VStream is a part of a group of companies that consists of an advertising agency, a content creator and an experiential developer. It was founded five years ago by Niall O’Driscoll and Andrew Jenkinson as a video and software production company specialising in marketing and corporate communications. VStream creates content with animators, producers, writers and directors all readily available. The company shoots on location or animates in-house.
Co-founder Niall O’Driscoll explains that “what is unique about a lot of the things that we do here, because we also have software developers, is we often make things interactive or enhanced as well. The other thing is that once we’ve created that content, we can deliver it in multiple different ways – we can either create content for advertising, so that would be 30 second TV ads, or we can create content for interactive, experiential programmes which would be world firsts, so we work with McLaren and Westfield Shopping Centre over in the UK, and we’re hoping to work with a lot of major US sports teams also.”
His co-founder Andrew Jenkinson also explained that the research and development department is indispensable to what the company does: “One of the unique offerings we have is our R&D and our innovation in content, video content, and interactive content, so at the moment we’re working a lot with gesture-control holograms so we can visualise content through a holographic interface; we’re working a lot with augmented reality wearables such as Google glass to create audiovisual content for the next generation of screens and the next generation of platforms.
“We have a significant amount of time dedicated to R&D, which is our technology team and our content creation team, and this allows us to deliver world firsts such as the Aviva Stadium 3D Experience, which we delivered in 2010 as the world’s first personalised stereoscopic 3D fan experience, right up to present day for the McLaren Formula 1 team for which we’re creating significant installation with lots of brand new pieces of content and technology married together. We do all of this from our Dublin base.”
The firm first and foremost offers the Irish film and television industry production and post-production facilities. They are Dolby-based and because of their web-based background, vStream does not carry the costs that other traditional post-production companies have. They also offer cross-platform facilities so that as well as the standard TV content, they can create content to support it, content that works across social media and across mobiles. As O’Driscoll points out, “we understand that our audience lives in a world where there are multiple screens.” VStream has worked on second screen apps for TV3 in the past.
The company has produced around twenty 30 second commercials so far, mostly working on short form content and interactive content as opposed to film production. “Even though it’s short form content, some of it has been up to 11 or 12 minutes long,” O’Driscoll explains. “There has been period drama, VFX-driven, animation, etc. so there is a wide gamut of work that we have done, and we are looking to break into the area of film production a bit more than we have to date.”
Overall, vStream’s internal philosophy has been to create world firsts which marry audio visual media and technology. As Niall O’Driscoll concludes, vStream is “hoping that there will be agency requirements out there that will recognise our experience and will want to embrace that which is innovative, different and new, that understand that working with us is the best way to do that. We’ve already talked to a lot of these sorts of companies in the UK and the US.”
See vStream’s work for McLaren Formula 1 here.
Read more about vStream on their profile.
