October 9, 2025 • 41 mins
** Episode Note: We did have some audio issues with this episode, but it was too good a conversation to keep on the shelf!
Tech visonary Kim Liberi, walks us through the mindset that carried him from early console graphics and London VFX labs to the painterly breakthroughs of What Dreams May Come, where live action became living brushstrokes using optical flow and fine-art sensibilities to his ground breaking work on the Matrix films, and his most recent incarnation as CTO of Epic Games.
The conversation opens into simulated worlds and the convergence of film and games. Kim breaks down how procedural cities, photogrammetry, and Unreal Engine’s real-time rendering shift power back to creators—letting directors dial weather on set, game designers craft cinematic beats, and teams reuse systems without losing soul.
If you’re curious about how math, art, and collaboration turn into wonder—on set and on screen—Kim's path is one that will resonate with you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kim Libreri (00:00):
And I, you know, I had this dream that one day
something as amazing and asvisceral as, you know, watching
the Star Wars movie, that you'dactually be able to go into
something like that usingcomputer graphics.
Jen Coronado (00:12):
Hi, welcome to everyone is.
I'm your host, JenniferCoronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all kinds of people
and build the understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success is successful becausethey're a creative thinker.
So whether you're an artist ora cook or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the
human conversation.
(00:33):
Because everyone just is.
I have known Kim Liberi for along time, and I am comfortable
saying I think he is a genius.
While he currently inhabits therole of CTO at the Colossus
Epic Games of Fortnite fame, hehas a long history of innovation
in the film industry, which hasbrought him two Academy Awards
for technical achievement.
(00:54):
But more than the specifics ofhis career, I want to dig into
the whys of how he thinks aboutthings.
So on that note, welcome toEveryone Is Kim Lebrari.
Hi, everybody.
Kim Libreri (01:05):
And hi Jen.
Jen Coronado (01:06):
So I know a little bit about your background, but
I want to know more.
So let's start off with thebasics.
Where were you born?
Kim Libreri (01:11):
I was born in a, well, I lived in a town called
Leyland in the north of England.
It's just about 26 miles northof Manchester.
So that's why I have a slightlyfunny accent.
Jen Coronado (01:21):
Kim, tell me about your parents.
Tell me about growing up inyour small town.
Kim Libreri (01:25):
You know, my dad, my dad was a factory worker, and
uh my mom was just uh honestly,she had a simple job.
She was a cleaner at the localschool that I used to go to.
And uh it's a it's anindustrial town.
We were known for making trucksand buses, and uh it was uh
Leyland is a was a quite famousautomotive manufacturer a long
(01:46):
time ago, British Leyland.
And then it sort of the townwent into a little bit of a
recession, but uh fortunately wealso had um a local um uh jet
fighter company, BritishAerospace.
Sort of a mix betweenindustrial and uh sort of rural.
It's a small town, 50,000people.
Jen Coronado (02:03):
Yeah.
Your dad was born in Malta,though, wasn't he?
Kim Libreri (02:05):
Yeah, my dad was born in Malta, and I think 11
years old, he moved over to theUK.
He still has a very thickMaltese accent to this day.
Jen Coronado (02:13):
Nice.
And Kim, I don't I actuallydon't know this about you.
Do you have any siblings?
Kim Libreri (02:17):
I have a sister and a brother, yeah, Carla and
James.
Jen Coronado (02:20):
Are they older, younger?
Kim Libreri (02:21):
Younger.
Carla's like 18 months younger,and then James is 14 years
younger.
Jen Coronado (02:27):
Oh wow, that's quite a difference.
I have a brother who's 14 yearsyounger.
When you were little, Kim,growing up in a small town with
your parents and your siblings,what like what were the things
that really like interested youas a kid?
Did you like movies?
Did you like video games?
Like when we were kids, it waslike Atari.
So what were the things youwere really interested in?
Kim Libreri (02:45):
I used to like to draw and a little bit of
painting.
I got into video games when theAtari VCS came out and uh loved
it, was fascinated by it.
And I was lucky enough that Ithink it was 1979, my dad
scraped together enough money tobuy me an Atari 800 computer,
which also played fantasticgames, but you could program it
(03:06):
because it was a computer.
And because it was, I got itquite early in the life cycle of
the Atari machines, I wanted tomake my own game.
So I started learning how toprogram.
And the thing I liked the mostwas making pictures out of
programming.
So from a young age, I would umsort of blend that, you know,
technical software engineeringmindset with trying to make art.
(03:28):
So that was kind of what sortof birthed my interest in
computer graphics and sort ofplotted my path into university
as well, where I studiedcomputer science and computer
graphics.
Jen Coronado (03:38):
Well, I have a question about that.
Your parents didn't have thekind of technical jobs that you
and creative jobs that you movedinto.
So where were your inspirationscoming from?
Was it something that yourparents talked to you about?
Was it something you sawoutside of your family?
How did that come about?
Kim Libreri (03:52):
So my grandmother, who was she was Italian, her
father had been an architect.
Actually, even though they wereItalian, they were based out of
Cairo for a long time in the1920s and 30s.
In fact, uh my uhgreat-granddad was a quite a
famous architect, built theSemeramis Hotel and a whole
bunch of mosques in Cairo.
Anyway, so my grandma, whoequally brought me up with my
(04:13):
mum, sort of, you know, wouldtalk about art.
My granddad, who ran the localfactory that my dad worked at,
um, was a patent designer in hisearly career, so he could draw.
So I was always fascinated as avery small kid and seeing him
draw.
And I think that sort ofplanted the seed of loving art.
And yeah, as I say, thecomputer thing came because it
(04:34):
just felt like a new cool way ofmaking art.
And in them days, you kind ofhad to learn to program if you
wanted to make anything.
There wasn't paint programs,not really, in the early days of
Atari.
Jen Coronado (04:44):
So you went to university and you were studying
computer science.
And I've heard you say in otherinterviews before that like
math and computer graphics are apassion for you.
That was it at university thatyou discovered really what that
was, and what as opposed to justperipherally knowing?
Kim Libreri (05:01):
What happened is that you know, I got this Atari
when I guess I would have been12 when I got the Atari, and I
taught myself to program and Iused it to actually draw, I
would like write code thatwould, you know, lay pixels down
that would actually start tolook like images.
And as I went through schoolheading towards university, I
started to really get afascination in how, you know,
(05:23):
how do we make a computer makeimages?
And, you know, at the time StarWars came out and all these
great movies that started toshow that there was something
going to happen with computersand filmmaking.
And I, you know, I had thisdream that one day something as
amazing and as visceral as youknow, watching the Star Wars
(05:45):
movie, that you'd actually beable to go into something like
that using computer graphics.
So it was like from that earlyage, I was driven to combine
these two things together.
And when I went to university,I studied computer science, but
I specialized, you know,anything I could learn about
graphics.
You've got to remember, this isyou know the mid-1980s.
Computer science, computergraphics was not really what it
(06:06):
is today.
Right.
But I got through university,learned how to program big,
massive parallel processingsystems, transputers.
And everything I did was aboutgetting the computer to make
better-looking images so wecould make art with computers.
And eventually, what I washoping is that one day you'd be
able to make interactivesimulations that were as real as
any movie that you would see ina movie theater.
(06:26):
So that sort of plotted thecareer, you know, the career
that I worked with you at when Iwas at ILM and now when I'm at
Epic.
It's all connected to thisdrive to entertain people and
show them things that they couldnever see, but not just in a
two-dimensional way that youwould see in a movie, but
something they can actually goin and explore and be part of.
Jen Coronado (06:45):
Yeah.
How old were you when you wentto university?
Kim Libreri (06:49):
Just I think 18 is when we start university in the
UK.
And I did, I, you know, Ithought about doing a PhD, but
honestly, computer graphics wasso primitive when I, you know, I
graduated in 1989.
It was so primitive that it wasmuch, much better to get out
into industry.
The challenge is a simplenorthern lad from Leyland,
finding somewhere that you couldwork in that was really about
(07:11):
you know pushing the envelope incomputer graphics was kind of
difficult back in in Lancashirewhere I come from.
And initially, I think my firstjob after university was um
working at a place called AMSNeve, making mixing consoles,
but doing the graphics softwarefor mixing desks.
They've still got them atSkywalker Sound 30 odd years
later.
But I, you know, I worked therefor a couple of years, but I
really, really, really wanted tomake pictures.
(07:33):
I wanted to make art with acomputer.
And I I just got this, youknow, I started to look around,
and obviously, I think it waswhen did the ILM book come out?
The original ILM book.
It was like 1986 or something.
Jen Coronado (07:44):
Yeah, 1986 in the mid-80s for sure.
Kim Libreri (07:46):
Yeah, I get at the very back of that book, there's
a little appendix on computergraphics, and it's got the what
is it, Avengers of Wally B, Ithink in the and it talks about
Ed Catmull and the Pixarcomputer and all that stuff.
And I'm like, that's it.
That's really what I want to beable to do, is I want to be
able to make pictures of thatfidelity level.
And, you know, in England,other than coming to California
(08:07):
and working at ILM, which, youknow, it wasn't easy to get into
ILM at all in that era, I justgot really lucky and I heard of
this place in London called theComputer Film Company, run by my
friend Mike Boudry and my greatboss uh Wolfgang Glemp.
And they were looking for aprogrammer that knew how to
program graphics for embeddedcomputer graphic systems, not
(08:30):
silicon graphics, not thestandard, you know, um stuff
that we use.
It was no Nvidia stuff.
It was like all hardware thatthey'd commissioned and built
that they needed a programmerfrom.
And I fortunately, with mybackground of having done a lot
of um parallel processing andgraphics, I got the job.
And that was the beginning ofme making images that I wasn't
embarrassed to be showing otherpeople.
And it ultimately led me to theUnited States and working on
(08:53):
movies.
Jen Coronado (08:54):
Well, that's something I want to ask you
about because I talked to a lotof people from the UK, and how
do I put this in a way where Idon't sound like a jerk?
There tends to be a hesitancyto for towards ambition.
And you have this tenacity,Kim, to push towards new things
(09:15):
and to try new things and toreally go after the things that
you're looking for.
And I wonder, did you feel likeyou had that when you were
young and it just was part ofwho you were?
Or is it something youdeveloped and allowed you to
move to the US?
Like what where do you thinkthat comes from?
Kim Libreri (09:30):
Yes, back in the UK, there is a little bit of a,
you know, be happy with your lotin life.
It's not, you know, I not not Ilove England, yeah.
Obviously, it still soundssomewhat English after 25 years
of living here, but it just, youknow, the level of ambition and
you know the lack of barriersthat you have in America is not
quite was not quite the same inthe UK at that in that era.
