Andy Povey is joined by two guests at the forefront of this space: Rob Liddell, Executive Producer at BBC Studios Science Unit, and Simon Clarke, Creative Director and Founder of Moonraker VFX. Fresh from announcing their new creative partnership, they’re here to share what happens when world-class storytelling meets cutting-edge visual effects in the world of immersive experiences.
Andy Povey is joined by two guests at the forefront of this space: Rob Liddell, Executive Producer at BBC Studios Science Unit, and Simon Clarke, Creative Director and Founder of Moonraker VFX. Fresh from announcing their new creative partnership, they’re here to share what happens when world-class storytelling meets cutting-edge visual effects in the world of immersive experiences.
Show References:
Rob Liddell, Executive Producer at BBC Studios Science Unit
Simon Clarke, Creative Director and Founder of Moonraker VFX
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Andy Povey: Hello and welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast that tells the stories of the world's best visitor attractions and the amazing people who work in them. Brought to you by Merac. I'm your host, Andy Povey.
Last week we explored how sound, scent and movement can deepen immersion in visitor attractions. So today, to add some balance, we're turning the spotlight back on the visuals. Not just any visuals, we're talking about gigantic cinematic mind expanding or inspiring media.
I'm joined by two wonderful guests at the forefront of this space. Rob Liddell, who's an executive producer at BBC Studio Science Unit, and Simon Clarke, who's the creative director and founder of Moonraker VFX. Fresh from announcing their new creative partnership, they're here to share what happens when world class storytelling meets cutting edge visual effects in the world of immersive experiences.
Andy Povey: Hi, gentlemen, and welcome to Skip the Queue.
Simon and Rob: Hi. Hi.
Andy Povey: There's a stories I've read about you going to IAAPA and taking what you're doing there, but can we just go back a little bit and give our listeners some history of what you're doing? So if I start with you, Rob, what are you doing at the BBC?
Rob Liddell: Yeah, well, so I've spent many years working at the BBC and particularly in the science unit, but right across BBC Studios, which is the BBC's commercial arms, making landmark television in the factual space. And many of the programs that I've made over the years have been programs that we made in collaboration with Moonraker, providing CGI material to the stories that we're telling. And throughout that process, we've always been, you know, trying to tell stories that would grab a broad audience appeal, not necessarily a special interest appeal, but bring them into the incredible wonders that specialist factual science, natural history, those kind of topics can reveal. And in our case, Moonraker have been an amazing collaborator in helping us visualise the things that are impossible to see.
Rob Liddell: Whether that's planets on the other side of the solar system or whether that's life that's been dead for 3 billion years. So we've been working together for and. Well, maybe over to you, Simon, because you've been working in the location based entertainment sector too, and we've been looking to bring that together.
Simon Clarke: Yeah. So actually, well, Moonraker and BBC Studios Science department had their sort of first meeting on a project which was Wonders of the Solar System for the BBC, which was the first Brian Cox series, which was really inspired by a lot of new satellite imagery that was coming out at the time. Cassini for example, taking amazing images of Saturn's rings. And we had the opportunity to work on that project together. And I guess since then we've developed that relationship. And as Rob said, we often, I suppose, help producers take audiences to worlds that they can't film. And a lot of that really comes down to the strength of the computer generated imagery that we create within Moonraker.
Simon Clarke: We use a lot of extensive software to help us do that, from visualising Earth through all its different epochs to also visualising, you know, new kind of creatures as well and bringing those to life in different environments and different worlds. So, yeah, we're really excited by this particular genre of science and natural history and history as well, and how we can bring that to new audiences outside of the more traditional kind of linear television format and bringing that into the immersive experiences that we're already involved in at the moment.
Andy Povey: Fantastic. So you've worked hard together on a couple of BAFTA and Emmy award winning projects. Are you allowed to name drop?
Rob Liddell: We are, we are. So, I mean, Simon mentioned one of those, which is the. One of the solar system. Stepping forward from there, we worked on a fantastic series together called Super Sized Earth, which was just trying to actually make us understand all of the sort of. It sounds very boring, the logistics around that make the world work, but it wasn't boring because were doing things like pulling all of the world's tallest skyscrapers into one space in one moment in a photoreal way. Or indeed animating what it would, what it looks like to have the million people that are in the air at any one time because there's a million people sitting on an airplane right now, probably a bit more since we made that series. So that was a lot of fun.
