Framing 20 Years in NY with Pete Jones

What’s your favorite borough or neighborhood in NYC? Why?

I live on the border of Bushwick and Ridgewood, and couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Our block is like a slice of old New York, with families who have lived in their apartments for generations. We’ve been welcomed in so readily, and to have people leaning out of their windows to wave my kids off to school each morning is, to me, what this amazing city is all about.

What’s your go-to bodega order? 

I’m not sure what it says about me, but my go-to order is a spicy chicken cutlet, provolone, mayo, lettuce, red onions and pickled jalapenos on a roll. Try it!

What NYC tourist activity have you yet to do?

Shamefully, I’ve never been to the Met - it seems like it’s always closed! A boat ride around the Statue of Liberty is always first on the list for visitors, and I insist on reading Emma Lazarus’s poem ‘The New Colossus’ aloud every time.

You have the very rare experience of being a part of the Framestore team during some of our first immersive/virtual reality jobs out of New York. Describe the growth of Framestore Immersive - how has the team changed? How have experiences changed? What new technologies and processes are being used? 

When I joined the VR Department as it was then, things were happening at breakneck speed, and the plane was truly being built as it flew. That was an exhilarating and often terrifying experience, but to this day I’m extremely proud to have been part of that very tightly knit team in the early, Wild West days of Immersive. We had to figure out how to work as game developers - something Framestore had never done before, and create those tools and working practices to service the work, as well as having to completely pivot the creative process while weaving it into the existing Framestore ecosystem. Now the landscape has changed and the work has evolved, but that solid foundation we created in the beginning has been a great platform for this current group to keep building on, to keep diversifying the offering and to keep pace with the rapidly evolving tech. Although the canvasses have changed somewhat - shifting away from VR headsets and towards interactive physical spaces - the creative power of Framestore has given Immersive the fuel to stay out in front as category leaders, and that’s another thing to take immense pride in.

What has been your favorite project or client collaboration in your tenure at Framestore?

At the time, the Marvel ‘Battle for Avengers Tower’ was incredibly cool because of the insane buzz levels around that IP. People were still completely amazed by the power of VR at that stage so to be able to demo that film and see the palpable amazement time and again was so rewarding. Another great memory was the GE piece for the New York Times, which won Framestore a Cannes Lions Grand Prix. It was a tiny team, and a huge surprise to have won such a big award, but one of the prettiest pieces I’ve ever worked on, and it deserved it 100%.

In your opinion, what project or milestone represents the Framestore New York office’s legacy and why?

From a VR perspective, probably the Mars Bus and the Game of Thrones VR projects. Both pieces of work were so far ahead of the field at the time, and both such exciting IPs that people still bring up to me often!

What does the next two decades at Framestore look like (can give a hypothesis for a more reasonable timeline ie 2-5 years)? What innovations do you think will have impacted the industry? 

Interactivity, participation and engagement are table-stakes expectations for brand campaigns in 2024, so innovation means going much further. Expect to see more and more AI integration as brands prepare to take their mascots to a hitherto unknown level of development.