(09:53):
I actually think it's changed alot.
There's so many greatentrepreneurs in the UK.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Amazing artists.
So I don't think it's quite thesame environment that it was
that I grew up in.
And especially, you know, I'min the north of England.
I was in London, I wasn't in apopulation center when I started
out.
But I think the thing for mewas, you know, even though, you
know, I was brought up inEngland, you know, almost
everybody I knew in the localvicinity was my family.
(10:15):
So not only was my dad Maltese,but my my my uncle and auntie
had moved over, they worked tothe same factory, they were from
Malta.
So a lot of my upbringing was,you know, either via my Italian
grandmother or my Maltese familythat used to live around the
corner from us.
So we just have a bit of adifferent outlook.
So you really need to think of,even though I have an English
accent, my um personality issomewhat Southern Mediterranean.
(10:39):
And if you've ever been toMalta, it's they're pretty
high-energy, passionate people.
So I always felt that like if Ireally worked hard and tried
hard and studied hard, then I'ddo well.
And most people of my era inthe UK, the opportunity to come
and live in California is adream.
And remember, my you know, myAtari was from made, you know,
made in Sunnyvale, California.
(11:00):
And my real dream was not to goto LA and Hollywood.
My dream was to come to the BayArea where all these legendary
companies like Apple and Atariwere born, and a new form of
entertainment, especially invideo games, had been formed.
And that's another thing thatpeople think that, you know, I
was a filmmaker at Core.
I loved making movies.
(11:20):
I loved entertaining audiences,especially on more breakthrough
things that show audiencesthings they've never seen
before.
But I equally had a passion forvideo games, always.
And, you know, in 1989, when Igraduated university, there was
no 3D in computer games.
Right.
And if you really cared about,you know, making amazing pixels,
movies was really the onlyplace to go.
(11:41):
That's changed, you know, inthe last decade and a half.
I think that we've shown prettymuch that the two industries
are on this sort of convergence.
Yeah, convergence.
It's not really a collisioncourse because I actually think
both industries can be better bylearning from each other.
Jen Coronado (11:56):
Yeah.
Kim Libreri (11:56):
It was, yeah, it was definitely a passion of mine
to be in video games as well asmovies.
That's what's one of the nicethings of working at Lucasfilm
because we had both sides of it.
In the days I was there, we hadLucasArts and we had ILM.
So you could play at theextreme level of both arts at
the same company.
It was great.
Jen Coronado (12:12):
I've always thought of you.
I never actually Kim thought ofyou as someone who had a
passion for not that you didn'tlove film or a passion for film
or games.
I thought you you had a passionfor vision.
Kim Libreri (12:23):
I like innovating and I like innovating in a way
that brings wonder to others.
That really is it.
That's why I love working withyou know the Wachowskis on the
Matrix movies, is they wanted toshow visuals that nobody had
ever seen before.
Yeah.
And, you know, that movie, thefirst Matrix, was so out there,
most people just didn'tunderstand what we were trying
to make.
And only when it came out didpeople get what we were actually
(12:44):
trying to achieve.
It's actually a very hard movieto crew.
Most people that we interviewedto come and help us work on
that movie wouldn't come.
They were like, we're notworking on the Keanu Reeves
movie.
It's a it would, I think it'shard for people to believe that
people wouldn't have believed inthat movie at the time.
But they just they wanted toreally get people to think about
the story they were telling andalso show people that what was
(13:08):
happening in the movie and theconcepts of the movie in a way
that you'd never seen before.
And that was exciting to me.
Almost everything I ever workedon that I really enjoyed was
about working on the cuttingedge, doing something that
people thought was impossible,working with an amazing team of
artists and engineers.
Almost everything that I'veloved working on, it's an equal
dose of engineering and scienceand art, and them teams coming
(13:32):
together, production crews thatI've worked with over the years.
There's so such close bondsbetween both sides that yeah,
it's it really is the I thinkthe place where I am the best
suited.
Jen Coronado (13:42):
I'm gonna loop back on Matrix in a second, but
the one thing I want to talkabout is the film that you came
to the US for, which is WhatDreams May Come.
And I want I want to talk aboutthat film because I thought it
was so visually interesting whenI saw it the year it came out.
And I know that a lot of thepeople that you worked on that
film continue to be yourcollaborators through the year.
Kim Libreri (14:02):
We all worked together like a quarter of a
century later.
Jen Coronado (14:05):
Exactly.
So I want you to talk aboutwhat was it about that
experience and then coming tothe US and how you connected
with those people.
Kim Libreri (14:11):
I was working at the time, before I came here, I
was working at CineSight,wonderful visual effects company
run by my my buddy Colin Brown,which was it was a division of
Kodak.
Um, in fact, they'd workedpreviously with ILM to build a
film scanner, and they were astartup visual effects company
to really propagate theknowledge of digital film.
One of the last movies I workedon at CineSite was a movie
(14:32):
called Mission Impossible Onewith Tom Cruise.
And there was a sequence inthere that we the the it was a
it's a shot that goes around TomCruise and is it Emmanuel Bert?
Does that sound right?
I think there's a bit ofromance between them and the
camera goes around them.
And the problem was is theycouldn't shoot this in a way
that the the move would besmooth enough and the timing
(14:52):
would work.
So we had to um work out a wayof um sort of re-speeding the
shot.
And we were working with Kodakat the time, and they had this,
they pretty much sort ofstumbled across, or not,
actually not stuff, they've beenworking on it for a while.
They had a thing calledCineSpeed, which was an optical
flow system.
What that would do, and it'svery nerdy, is for every pixel
(15:13):
in a shot, the computer couldwork out exactly where every
pixel would go from frame toframe, and that allows you to
re-speed it.
Anyway, we've been working onthis, and one of my friends is
visiting from America calledNick Brooks, and Nick was
already working on what WhatDreams May Come, or they were
doing some tests for What DreamsMay Come.
And he's like, Hey, we havethis movie that Vincent Ward is
(15:34):
directing, and he wants to makelive action turn into something
that looks like a painting.
And, you know, we just we wewere at the pub and we were
brainstorming.
I'm like, Nick, I think that ifyou really want to shoot it as
live action and you want tobasically effectively attach
paint strokes, you know, and youknow, understand how light is
(15:55):
expressed and how texture isexpressed in a painting and
attach that to a piece of liveaction and make the live action
look like a living painting.
I think this technology thatKodak has is going to enable
that.
And you know, I was advisingNick as a friend because I
wanted to help Kodak propagatethis software and get more of
the film business using it.
So Kodak helped Nick and theteam do a test for what dreams
(16:17):
may come.
And they just did, it was a fewshots and it just showed
promise that hey, you reallycould do it.
You could actually take paintstrokes that had been made by a
fine artist, choose which paintstrokes best fitted contours and
areas of light and dark in theimage, and then have that follow
live action so that the thelive action then turned into a
painting.
And the test was so successful,Nick was like, Hey, do you do
(16:41):
you want to come and move towork for us at um I think the
company was called Mass Illusionat the time?
And I'm like, Well, yeah, Idon't know about living in
Massachusetts, I have no ideawhat Massachusetts is like, but
if you were in California, I'dmove to California or the Bay
Area, and he's like, Well,that's funny.
(17:01):
We're shooting the movie in theBay Area because Robin lives in
the Bay Area.
Well, why don't you set up anoffice there and I'll be out
there like a shot?
And that's how I got involved.
And then Wait, hold on.
Jen Coronado (17:11):
You got someone to set up an office for you?
Kim Libreri (17:14):
Well, they were shooting the movie, they were
shooting, you know, the good olddays when people would spend
money on visual effects, but umthey you know, they were
shooting.
Nick actually liked the idea ofbeing in the Bay Area, and you
know, we were a company that wasa hybrid between art and
technology.
ILM was already in the BayArea, PDI was in the Bay Area,
Pixar was in the Bay Area, itwas the place to be if you
(17:36):
really wanted to innovate.
And it's not just that, hey,the people are available to
hire.
The people that we hired camefrom all over the planet, but
there there was a you know, inthe late 90s, mid to late 90s,
there was a magic here in theBay Area for computer graphics
where you knew that Pixar wasinnovating, you'd know that PDI
was doing all this crazy stuff.
And we had a community wherewe'd all sure share ideas, and
(17:58):
we knew that George was poweringup ILM to do the next Star Wars
movie.
So it was the whole place wasit was buzzing.
It was really, really, reallycool.
Yeah.
And, you know, and also whereelse could you meet amazing
technologists, amazing artiststhat all are a little bit
counterculture because we're inthe Bay Area?
It was fantastic, it was afantastic time to come here, a
(18:18):
fantastic community to be partof.
It worked, it was not, theydidn't even bat an eyelid about
setting up the Bay Area becauseit was an obvious place to do
it.
Jen Coronado (18:26):
Yeah.
So I want to jump into thematrix of it all.
And I want you to tell me aboutLana and Lily Wachowski and how
you began working with them.
And do you think that was acareer catalyst for you?
Kim Libreri (18:38):
I don't know about career catalyst.
It just was an awesomeexperience, yeah.
And also it was so it was sohard to make.
So, how do we get involved init?
So at the same time as workingon What Dreams May Come, Mass
Illusion had also been tapped todo the Matrix movie.
And myself and Rodney Wishinaand John Gator would sort of we
were starting to ideate how wewould do bulletem as we were
(19:01):
still working on what dreams maycome.
And, you know, on the firstone, we only met, well, I only
met Lana and Lily just onlyprobably two or three times
during the first movie, becausethey would come to our really
scruffy offices in Alameda.
I don't know if you know thestory.
We you know, we worked on theold Alameda Naval Air Station.
Yeah.
But when I first moved to theUS for What Dreams May Come, it
(19:23):
was I think July 1997, and theNavy had just moved out of
Alameda.
It was pretty cool.
From a from a pure environmentto make movies in, nobody was on
this Navy base, a whole massiveNavy base, you know, it kind of
in the middle of the bay, ornot really the full middle, but
to kind of the side of the bay.
Jen Coronado (19:40):
Yeah.
Kim Libreri (19:41):
Nobody's there.
All these disused buildings,empty houses, a crazy
environment to be makingsomething that was as
groundbreaking as the Matrix inparticular, which is, you know,
you actually, I don't know ifyou ever went over to Alameda
during that era, but it was likea ghost town.
It was the weirdest thing.
And you know, you go, you go tothe edge of the Navy base or
the the bit they would let yougo to, and you've got like a
(20:02):
fence that you can't cross umbecause that the air the runways
are not an active runway, andit's just disused, and there's
pampas grass and fucking hairsrunning across the location, and
then you see San Francisco inthe distance across the bay.
