Transform Filmmaking
Realizing
The Director's
Vision
Combining the immersive power of virtual reality
Pushing the boundaries of Virtual Production.
See the world through our sense and perception
Pushing the boundaries of reality
Making use of latest technological innovations
Norman is a successful VR entrepreneur. He co-founded Opaque Media Group in 2012 and was instrumental in growing the organization from the initial 4-people operation to becoming one of the most recognized VR studios in the world with clients such as NASA, Google, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and is seen as a key industry figure in the Australian VR and start-up industry.
In August 2016, at the invitation of HTC, Norman stepped down from his previous role in Opaque Media Group to become the CEO of Opaque Studios, the newly formed spin-off startup that took part in the prestigious Vive X accelerator.
Prior to founding Opaque Media Group, Norman was a lecturer at Swinburne University and a PhD researcher in the field of cognitive psychology. He is a published author in the field of computer vision and has long held a keen interest in understanding the interplay between technology and human perception.
Mariana is a technologist, pixel pusher and entrepreneur. During her years working at The Foundry she focused on Virtual Reality post-production workflows, as well as being the Head of Creatives in the Americas. She was instrumental in the launches of ExploreVR and Cara VR.
Mariana was a pioneer in her home town Mexico City, where she founded the first VR and 360 video production and branding agency - JoltVR.
Most recently she co-founded Opaque Studios, where she leads the roadmap for new and existing technology developing tools for Virtual Production using Virtual Reality, transforming the way film making is done today. She was one of the ten finalists of the Women Startup Challenge VR and AI on February, 2017 at Google in New York City.
Mariana has also enjoyed multiple speaking engagements either as a panelist or moderator. Prior to her switch into tech, she worked as an on-set VFX supervisor & senior digital artist, and has over 13 years’ experience in the motion picture industry working at studios such as Sony Imageworks, CIS Hollywood, Digital Domain, HBO, Columbia Pictures and Fuse FX.
Jannes is a 10-year industry veteran. He is the youngest person to ever hold a senior technical position in the German games industry and has worked as a professional game developer from before he graduated from high school.
A highly interdisciplinary engineer and cognitive scientist, Jannes has experience in the field of artificial intelligence, computer graphics, GPU computing, computer vision and real-time systems. Most notably, Jannes was responsible for developing a multi-threaded version of Unity, long before Unity offered thread management functionality.
Our parent company, Opaque Media Group, offered Jannes the position of an Intelligent Systems Engineer in 2016. At his previous position at Opaque Media Group, Jannes was instrumental in our Google Tango integration project as well as our Earthlight VR astronaut training collaboration with NASA despite having relatively little familiarity with either domain before taking part in the project.
As an intelligent Systems Engineer, Jannes was responsible for developing tools and other automation systems that enhances the productivity of other developers. For Earthlight, Jannes independently designed and created a complex tool to manage level progression and order story events in a graph. This lead to great deflation in project complexity and allowed everyone to work more independently.