Production Line: Staying Curious to Be Ahead of the Curve with Geneviève Trepanier

Geneviève’s professional background lies in managing digital projects across many fields - from AR gaming to interactive installations. With over 12 years experience in digital and immersive projects, she has worked with clients including Google, TAITO, The Smithsonian, Coca-Cola and Cirque du Soleil. Genevieve loves delivering non-traditional projects - the more innovative the better.

LBB> Production used to be quite siloed, then it moved to integrated and now it seems producers can be media/platform-neutral problem solvers - what’s your take?

Geneviève> I’d say it really depends on the company and niche skill sets sought for producer casting. My background is quite diverse, and I appreciate how UNIT9 continues to enable me to evolve, with the opportunity to get involved in projects ranging from AR to gaming to experiential.

There’s something nice about being a ‘jack of all trades’, bringing and bridging learnings from, say, an experiential museum project spanning many months into a short and sweet AR gaming production, adapting to new teams and clients and ensuring I always challenge myself and my ways of working. 

LBB> Can you talk us through one or two of the most exciting recent productions that you’ve been involved in that you think had a really interesting innovation or technological aspect to them?

Geneviève> There have been a few, but technically speaking I’d say the spatial computing experiments we have been creating for Spatial by UNIT9 have broken boundaries (both figuratively and virtually). We’ve been working with the latest hardware including the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro headsets to see what we can create with improved mixed reality functionality, including things like better video passthrough.

One of my favourite experiments from the series, 'Riders', uses passthrough and room mesh to bring two players in separate physical environments together in a shared virtual space, each with a different role to play within the experience. In my opinion, the idea of connected co-presence in mixed reality is just getting started.

I can’t wait for more information to become available to help us makers understand a user’s environment further in order to create even more bespoke and adapted experiences. For instance, I love the idea of being able to use the room geometry from my own apartment to play a mixed reality game of hide and seek with a virtual friend someday.

Another project that stands out in terms of innovative tech was our AR transformation of 'SPACE INVADERS'. With such an iconic game, we needed the most cutting-edge tech to do it justice, and I believe this is what we had. We used Google’s Geospatial API to anchor 'SPACE INVADERS' gameplay content to a player’s physical surroundings, turning their immediate world into a canvas for the game.

Seeing my own neighbourhood transform into the Invader’s world, mixed with highly precise AR characters spawning from the buildings around me was one of those pivotal moments as a digital producer where I realised the technological importance of this project. 

LBB> What are the technologies that you have your eye on that either are having a big impact on how production is done - or have the potential to change things in a big way?

Geneviève> It’s on everyone’s minds and lips this year, but AI really will be a game changer. It’s already breaking barriers on all fronts - supporting coding efforts, helping us create quick visuals for mood boards and establishing concept art, as well as streamlining our day-to-day tasks with note taking and smart reminders.

For advertising projects, we feel there are three key areas of immediate impact for AI: accelerating workflows, enhancing creativity, and creating personalisation at scale. We’ve been exploring its potential in a number of our projects - from deepfaked personalised video messages from Lionel Messi to his fans, to an AI-powered contest that scoured Twitch streams for visible Mountain Dew bottles to give their audience a chance to win a spotlight on the brand’s gaming channel.

The lid has only just been lifted, really. 

LBB> It looks like it will involve quite a different workflow/process - is that something agencies and brands need to educate themselves on?

Geneviève> Totally. As a production partner, we have our own watch outs - AI will redefine how some campaigns or projects are shaped, so the way we review them, address any potential legal liability and mitigate risks should be adapted. Right now, all clients, agencies and production legal teams are still in learning mode as the tools and implementations constantly evolve - it’s something we all need to stay on top of. When it comes to AI things are changing almost daily so ongoing education is key.

LBB> With so many platforms to produce for, what’s your preference, to maximise assets across platforms or to produce content that’s more tailored to each - or some sort of balance? What sort of conversations do you tend to have about this sort of thing?

Geneviève> Usually this decision is informed by the wider project and asset strategy rather than being up to the producer alone - and in today’s world where activations can span multi channels, it can get pretty complex.

Each platform always has its own set of requirements. So even if we’re trying to leverage the same content across a range of platforms - eg mobile, desktop and mixed reality - there will always be extra work involved. We don’t have to triple the efforts necessarily, but we do have to reproduce the work to some degree. So we often need to identify which platform should become our priority if we want to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. 

Of course, I always prefer to spend as much time as possible on each platform to create the highest quality output - but sometimes we need to adapt. I’ll always make sure to test the pipeline and visual adaptations early on so that we - and the client - are clear on the potential variations along the way.

LBB> Quite often production involves trying to solve a problem that’s never been attempted before - and that can mean hacking existing technology or trying to find new technologies. When you get a project that has such technological challenges, how do you and your team like to approach them?

Geneviève> Where we can, we try to be ahead of the curve by staying curious, and consistently exploring and experimenting with the latest tech. We have an internal initiative where we cultivate a culture of experimentation and target specific tech or trends that interest us and put time and energy into understanding, creating and developing with them, so that we’re ready to use that knowledge on client projects when the moment comes.

This essentially involves running R&D projects and initiatives to see what innovations, prototypes or proof of concept initiatives could be created in short sprints, using the latest hardware and tech we can get our hands on. 

And yes, we sometimes (often) have wild ‘never been done before’ ideas in the ideation stage of our client work. When that happens, we always give ourselves sufficient time for a proper ‘discovery’ period and make sure we have extremely clear communication between the parties involved on the risks. We use time in discovery to focus on grey areas and iteration to find solid solutions that will allow us to make those wild ideas a reality.