Yeah, and it's it's almosthonestly, it's like because you
can't see any traffic, you don'tsee any motion.
(20:22):
It has that sort of eerie, youknow.
I know Stephen King in the DarkTower series when he dis
describes some of the bigcities, it's got that very eerie
feel, but yet they're there,and we don't see another soul
other than people making themovie with us.
It was awesome.
Jen Coronado (20:36):
That's very cool.
And I mean, out of well, thefirst matrix gave you is that
where you got your first AcademyAward, your first technical
academy?
Kim Libreri (20:43):
Uh yeah, we got a scientific and technical
achievement award for thevirtual environments that we
built on the Matrix.
I don't think I don't know ifBullet Time, I don't think
Bullet Time was actuallyincluded in that.
I think it was mostly for theenvironments of the Bullet Time
stuff, is uh is is what theaward was for.
Jen Coronado (20:58):
Tell me about Bullet Time and developing that
and what that looked like andhow did you think about that?
Because I know you were like,what was your exact role on the
film?
Kim Libreri (21:06):
I was Bullet Time supervisor, mostly for dealing
with how we were gonna shoot itand how we were gonna process
it.
You know, John Gator was thevisual effects supervisor, my
friend Yannick's another bigshot visual effects supervisor
now, was my buddy that yearsearlier when working at the
computer film company, we were Iwould write the software, he
would do the compositing.
Jen Coronado (21:25):
It's uh was such a Was that when you worked on the
Muppet movie?
Kim Libreri (21:28):
The Muppets Christmas Carol.
Jen Coronado (21:30):
That's right.
I mean, great that the Caper isthe best film, but I like that
movie.
Kim Libreri (21:34):
No, Christmas Carol is awesome.
Like Michael Cain's performancein that is unbelievable.
How he keeps a straight facethrough all of that craziness is
unbelievable.
Yeah, and you know, BrianHenson, you know, took over the
directing duties from his dad,his dad passed away, yeah.
And that was the my firstexperience of ever working with
the director, and it wasawesome.
When we got Kermit to walk, ityeah, it was quite an emotional
(21:57):
because they couldn't do itwithout digital effects.
You couldn't really get Kermitto walk without a guy in blue
behind him doing the puppetingand then removing that.
So it was cool anyway.
That's cool.
Jen Coronado (22:08):
That also goes back to the first film where
they were trying to take hislegs for frog legs, remember?
Kim Libreri (22:13):
Yeah, yeah, delicious, delicious.
Jen Coronado (22:16):
Okay, so bullet time.
You it let's go back to bullettime and talk about developing
that.
Kim Libreri (22:21):
The Wachowskis are already storyboarded what they
want.
So people think that we made atool and then they utilized it.
It wasn't that, it was alwaysin their heads.
They they were super comic bookaficiados, they loved Hong Kong
cinema, they wanted to bringtogether the um the action of
Hong Kong cinema, but with thevisceral, you know, when you
(22:44):
watch a comic, when you when youlook at a comic, especially the
you know, the Marvel actionones, there's so much, there's
moments in there that arehyper-real that you really don't
see in the real world, but itsort of kindles the imagination.
Right.
And they storyboarded thishybrid way before any of us were
working on this thing.
They storyboarded that uh theoriginal rooftop shot of it's
(23:06):
called GR22, is the is theactual shot name of Keano on the
rooftop, dodging the bullets.
And uh anyway, so that we wehad that template, and you know,
we had to work out how to doit.
Um, the Mass Illusion and Johnand Nick had done an early test,
and actually Pierre Jasmine aswell, had done an early test
probably a year before the moviewas shot with some still
(23:29):
cameras, doing a still cameraarray.
John was like, Oh my god,really?
We're gonna have to do thiswith still cameras.
It's super complicated withstill cameras.
Every camera has to bepositioned, has to be focused,
has to be triggered, has to beloaded.
There are still cameras, theyonly shoot 30 exposures.
The batteries are a totalnightmare doing it with still
cameras.
(23:49):
So John was like, can we notjust do four or five movie
cameras and then do some clever3D reconstruction and move the
camera around in pulse, whichnow you can.
We have nerfs and we haveGaussian splats and the
technology, you know, almost 30years later is exists now, but
just no way.
Shooting on film and doing itthat day and age, there's no way
(24:09):
we could have done it.
So we decided to settle on thestill rig.
We built a custom rig.
Uh Frank Gallego and his teamat Innovation Arts built uh the
bullet time rig for us.
There was a lot of previous.
So the way it would the way wegot the shots done is that a
Wuping's Hong Kong action teamwould basically rehearse the
work out the choreography ofwhat they wanted to do for the
(24:31):
actual these stunts, rehearsethem with videotape, them, not
even mocap, because you've gotto remember 1998 motion capture
was, I think, I think it'd justbeen used on Titanic, but very
little motion capture in themovie business at that point.
Yeah.
I don't even remember.
Havan Helsing was like thefirst thing for ILM, I think,
that you did extensive mocap,but correct.
Anyway, we'd get thechoreography, would get it into
(24:53):
Soft Image, and the way we woulddo it is my buddy Dan Clem
would you know rotoscope thestuff by hand in Soft Image in
3D so that we would get thestunt action and then we would
pre-vis around it.
It's one of the earliest usesof pre-vis as a sort of tech viz
capability so that you can workwith the filmmakers to design
the camera move, to design howthe action is positioned in the
(25:15):
world, and then work outultimately in post-production
where do we want them cameras,where do we want that virtual
camera to fly?
So yeah, we started off withpre-vis, worked out where the
cameras would have to be, whenthey would be triggered, and
each camera, it you know, we'regetting pretty technical.
It's like a thousandth of asecond between each camera
firing, getting stuff to rig.
(25:35):
So, you know, it was a nice, itwas a it was a nice thing to
see the you know the martialartists coming together with the
pre-visualization artists,which really wasn't a term in
that day and age.
Dan Clem did most of it in softimage.
And then we're, you know,basically doing simulations for
where we have to put thecameras, because you know,
cameras have a body.
(25:55):
You you you they you have toyou you can't space them
infinitely close together.
So there was a whole bunch ofcomplexity in working out where
where they would actuallyphysically fit and then how many
frames of interpolation wewould have to generate to get
the final camera to work.
Somewhere in this house, thereis a Bible of all the steps to
make a bullet time shot.
Really?
A hundred steps just for thepost-production side of things,
(26:18):
to the point where almost everycompositor that worked with me
on the first movie to do bullettime ended up being kids that I
trained out of school.
Tom Proctor, who's a bighotshot visual effects
supervisor in London now, had hejust, I don't, I he just
finished his degree and we'relike, hey kid, I'm gonna teach
you how to composite and pull agreen screen.
(26:38):
And because anybody who wasexperienced was like, this is
madness, this is so hard, you'recrazy.
Why are you doing this?
It's like surely you don't needthese shots.
It's like we do, they're reallypivotal to telling the story
that we have to show that Neohas is able to have his mind
have power over the matter ofthe matrix.
Jen Coronado (26:56):
Yeah.
Kim Libreri (26:56):
Anyway, the very very, very complicated process.
I don't go into all of it, andwe've talked about it plenty of
times, and I'm pretty surepeople at home will be panic.
Jen Coronado (27:03):
Well, here's my question for you how many times
did you panic?
Kim Libreri (27:07):
You know, I've always said to the crew that I
work with, success is a state ofmind.
If you've got a smart team andyou really feel that there's
going to be a solution, you'llget through it.
There's been very, you know,maybe I've just been really
lucky and I'm about to like thenext thing I work on is gonna
blow up in my face.
But we've always, you know, itthat I think that's one of the
(27:28):
hard things about being creativeand innovating and just having
enough instinct to what could bepossible, what do you feel that
you can do?
A lot of people sort of live inthis world of, oh, we can only
do it the way we've done it inthe past.
That's never been a projectthat I work on.
It's oh, we're always like,well, what is the science and
the art and the tools?
Where could we go?
(27:48):
If we extrapolate where we are,where do we really feel we can
do?
And sometimes that ends upbeing a very hard process.
Making them bullet time shotswas really hard.
They were made over the bestpart of a year, and you know, we
got pretty close to the end.
And it's by the and I, youknow, you've worked with me on
some productions at ILM, and youknow that, well, if you're
(28:09):
gonna innovate, it's gonna bethe last 10% of the time when
you do most of the actual workbecause you've worked out the
special ingredients for thetechnique you're deploying.
But you know, by the time wegot to three-quarters of the way
through, we were prettyconfident we got one shot sort
of working.
Our issue was we're a littletiny visual effects company that
can't pay a lot of money in theBay Area during the dot-com era
(28:30):
where you know anybody who wasgood at science was getting
crazy salaries.
It was just we crunched.
It was like there was not manyof us working on it, and we
really had to crunch.
The biggest panic was for so itwas really important for Joel
Silver that we got a trailerinto the Super Bowl.
So January 1999, the bullettime shot of Neo dodging the
(28:52):
bullets on the rooftop is therein the trailer.
And if you ever look, if youlook at that historic trailer,
it's not as good looking as thefinal version.
But there's a reason it wasit's it still looks good.
It was the bullet wakes, to behonest, that were the biggest
letdown in that shot.
But uh what happened was uh wedidn't have a lot of money at
that company.
Man X was not super rich, anduh, we were working up with 3K
(29:15):
imagery.
Yeah, a lot of disk storage weneed, a lot of disk storage.
And the way to do it in thatday and age is you'd buy a fancy
RAID disc and there would be ahundred thousand dollars worth
of disk.
And we couldn't afford it.
And we couldn't afford it oncewe started the shots.
So what we had is we had fourdrives regular, normal external
(29:36):
hard drives, SCSI drives whatthey were called at the day in
that day and age.
And the data would be spreadacross them for we get maximum
speed because we really neededspeed because we were loading so
many images.
The problem with that is if onedrive dies, everything is lost.
And finally, a couple of weeksbefore we're delivering the
Super Bowl trailer, our ITperson shows up and we've got
(29:58):
your RAID disc.
Oh About time.
Blumminek.
It could have been a few weeksago.
It would have been better then.
We're kind of in a crunch now,but we're like, you know,
there's always this chance thisdisc fails.
So we bet we swap we'll swap itout.
And anyway, he goes to startswapping the discs out and he
gets distracted by somebodyelse.
I'm not going to say whose nameit was.
Dude, you're totally stressingme out with this story.
(30:18):
Continue.
This is super stressful.
It's unbelievable.
And remember, Tom, Tom was 21years old.
Not I actually he turned 21 inthe middle of making Matrix.
Congrats.
And this is Tom Proctor.
