part of life for me growing up.
My mom actually used Disneyland
as a babysitting service for most of my life.
She would drop me off really early in the morning,
pick me up after work.
I did not complain one day at all.
It was great.
Then kind of turning 18, me and all of my friends
decided to get jobs at Disneyland.
Some of them ran churro stands or operated some of the rides.
I had a slightly different job,
and I am not really allowed to tell you what I did
because I know there are some Imagineers
walking around who will sue me.
But I was in a stage show called Fantasmic!
and became best friends with some of your Disney favorites,
is what I am allowed to say.
Hopefully some of you can read between the lines there.
After about two years,
I really wanted to get into the film industry,
so I was going to art school at the time, and I did that.
I have been working in visual effects for about 13 years,
I got to work on some really big amazing movies
and a couple of Oscar winners, which is really cool.
I got to do that around the world.
But a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to move on
and try to find something
that could take the experience away from a flat screen
that you might have in front of you
and bring the audience into these immersive stories.
That is where Framestore came into my life.
In the film industry, Framestore is known
for its big budget visual effects films like Gravity
or the Harry Potter movies.
But in the past 30 years as a company,
we have diversified into other media-based arenas.
Eighties synth pop fans will love the Take
on Me video from A-ha.
It was one of the very first things that they did,
which is pretty cool.
Over time, it is really amazing how far
and how fast technology has developed
and how the demand for digital content
keeps expanding across platforms and new ways of telling stories.
As a result, we no longer describe ourselves
as a visual effects studio, but rather as a creative studio.
Whether we are creating something
for a giant cinema screen, an installation in Times Square,
a VR headset, or even a theme park ride,
each platform is just another way for us
to tell a visual story. For a number of years,
Framestore’s immersive entertainment departments
were already working on projects
that could easily be considered attractions in their own right.
From the house reel you watched a little while ago,
you can see we have covered a lot of ground
in location-based entertainment.
For Samsung, we created an in-store experience
to simulate walking on the Moon.
The action takes place in a custom-designed simulator rig
and an inertial measurement unit space suit.
I have tried to say that three times fast and I cannot,
and I flub that line every single time.
This registers the user’s weight in real-time
and offsets it to emulate the gravity of the Moon’s surface,
which is a lot of fun.
The Volkswagen Hyper Reality Test Drive
was a physical experience covering the area
the size of a football field where a script was mapped
to certain content triggers to create action highlights.
This custom trigger system ensured total synchronicity
between in-game and real-world effects for six Volkswagens
running the test drives at any given time.
Now, all of these projects show you how we are focused
on pulling you into the environment.
I went too far too quick. As a result of that,
Framestore decided that they wanted to have a team
that could focus specifically on doing theme park rides.
Here we are.
This is a lot of our research and work trips.
There is no fun being had here whatsoever.
I can assure you it is very serious business.
But this team really appealed to me
because I could learn and experience new mediums
without leaving the visual effects industry,
leveraging my technical knowledge
from film and television
while creating larger enveloping stories.
This year and actually today, in fact,
a theme park called Lionsgate Entertainment World has opened,
and that has got five new attractions
that Framestore created.
There is a VR roller coaster, a VR motion base,
a VR walkthrough experience,
as well as a 2D motion-based ride and a 2D dark ride.
We also did a lot of the media
that would be on all of the screens
in the environmental media areas of the park.
For the three VR rides,
we used Unreal from prototype to final delivery,
but all of our rides have used Unreal and VR
in previsualization, motion capture,
as well as prototyping and reviewing any perspective
warped media or spatial audio
throughout the ride and the park.
Now, location-based entertainment
can be really tricky
because the only way to view all of this ride in context
is to be in China.
So Unreal became incredibly valuable for us
because it was the only way that we could preview
all of this Material in context
and get to see how the story would work
spatially for everyone doing it.
Because you cannot fly me to China every single time
that you want to do a daily session.
I cannot talk to you about all of the rides that we have got,
because I just do not have the time.
I really want to focus on two of my favorites,
the first being a Twilight ride,
because everybody has been waiting their whole life
for Twilight to be a ride. It is actually loads of fun.
Framestore is team Jacob, and we are very excited to be.
This is Midnight Ride,
and it is one of our most technically impressive
attractions that Framestore has ever worked on.
It is a VR experience with motorbikes
mounted on state-of-the-art motion bases.
Riders use custom-designed VR headsets to place them
inside of a virtual reality Forks, Washington.
Because I am sure all of you know your
Twilight trivia and know that it is
Forks, Washington where Jacob is from?
