Neil Smith is CVO (Chief Visionary Officer) at Rift Valley Studios based in Los Angeles, California. Neil had twenty five years in the IT Industry before returning to school in 2000 to catch up on his reading. It was whilst studying Psychology and Neuroscience at USC (University of Southern California) that Neil also got involved in making HD documentaries on Neuroscience and became fascinated with the technology and workflow of filmmaking and post-production. He attended many of the classes run in the USC Cinema School and quickly realized that Hollywood was about to go digital. Since 2005, Neil has owned and managed a post-production and systems integration business in LA focusing on providing state-of-the-art digital technology and services to independent filmmakers and digital content creators. Having already been involved with VR IT projects during the 1980s, it was only natural that his interest should be piqued once the Next Gen VR technology driven by Oculus Rift started to bubble up during 2013. Since 2013, Rift Valley Studios has been experimenting with different cameras rigs and workflows to better understand how to optimize the production and post processes involved in shooting, stitching and delivering VR/360 Spherical content to mobile headsets and Google 360 YouTube.