And he sat there behind hisworkstation, our IT guy swapping
out these discs.
And at some point, somebodyacross the room says something
to him.
I almost said his name.
(30:39):
And he turns around to them andhis bum hits these discs.
And he knocks them flying onthe floor.
The good the ones with our dataon them.
And they're lying on the floorgoing, ging, which is the heads
grinding of the disc.
And we're like, oh God.
Oh god.
Yeah, Tom's like throwing uppretty much at this point.
(31:01):
And I'm like, so you how havethem nightly backups been going?
And remember, we had no money.
Yeah.
And our IT guys we ran out oftapes.
Oh Jesus Christ.
So the closest one we've got isa month old.
A month?
A month.
We've got two weeks to finishthis.
So we've got to do a month'sworth of work in like two weeks
(31:24):
and finish the bit we hadn'tfinished yet.
And you know, Tom's a trooper.
And honestly, it's usually it'sa very valuable lesson.
When you do something for thesecond time, it's usually not as
hard.
It's a lot easier.
A lot easier.
And we were able to recover itand we got our shot for the
Super Bowl.
And Joel Silver was very happy,and we all got banned by Joel.
Jen Coronado (31:45):
Oh man.
You stressed me out, but justtell me the story.
I mean, one of the things thatI think is really interesting,
Kim, about everything you'vedone, regardless of what you've
dealt with, you've always kindof done a version of simulated
worlds, right?
Um, and is the idea of thesebig simulated worlds something
that's super cool for you too?
Like the idea of like you workwith real-time rendering right
(32:05):
now with the Unreal Engine atEpic.
Like is that super what excitesyou about that?
Kim Libreri (32:11):
Well, so being a computer programmer, you know,
what one has a tendency to, whenyou're trying to solve an
artistic or creative problem,one tends to also go towards
maths and algorithms to try andsolve the problem.
And having worked on thematrix, when we got to the
second and third matrix, and wehave all this city stuff in this
in the matrix, and we're like,come on, Lana and Lily, we can
(32:32):
shoot some of this as plates.
No, the matrix is a simulation.
The matrix is a simulation.
We need to be authentic.
So, first of all, you know, wewe deployed photogrammetry to
build a city in the computer.
And, you know, after we'dfinished the second and third
movie, we're like, there must bea smarter way of doing it.
And you know, we'd looked atbuildings so much that we
started to understand the likethey repeat themselves a lot.
(32:55):
You know, the way an architectdesigns a building is yeah, the
group the ground floor isusually pretty unique.
But from then on, it's just arepeat of the corner pieces and
the and the main body of thebuildings.
And you can use maths andproceduralism to lay that stuff
out.
And then, you know, as Istarted to get more and more
into game engine technology, youstart to think about how games
(33:16):
are made.
And games are a simulatedworld.
You know, the designers of thegames are trying to build
something that a player believesis a real place.
And, you know, what is one ofthe things that's been driving
us?
And, you know, the way that wemake an Unreal Engine is, you
know, we we try to make it towork for many industries, the
film business, the gamesbusiness, the architectural
business.
And what we've been trying toeducate people is if you take
(33:39):
this mentality of actuallyprogramming something, then you
make a world not only in a waythat the next time you want to
make it, it's really easy tomake.
So if you want to make like aweather system that you know
sprinkles snow over a city andproduces the snow particles and
you know, adjusts the lightingand all the things that happen
when a snowstorm happens or whenrain happens, then if you do
(34:01):
that as a simulated way, thenit's really easy to use it time
and time again later.
But it also starts to free upthe filmmakers so they can do
that stuff on set.
So if you can do that real timeand go, you know, it would be
better if it's a bit foggy rightnow, or hey, make the rain
stronger.
It it actually is actuallyquite freeing for people trying
(34:21):
to tell stories.
I think what interests me thereis you use a computer to take
the grunt work out so you're nothaving to do every single step
manually.
And when you can do that, youcan give them controls to
whether it's a game maker or afilmmaker that you know that now
they can be all powerful and beable to do very expressive
things that have massiveconsequences to the to the story
(34:43):
they're telling or the look ofthe thing that they're making in
a way that is intuitive to themand easy.
Jen Coronado (34:48):
The other thing, you know, we talked about this a
bit earlier, but I think it'simportant.
It can be you work with a lotof the same people over the
years and you bring teams withyou to to places that you go.
You've been at Epic for 10years now.
I don't know if you realize 10and a half years.
Yeah.
So do you find comfort in theseteams or do you find that you
like to just hold on to peoplewho you know have been your best
(35:10):
collaborators?
Kim Libreri (35:12):
When we work together, you know, people
compliment each other and wehave a connection.
We, you know, we all loveworking with each other and
we've done so many amazingthings over the years.
You know, it's not typicalpeople have no fear of
innovating.
People are pretty can be prettyconservative.
And when you find like-mindedpeople that are passionate,
(35:34):
smart, and fearless, it like itbecomes addictive working with
them people.
So together, it's not it's notthey all want to work for me or
I just want to work with them.
We're drawn to each other.
We just we've done so manyamazing things together that you
know, if you you look at StevenSmallberg, he's worked with the
same crew as much as he can.
Yeah, it's like it just a bondgets made that is, you know, and
(35:55):
also when you do reallydifficult innovative things, you
work very hard together andthey become your family, you
know, as much as your realfamily.
Even you know, occasionally youwork with somebody on something
really hard, you get sick ofeach other for a little bit.
It's just like families.
I won't see them for a bit.
And then you come backtogether.
Years later, you're like, Doyou want to do it again?
Do you want to do somethingcrazy?
So there's just a bond that'smade from pushing the envelope
(36:18):
and succeeding.
Jen Coronado (36:20):
Like, yeah.
Kim Libreri (36:20):
And I, you know, and when you don't succeed and
you fail, that makes evenstronger bonds.
Yeah.
Because you really people arethematic.
They always, you know, if youhave something in your heart
that you think something'spossible and you don't succeed
once, really great people willdo it again.
Like we're very thematic, yeah.
Things stay there, we programourselves, and if if something
failed, we usually areinnovators do not give up.
(36:43):
You'll see people trying,trying to until they crack it.
And I think that drive as well.
And you know, we all but allback to the matrix moves.
We all really believed thatcomputer graphics was going to
revolutionize entertainment as awhole.
Yeah, that's why the move frommovies to games for a lot of
these people has been easy.
They don't like like the tothem, it's about using our
skills to to make these amazingexperiences, whether they're
(37:05):
linear 2D stuff or they're fullyimmersive 3D interactive stuff.
Yeah.
We just did a crazy concert.
I don't know if you saw we dida concert in Times Square with
Soup Dog last not last Friday,but the Friday before.
Yeah.
Michael Gay, who was he builtthe Burley Brawl for us, he was
the artist that held togetherthe Burley Brawl team and did
all the Burley Brawl Matrixmovie, yeah.
Agent Smith battle.
(37:26):
He and our team worked out howdo we coordinate every single
screen in Times Square with thegraphics that we worked with our
friends at Magnopas, they didan amazing job, but them
graphics play across time andspace.
So it's not just the one screenthat we're controlling, every
screen was coordinated to theanimation of this, and then on
(37:49):
top of that, inside the game ofFortnite 10 million players, 10
million plus players were ableto experience the same thing
that was a combination of livehuman entertainment of Snoop
Dogg live in Times Square withwhat they were doing in the
game.
It's awesome.
It's like the ability to dothings that just bring so much
(38:10):
joy to people is amazing.
Jen Coronado (38:12):
And we all thought Snoop Dogg was just there for
the Olympics, but he's there,he's everywhere.
Kim Libreri (38:17):
He's one of the coolest people in the world
right now.
Jen Coronado (38:19):
Yeah, it's true.
So, you know, we talked aboutthe technology, we've talked
about the vision of things, butI want what I want to talk
about, Kim, I want to put allthat aside.
And I want to talk about whoare you, Kim, outside of that?
Like, for example, I know youmake a great risotto, but what
are the things that bring youjoy outside of what your job
does?
Kim Libreri (38:39):
I do like cooking.
I think that came from mygrandmother.
And there is a relationship, Ithink, between making imagery
and having the passion and skillto cook.
I like a lot of my friends thatI've worked with over the years
all cook.
I like my cars, I like driving.
I like I it's funny.
I have this really therapeuticthing that I like detailing
cars.
I know that sounds reallyweird, and everybody at home is
(39:00):
gonna be like, what?
I'm like, it's I just find itso therapeutic.
All week, all I do is talk topeople, all I do is look at
images, interact with games, tobe able to just do this finesse
detailing of my cars is supertherapy for me.
I just love it.
But yeah.
Jen Coronado (39:18):
That's great.
I think that's important forpeople to have that.
Sort of as a final wrap-upquestion, one of the things we
did at the beginning of thisseason is we talked to a bunch
of kids and we asked them twoquestions.
And one was, what do you wantto be when you grow up?
And what does imagination meanto you?
And I want to ask you kind ofan esoteric question, which is
(39:39):
what do you think little Kimwould have said?
And how do you think aboutimagination and creativity as a
grown-up?
Kim Libreri (39:47):
I think young teenage Kim would have said,
work out how to make a videogame be as awesome looking and
as awesomely moving as the very,very best movies.
I literally as a little kid,where like well, I wouldn't have
(40:07):
been that little in 1986 whenthat book came out.
I had a dream.
I had a dream, I would havebeen a late teenager.
I had a dream that I was flyingat a snow speeder in the Battle
of Hoth, but in a game.
And it looked exactly like themovie.
But yet I was commanding whatwas happening there.
Like that's honest truth.
Jen Coronado (40:26):
That's amazing.
And what does grown-up Kimthink creativity means now?
Kim Libreri (40:31):
I don't know.
Creativity, what does it meanto me?
Yeah.
I think it's I think it's aboutmaking your dreams come true,
not just for yourself, but forothers.
Jen Coronado (40:40):
That's beautiful.
Well, my friend, we're towardsthe end of the conversation.
Is there is there anything youelse you wanted to add?
Any pearls of wisdom?
Kim Libreri (40:49):
I I think at the end of the day, you know, it's
never about an individualperson, it's about your team.
And that that that thing aboutsuccess is a state of mind.
I think the tradition of thefilm industry is very
hierarchical, but the reality isthe great stuff is not made
that way.
The great stuff is made as ateam effort where everybody
mucks in together and even theyoungest mind can be the one
that actually solves the amazingproblem that you need to solve.
(41:10):
So I think it's it's lookingafter your team, inspiring your
team, super important.
That's great.
Jen Coronado (41:16):
Well, thank you, Kim.
I really appreciate you.
Kim Libreri (41:18):
Cool.
