XLIVE is proud to present its second annual list of Emerging Leaders. Our group of 2022 winners includes young event professionals — across both B2B and Fan Experience — whose innovation, creativity, and drive are pushing the industry forward. We will be featuring all of the winners on XLIVE over the coming weeks, so be sure to check back!
Berto Mora’s passion for digital production and technology began with a love a photography, which only grew when he got his first DSLR camera in high school. “I was always influenced by music and visuals,” he says, “but I never really knew what careers existed to get into that world.”
He went on to attend the Art Institute of California in San Francisco, where he studied motion graphics and digital film, which was a new medium at the time. His experience there inspired him to get into the world of music videos, and after various roles in video game editing and production, he went back to school for Computer Science and became fascinated by tracking technologies.
Since 2014, Mora has worked at creative agency All of it Now, producing innovative visual content and experiences. “I'm now doing what I've always wanted to do,” he says, “which is real-time camera tracking for the film and entertainment industries.”
In this role, Mora is often working on research and development for new projects depending on client requests. He notes that one of the most important parts of guiding clients is first considering the goals and desired outcomes of the projects, and then finding the right tech to deploy — whether it be augmented reality, extended reality, etc. — as opposed to starting with the technology just for the sake of it, which often leads to gimmicky outcomes.
Over the past year, Mora has been involved with a number of groundbreaking projects at All of it Now, one of which involved Broadcast AR at Coachella. All of it Now partnered with Epic Games, &Pull, and Six Degrees of Freedom to create the experience, which involved 3D occlusion, allowing for 3D objects to be placed behind the video feed of the stage using Unreal Engine — unlike a lot of other AR implementations, which Mora notes are usually overlays.
Another noteworthy project was Coldplay’s performance on The Voice earlier this year, during which BTS appeared as virtual holograms on the broadcast (they weren’t visible to the live audience). All of it Now worked with Warner Music, Coldplay, and Dimension Studio to execute this impressive use of volumetric technology and augmented reality.
Mora shares that one of his favorite parts of the job is being able to figure out new technologies and how to implement them in the entertainment industry, and he also loves sharing knowledge and supporting his peers.
“I’ve created tutorials and I feel like I'm a support system for a lot of people out there that are trying to do this type of work,” he says. “A lot of people feel the need not to share their knowledge, which to me, holds back the development or the creativity of an industry. By doing tutorials and by helping people, it pushes that industry in a way where we create more jobs and more requests for these kinds of effects, graphics, workflows, whatever it may be I love educating people on how to do this type of work.”
In turn, he also draws inspiration from his colleagues and other companies doing similar work. Instead of treating them as competitors, he sees them as friends that he can learn from be motivated by. “At the end of the day, it allows for inspiration and creates this community that is able to help each other because we're all here to grow.”
When it comes to the future of immersive technologies and extended reality, “the thing that I'm most excited about is the unknown,” says Mora. “It fascinates me and makes me want to keep working in this industry. We're using a bunch of technology ingredients, mixing them up, and coming up with something, so I’m personally looking for that next big project. I don't know what that is, but I'm really excited to see more augmented reality, XR technology, and virtual production technology out in the world.”
A lot of people are currently experimenting with these technologies, but Mora notes that over the course of the next few years, it will continue to be finessed as the industry figures out the best use cases and the most effective ways to deploy the tech.
Mora spends a lot of his time researching up-and-coming technologies including blockchain and NFTs and figuring out how to leverage them in his work. When he’s not thinking about the next technology frontier, Mora tries to spend as much time as possible with his family. He also loves to explore new foods, and hopes to one day own a Mezcal distillery.