Rob Liddell: But actually we've done. We've been working super closely together for the last four or five years on two back to back. Series one, which went out in 2023, called Earth in the UK, Ancient Earth in which told a 4 billion year story of planet Earth and was a biography, really trying to treat our planet and the planet's relationship with life and life's relationship with the planet as a biography and stepping through the formative chapters of our planet's experience and really visualising that in an incredibly immersive way. So we work really hard with Moonraker to bring the viewer into these moments of huge change, landscape change, planet, freezing solid period of huge volcanism so that the audience would feel what those moments would have been like whilst telling this really incredibly epic story that sort of set us in context in the whole planet's history.
Rob Liddell: Moonraker won some awards for the VFX for that show. And we're now deep into production on a forthcoming series for the BBC and PBS called Evolution that is looking at some of the ancient creatures that have made the modern world.
Andy Povey: Fantastic. So the story that we're hearing right now is the partnership that's going off between you guys to move into the sort of location based entertainment space. Tell me more about what you're doing there.
Simon Clarke: Yeah, so, I mean, Moonraker have actually been heavily involved in that space really sort of over the last, I guess, sort of 8 to 10 years. And, you know, a lot of that journey has been through, I guess, you know, our connections within the TV world and doing work within science, within natural history. And a lot of that genre of work played very nicely into a lot of content that was being created that were asked to create for a lot of museums, for example. You know, a lot of museums tend to sort of lean on themes like space dinosaurs. So we'd already been kind of showcasing that, you know, to a television audience. So we had, you know, we had a great portfolio of work that we could demonstrate to be able to kind of break into doing more content for museums.
Simon Clarke: And I guess as museums have kind of evolved over the years, you know, budgets have been a bit more supported, you know, certainly globally, maybe not so much in the UK because a lot of museums here, of course, are, you know, free to entry. So certainly, you know, we started to become a bit more established in that market. And really, I guess, you know, since COVID you know, and people wanting to get back into, you know, sort of shared social experiences, you know, the whole immersive kind of, you know, experience sectors really kind of exploded. And for us that's meant we're putting on, I suppose, visual spectacles on ever bigger scales. We've been developing shows now which are 16K resolution, 24K resolution. There was a time when we all used to fall over when people came to us with a 4K UHD delivery.
Simon Clarke: So we've had to kind of ride that wave and really invest heavily in the infrastructure to be able to support the content creation for those formats. But I think what's really important for us with all of this, and certainly, I guess the real motivation for the collaboration with Rob and BBC Science and BBC Studios is to, I suppose, to really leverage the strength of storytelling within those experiences. And actually, one thing I often feel with a lot of the word immersive is that people come out of these immersive experience not feeling particularly immersed. And I still feel there's, you know, there's a lot of linearity in the storytelling in a way.
Simon Clarke: And I think, you know, some of that is symptomatic, I think, of the producers that are making that content that they might not necessarily have come from, I suppose, the same background as we have where we're really fusing, you know, visual effects and storytelling together in a way that we can, you know, really think deep about, you know, how do we want to engage the audience, how do we want to entertain the audience, as we've been doing so well within the television format. So for me, it's an opportunity for collaboration, bringing talent together, bringing storytelling together, and actually visualizing amazing spectacle to immerse audiences. So they kind of have a really fantastic experience and ultimately a shared experience as well.
Andy Povey: I think I love all of those, Simon. I mean, everything we do in the attractions world, when it's at its best, is all about storytelling. Whether it's a fantastic ride or a great artifact or a fantastic animal display in a zoo, it's all about telling the stories. So I'm really quite excited about the two organisations coming together to do stuff in the attraction space.
Simon Clarke: Yeah, you know, there's so. There's so much great stuff now that, you know, individuals are able to access and even create themselves, you know, on a certain scale for content that we're seeing AI generated content on their phones, for example, on their devices. And I guess subconsciously we're sort of raising the bar a bit in terms of what our expectations of quality are. And quality is getting more and more, you know, higher level on phones and devices, but it's not really breaking so much into immersive cinema and immersive experiences. I think, you know, we very much kind of dined out on the tech, really selling, you know, the attraction part to people to come and visit those kind of particular experiences. And often I feel that the content doesn't quite follow suit in terms of the investment in the hardware or the ride experience.