All right, thank you.
Jen Coronado (41:21):
Thank you for listening to Everyone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson.
Executive producer is AaronDusau.
Music by Doug Infinite.
Our logo and graphic design isby Harrison Parker, and I'm Jen
Coronado.
Everyone Is is a slightlydisappointed productions
production dropping every otherThursday.
So make sure to rate and reviewand like and subscribe.
(41:43):
Thanks for listening.
And I, you know, I had this dream that one day
something as amazing and asvisceral as, you know, watching
the Star Wars movie, that you'dactually be able to go into
something like that usingcomputer graphics.
Jen Coronado (00:12):
Hi, welcome to everyone is.
I'm your host, JenniferCoronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all kinds of people
and build the understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success is successful becausethey're a creative thinker.
So whether you're an artist ora cook or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the
human conversation.
(00:33):
Because everyone just is.
I have known Kim Liberi for along time, and I am comfortable
saying I think he is a genius.
While he currently inhabits therole of CTO at the Colossus
Epic Games of Fortnite fame, hehas a long history of innovation
in the film industry, which hasbrought him two Academy Awards
for technical achievement.
(00:54):
But more than the specifics ofhis career, I want to dig into
the whys of how he thinks aboutthings.
So on that note, welcome toEveryone Is Kim Lebrari.
Hi, everybody.
Kim Libreri (01:05):
And hi Jen.
Jen Coronado (01:06):
So I know a little bit about your background, but
I want to know more.
So let's start off with thebasics.
Where were you born?
Kim Libreri (01:11):
I was born in a, well, I lived in a town called
Leyland in the north of England.
It's just about 26 miles northof Manchester.
So that's why I have a slightlyfunny accent.
Jen Coronado (01:21):
Kim, tell me about your parents.
Tell me about growing up inyour small town.
Kim Libreri (01:25):
You know, my dad, my dad was a factory worker, and
uh my mom was just uh honestly,she had a simple job.
She was a cleaner at the localschool that I used to go to.
And uh it's a it's anindustrial town.
We were known for making trucksand buses, and uh it was uh
Leyland is a was a quite famousautomotive manufacturer a long
(01:46):
time ago, British Leyland.
And then it sort of the townwent into a little bit of a
recession, but uh fortunately wealso had um a local um uh jet
fighter company, BritishAerospace.
Sort of a mix betweenindustrial and uh sort of rural.
It's a small town, 50,000people.
Jen Coronado (02:03):
Yeah.
Your dad was born in Malta,though, wasn't he?
Kim Libreri (02:05):
Yeah, my dad was born in Malta, and I think 11
years old, he moved over to theUK.
He still has a very thickMaltese accent to this day.
Jen Coronado (02:13):
Nice.
And Kim, I don't I actuallydon't know this about you.
Do you have any siblings?
Kim Libreri (02:17):
I have a sister and a brother, yeah, Carla and
James.
Jen Coronado (02:20):
Are they older, younger?
Kim Libreri (02:21):
Younger.
Carla's like 18 months younger,and then James is 14 years
younger.
Jen Coronado (02:27):
Oh wow, that's quite a difference.
I have a brother who's 14 yearsyounger.
When you were little, Kim,growing up in a small town with
your parents and your siblings,what like what were the things
that really like interested youas a kid?
Did you like movies?
Did you like video games?
Like when we were kids, it waslike Atari.
So what were the things youwere really interested in?
Kim Libreri (02:45):
I used to like to draw and a little bit of
painting.
I got into video games when theAtari VCS came out and uh loved
it, was fascinated by it.
And I was lucky enough that Ithink it was 1979, my dad
scraped together enough money tobuy me an Atari 800 computer,
which also played fantasticgames, but you could program it
(03:06):
because it was a computer.
And because it was, I got itquite early in the life cycle of
the Atari machines, I wanted tomake my own game.
So I started learning how toprogram.
And the thing I liked the mostwas making pictures out of
programming.
So from a young age, I would umsort of blend that, you know,
technical software engineeringmindset with trying to make art.
(03:28):
So that was kind of what sortof birthed my interest in
computer graphics and sort ofplotted my path into university
as well, where I studiedcomputer science and computer
graphics.
Jen Coronado (03:38):
Well, I have a question about that.
Your parents didn't have thekind of technical jobs that you
and creative jobs that you movedinto.
So where were your inspirationscoming from?
Was it something that yourparents talked to you about?
Was it something you sawoutside of your family?
How did that come about?
Kim Libreri (03:52):
So my grandmother, who was she was Italian, her
father had been an architect.
Actually, even though they wereItalian, they were based out of
Cairo for a long time in the1920s and 30s.
In fact, uh my uhgreat-granddad was a quite a
famous architect, built theSemeramis Hotel and a whole
bunch of mosques in Cairo.
Anyway, so my grandma, whoequally brought me up with my
(04:13):
mum, sort of, you know, wouldtalk about art.
My granddad, who ran the localfactory that my dad worked at,
um, was a patent designer in hisearly career, so he could draw.
So I was always fascinated as avery small kid and seeing him
draw.
And I think that sort ofplanted the seed of loving art.
And yeah, as I say, thecomputer thing came because it
(04:34):
just felt like a new cool way ofmaking art.
And in them days, you kind ofhad to learn to program if you
wanted to make anything.
There wasn't paint programs,not really, in the early days of
Atari.
Jen Coronado (04:44):
So you went to university and you were studying
computer science.
And I've heard you say in otherinterviews before that like
math and computer graphics are apassion for you.
That was it at university thatyou discovered really what that
was, and what as opposed to justperipherally knowing?
Kim Libreri (05:01):
What happened is that you know, I got this Atari
when I guess I would have been12 when I got the Atari, and I
taught myself to program and Iused it to actually draw, I
would like write code thatwould, you know, lay pixels down
that would actually start tolook like images.
And as I went through schoolheading towards university, I
started to really get afascination in how, you know,
(05:23):
how do we make a computer makeimages?
And, you know, at the time StarWars came out and all these
great movies that started toshow that there was something
going to happen with computersand filmmaking.
And I, you know, I had thisdream that one day something as
amazing and as visceral as youknow, watching the Star Wars
(05:45):
movie, that you'd actually beable to go into something like
that using computer graphics.
So it was like from that earlyage, I was driven to combine
these two things together.
And when I went to university,I studied computer science, but
I specialized, you know,anything I could learn about
graphics.
You've got to remember, this isyou know the mid-1980s.
Computer science, computergraphics was not really what it
(06:06):
is today.
Right.
But I got through university,learned how to program big,
massive parallel processingsystems, transputers.
And everything I did was aboutgetting the computer to make
better-looking images so wecould make art with computers.
And eventually, what I washoping is that one day you'd be
able to make interactivesimulations that were as real as
any movie that you would see ina movie theater.
(06:26):
So that sort of plotted thecareer, you know, the career
that I worked with you at when Iwas at ILM and now when I'm at
Epic.
It's all connected to thisdrive to entertain people and
show them things that they couldnever see, but not just in a
two-dimensional way that youwould see in a movie, but
something they can actually goin and explore and be part of.
Jen Coronado (06:45):
Yeah.
How old were you when you wentto university?
Kim Libreri (06:49):
Just I think 18 is when we start university in the
UK.
And I did, I, you know, Ithought about doing a PhD, but
honestly, computer graphics wasso primitive when I, you know, I
graduated in 1989.
It was so primitive that it wasmuch, much better to get out
into industry.
The challenge is a simplenorthern lad from Leyland,
finding somewhere that you couldwork in that was really about
(07:11):
you know pushing the envelope incomputer graphics was kind of
difficult back in in Lancashirewhere I come from.
And initially, I think my firstjob after university was um
working at a place called AMSNeve, making mixing consoles,
but doing the graphics softwarefor mixing desks.
They've still got them atSkywalker Sound 30 odd years
later.
But I, you know, I worked therefor a couple of years, but I
really, really, really wanted tomake pictures.
(07:33):
I wanted to make art with acomputer.
And I I just got this, youknow, I started to look around,
and obviously, I think it waswhen did the ILM book come out?
The original ILM book.
It was like 1986 or something.
Jen Coronado (07:44):
Yeah, 1986 in the mid-80s for sure.
Kim Libreri (07:46):
Yeah, I get at the very back of that book, there's
a little appendix on computergraphics, and it's got the what
is it, Avengers of Wally B, Ithink in the and it talks about
Ed Catmull and the Pixarcomputer and all that stuff.
And I'm like, that's it.
That's really what I want to beable to do, is I want to be
able to make pictures of thatfidelity level.
And, you know, in England,other than coming to California
(08:07):
and working at ILM, which, youknow, it wasn't easy to get into
ILM at all in that era, I justgot really lucky and I heard of
this place in London called theComputer Film Company, run by my
friend Mike Boudry and my greatboss uh Wolfgang Glemp.
And they were looking for aprogrammer that knew how to
program graphics for embeddedcomputer graphic systems, not
(08:30):
silicon graphics, not thestandard, you know, um stuff
that we use.
It was no Nvidia stuff.
It was like all hardware thatthey'd commissioned and built
that they needed a programmerfrom.
And I fortunately, with mybackground of having done a lot
of um parallel processing andgraphics, I got the job.
And that was the beginning ofme making images that I wasn't
embarrassed to be showing otherpeople.
And it ultimately led me to theUnited States and working on
(08:53):
movies.
Jen Coronado (08:54):
Well, that's something I want to ask you
about because I talked to a lotof people from the UK, and how
do I put this in a way where Idon't sound like a jerk?
There tends to be a hesitancyto for towards ambition.
And you have this tenacity,Kim, to push towards new things
(09:15):
and to try new things and toreally go after the things that
you're looking for.
And I wonder, did you feel likeyou had that when you were
young and it just was part ofwho you were?
Or is it something youdeveloped and allowed you to
move to the US?
Like what where do you thinkthat comes from?
Kim Libreri (09:30):
Yes, back in the UK, there is a little bit of a,
you know, be happy with your lotin life.
It's not, you know, I not not Ilove England, yeah.
Obviously, it still soundssomewhat English after 25 years
of living here, but it just, youknow, the level of ambition and
you know the lack of barriersthat you have in America is not
quite was not quite the same inthe UK at that in that era.
(09:53):
I actually think it's changed alot.
There's so many greatentrepreneurs in the UK.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Amazing artists.
So I don't think it's quite thesame environment that it was
that I grew up in.
And especially, you know, I'min the north of England.
I was in London, I wasn't in apopulation center when I started
out.
But I think the thing for mewas, you know, even though, you
know, I was brought up inEngland, you know, almost
everybody I knew in the localvicinity was my family.
