Light Sail VR’s Matthew Celia on Immersive Video’s New Era

Immersive video is entering a true second wave. Cameras are more powerful, and the workflow is far more reliable than it was a decade ago, giving creators room to build even more compelling work that takes advantage of today’s headsets. While much has changed, some realities haven’t shifted. The XR audience still remains modest, and the path to sustainable funding is unclear.

For Matthew Celia, co-founder of Light Sail VR and fresh off an Emmy win for the studio’s Saturday Night Live immersive experience, this moment feels different enough to matter. He has worked in immersive media through the first boom, the long winter, and now this renewed stretch of momentum.

Immersive Video Is Back

Light Sail VR opened its doors in 2015, at a moment when immersive video was gaining attention and creators and platforms were eager to experiment. But a few years later, the bottom dropped out, and there was a shift to move away from the metaverse. “Back in 2018, during the VR winter, everyone was pivoting to blockchain. Companies that started in 2016 were going out of business, and it was hard to keep the faith,” Celia told Remix Reality in an interview.

Despite that downturn, Light Sail VR kept pushing. The studio’s recent Emmy win for its SNL immersive experience became a moment of recognition for the team. “It felt really good to have it under our belt,” Celia said. “SNL even letting us capture the whole show in 360 degrees was a validation they see real value in bringing this experience to audiences.”

A decade later, Celia believes immersive video is entering a stronger, more stable phase.

“It’s so funny because so much has changed and yet so much has not,” he told us. “When it comes down to the creative choices filmmakers make in this medium, it is the same stuff I’ve been saying for a decade. But the technology has gotten so much better all the way from capture through distribution.”

Celia’s motivation has stayed anchored in the reason he entered the field in the first place.

“What inspires me about creating in this medium is bringing people into that sense of presence and feeling like you’re there and part of the story,” he said.

Still, the economic realities remain.

“On the creative side, people are very interested,” he said. “But they’re also a little bit like, where’s the money, where’s the economy? There’s no advertising in this space. There are no ticket sales.”

Much of the current momentum is coming from the major platform companies investing in the space.

“A lot of it is bootstrapped and funded by folks like Apple and Meta,” Celia said. “They are pouring millions and millions of dollars into creating this new medium and building this ecosystem.”

He added that this strain isn’t unique to immersive media. “People are always wondering how to finance this and how to put food on the table,” he said. “It hits an emerging medium like immersive a little harder.”

While headset user numbers remain small compared to mobile, Celia believes the intensity of engagement is the real value.

“Sure, your YouTube video might have three million views, but two and a half million of those people probably watched it for twenty seconds or didn't really watch it at all,” he said. “When you watch an immersive piece, you get an audience that is making a conscious choice to shut out all the distractions and say, 'I'm gonna watch this." It's a lot like going to the theater in many ways or playing a really good video game where you're dedicating your time and energy to it."

That leads to deeper investment from the viewer.

“If the content is really good and it’s something you love, then you evangelize it,” he said. “I've seen on a lot of the concerts that we've produced is people they love, like Shawn Mendes, they see it in VR, and then they get like twenty of their friends to see it." Light Sail VR was also nominated for an Emmy for Shawn Mendes: Red Rocks Live In VR, an immersive concert shot using Canon’s EOS VR system for the Meta Quest.

Amid all of this, one clear signal stands out that major camera makers now believe immersive media is real.

“It lends an air of legitimacy to this emerging medium. When you have big companies like Canon and Blackmagic that are coming to the table and saying, ‘Hey, we think immersive media is a thing.’ It now becomes more mainstream. People hear about it, and when people hear about it, they get curious what's being shot on these cameras, and it grows the audience and it grows the ecosystem.”

The Ursa Cine Shift

Blackmagic’s entry into immersive filmmaking has reshaped Light Sail VR’s production pipeline. The Ursa Cine Immersive camera marks a jump in both capability and expectations.

“This camera has upended a lot of things in our studio,” Celia said. “With the Canon ecosystem we used before, we were maxed out at 8K. The Ursa Cine Immersive jumps to 16K, 8K per eye, up to 90 frames a second.”

The result is a closer approximation of presence.

“You get so much more pixel density that the images feel more lifelike,” he said. “They’re sharper and clearer. It transports you a little more.”

Celia had just returned from Apple’s developer session on creating immersive content on visionOS when we spoke, where he saw firsthand how tightly Apple and Blackmagic are aligning.

“What’s unique about Blackmagic's approach, including its collaboration with Apple, is that it's the only company that actually owns the pixel from capture all the way through distribution,” he said. “They're able to do some really unique things with that pipeline and workflow that I think overall it will greatly enhance the quality of films that are being made while lessening the technical burden on filmmakers."

But that leap required a full rebuild of their technical environment.

“We had to upgrade our computers. We had to upgrade our storage. We had to relearn our processes,” he said. "Learning how to redo a lot of our processes and translate them into this new format was definitely a bit of a curve. Once we did that, we found that the improvement in the level of quality made it really make sense to go down this road."