Simon Clarke: The media is often very much undersold and underplayed. So we're going to really kind of champion that and try and, you know, I suppose revolutionise, you know, the quality threshold of content and just, I suppose, the visual, you know, storytelling element of that to really excite audiences.
Rob Liddell: I mean, it's absolutely. And I think it's that's been the big attraction for us. You know, we've always been trying to drive, you know, push the bounds within what is possible within the television space of visual storytelling. We were really early adopters of bringing filmic lenses and filmic cameras into our documentary making. Really trying to draw on the movie industry as some of our inspirations. And the products that you would see would feel like they have that movie quality to them. But what really attracts me is that it's the stories that we want to bring out off the small screen into these immersive experiences. And it's the stories we find ourselves telling on the small screen that feel like we can actually liberate those stories and tell them in a more, you know, a multifaceted space that we can really utilise.
Rob Liddell: The bigger screens, the wider fields of view, the autumn, you know, the automation of actually putting, you know, if it's a fly ride, for instance, the viewer into that experience. But it comes from understanding how we're creating a narrative and creating a character and trying to, you know, use that story to bring an experience across. And this. This whole process for us actually started with that series Earth. I mentioned that Simon and I actually were having a beer towards the end of it, having nearly got it finished, and just we started that point just trying to think, how could we take what we've done there and bring that into a more immersive space? How amazing would this be to sit and watch some of the shots that we created in that.
Rob Liddell: In a full dome space, and the incredible story that we could tell that way. Now, that itself hasn't didn't quite come off, but it has been the start of this journey that's brought us to this place.
Simon Clarke: And I think. I think that's a really important point, actually, because, you know, one of the things, of course, that I suppose really plays into the way that those stories are told in large screen venues, you know, is how do we best use scale? You know, do. Because, you know, and again, some of the camera grammar that we've been used to using filmmaking, you know, you really kind of throw it on its head. You know, you sort of do away slightly with big close ups. You're often trying to kind of recreate real physical scale so that, you know, you equate pixel sizes to centimetres in the real world.
Simon Clarke: And actually, you know, when were talking, you know, Rob was talking about there about some of the scenes that were creating for the Earth series, you know, one of the most iconic scenes in the show about these huge fungi which are, you know, like 90ft, you know, 30 meters high. And actually, like trying to imagine and visualise that you know, we can see it on screen, but, you know, you haven't got many points of reference. But actually, you know, if you could put these things in a physical venue and you just be looking at this.
Rob Liddell: Thing towering over you.
Simon Clarke: Bloody hell.
Rob Liddell: Yeah.
Simon Clarke: So, you know, it felt like there was a really big opportunity to really play with the format and those venues to really help deliver scale and really make people understand, you know, things that they can't see now in the real world to get a real sense of scale. The same goes for, you know, if you were sitting on the surface of the water and, you know, you're a big wave surfer and you've got, you know, a 90 foot wave coming in, you know, to have that feeling that you're seeing something that big I think is really powerful.
Andy Povey: I couldn't agree more. I'm incredibly excited to see what comes up. So, talking of immersive, probably the most overused word in the attractions world across the board at the moment. Rob, I want to put you on the spot. You were in Orlando as a first time visitor to IAAPA and or the IAAPA Expo in Orlando. I can't think of a more challenging environment to the senses. If we're talking immersive environments. Give us a couple of takeaways that you took from your first time in Orlando at IAAPA.
Rob Liddell: Take good shoes. Take good shoes. I did 28,000 steps a day there, which is a personal record for me. No, it is an incredible, it's amazing actually. I found it thrilling. It's an amazing space. So many interesting companies, so many interesting creators being squeezed into an enormous space. But it is an assault on the senses. It's so noisy. There's so much going on. You're having all these meetings with, you know, talking about these grand ideas, but you're standing next to an arcade machine with someone sort of unloading a digital AK47 into the screen next to you and trying not to get distracted or. I couldn't help but just keep wandering around there and finding things that I had to.
Rob Liddell: Photos I had to send back to my kids who thought that I was the world's most traitorous dad ever to going to a bouncy castle conference as they saw it.
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Rob Liddell: But no, I mean, I think on the serious point, it felt like an industry that's got a big spring in its step at the moment and that there was a lot of confidence of people bringing a lot of really interesting things into the market and it was, it was really great to meet a lot of people who are trying to make that happen.
