Hardie Tankersley (Silverdraft / Fox) on the Challenges of Crafting Compelling Entertainment for VR (Part 1)
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The Guest
Hardie is the VP of VR and Solutions Consulting at Silverdraft, a company that uses a unique supercomputer architecture to address the significant computational and processing needs of high-end rendering, VR, visual effects, and visualization. Honda, Audi, Tesla, GE, and Autodesk all rely on Silverdraft for product visualization in VR.
Previously, Hardie spent more than 8 years at Fox Television, where he was Senior Vice President of Innovation. There he created the very first mobile apps for Fox TV as well as interactive experiences for American Idol, 24, Glee, and others.
He also developed the first-ever, Emmy-winning virtual reality experience for Sleepy Hollow and a virtual reality behind-the-scenes series for Scream Queens.
Early in his career, Hardie spent nearly 8 years at Apple.
The Conversation
This is the first of two parts of my conversation with Hardie. In this first part, Hardie shares some wonderful stories from his days at Apple in the 1990s.
He goes on to talk about some of the early experimentation his team did in VR at Fox, and the reactions from the executive team. Based on these and other experiences, Hardie explores the many challenges he sees in creating compelling entertainment content in VR.
Hardie has some great stories and strong opinions, and I think you’ll really enjoy this one.
Links From The Episode
- Video: Sleepy Hollow VR experience at San Diego Comic-Con 2014
- Article: Review of Michael Abrash’s Predictions at Oculus Connect 1-5 by VentureBeat
- Book: Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke
- Book: Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment by Anita Elberse
- Episode Transcript