My friend Bilawal got to sit down with VFX pioneer John Gaeta to discuss “A new language of perception,” Bullet Time, groundbreaking photogrammetry, the coming Big Bang/golden age of storytelling, chasing “a feeling of limitlessness,” and much more.

In this conversation:

— How Matrix VFX techniques became the prototypes for AI filmmaking tools, game engines, and AR/VR systems
— How The Matrix team sourced PhD thesis films from university labs to invent new 3D capture techniques
— Why “universal capture” from Matrix 2 & 3 was the precursor to modern volumetric video and 3D avatars
— The Matrix 4 experiments with Unreal Engine that almost launched a transmedia universe based on The Animatrix
— Why dystopian sci-fi becomes infrastructure (and what that means for AI safety)
— Where John is building next: Escape.art and the future of interactive storytelling

00:00 – Intro: The Matrix’s 25-Year Secret Plan
01:04 – Solving the “God’s Eye” Problem
03:15 – Recruiting PhD Students to Invent Bullet Time
06:11 – How Sci-Fi Becomes a Roadmap for Reality
07:54 – Matrix 2/3: Inventing “Universal Capture”
09:47 – Matrix 4: Stepping Inside the “Real” Matrix
14:40 – Building a City-Scale Simulation in Unreal Engine 5
16:47 – The AI Animatrix Prequel Hollywood Killed
18:55 – How Hollywood Kills Innovation
22:03 – Gen AI: A New “Golden Age for Expression”
26:11 – AI Isn’t Efficiency, It’s “Permission”
28:04 – A New Platform Bypassing Gatekeepers
35:28 – The Future: AI Agents as Your Sixth Sense
41:01 – John’s Warning: The Simulation Is Here