Some careers read like a straight line. This one is a map of brave detours, timely breakthroughs, and the stubborn belief that story and technology belong together. Vicki Dobbs Beck—VP of Immersive Content at Lucasfilm and ILM—to unpack how a kid from Kirkland, Washington, rode a love of books and big ideas to help launch ILMxLAB and push real-time storytelling into the mainstream.
We trace the arc from a palm-tree dream of Stanford to an unlikely first win at ILM: drafting the company’s first business plan by interviewing senior creatives and stitching their wisdom into direction. From there, the conversation travels through Lucasfilm’s early experiments in location-based entertainment and the visionary but early Lucasfilm Learning, where a mystery about disappearing ducks introduced project-based, no-single-answer learning—an immersive idea before VR could carry it.
When real-time rendering finally hit cinematic quality, the door opened for ILMxLAB. Vicki breaks down the creative-operational engine behind XR: align high-fidelity media with interactivity and give audiences agency without sacrificing story.
If you’re building a creative career, rethinking education, or chasing the edge of immersive tech, this conversation will change how you plan and how you dare. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves story and innovation, and leave a review.
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