Andy Povey: There's a real creative buzz, isn't it. There's a huge energy. I was a little disappointed not to be able to make it this year. I felt like the last hippie in the Village who didn't get the Glastonbury ticket when everybody else had gone off. But no, I'm glad you enjoyed it. How does an attraction get involved? Are we, what kind of environment do we need? So you do a lot of work, Simon, in plan domes, or is that the appropriate plural for planetarium?
Simon Clarke: Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, planetarium, I suppose is, it's probably more full dome. Full dome format? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think planetarium sometimes it sort of COVID covers off seeing stars in the sky a lot too, you know, a lot of the time. But I think full dome, you know, is the, is the venue format, you know, for three, for 360 constant.
Rob Liddell: Because you can have a thrill ride in a full dome rather than just a sedate, you know, absolutely. Nighttime gaze.
Andy Povey: Yeah. I mean, I picked planetariums particularly. I was a duty manager at Madame Tussauds many years ago.
Simon Clarke: Well, I, I, that was one of my very first shows, actually. I, we, I went many years ago. I worked on the, on one of the shows within the Two Swords Planetarium. So kind of the birth of when computers were, you know, becoming useful and could actually do things, you know, I mean, it was very wireframe, but even so it was still revolutionary at the time.
Andy Povey: It certainly was.
Rob Liddell: I mean, it's not just domes, isn't it? I mean, I think it's this that you could, you know, there's a full range of, you know, fly rides and. Yeah, quite a lot of big screen stuff too.
Simon Clarke: No, completely. And you know, and actually sort of, you know, we're sort of slightly rewriting our, you know, our marketing collateral, you know, to, and, and I often say to people it's kind of any size, any shape, anywhere at the moment. You know, because so much of content that we create, you know, fills spaces that are all shapes and sizes. You know, whether it be a, you know, a full dome, whether it be a half dome for a flying ride, whether it be a dark ride or a dark walk, that has, you know, projection mapped elements onto scenic walls.
Simon Clarke: You know, I mean, I think there's just such a blend now of disciplines, you know, between lighting, between, you know, theater, storytelling, I mean, and even formats of things that we never would have really assumed we'd Ever be creating content for, you know, we're getting asked to create content for think things like, you know, water parks, for example. You know, I think people are really embracing, you know, I guess, visual elements more into physical experiences and, you know, sure, you know, they make for good Instagram moments as well, you know, but I think that was also a problem because you sometimes see something which makes a very good Instagram moment and it attracts an audience to come see it.
Simon Clarke: But yet then does it deliver, you know, do you come out of that experience, you know, feeling, you know, like you've had your money's worth, you know, because maybe the visual storytelling fell short, you know, So I think, you know, there's also, you know, that part of it going on as well.
Andy Povey: So you need to be very careful, don't you? There's a very fine line between what's actually entertainment and what's techie. People being very obsessed about their. Their techie bits. Favourite story of mine was the large attraction or group of attractions in the UK introduced some augmented reality with the Gruffalo. So you could point your phone at the tree stump with your child standing next to the tree stump, and the augmented reality would superimpose the Gruffalo on top of the picture, which scary. Well, conceptually, it seemed like a really great idea. My kids love the Gruffalo, but their experience was, oh, God, Mum, Will, Dad's on their phone again. So the intent is great, but the execution sometimes falls over.
Andy Povey: So without giving away too many trade secrets, can you just walk us through the process of how you come up with the ideas? How do you start ideating for the next attraction?
Rob Liddell: Well, I mean, I think the thing is, I guess there's two pathways to that, and I'll let Simon take most of this, but one is that, you know, we've got a whole catalog of stories in our pocket of. Think of areas of interest that we've covered before that we feel like we haven't covered properly and that there's things we can bring. And so, you know, whether that's in the, you know, the space. Space of dinosaurs, underwater history. There's all sorts of things that we. Amazing stories that we think that lie there, that we can bring out, but it's also really about thinking about what the venues are.
Rob Liddell: And I think that these, the, this, this market in particular is about trying to make sure that what we're doing is quite venue specific and really will work for a particular venue on that front.
Simon Clarke: Yeah, no, I know, I agree I mean, I think, you know, like you say, I mean, there is a slightly different kind of film grammar, you know, to creating content for large screen venues particularly, you know, there's. There's just certain shots that work and certain shots that don't. And I think, you know, you've also got to kind of use the space and direct the audience to. To focus in on certain aspects as well within the image. Because, you know, sometimes you've got a canvas that's so big that you don't quite know where to look. So you have to be quite mindful about directing the eye, certain things within that, and certainly.