(10:15):
So not only was my dad Maltese,but my my my uncle and auntie
had moved over, they worked tothe same factory, they were from
Malta.
So a lot of my upbringing was,you know, either via my Italian
grandmother or my Maltese familythat used to live around the
corner from us.
So we just have a bit of adifferent outlook.
So you really need to think of,even though I have an English
accent, my um personality issomewhat Southern Mediterranean.
(10:39):
And if you've ever been toMalta, it's they're pretty
high-energy, passionate people.
So I always felt that like if Ireally worked hard and tried
hard and studied hard, then I'ddo well.
And most people of my era inthe UK, the opportunity to come
and live in California is adream.
And remember, my you know, myAtari was from made, you know,
made in Sunnyvale, California.
(11:00):
And my real dream was not to goto LA and Hollywood.
My dream was to come to the BayArea where all these legendary
companies like Apple and Atariwere born, and a new form of
entertainment, especially invideo games, had been formed.
And that's another thing thatpeople think that, you know, I
was a filmmaker at Core.
I loved making movies.
(11:20):
I loved entertaining audiences,especially on more breakthrough
things that show audiencesthings they've never seen
before.
But I equally had a passion forvideo games, always.
And, you know, in 1989, when Igraduated university, there was
no 3D in computer games.
Right.
And if you really cared about,you know, making amazing pixels,
movies was really the onlyplace to go.
(11:41):
That's changed, you know, inthe last decade and a half.
I think that we've shown prettymuch that the two industries
are on this sort of convergence.
Yeah, convergence.
It's not really a collisioncourse because I actually think
both industries can be better bylearning from each other.
Jen Coronado (11:56):
Yeah.
Kim Libreri (11:56):
It was, yeah, it was definitely a passion of mine
to be in video games as well asmovies.
That's what's one of the nicethings of working at Lucasfilm
because we had both sides of it.
In the days I was there, we hadLucasArts and we had ILM.
So you could play at theextreme level of both arts at
the same company.
It was great.
Jen Coronado (12:12):
I've always thought of you.
I never actually Kim thought ofyou as someone who had a
passion for not that you didn'tlove film or a passion for film
or games.
I thought you you had a passionfor vision.
Kim Libreri (12:23):
I like innovating and I like innovating in a way
that brings wonder to others.
That really is it.
That's why I love working withyou know the Wachowskis on the
Matrix movies, is they wanted toshow visuals that nobody had
ever seen before.
Yeah.
And, you know, that movie, thefirst Matrix, was so out there,
most people just didn'tunderstand what we were trying
to make.
And only when it came out didpeople get what we were actually
(12:44):
trying to achieve.
It's actually a very hard movieto crew.
Most people that we interviewedto come and help us work on
that movie wouldn't come.
They were like, we're notworking on the Keanu Reeves
movie.
It's a it would, I think it'shard for people to believe that
people wouldn't have believed inthat movie at the time.
But they just they wanted toreally get people to think about
the story they were telling andalso show people that what was
(13:08):
happening in the movie and theconcepts of the movie in a way
that you'd never seen before.
And that was exciting to me.
Almost everything I ever workedon that I really enjoyed was
about working on the cuttingedge, doing something that
people thought was impossible,working with an amazing team of
artists and engineers.
Almost everything that I'veloved working on, it's an equal
dose of engineering and scienceand art, and them teams coming
(13:32):
together, production crews thatI've worked with over the years.
There's so such close bondsbetween both sides that yeah,
it's it really is the I thinkthe place where I am the best
suited.
Jen Coronado (13:42):
I'm gonna loop back on Matrix in a second, but
the one thing I want to talkabout is the film that you came
to the US for, which is WhatDreams May Come.
And I want I want to talk aboutthat film because I thought it
was so visually interesting whenI saw it the year it came out.
And I know that a lot of thepeople that you worked on that
film continue to be yourcollaborators through the year.
Kim Libreri (14:02):
We all worked together like a quarter of a
century later.
Jen Coronado (14:05):
Exactly.
So I want you to talk aboutwhat was it about that
experience and then coming tothe US and how you connected
with those people.
Kim Libreri (14:11):
I was working at the time, before I came here, I
was working at CineSight,wonderful visual effects company
run by my my buddy Colin Brown,which was it was a division of
Kodak.
Um, in fact, they'd workedpreviously with ILM to build a
film scanner, and they were astartup visual effects company
to really propagate theknowledge of digital film.
One of the last movies I workedon at CineSite was a movie
(14:32):
called Mission Impossible Onewith Tom Cruise.
And there was a sequence inthere that we the the it was a
it's a shot that goes around TomCruise and is it Emmanuel Bert?
Does that sound right?
I think there's a bit ofromance between them and the
camera goes around them.
And the problem was is theycouldn't shoot this in a way
that the the move would besmooth enough and the timing
(14:52):
would work.
So we had to um work out a wayof um sort of re-speeding the
shot.
And we were working with Kodakat the time, and they had this,
they pretty much sort ofstumbled across, or not,
actually not stuff, they've beenworking on it for a while.
They had a thing calledCineSpeed, which was an optical
flow system.
What that would do, and it'svery nerdy, is for every pixel
(15:13):
in a shot, the computer couldwork out exactly where every
pixel would go from frame toframe, and that allows you to
re-speed it.
Anyway, we've been working onthis, and one of my friends is
visiting from America calledNick Brooks, and Nick was
already working on what WhatDreams May Come, or they were
doing some tests for What DreamsMay Come.
And he's like, Hey, we havethis movie that Vincent Ward is
(15:34):
directing, and he wants to makelive action turn into something
that looks like a painting.
And, you know, we just we wewere at the pub and we were
brainstorming.
I'm like, Nick, I think that ifyou really want to shoot it as
live action and you want tobasically effectively attach
paint strokes, you know, and youknow, understand how light is
(15:55):
expressed and how texture isexpressed in a painting and
attach that to a piece of liveaction and make the live action
look like a living painting.
I think this technology thatKodak has is going to enable
that.
And you know, I was advisingNick as a friend because I
wanted to help Kodak propagatethis software and get more of
the film business using it.
So Kodak helped Nick and theteam do a test for what dreams
(16:17):
may come.
And they just did, it was a fewshots and it just showed
promise that hey, you reallycould do it.
You could actually take paintstrokes that had been made by a
fine artist, choose which paintstrokes best fitted contours and
areas of light and dark in theimage, and then have that follow
live action so that the thelive action then turned into a
painting.
And the test was so successful,Nick was like, Hey, do you do
(16:41):
you want to come and move towork for us at um I think the
company was called Mass Illusionat the time?
And I'm like, Well, yeah, Idon't know about living in
Massachusetts, I have no ideawhat Massachusetts is like, but
if you were in California, I'dmove to California or the Bay
Area, and he's like, Well,that's funny.
(17:01):
We're shooting the movie in theBay Area because Robin lives in
the Bay Area.
Well, why don't you set up anoffice there and I'll be out
there like a shot?
And that's how I got involved.
And then Wait, hold on.
Jen Coronado (17:11):
You got someone to set up an office for you?
Kim Libreri (17:14):
Well, they were shooting the movie, they were
shooting, you know, the good olddays when people would spend
money on visual effects, but umthey you know, they were
shooting.
Nick actually liked the idea ofbeing in the Bay Area, and you
know, we were a company that wasa hybrid between art and
technology.
ILM was already in the BayArea, PDI was in the Bay Area,
Pixar was in the Bay Area, itwas the place to be if you
(17:36):
really wanted to innovate.
And it's not just that, hey,the people are available to
hire.
The people that we hired camefrom all over the planet, but
there there was a you know, inthe late 90s, mid to late 90s,
there was a magic here in theBay Area for computer graphics
where you knew that Pixar wasinnovating, you'd know that PDI
was doing all this crazy stuff.
And we had a community wherewe'd all sure share ideas, and
(17:58):
we knew that George was poweringup ILM to do the next Star Wars
movie.
So it was the whole place wasit was buzzing.
It was really, really, reallycool.
Yeah.
And, you know, and also whereelse could you meet amazing
technologists, amazing artiststhat all are a little bit
counterculture because we're inthe Bay Area?
It was fantastic, it was afantastic time to come here, a
(18:18):
fantastic community to be partof.
It worked, it was not, theydidn't even bat an eyelid about
setting up the Bay Area becauseit was an obvious place to do
it.
Jen Coronado (18:26):
Yeah.
So I want to jump into thematrix of it all.
And I want you to tell me aboutLana and Lily Wachowski and how
you began working with them.
And do you think that was acareer catalyst for you?
Kim Libreri (18:38):
I don't know about career catalyst.
It just was an awesomeexperience, yeah.
And also it was so it was sohard to make.
So, how do we get involved init?
So at the same time as workingon What Dreams May Come, Mass
Illusion had also been tapped todo the Matrix movie.
And myself and Rodney Wishinaand John Gator would sort of we
were starting to ideate how wewould do bulletem as we were
(19:01):
still working on what dreams maycome.
And, you know, on the firstone, we only met, well, I only
met Lana and Lily just onlyprobably two or three times
during the first movie, becausethey would come to our really
scruffy offices in Alameda.
I don't know if you know thestory.
We you know, we worked on theold Alameda Naval Air Station.
Yeah.
But when I first moved to theUS for What Dreams May Come, it
(19:23):
was I think July 1997, and theNavy had just moved out of
Alameda.
It was pretty cool.
From a from a pure environmentto make movies in, nobody was on
this Navy base, a whole massiveNavy base, you know, it kind of
in the middle of the bay, ornot really the full middle, but
to kind of the side of the bay.
Jen Coronado (19:40):
Yeah.
Kim Libreri (19:41):
Nobody's there.
All these disused buildings,empty houses, a crazy
environment to be makingsomething that was as
groundbreaking as the Matrix inparticular, which is, you know,
you actually, I don't know ifyou ever went over to Alameda
during that era, but it was likea ghost town.
It was the weirdest thing.
And you know, you go, you go tothe edge of the Navy base or
the the bit they would let yougo to, and you've got like a
(20:02):
fence that you can't cross umbecause that the air the runways
are not an active runway, andit's just disused, and there's
pampas grass and fucking hairsrunning across the location, and
then you see San Francisco inthe distance across the bay.
Yeah, and it's it's almosthonestly, it's like because you
can't see any traffic, you don'tsee any motion.
(20:22):
It has that sort of eerie, youknow.
I know Stephen King in the DarkTower series when he dis
describes some of the bigcities, it's got that very eerie
feel, but yet they're there,and we don't see another soul
other than people making themovie with us.
It was awesome.
Jen Coronado (20:36):
That's very cool.
