Tech Special: Jessica Brillhart

Google’s principal VR filmmaker Jessica Brillhart tells Iain Blair her career has been one of surprises. Shocked to get onto an NYU film course, she was later blindsided by an invite to be the creative lead on Google’s 360-degree camera rig, Jump. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at her constant state of astonishment as she travels the world, exploring where this exciting new technology can go next

Jessica Brillhart, the principal filmmaker for VR at Google and a pioneer in this brave new world, may be a self-confessed high-tech nerd and “proud of it”, but she’s definitely not your usual Silicon Valley-raised techie.

“I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, and I learned filmmaking via technology,” she says. “My dad was a programmer and a hobbyist kind of guy, so I was exposed to some stuff from him, but I learned how to edit videos I was making for high school by reading books at the local Borders because I couldn’t afford to buy them and take them home. I was basically self-taught.”

And there’s more than just algorithms and circuitry embedded in her DNA: “They give you this test at school to see what direction you should go in later, and my interests were all over the place,” she remembers. “I was a big tech-nerd, but I also loved art and creativity. One result from my future career test was ‘filmmaker’. So I looked that up and thought, ‘That’s interesting – and it’s a real job,’ which I hadn’t realised before.”

No one Brillhart knew had “a clue” about filmmaking, “so I Googled it, and NYU popped up,” she recalls. “So I applied, never thinking I’d get in, and also applied to a lot of other colleges, to study computer science, which seemed far more likely to happen.” She submitted a short video she’d edited to NYU, and was “a bit taken aback” when she was accepted. “That was 2003, and I graduated in 2007 and then worked at Apple for a bit, which was fun and interesting,” she adds.  

The joy of pressing record

But she still hadn’t found her sweet spot, she admits. “I had this filmmaking track and this technology track, and for a while they ran on parallel courses, but never converged. And it wasn’t until I started working at Google seven years ago as their ‘first filmmaker’ – even though I didn’t know what that title meant, and they didn’t either – that these two tracks in my life finally merged.”

At Google Creative Lab she spearheaded numerous award-winning shorts and documentaries before joining the VR team in 2015. “VR happened randomly,” she says. “I was making films about AI and how technology interacts with humanity, and some other really interesting stuff, and I wasn’t looking to leave all that. I was happy doing that.” But then she got an email from a group of engineers that were building a new 360-degree stereoscopic camera rig, asking if she could test it for them as a filmmaker. “I thought the request was sent to me by mistake,” she admits. “And it was a big moment for me, as it was the prototype to Jump at the time, with 16 GoPros in this array, all un-synced.”

Brillhart took up the challenge, and went to Seattle to work with the team. “One of the cool things about the Jump ecosystem is that it’s not just the rig – it’s the ability to take footage and use cloud computing to stitch it all together,” she notes. “That’s a big deal as otherwise you spend a lot of time and money stitching material together – and this setup did it all in just one day.”

One particular piece of footage really caught Brillhart off-guard. “It was the group just pressing ‘record’ in their office, so it was literally just a bunch of engineers hanging out together with the rig, and they were all so excited and happy, and it felt awesome,” she says. “Here I was, trying to communicate the nuances of humanity and tech, and these guys just hit the record button and did it. It felt like everything I’d been trying to accomplish in filmmaking and just couldn’t.”

It was a eureka moment for Brillhart. “I instantly realised that this would be the next big step,” she states. “It captured something and made me feel something I’d never felt before. It was a very profound moment, for sure.”

That was a year-and-a-half ago, and since then Brillhart has worked with all the Jump prototypes and the GoPro Odyssey rig, and has made three films: World Tour, the first VR film shot with the first prototype of the Jump rig; Resonance, a VR music video featuring violinist Tim Fain; and Go Habs Go, about the opening night of the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey season. Brillhart found herself surprisingly excited about the last. “I’m not even a big ice hockey fan, but it was one of those things where they were like, ‘We’d love to know what VR is,’ and I was like, ‘Great! I’d love to know what ice hockey is!’” she laughs.  

Brillhart has been travelling the world, filming and experimenting, all in an effort to better understand and help inform others about this emergent medium. “Last time I was in Paris, I went around a lot of the touristy areas with the rig, just to gather material and insight,” she explains. “I’m trying to film and see what’s possible without the stress of having to complete a very polished final product. It’s been very helpful because I get the stuff back so quickly, so I can have insights, and then let those emerge and use that information for the next project I do.”

Currently, Brillhart is working with La Blogotheque, the French company well-known for its stripped-back music videos called Take Away Shows, largely shot by Parisian indie filmmaker Vincent Moon. “We’re working on music video experiences together,” she says. “They do really cool projects, like putting a musician in a stairwell and just filming him singing in a very raw, unpolished way in this great space. So VR seemed like a natural fit for them. It makes perfect sense for projects like that.”

Ask Brillhart what she thinks of the current wave of VR technology and content, and she’s very enthusiastic: “It’s all great. It’s permeating a lot more now, so you’re seeing more rigs and platforms out there and people are experimenting more with content.” Mentioning Cardboard Camera, the Google app that turns your smart phone into a VR camera, she continues: “People are really into it now, so you see camera companies and tech companies reaching out to creators, enabling them to take the next step. And I go to all these different festivals, and it’s amazing to see, not just what all the major players are doing, but what kids are doing.

“There’s this huge VR hacker culture now. It’s going to be far more common to have a VR headset soon,” she adds, “and the content will constantly improve, thanks to the experimentation. For instance, there are things that work in traditional filmmaking and gaming that just don’t work in VR. But you can use some of it as a framework, and pull in the elements that do work.”

Giving advice for people thinking of getting into the VR space, Brillhart doesn’t hold back: “Expect to be very confused a lot of the time! But that’s OK because, to be honest, we’re all confused too. You think you know something, and then it switches on you. It’s important to be reactive and OK with being wrong. Then it’s a lot of fun. Otherwise, it’s going to be very tough.”