Simon Clarke: And that multiplies more, you know, when you're working in the 360 format, for example, because sometimes you've got things that might be happening overhead, so you need to then have some motivation to be able to turn your head, to be able to look at something that you might have heard that's. That's coming from behind. So spatially, you're working in a much broader canvas. You know, it's not just the direction of view. You know, you're working with things all around. So it has its own complexity.
Rob Liddell: My worst experience of that is that I went to see the J.J. abrams Star Trek on the IMAX, but I sat in the front row. And that film, it's got these fight sequences that are like, massively fast cut. But it's also got this business of it's got captions it puts up in the corners of the screen. And I only realised about halfway through the film that was the case. I had turn my head all the way over there whilst trying not to vomit at the shaky camera that was, you know, going in front of me and thinking, well, I really. Thi wasn't actually made for this experience.
Andy Povey: Now, it's interesting you mentioned IMAX. My first experience of IMAX was, God, 20 years ago, 25 years ago. I don't know, someone's going to fact check me and point out that I'm completely wrong with dates. But back then it was. It appeared to me as a consumer that the production was very happy with producing things to show how great the film was. So you've got paint being thrown over you in the audience and it's all been, wow. There was no story, though, because we just hadn't got the appropriate creative people in or creative disciplines in.
Rob Liddell: Yeah, I mean, exactly, you're right. And I think that actually just drawing on those film references there, one of the best uses I've seen of it was first man, which tells the story of Neil Armstrong. It's a biography of him and the director, whose name I forget, who did La La Land and that jazz film. But they shot different parts of the story on different formats. So they shot all the personal stuff on Super 16, the NASA stuff on 35 mil and then the moon stuff on IMAX 70 mil film.
Rob Liddell: And it's a subtle thing, you read about it afterwards, but there's a quality as you move through that film that when you land on the moon and you're suddenly hitting all the imax, you suddenly feel the starkness and the, you know, I thought that was a brilliant use of form to, you know, subtly, you know, tell a bit of story there.
Andy Povey: Very much so. We, our episode last week was all about the use of smell and sound in creating the broader experience that assaults all of your senses that you can only get when you're in a place.
Simon Clarke: Yeah, and certainly, you know that stuff comes up a lot in the flying ride work as well that we've been doing. So. And actually, yeah, I mean, again, one thing that, you know, is good example of something that could have potentially been, you know, a show that we, you know, if we'd had this partnership, you know, maybe two years ago, we could have been working on something together, I'm sure. Which was a piece that we just finished for the Climate Museum in Germany, in the north of Germany. That's a 30 seat ride system that goes up through four floors of building. It's a moving seat platform, about 30 people that can take any one time. It's a sort of 12, 15 minute show and it immerses people in the problem of climate change.
Simon Clarke: You get to experience what it's like to be in the heart of a forest when a forest fire is kicking off all around you. You get to experience what it's like to be in the middle of a hurricane. You know, if you're on a street, you know, somewhere in Florida, and you've got, you know, winds blowing all around you know, so again, making those sort of subjects and actually putting people, you know, in the eye of the storm, if you like. You know, I think again, is an opportunity for people to hopefully kind of, you know, be more aware of what's going on the planet as well. But at the same time, you know, have an enjoyable experience and be entertained.
Andy Povey: There's an interesting topic, Simon, and one of our thoughts, or one of my thoughts before sitting with you is really how do you balance the reputation the BBC has for being factually correct and whatever, versus the outlandish entertainment possibly that we might want when we go into a park.
Rob Liddell: Well, you can have them both. You can. And I think that's been sort of my entire career, I feel, on that front again, reaching back to Earth. The opening episode of that film, that series was an episode called Inferno, which tells the story of one of Earth's major mass extinctions that was driven by a period of extreme volcanic activity. And the film is a disaster movie. Basically. It's a disaster movie. You watch this film all the way through, you never know what's gonna happen next. You don't quite understand how, you know, life or Earth is actually going to survive this. And t's a roller coaster ride to. Or use another pun. And however, it's all true. It's all true.
Rob Liddell: And we spoke with 200 different scientists about every aspect of that show, from the way the climate was modeling to the specific kind of plants and animals and where they would be and would they be in the right place and this, that and the other. And I think it's a really good example of the fact that fact is often more gripping than fiction. The stuff that's really happened is just incredible. And you just need to sort of know where to go to find that, to do that.