And I mean, out of well, thefirst matrix gave you is that
where you got your first AcademyAward, your first technical
academy?
Kim Libreri (20:43):
Uh yeah, we got a scientific and technical
achievement award for thevirtual environments that we
built on the Matrix.
I don't think I don't know ifBullet Time, I don't think
Bullet Time was actuallyincluded in that.
I think it was mostly for theenvironments of the Bullet Time
stuff, is uh is is what theaward was for.
Jen Coronado (20:58):
Tell me about Bullet Time and developing that
and what that looked like andhow did you think about that?
Because I know you were like,what was your exact role on the
film?
Kim Libreri (21:06):
I was Bullet Time supervisor, mostly for dealing
with how we were gonna shoot itand how we were gonna process
it.
You know, John Gator was thevisual effects supervisor, my
friend Yannick's another bigshot visual effects supervisor
now, was my buddy that yearsearlier when working at the
computer film company, we were Iwould write the software, he
would do the compositing.
Jen Coronado (21:25):
It's uh was such a Was that when you worked on the
Muppet movie?
Kim Libreri (21:28):
The Muppets Christmas Carol.
Jen Coronado (21:30):
That's right.
I mean, great that the Caper isthe best film, but I like that
movie.
Kim Libreri (21:34):
No, Christmas Carol is awesome.
Like Michael Cain's performancein that is unbelievable.
How he keeps a straight facethrough all of that craziness is
unbelievable.
Yeah, and you know, BrianHenson, you know, took over the
directing duties from his dad,his dad passed away, yeah.
And that was the my firstexperience of ever working with
the director, and it wasawesome.
When we got Kermit to walk, ityeah, it was quite an emotional
(21:57):
because they couldn't do itwithout digital effects.
You couldn't really get Kermitto walk without a guy in blue
behind him doing the puppetingand then removing that.
So it was cool anyway.
That's cool.
Jen Coronado (22:08):
That also goes back to the first film where
they were trying to take hislegs for frog legs, remember?
Kim Libreri (22:13):
Yeah, yeah, delicious, delicious.
Jen Coronado (22:16):
Okay, so bullet time.
You it let's go back to bullettime and talk about developing
that.
Kim Libreri (22:21):
The Wachowskis are already storyboarded what they
want.
So people think that we made atool and then they utilized it.
It wasn't that, it was alwaysin their heads.
They they were super comic bookaficiados, they loved Hong Kong
cinema, they wanted to bringtogether the um the action of
Hong Kong cinema, but with thevisceral, you know, when you
(22:44):
watch a comic, when you when youlook at a comic, especially the
you know, the Marvel actionones, there's so much, there's
moments in there that arehyper-real that you really don't
see in the real world, but itsort of kindles the imagination.
Right.
And they storyboarded thishybrid way before any of us were
working on this thing.
They storyboarded that uh theoriginal rooftop shot of it's
(23:06):
called GR22, is the is theactual shot name of Keano on the
rooftop, dodging the bullets.
And uh anyway, so that we wehad that template, and you know,
we had to work out how to doit.
Um, the Mass Illusion and Johnand Nick had done an early test,
and actually Pierre Jasmine aswell, had done an early test
probably a year before the moviewas shot with some still
(23:29):
cameras, doing a still cameraarray.
John was like, Oh my god,really?
We're gonna have to do thiswith still cameras.
It's super complicated withstill cameras.
Every camera has to bepositioned, has to be focused,
has to be triggered, has to beloaded.
There are still cameras, theyonly shoot 30 exposures.
The batteries are a totalnightmare doing it with still
cameras.
(23:49):
So John was like, can we notjust do four or five movie
cameras and then do some clever3D reconstruction and move the
camera around in pulse, whichnow you can.
We have nerfs and we haveGaussian splats and the
technology, you know, almost 30years later is exists now, but
just no way.
Shooting on film and doing itthat day and age, there's no way
(24:09):
we could have done it.
So we decided to settle on thestill rig.
We built a custom rig.
Uh Frank Gallego and his teamat Innovation Arts built uh the
bullet time rig for us.
There was a lot of previous.
So the way it would the way wegot the shots done is that a
Wuping's Hong Kong action teamwould basically rehearse the
work out the choreography ofwhat they wanted to do for the
(24:31):
actual these stunts, rehearsethem with videotape, them, not
even mocap, because you've gotto remember 1998 motion capture
was, I think, I think it'd justbeen used on Titanic, but very
little motion capture in themovie business at that point.
Yeah.
I don't even remember.
Havan Helsing was like thefirst thing for ILM, I think,
that you did extensive mocap,but correct.
Anyway, we'd get thechoreography, would get it into
(24:53):
Soft Image, and the way we woulddo it is my buddy Dan Clem
would you know rotoscope thestuff by hand in Soft Image in
3D so that we would get thestunt action and then we would
pre-vis around it.
It's one of the earliest usesof pre-vis as a sort of tech viz
capability so that you can workwith the filmmakers to design
the camera move, to design howthe action is positioned in the
(25:15):
world, and then work outultimately in post-production
where do we want them cameras,where do we want that virtual
camera to fly?
So yeah, we started off withpre-vis, worked out where the
cameras would have to be, whenthey would be triggered, and
each camera, it you know, we'regetting pretty technical.
It's like a thousandth of asecond between each camera
firing, getting stuff to rig.
(25:35):
So, you know, it was a nice, itwas a it was a nice thing to
see the you know the martialartists coming together with the
pre-visualization artists,which really wasn't a term in
that day and age.
Dan Clem did most of it in softimage.
And then we're, you know,basically doing simulations for
where we have to put thecameras, because you know,
cameras have a body.
(25:55):
You you you they you have toyou you can't space them
infinitely close together.
So there was a whole bunch ofcomplexity in working out where
where they would actuallyphysically fit and then how many
frames of interpolation wewould have to generate to get
the final camera to work.
Somewhere in this house, thereis a Bible of all the steps to
make a bullet time shot.
Really?
A hundred steps just for thepost-production side of things,
(26:18):
to the point where almost everycompositor that worked with me
on the first movie to do bullettime ended up being kids that I
trained out of school.
Tom Proctor, who's a bighotshot visual effects
supervisor in London now, had hejust, I don't, I he just
finished his degree and we'relike, hey kid, I'm gonna teach
you how to composite and pull agreen screen.
(26:38):
And because anybody who wasexperienced was like, this is
madness, this is so hard, you'recrazy.
Why are you doing this?
It's like surely you don't needthese shots.
It's like we do, they're reallypivotal to telling the story
that we have to show that Neohas is able to have his mind
have power over the matter ofthe matrix.
Jen Coronado (26:56):
Yeah.
Kim Libreri (26:56):
Anyway, the very very, very complicated process.
I don't go into all of it, andwe've talked about it plenty of
times, and I'm pretty surepeople at home will be panic.
Jen Coronado (27:03):
Well, here's my question for you how many times
did you panic?
Kim Libreri (27:07):
You know, I've always said to the crew that I
work with, success is a state ofmind.
If you've got a smart team andyou really feel that there's
going to be a solution, you'llget through it.
There's been very, you know,maybe I've just been really
lucky and I'm about to like thenext thing I work on is gonna
blow up in my face.
But we've always, you know, itthat I think that's one of the
(27:28):
hard things about being creativeand innovating and just having
enough instinct to what could bepossible, what do you feel that
you can do?
A lot of people sort of live inthis world of, oh, we can only
do it the way we've done it inthe past.
That's never been a projectthat I work on.
It's oh, we're always like,well, what is the science and
the art and the tools?
Where could we go?
(27:48):
If we extrapolate where we are,where do we really feel we can
do?
And sometimes that ends upbeing a very hard process.
Making them bullet time shotswas really hard.
They were made over the bestpart of a year, and you know, we
got pretty close to the end.
And it's by the and I, youknow, you've worked with me on
some productions at ILM, and youknow that, well, if you're
(28:09):
gonna innovate, it's gonna bethe last 10% of the time when
you do most of the actual workbecause you've worked out the
special ingredients for thetechnique you're deploying.
But you know, by the time wegot to three-quarters of the way
through, we were prettyconfident we got one shot sort
of working.
Our issue was we're a littletiny visual effects company that
can't pay a lot of money in theBay Area during the dot-com era
(28:30):
where you know anybody who wasgood at science was getting
crazy salaries.
It was just we crunched.
It was like there was not manyof us working on it, and we
really had to crunch.
The biggest panic was for so itwas really important for Joel
Silver that we got a trailerinto the Super Bowl.
So January 1999, the bullettime shot of Neo dodging the
(28:52):
bullets on the rooftop is therein the trailer.
And if you ever look, if youlook at that historic trailer,
it's not as good looking as thefinal version.
But there's a reason it wasit's it still looks good.
It was the bullet wakes, to behonest, that were the biggest
letdown in that shot.
But uh what happened was uh wedidn't have a lot of money at
that company.
Man X was not super rich, anduh, we were working up with 3K
(29:15):
imagery.
Yeah, a lot of disk storage weneed, a lot of disk storage.
And the way to do it in thatday and age is you'd buy a fancy
RAID disc and there would be ahundred thousand dollars worth
of disk.
And we couldn't afford it.
And we couldn't afford it oncewe started the shots.
So what we had is we had fourdrives regular, normal external
(29:36):
hard drives, SCSI drives whatthey were called at the day in
that day and age.
And the data would be spreadacross them for we get maximum
speed because we really neededspeed because we were loading so
many images.
The problem with that is if onedrive dies, everything is lost.
And finally, a couple of weeksbefore we're delivering the
Super Bowl trailer, our ITperson shows up and we've got
(29:58):
your RAID disc.
Oh About time.
Blumminek.
It could have been a few weeksago.
It would have been better then.
We're kind of in a crunch now,but we're like, you know,
there's always this chance thisdisc fails.
So we bet we swap we'll swap itout.
And anyway, he goes to startswapping the discs out and he
gets distracted by somebodyelse.
I'm not going to say whose nameit was.
Dude, you're totally stressingme out with this story.
(30:18):
Continue.
This is super stressful.
It's unbelievable.
And remember, Tom, Tom was 21years old.
Not I actually he turned 21 inthe middle of making Matrix.
Congrats.
And this is Tom Proctor.
And he sat there behind hisworkstation, our IT guy swapping
out these discs.
And at some point, somebodyacross the room says something
to him.
I almost said his name.
(30:39):
And he turns around to them andhis bum hits these discs.
And he knocks them flying onthe floor.
The good the ones with our dataon them.
And they're lying on the floorgoing, ging, which is the heads
grinding of the disc.
And we're like, oh God.
Oh god.
Yeah, Tom's like throwing uppretty much at this point.