No? Just me? Okay, great. That is fine.
The experience sees visitors mount motorcycles
to join Jacob Black
and his wolf pack in a journey through the forest
to hunt down newborn vampires. You actually go in large teams
and we use body and gesture tracking
so that you can identify who your friends are in that moment,
and you actually have agency
over your motorcycle on the track,
so you two can weave around each other or take different paths
while dodging sparkly vampires at the same time.
Next up is the Divergent Fear Simulator
based on the Divergent series. This was by far the widest brief
that Framestore got for an attraction,
and it was to create a fear-based walkthrough
VR experience.
Visitors to the experience are given a VR headset
and backpack as they prepare to face three fears
inside of the simulator, that being vertigo, darkness,
and a sort of surreal nightmare scenario.
They are all supposed to be terrifying
VR environments that are tied to the physical world,
so it was really important to us
that if somebody reached out to touch an object
or a textured surface, it was actually there.
We want visitors to be put on edge the entire time
and make it feel as real as possible,
which was incredibly vital for this experimental attraction.
Next up, I get to show you some of the cool stuff
that we are working on now.
We have recently partnered with an engineering firm
to design some new ride types,
and Game Changers is the product of that partnership.
Not only do I think that they are really cool examples
of what Framestore is working on,
but it is really also describing
where the industry is going as a whole.
For a lot of these, we are looking at goal-based gameplay
like video games where members can take
on different roles and challenges to advance.
But we also really want riders to be able to decide
how the story is going to unfold for them.
In the case of the Reaction Coaster,
we want the rider to influence not only the media displayed,
but the speed and the movement of the coaster.
Using motion and gesture controls,
the rider can change the speed
and the direction of the vehicle,
giving them access to different story
Easter eggs and varying difficulty levels.
The goal is to create a coaster
that will be different every single time that you play it.
All of these different possibilities
and variations increase the likelihood of people
wanting to repeat the ride.
If you happen to catch a screen that I missed when I ride it,
I am going to want to ride it again
so I can see if I can catch it
or do something entirely different
than either of us had experienced before.
Now, originally, these were designed
to be in shopping malls, but they have been moved
to other mixed-use case scenarios.
One of the things that really helps wit immersion
is getting able to change
some of the visuals to match your surrounding space.
Using Unreal, we have been able to tap into live data feeds
and change things like the time of day
or even certain weather conditions
to match the area around you. Next up is Tower Battle.
Building on the idea of users influencing the ride vehicle,
Tower Battle allows you to affect not only your vehicle,
but an opposing team’s as well. Here we have two drop towers
with a translucent screen between the teams.
We want to have the flexibility to include
both controller-driven actions as well as gesture controls.
These varying degrees of inputs allow us
to change the experience
from something arcade-like to more of a story narrative
where each car is trying to escape obstacles.
Now, the goal is to maintain the excitement of a drop tower
while just adding an additional layer of narrative over the top.
Now, also with additional things such as wearable technologies
like Apple Watch or Disney’s Magic Bands
that include RFID and NFC technology,
currently we are able to pull information like your name,
your age, where you are coming from.
But we are also hoping to push information to these devices
as well like how you scored on the ride.
Later on throughout the day, a character actor in the park
could come and talk to you about that,
and that brings the experience of the ride out
and affects the rest of your day as well, which is pretty cool.
We want things that last beyond just five minutes
of riding the ride.
My favorite is The Adventure Machine.
It is based on an interactive choose your own adventure book.
Riders are faced with an obstacle.
If they as a team shoot more zombies on the right,
the car in the story will progress right.
If the team chooses the left,
a different scene will play out in front of them.
We want these choices to feel invisible and natural
so you do not feel like you are making them,
in an effort to keep the narrative fluid.
Unreal also allows us to customize the media
to each ride vehicle,
like maybe starting a fire in one scene
and then we see the glow in the next.
Instead of having an option of either A or B,
content can change based on how you got there.
It is also possible to include more interactivity
than the standard shoot them up style.
Maybe we might have some button mashing
or we could have some sword fighting,
which is fun, and we are dancing clowns.
But really, people just love shooting things,
so we like to give them what they want.
Each of these rides has one primary goal,
utilize the advancements in real-time technology
to create an adaptable narrative driven by the audience.
We really want these to be stories of your own design,
unique to each person who rides them,
and can last beyond the five-minute ride experience.
Thank you very much. That is my time for the day.
Again, my name is Amanda Johnstone-Batt,
and if you have any questions
or if you just want to nerd out about theme park rides,
I will be right over there so you can see me.
Cool. Thank you.