Dori is an award winning Cinematic Director and tech nerd with a passion for virtual production. Starting his career in feature film VFX, Dori saw the potential of visual storytelling in games and made the transition to the games industry. With a background in traditional cinematography and photography, he is fascinated by what makes different visual styles tick, and how these styles can be applied to interactive narratives. He has produced a wide array of different visual styles. From the cartoony “Sonic the Hedgehog” to the fantasy realism of “God of War”. Always endeavoring to push the medium’s capabilities, techniques and quality bar from PreVis to to final content. Dori has built and directed teams for; Midway Games, THQ, Sega, Sony and Electronic Arts. Known for his work on “God of War” and “God of War - Ragnarok”, Dori is now directing cinematics at EA on the Star Wars franchise.

Lina Halper has 20 years of game engineer experience from “Battlefield”, “Gears of War”, “Paragon”, and “Fortnite.” During her 12 years at Epic Games, she focused on motion and animations of characters. She led the UnrealEngine Animation System & Tools effort, developed the Facial Animation System (Pose Blending) and the ControlRig. She was the tech lead for MetaHuman Creator and was also involved in various special projects such as HellBlade Senua Live GDC, Siren, and LOTR Smaug VR. Currently, she is a Principal Animation Engineer at NVIDIA working on Omniverse, a real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines. She loves animation as a medium of storytelling through motions and expressions and has a huge passion to develop tools to tell the stories by anybody as easily as possible.

Marianne Hayden is currently the Lead Cinematics Animator at Skydance New Media, working on Marvel and Star Wars games. She has over 15 years of experience working in the video game industry, with 13 years at Naughty Dog, where she worked on “Uncharted” 2, 3, 4, “Uncharted: The Lost Legacy”, “The Last of Us” and “The Last of Us: Part II.” She is an experienced cinematic animator, story animator, level lead animator, previs animator, and animation producer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer games industry. She is a strong arts and animation professional skilled in acting, directing, editing, and art. Marianne is a frequent lecturer at universities and conferences discussing the craft, culture and future of cinematics, IGCs and the video game industry.

Brian has directed award-winning cinematics for Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Starcraft, as well as supervised Blizzard’s stellar team of directors. Prior to directing, Brian helped create Blizzard’s animation editorial department, building off an Emmy-nominated editing career in television and film. Brian’s personal films have been screened at festivals all over and the music he does in his other spare time can be heard on TV shows worldwide.

Prior to her current role at Netflix Animation, Emily Hsu was a Senior Project Producer with the Cinematics team at Blizzard Entertainment, helping bring the stories and worlds of Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo to players around the world. With over a decade of experience in the entertainment industry at companies including Pixar, LAIKA, and PDI/DreamWorks, Emily is fond of storytelling through all mediums and passionate about the power of animation, visual effects, games, and everything in-between in bringing any story from any genre to life… as well as the occasional spreadsheet to help take a team to the finish line.

When not getting involved with the industry as part of the Producers Guild of America, Visual Effects Society, Women in Animation, ASIFA-Hollywood or chairing programs for SIGGRAPH, she also enjoys the many wonders of the ocean and supports the Ocean Institute in Dana Point as part of its Associate Board of Directors.

Greg Mitchell spent the last 15 years as Cinematic Director for the award-winning video game series, Gears of War. After previously working in television production, Greg ventured into video game cinematics in early 2005 and contributed to titles such as Mortal Kombat, Infinity Blade, Bulletstorm, Unreal Tournament, and Shadow Complex.

Greg has held positions at Midway, Epic Games, Microsoft with The Coalition in Vancouver, B.C, and has now joined the newly founded studio Bit Reactor which is currently developing a new Star Wars strategy game.

Marty Stoltz has been a Cinematic Director in the video games industry for the past 26 years. He is currently the Cinematic Director at Netherrealm Studios directing titles such as “Injustice 2” and “Mortal Kombat 11.” Other titles he has directed are “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”, “Psi-Ops”, “Mortal Kombat Deception and Armageddon”, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and Sanitarium. Marty has been a Director for these DreamForge Entertainment, Midway Games, Lucas Arts, Big Huge Games, Ubisoft, and Warner Brothers Games.

Fueled by a passion for visual storytelling in any medium, Matthew Ward has over 25 years of experience in pre-visualization, cinematography, and digital filmmaking, often working directly with major motion-picture filmmakers and game devs to help realize their films and game narratives. Listed as inventor on two Walt Disney Pictures virtual-camera patents, Ward has contributed to the early design of pipelines for pre-visualization and virtual production cinematography, spanning numerous live action and animated feature films. As an independent director and filmmaker, Ward has been featured by several international film festivals, earned Addy nominations for his commercial work, and directed music videos for recording artists. In 2013, Ward joined BUNGiE as the Cinematic Director for the breakthrough video game franchise, DESTINY and DESTINY 2. In 2021, Ward joined the new division of Gearbox Entertainment, where he has been tasked with helping fuse film and game IPs together via transmedia opportunities through the newly created Cinema & Cinematics Department.