Andy Povey: Simon, what are you really looking forward to coming out of this partnership, whetting your appetite?
Simon Clarke: Well, so many things, I think the fact that we continue to have fun making stuff together. There's a lot of unknowns, of course, you know, and certainly, you know, some of the things that we've been doing, you know, with Rob over the last couple of years on these couple of TV series, you know, nobody's visualised things, you know, before. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff where you're sort of piecing a jigsaw puzzle together, you know, trying to come up with something that hasn't been visualised before. I mean, yeah, sure, there's lots of references of things that have been, you know, we lend, you know, and we reference films and, you know, all sorts of things from, you know, even illustrations in books that people have done.
Simon Clarke: But I think, you knowing that we can do something and visualise something in a very cinematic way, I think that people can really, I don't know, just sort of enjoy and feel, I suppose, you know, there is a certain realism to visualising things. You know, there's a certain subconscious expectation in people's minds of what something should look like. But I think it's that fine balance between creating something that still has authenticity and realism, but again has a cinematic spectacle to. It that has a production value, if you like, within its depiction.
Rob Liddell: We're often quite constrained in the way we make our approaches with the VFX. I think in the CGI world it's quite easy to. Because you can do anything, to try and do anything. And one of the things that Simon and I work quite hard on is actually providing ourselves with creative restrictions, saying that our camera is only going to move in a certain way. It's these shots are only going to, you know, work as if there was an operator there, that we're not going to do the flight round, zip rounds through, fly through doors and things like that there, unless that is something that we're trying to do for real effect.
Rob Liddell: But often it's about limiting what you can do and setting a set of rules because that provides a kind of grammar that the audience then can dial into, whether consciously or not it there. And it provides a sort of storytelling bed visually for things.
Simon Clarke: I think that's a good point. Again, it sets the foundation for what becomes familiarity for most people. You know, there is this tendency to be able to do anything, as Rob said, and to fly a camera anywhere. And I think actually in a way you can ground science purely by what camera choices you use and you know, and having, you know, having a sort of, you know, restriction of camera movement, you know, using familiar cracks, dollies, you know, different lens types as well. And I guess that's something that we bring to our storytelling that maybe others don't, that we've got that kind of experience and that history of storytelling, you know, through very traditional filmmaking techniques. You know, we've all spent time out in the camp, out in the field with cameras.
Simon Clarke: You know, we understand about lens choices, about how to cut between different scenes and it's kind of applying all that knowledge and all that learning, you know, in what we've done within filmmaking, within television, but really bringing that to a new audience, you know, within venue based experiences. So. But also at the same time understanding the difference between those screen formats as well and how we can use those to our advantage for certain types of shots. Yeah, so I'm very excited by all the possibilities. And it's not, you know, it's not just to say it's not only really content that we're looking at. There are opportunities where we're really thinking, you know, completely from the ground up to the full turnkey solutions where we might be designing a complete experience.
Simon Clarke: So, you know, we might be then pulling in other collaborators, you know, fabricators, operators, AV specialists, you know, to create our own ticketed experience. You know, we've obviously between us we've got a lot of access to a lot of talent and IP and people that we've worked with over the years, you know, so we're very much thinking, you know, about other experiences that we can wholly kind of own as well.
Andy Povey: So I'm an attraction operator. Imagine for a moment I've got a 10,000 acre theme park up in the north of England somewhere and I want to get involved. How do I do that?
Rob Liddell: Pick up the phone.
Andy Povey: To whom?
Rob Liddell: To me. To Simon John.
Andy Povey: Yeah, we'll make sure that we put your contact details in the notes of the podcast, just in case.
Rob Liddell: Yeah, definitely. We're open to hearing, you know, that works best frankly, if people have got a need or they got an idea that they want. You know, we're very good at trying to take the nugget of something and thinking how to expand that and turn that into a really compelling and complex proposition. So, so yeah, I mean one of the things that I was really doing I appa was just trying to really understand what everyone, what people are after, what do they want from us because we're very good at delivering in to all sorts of different needs and niches from you know, quite light, you know, in the television world, very quite light entertainment kind of things to really deep, quite complex physics stuff, short form, you know, 20 second videos to, you know, three hour epics.
Rob Liddell: So we're quite flexible in the way we can approach things.