(31:01):
And I'm like, so you how havethem nightly backups been going?
And remember, we had no money.
Yeah.
And our IT guys we ran out oftapes.
Oh Jesus Christ.
So the closest one we've got isa month old.
A month?
A month.
We've got two weeks to finishthis.
So we've got to do a month'sworth of work in like two weeks
(31:24):
and finish the bit we hadn'tfinished yet.
And you know, Tom's a trooper.
And honestly, it's usually it'sa very valuable lesson.
When you do something for thesecond time, it's usually not as
hard.
It's a lot easier.
A lot easier.
And we were able to recover itand we got our shot for the
Super Bowl.
And Joel Silver was very happy,and we all got banned by Joel.
Jen Coronado (31:45):
Oh man.
You stressed me out, but justtell me the story.
I mean, one of the things thatI think is really interesting,
Kim, about everything you'vedone, regardless of what you've
dealt with, you've always kindof done a version of simulated
worlds, right?
Um, and is the idea of thesebig simulated worlds something
that's super cool for you too?
Like the idea of like you workwith real-time rendering right
(32:05):
now with the Unreal Engine atEpic.
Like is that super what excitesyou about that?
Kim Libreri (32:11):
Well, so being a computer programmer, you know,
what one has a tendency to, whenyou're trying to solve an
artistic or creative problem,one tends to also go towards
maths and algorithms to try andsolve the problem.
And having worked on thematrix, when we got to the
second and third matrix, and wehave all this city stuff in this
in the matrix, and we're like,come on, Lana and Lily, we can
(32:32):
shoot some of this as plates.
No, the matrix is a simulation.
The matrix is a simulation.
We need to be authentic.
So, first of all, you know, wewe deployed photogrammetry to
build a city in the computer.
And, you know, after we'dfinished the second and third
movie, we're like, there must bea smarter way of doing it.
And you know, we'd looked atbuildings so much that we
started to understand the likethey repeat themselves a lot.
(32:55):
You know, the way an architectdesigns a building is yeah, the
group the ground floor isusually pretty unique.
But from then on, it's just arepeat of the corner pieces and
the and the main body of thebuildings.
And you can use maths andproceduralism to lay that stuff
out.
And then, you know, as Istarted to get more and more
into game engine technology, youstart to think about how games
(33:16):
are made.
And games are a simulatedworld.
You know, the designers of thegames are trying to build
something that a player believesis a real place.
And, you know, what is one ofthe things that's been driving
us?
And, you know, the way that wemake an Unreal Engine is, you
know, we we try to make it towork for many industries, the
film business, the gamesbusiness, the architectural
business.
And what we've been trying toeducate people is if you take
(33:39):
this mentality of actuallyprogramming something, then you
make a world not only in a waythat the next time you want to
make it, it's really easy tomake.
So if you want to make like aweather system that you know
sprinkles snow over a city andproduces the snow particles and
you know, adjusts the lightingand all the things that happen
when a snowstorm happens or whenrain happens, then if you do
(34:01):
that as a simulated way, thenit's really easy to use it time
and time again later.
But it also starts to free upthe filmmakers so they can do
that stuff on set.
So if you can do that real timeand go, you know, it would be
better if it's a bit foggy rightnow, or hey, make the rain
stronger.
It it actually is actuallyquite freeing for people trying
(34:21):
to tell stories.
I think what interests me thereis you use a computer to take
the grunt work out so you're nothaving to do every single step
manually.
And when you can do that, youcan give them controls to
whether it's a game maker or afilmmaker that you know that now
they can be all powerful and beable to do very expressive
things that have massiveconsequences to the to the story
(34:43):
they're telling or the look ofthe thing that they're making in
a way that is intuitive to themand easy.
Jen Coronado (34:48):
The other thing, you know, we talked about this a
bit earlier, but I think it'simportant.
It can be you work with a lotof the same people over the
years and you bring teams withyou to to places that you go.
You've been at Epic for 10years now.
I don't know if you realize 10and a half years.
Yeah.
So do you find comfort in theseteams or do you find that you
like to just hold on to peoplewho you know have been your best
(35:10):
collaborators?
Kim Libreri (35:12):
When we work together, you know, people
compliment each other and wehave a connection.
We, you know, we all loveworking with each other and
we've done so many amazingthings over the years.
You know, it's not typicalpeople have no fear of
innovating.
People are pretty can be prettyconservative.
And when you find like-mindedpeople that are passionate,
(35:34):
smart, and fearless, it like itbecomes addictive working with
them people.
So together, it's not it's notthey all want to work for me or
I just want to work with them.
We're drawn to each other.
We just we've done so manyamazing things together that you
know, if you you look at StevenSmallberg, he's worked with the
same crew as much as he can.
Yeah, it's like it just a bondgets made that is, you know, and
(35:55):
also when you do reallydifficult innovative things, you
work very hard together andthey become your family, you
know, as much as your realfamily.
Even you know, occasionally youwork with somebody on something
really hard, you get sick ofeach other for a little bit.
It's just like families.
I won't see them for a bit.
And then you come backtogether.
Years later, you're like, Doyou want to do it again?
Do you want to do somethingcrazy?
So there's just a bond that'smade from pushing the envelope
(36:18):
and succeeding.
Jen Coronado (36:20):
Like, yeah.
Kim Libreri (36:20):
And I, you know, and when you don't succeed and
you fail, that makes evenstronger bonds.
Yeah.
Because you really people arethematic.
They always, you know, if youhave something in your heart
that you think something'spossible and you don't succeed
once, really great people willdo it again.
Like we're very thematic, yeah.
Things stay there, we programourselves, and if if something
failed, we usually areinnovators do not give up.
(36:43):
You'll see people trying,trying to until they crack it.
And I think that drive as well.
And you know, we all but allback to the matrix moves.
We all really believed thatcomputer graphics was going to
revolutionize entertainment as awhole.
Yeah, that's why the move frommovies to games for a lot of
these people has been easy.
They don't like like the tothem, it's about using our
skills to to make these amazingexperiences, whether they're
(37:05):
linear 2D stuff or they're fullyimmersive 3D interactive stuff.
Yeah.
We just did a crazy concert.
I don't know if you saw we dida concert in Times Square with
Soup Dog last not last Friday,but the Friday before.
Yeah.
Michael Gay, who was he builtthe Burley Brawl for us, he was
the artist that held togetherthe Burley Brawl team and did
all the Burley Brawl Matrixmovie, yeah.
Agent Smith battle.
(37:26):
He and our team worked out howdo we coordinate every single
screen in Times Square with thegraphics that we worked with our
friends at Magnopas, they didan amazing job, but them
graphics play across time andspace.
So it's not just the one screenthat we're controlling, every
screen was coordinated to theanimation of this, and then on
(37:49):
top of that, inside the game ofFortnite 10 million players, 10
million plus players were ableto experience the same thing
that was a combination of livehuman entertainment of Snoop
Dogg live in Times Square withwhat they were doing in the
game.
It's awesome.
It's like the ability to dothings that just bring so much
(38:10):
joy to people is amazing.
Jen Coronado (38:12):
And we all thought Snoop Dogg was just there for
the Olympics, but he's there,he's everywhere.
Kim Libreri (38:17):
He's one of the coolest people in the world
right now.
Jen Coronado (38:19):
Yeah, it's true.
So, you know, we talked aboutthe technology, we've talked
about the vision of things, butI want what I want to talk
about, Kim, I want to put allthat aside.
And I want to talk about whoare you, Kim, outside of that?
Like, for example, I know youmake a great risotto, but what
are the things that bring youjoy outside of what your job
does?
Kim Libreri (38:39):
I do like cooking.
I think that came from mygrandmother.
And there is a relationship, Ithink, between making imagery
and having the passion and skillto cook.
I like a lot of my friends thatI've worked with over the years
all cook.
I like my cars, I like driving.
I like I it's funny.
I have this really therapeuticthing that I like detailing
cars.
I know that sounds reallyweird, and everybody at home is
(39:00):
gonna be like, what?
I'm like, it's I just find itso therapeutic.
All week, all I do is talk topeople, all I do is look at
images, interact with games, tobe able to just do this finesse
detailing of my cars is supertherapy for me.
I just love it.
But yeah.
Jen Coronado (39:18):
That's great.
I think that's important forpeople to have that.
Sort of as a final wrap-upquestion, one of the things we
did at the beginning of thisseason is we talked to a bunch
of kids and we asked them twoquestions.
And one was, what do you wantto be when you grow up?
And what does imagination meanto you?
And I want to ask you kind ofan esoteric question, which is
(39:39):
what do you think little Kimwould have said?
And how do you think aboutimagination and creativity as a
grown-up?
Kim Libreri (39:47):
I think young teenage Kim would have said,
work out how to make a videogame be as awesome looking and
as awesomely moving as the very,very best movies.
I literally as a little kid,where like well, I wouldn't have
(40:07):
been that little in 1986 whenthat book came out.
I had a dream.
I had a dream, I would havebeen a late teenager.
I had a dream that I was flyingat a snow speeder in the Battle
of Hoth, but in a game.
And it looked exactly like themovie.
But yet I was commanding whatwas happening there.
Like that's honest truth.
Jen Coronado (40:26):
That's amazing.
And what does grown-up Kimthink creativity means now?
Kim Libreri (40:31):
I don't know.
Creativity, what does it meanto me?
Yeah.
I think it's I think it's aboutmaking your dreams come true,
not just for yourself, but forothers.
Jen Coronado (40:40):
That's beautiful.
Well, my friend, we're towardsthe end of the conversation.
Is there is there anything youelse you wanted to add?
Any pearls of wisdom?
Kim Libreri (40:49):
I I think at the end of the day, you know, it's
never about an individualperson, it's about your team.
And that that that thing aboutsuccess is a state of mind.
I think the tradition of thefilm industry is very
hierarchical, but the reality isthe great stuff is not made
that way.
The great stuff is made as ateam effort where everybody
mucks in together and even theyoungest mind can be the one
that actually solves the amazingproblem that you need to solve.
(41:10):
So I think it's it's lookingafter your team, inspiring your
team, super important.
That's great.
Jen Coronado (41:16):
Well, thank you, Kim.
I really appreciate you.
Kim Libreri (41:18):
Cool.
All right, thank you.
Jen Coronado (41:21):
Thank you for listening to Everyone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson.
Executive producer is AaronDusau.
Music by Doug Infinite.
Our logo and graphic design isby Harrison Parker, and I'm Jen
Coronado.
Everyone Is is a slightlydisappointed productions
production dropping every otherThursday.
So make sure to rate and reviewand like and subscribe.
(41:43):
Thanks for listening.
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