Senior Producer, Epic Games

With over 15 years of Producing & Production Management experience in the entertainment industry at companies including Epic Games, Netflix Animation, Blizzard Entertainment, 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.

Cinematic Director, Blizzard Entertainment

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.

Associate Production Manager, Digital Domain

Dziewa is a passionate gamer and a seasoned professional in VFX production with over a decade of experience. Best known in the industry as Dzie (Dizzy), their work has contributed to some of the most iconic films to pass through Vancouver’s renowned studios, collaborating with industry leaders like Scanline, ILM, and Digital Domain. Dziewa's expertise spans motion capture, virtual production, performance capture, and voice acting, making them a versatile creative force. Their obsession with cinematography and the art of interactive storytelling shines through in every project they undertake.
Believing in the power of self-improvement and community, Dziewa embraces the philosophy that personal growth is the key to shaping the industry’s future. They are committed to fostering inclusivity in gaming culture and are thrilled to contribute to the Society for Game Cinematics' mission of advancing the art form.

Principal Animation Engineer, NVIDIA

Lina Song 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.

Cinematics Director

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 Bit Reactor.

Lead Cinematics Animator, Skydance New Media

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.

Director of Cinematics, Gearbox Entertainment

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.