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Maxwell Planck      

Virtual Reality Technical Producer; CEO & Co-Founder of Adventure Lab

Max Planck graduated from MIT in 2004 with a degree in computer science (specializing in computer graphics). After graduation, he worked at Pixar for 10 years as a technical director working on movies like Cars, WALL-E, Up, Brave, and The Good Dinosaur creating creative technology around lighting, shading, animation, and simulation.

He cofounded Oculus Story Studio in 2014 where he produced and supervised some of the early groundbreaking, award winning narrative experiences in VR including Lost, Henry, Dear Angelica, and Wolves in the Walls. Planck won an Emmy for his work with Henry and Wolves in the Walls. He won a Lumiere and Peabody Award for Dear Angelica.

Planck loves video games, board games, jigsaw puzzles, immersive theater (he saw Speakeasy SF 5 times!), role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (DM for 4 years). He grew up adoring game shows like Double Dare and Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Planck’s biggest adventure to date: he and his wife are obsessed with escape rooms, having escaped 90+ together. His proudest and most adventurous moment is when he used the final puzzle of an escape room to propose.

Speech Topics


  • Virtual Reality Storytelling
  • Building & Running a Virtual Reality Studio
  • Using a Game Engine to tell Stories
  • Immersive Virtual Reality (aka Immersive Cinema)
  • Positionally Tracked Virtual Reality - Oculous Story Studio is designing a computer generated experience running in a real-time game engine, where the user can walk around in the stories created. Building an experience that balances visual quality, performance, and readability of story is a unique challenge in "immersive cinema."

News


Oculus Story Studio is the Pixar of virtual reality
Moments before Oculus Story Studio's new virtual reality short Lost reached its satisfying climax, I found myself in a compromised position. Sequestered in a private demo booth, I was involuntarily crouched down, covering my head in a defensive position and, I should add, squealing with delight...
Oculus' Pixar Exec-Led Story Studio Will Release VR Cinema ...
He's joined by Supervising Technical Director Max Planck, who solved technical animation problems for Pixar for 10 years on films like Up and Wall-E. The lean ...
Oculus Launches Story Studio to Promote Virtual Reality Filmmaking ...
Maxwell Planck, is Story Studio's supervising technical director, who spent the past decade at Pixar solving the company's creative technical problems behind ...

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