Jonathan Strietzel: Creating the “Digital You”

>> Vince Thompson: Welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Vince Thompson. Have you ever pictured yourself starring in a blockbuster movie? Maybe an award winning television series or an action packed video game? Big Stage dot com - a new digital media company is using breakthrough technology to bring that digital you to life, could be big for advertisers. Jonathan Strietzel is the co-founder and chief creative officer. Jonathan, I love the idea of this. How are you going to put me into a blockbuster movie?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: Log onto the website, Big Stage dot com, grab your digital camera that I'm sure you have - or a good cell phone camera. You take 3 simple pictures of your face, upload this to the website, and in roughly 30 seconds I've got a digital version of you; completely alive, looking back it's winking it's blinking, it's smiling back at yourself and you can, with a single click, put yourself into a film that's been prepared using our toolkit.

>> Vince Thompson: So this will work with any content or any movies? Are you building a library?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: We intend to build the most high fidelity digital person possible. That's the goal of the company and the Big Stage toolkit will allow people to have library content, famous films, really cool comic books. We intend to be the kind of defacto avatar company that hosts digital people, and let the world create cool content. So the average user can put themselves into the film or put themselves into the comic or into the video game.

>> Vince Thompson: At first glance, I could become a character in a movie and that's kind of fun, I"ll look at that, I'll get a kick out of that. It does seems rather novel though. Help me understand what else the business delivers.

>> Jonathan Strietzel: We sincerely believe that personal projection into online media is a completely new vertical of entertainment period. Projecting yourself into a video game and then after you're done playing that video game, you still have your digital self. You can say, what do I want to do next? You have some children - maybe I'll go and jump into a cool cartoon with my kids. We believe that this form of entertainment is going to huge. We don't have to necessarily tell stories to you, we can tell stories with you involved and with people that you feel are important to you - involved friends and family. That becomes cool.

>> Vince Thompson: You can do this with any type of video content, or any type of content?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: You'll see a range of content. There are a number of pieces of content on the site, we're using kind of famous works of art, you can put yourself in as Rembrandt or the Mona Lisa, straight from television shows, we've got movie content.

>> Vince Thompson: How do you make money?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: Branded promotions, sponsorship, we think that virtual goods is huge. It's a multibillion dollar business worldwide and we've done some initial focus group testing that has shown the impact is huge. The mental and emotional impact of decking the digital you out in all sorts of clothes and accessories, and then taking that into your entertainment experiences is very cool.

>> Vince Thompson: Can you give us an example of some of the branded promotions you've done?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: We did do one sneak peek campaign, which was the Michael Jackson. It's a Michael Jackson campaign for his 25th anniversary re-release of Thriller. We had some huge response, somebody considers it a pretty nice success, so it was good, it was a lot of fun. We're working on a number of cool releases that come right after a launch, and you'll see those real soon.

>> Vince Thompson: Now it sounds like at some point you're turning from just being a technology company making this available for these campaigns, to an open platform? Tell me about that.

>> Jonathan Strietzel: The open stage concept is simple. It allows any content owner, a game developer to basically use our API's and tap in and create content that they can immediately have Big Stage enabled by just using their own post production houses, their own in house talent. You basically just go in, you download our API's, you'll be able to create a little microsite that allows people to sign up, upload some images, put themselves in your movie promo, and that can go across the web.

>> Vince Thompson: Do you have to produce content with the end in mind, the Big Stage in mind, or can you take content that's already produced and then apply Big Stage technology to it?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: Yeah, absolutely. You can take any existing content, library content, if you go to Big Stage dot com in our beta right now you'll see a bunch of classic film clips, a bunch of experimental clips that we've done; black and white all the way to color. There's no reason why you can't do some of the cool, innovative, low budget shoots like you've seen with some of these huge films like 300 and the Sin Cities that use tons of stylized effects to achieve kind of like an alternate reality.

>> Vince Thompson: So what's the future hold?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: We've got to think quick and be tactical about how we create content and create services that people will like right away. We want to release this new genre of content in the coolest way possible and we have to figure that out. So that's the challenge, figuring out what people like and giving the public the coolest stuff possible. That's my job.

>> Vince Thompson: What kind of advice would you give to an entrepreneur who has this wow technology, now they need to make it real? They need to make it an income producing company.

>> Jonathan Strietzel: One of the things that you need to possess as an entrepreneur is self awareness - knowing what you're good at, knowing what someone else is better at. Any good investor knows it's the team that gets the company where it needs to be.

>> Vince Thompson: What's keeping you up at night?

>> Jonathan Strietzel: You know, it's prioritizing what you do as a company. With our limited resources, is this the correct plan of action? And then I look to partners, I look to our CEO to help make those decisions; especially in the start up, you're not bringing in tons of revenue right away so your decisions are ... they can make or break the company. So I think that's what keeps me up.

>> Vince Thompson: Jonathan, co-founder of Big Stage dot com, thanks so much for being here. As always if you have questions, comments, or ideas for guests please email us. You can do so at info at dog and pony dot com. I'm Vince Thompson, thanks for watching! music