Andy Povey: And so there's a lot of talk in the industry at the moment about, I'm not going to use the portmanteau word, but attractions going into shopping centres and closed branches of department stores that are all vacant at the moment. Could this be a standalone attraction that you could take on as a shopping centre owner?
Simon Clarke: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, and you know, we're. Without giving too much away at the moment because I can't, you know, we are having those conversations as well, like you say, because people want to have other things that bring back people to that, to those places, you know, they want, they want to create these places as destinations where you've got a number of different things to do. And I think, you know, the anchor for that is definitely going to be in some of the things that we're going to create as well. You know, to create sort of multi use spaces that can house a real suite of different content, you know, for different demographics, different times of day, for example. And I think, you know, for us it's, you know, you were talking about, you know, how operators get involved.
Simon Clarke: You know, it's very much our job to also have continuous conversations with operators, with tech developers as well. Because, you know, we need to know what, what the tech can offer to know how we can actually utilize that in some of our experiences. Whether that be somebody creating, you know, flexible transparent LED panels that we can bend and curve around walls, that, you know, we want to be able to know that the tech supporting the content as well in the way that we can actually, you know, display the imagery that we want to, you know, and we've been having conversations with, you know, cruise ship companies, for example.
Simon Clarke: You know, how can we, how can we reimagine those spaces, you know, observation decks where people still want to be able to have a view of outside the window, but actually at a certain time of day they might want to show where then those windows need to become, then projection screens or they need to become transparent LED screens, for example. So to give another level of, you know, experience to cruise companies, you know, and again, positioning them more as a destination where you've got, it's very much about the cruise experience, about where you're going to. In the same way that people go to cruises to enjoy food, they might as well go to cruises to enjoy all the entertainment facilities on board as well.
Simon Clarke: So I think we have to be very much at the forefront of knowing how the technology is evolving to know how best to support it with the content that we're creating as well.
Andy Povey: Final question. What advice would you give to an attraction operator or a producer that doesn't necessarily have access to your vast technical resources and fast creative resources? What advice would you give them on how they elevate the visual content of their experiences?
Simon Clarke: Well, I think, I mean, it's probably, I mean, twofold. Again, we're probably circling back to where we started, which is, you know, story is key. So many producers that want to elevate their experience can do small things by just making sure that they really maximise the story opportunity, you know, and then support that within the visual experience, you know, behind it. But, you know, there's no point creating great visuals if you haven't got a great story. I think that's fundamentally the first thing I think that, you know, if you're going to take on delivery for a very large format, you have to be set up technically to be able to do it.
Simon Clarke: One of the things that we've really kind of invested a lot of time, resource and R and D and is actually in how best to support venues in the delivery of content. You know, it's not easy at all. You know, you need a decent render farm. You know, that requires a lot of investment with computing power. You know, we've elected to do stuff in house rather than in the cloud, just because there's more efficiencies and the fact that we can control it when it's in house, we can monitor it and manage it more easily. Because I think, you know, a lot of people that work within these formats, they do fall down quite often.
Simon Clarke: You know, they create amazing stuff, they think they've got it right, but then when they put it on their, on site testing, the lens distortions off, the horizon line is off, you know, so all the kind of calibration, all that hard work gets lost because, you know, it's not being delivered in the right format. So I think for us, you know, coming at it with our history and visual effects has really, I suppose we know we've been very much at the forefront of, of the, of the technical side, the technical delivery side.
Simon Clarke: You know, we have people in our team that are very creative, but we also got people that really understand a lot of the technicalities of delivering content, whether it be the right color space, the right frame rates, you know how to splice footage, you know how to overlap footage, multiple scenes. Do we render it all as one image? Do we divide it up into chunks? How do we create efficiencies within that? So, you know, it's all those things that combine together to ultimately put something which is great in the right format for the right format and for the right venue. So I would say, yeah, but first and foremost get your story right, you know.
Andy Povey: Yeah, so I'm hearing story and then just check that what you've got is appropriate for the place that you're going to be using it. Rob, have you got anything to add to Simon's advice?
Rob Liddell: No, I mean, I think that's true though. You just don't want things, you don't want as a punter going through the doors. You don't want it to be breaking down the whole time. I mean, that kills the magic straight away. And that does happen, you know, and I think the moment the magic goes, it's so hard to bring it back again. So robustness is probably better over, you know, a particular bar of quality on that front.