Immersive video also comes with its own production challenges, so Light Sail VR created custom tools to support it. One of the tools Light Sail VR created is a live, on-headset preview that multiple people can use at once, giving directors a real sense of how the scene will look inside the headset.

“If you’re not seeing anything in a headset while capturing, how do you know what you’re making is good?” he said. “These are things you can’t change later.”

For director Eli Roth, who collaborated with Light Sail VR on immersive 180 storytelling, having this preview system on set became essential.

“Giving him the tools to stage people in the immersive 180 canvas and play with depth and blocking was powerful,” Celia said.

While these tools are made by Light Sail VR for its own use, Celia intends for them to also be used by other filmmakers. “We build them for us, but we want other people to use them,” he said. "I think it's important that we help create the tools that are going to inspire this generation of filmmakers so that they're not so intimidated that they decide not to even give it a try."

The Platform Category Emerges

Much of the renewed energy in immersive video is tied to platform support from Apple and Meta, along with Samsung and Google returning to the space through the new Galaxy XR headset. Celia remembers that this isn’t their first time investing in the category. “Google and Samsung were actually really early proponents of immersive video,” he said. “Samsung VR was an amazing platform.”

Between 2017 and 2019, Light Sail VR produced a wave of immersive projects funded by Google, including a collaboration with Refinery29. “We did a ton of projects… rewatching it now, I think audiences are more ready for it,” he said.

Celia believes this new Samsung–Google push fills an important gap in the market. “Having more people play in the sandbox is good,” he said. “I think the headset is really good if you are a die-hard Android fan and you want all that ecosystem… and if you want displays as powerful as the Vision Pro but maybe can’t afford the high price tag.”

Apple’s new Immersive Video format has added another layer of energy. Celia respects the ambition.

“They’re adopting a high pixels per degree target,” he said. “The Blackmagic camera captures 44 PPD, but you can tell they’re aiming around 60 because that is true twenty-twenty vision.”

With new players entering and headset makers focusing on their own formats, he does worry about fragmentation.

“I do worry a little bit about format confusion and fragmentation of the market,” he said. “I was really pleased when Vision Pro OS 26 announced their support for what they call Apple projected media profile, which is a way to take equirectangular 180 and 360 videos… and bring them onto a platform like Vision Pro.”

For Celia, the recent wave of new tools, platform support, and industry announcements is meaningful because it is drawing more creative voices back into the space.

 "What I'm excited about is all this buzz, announcement, push, and investment into this space has made traditional 2D filmmakers and other people who are really creative interested in exploring," he said. "So what I'm trying to do is take our ten years of experience, all those hard-fought lessons, those late nights, all that stuff that we tried that didn't work, and bring that to a creative community and collaborate with them. We are giving birth to a new cinematic language. We need all the help we can get."

Where AR Fits In

With platforms investing again, the wider XR category is heating up, and AR is starting to pull its share of attention. New products from Meta, rumors around Apple’s long-term plans, and renewed efforts from Google have brought fresh attention to the category. It is a familiar pattern in XR, where excitement around AR can sometimes overshadow the steady progress happening in VR and immersive video.

Celia sees the two technologies as related but fundamentally different. “I think it's unfair to kind of lump AR in with VR," he said. "They're very different and they offer different use cases," he said. "We don’t compare your television to your toaster."

For entertainment, he finds that today’s AR glasses still fall short. “Every AR glasses demo feels like a postage stamp image,” he said. “There’s no real immersion.” Celia believes mixed reality in headsets is the stronger near-term path for spatial storytelling because it can enhance the whole environment.

He sees a clear role for AR in everyday utility. Glasses become a natural device for lightweight tasks like navigation, communication, and taking pictures. But when it comes to storytelling, he is certain the center of gravity remains in VR. "VR is much more like an immersive break from the day-to-day," he said. "I don't think AR glasses do entertainment very well."

AI in the Filmmaking Process

It wouldn’t be a conversation about filmmaking today without touching on AI. For Celia, the role of AI is already practical and grounded rather than speculative. It has become a core part of Light Sail VR’s production process, especially in areas where the team once hit resource limits. “None of us are programmers by trade, but we are experts in our field,” Celia said. “Now, for twenty dollars a month, we have a junior-level programmer who can help modify tools and workflows to really fit us.” With AI, the team can build custom on-set tools that weren’t feasible before.

AI also reduces friction earlier in the process. “For previs it’s really helpful,” Celia said. “It saves time.” That speed matters even more when exploring interactive formats. “AI helps a lot with this because you can generate stuff a lot faster and quicker and easier,” he said.

But he maintains a firm boundary in its use. “I don't see it having a place in final pixels for us,” he said. “AI is really limited in terms of resolution,” he said. "For full immersion, it falls apart very quickly." Additionally, for Celia, AI is a support tool, never a replacement for the craft.

He also believes young filmmakers won’t abandon the collaborative heart of production. “The current crop of film school kids studying to be the next Spielberg aren’t thinking they’ll go home and prompt a computer,” he said. “They want to be on set with real people having fun, making memories, creating something together, the way humans will do. And I don't ever see that dying out ever.”