Simon Clarke: I think my final thing would just be, you know, don't underestimate audience expectation as well. I think that we've survived too long in the attractions world of underestimating audience expectation when it comes to visual content. And I think, you know, what we're really saying is, you know, let's make visual content king. Let's put it at the heart of the experience. Now, we know we've got the right, you know, hardware to support that. You know, we know, you know, we know that we can create, you know, multi dimensional experiences for people because we can put them on simulators.
Simon Clarke: But ultimately, you know, we need to make sure that what people are looking at delivers, you know, it delivers emotionally, visually, you know, and, and people have a really strong take home from what they're seeing as well.
Rob Liddell: It's a real challenge. I think you're totally right. People, people. I don't, I certainly don't. You just don't differentiate between the show that you've seen in the cinema that might cost, you know, 300, $400 million to make versus the thing that you're seeing in theme park, and you don't really quite comprehend why they don't look the same, you know, and the fact that one cost, you know, 100 times more than the other doesn't really register when you're there. You just sort of go, well, that's not quite as good as what I was thinking it was going to be. And I think that again, one of the things that Moonraker and us have done over the years has been to set the bar incredibly high.
Rob Liddell: To say, well, if we're making a space film, it needs to look like Dune or it needs to look like Gravity. And then the answer to that isn't to spend the same money. The answer to getting that is to be really creative in how you execute the project and what you're showing and what you're putting on. So, you know, Simon and I are specialists about finding the just the perfect angle or the perfect way of cutting these shots together. That means that they look 10 times as expensive as they actually are. And that's about really careful working of the storytelling and the visual. So the storytelling is never begging you to show you a shot, to show you a visual effect or show you an experience that you can't produce.
Rob Liddell: And when you are in those moments, they are the things that really look blockbuster.
Simon Clarke: Yeah, it's that kind of constant teasing, isn't it?
Rob Liddell: And you've got to marry. You've got to marry what you're shaping and doing. You can't just go, oh, we're going to just plow ahead with this story, whatever. And this is the shot we need. You've got to think about how, you know, when we did the series Earth, we made a conscious decision right at the beginning of it. We weren't really going to show life, even though that was one of the characters in the story. But it meant that were able to very cleverly shape the story so that you never really were wanting to see the life in it. Even though that was a major part of the storytelling. We found other ways to bring that into the.
Rob Liddell: Into the film so we could really focus our VFX budget, our CGI budget, into these incredible dramatic moments of, you know, landscape disaster, frankly, on that front.
Andy Povey: Fascinating. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I'm walking away from this feeling that I've been educated. It doesn't feel like I've been sitting at school. I really enjoyed the time. Thank you very much, guys. If our audience wanted to catch up with you at some point, are you going to be out and about? Will we see any. We're nearly at the end of the year, but do you have any trade shows, any events, anything where people could see you face to face?
Rob Liddell: Some of those IAAPA events, I think we're.
Simon Clarke: Yeah, we'll be at IAAPA in Asia next year. Of course, that's good for us because we've just recently delivered a flying ride for Hong Kong and IAAPA will be in Hong Kong next year. So we're hoping that it's going to be open. It's been a year and a half delayed the opening. But yeah, we're told that next year it will be open before Appa, so hope that it is. But, yeah, I mean, yeah, we'll be at various. Various different shows, you know, throughout the year. And yeah, we, you know, people want to get in touch then, you know, they can do that easily via Moonraker website as well.
Andy Povey: If not before, I look forward to seeing you both face to face in London in September, the IAAPA Europe show.
Rob Liddell: Lovely.
Simon Clarke: Well, thanks very much for the chat today. Really enjoyed it.
Rob Liddell: Yes, thank you, Andy.
Andy Povey: Thank you. Gentlemen. Well, wow. What can I say? Thank you to my wonderful guests for joining me on today's episode.
Andy Povey: This episode was written by Emily Burrows, edited by Steve Folland, and produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle from Plaster, as well as Wenalyn Dionaldo from Skip the Queue HQ.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, share and even comment on the episode in your podcast app. It all helps spread the word about us and the amazing attractions we work with.
If you'd like to find out more about Moonraker's work and BBC Studios, head over to the Show Notes for links, visit Skiptheque.fm for transcriptions and listen to the rest of this season so far. Once again, thank you for listening. I've been your host, Andy Povey. See you next time.