Meet Filmmaker & Volumetric Production Director at Yoom, Eden Hadad

Writer, Director, and Producer Eden Hadad, has had his work shown worldwide in theatrical venues, on national television, and even streamed on podcasts.

Currently, Eden is working as the Volumetric Production Director at Yoom, an Israeli startup. Its focus is to pitch its proprietary 3D volumetric-capture platform to entertainment, media, and gaming companies. In his new role, Eden will be in charge of prepping the shooting days and then be the on-set producer, dealing with vendors, creatives, clients, and talent.

In this interview, we spoke with Eden about his new role at Yoom, learned more about the work that Yoom has a hand in creating, and more.

PH: Hi Eden, I'd love to learn a bit more about your background!

Eden Hadad: I have always loved filmmaking. From the moment I held my dad’s first camera, it was one of those that you needed to slot a piece of tape, to get the thing rolling. But wait, first, I was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel to a Yemenite mom, and a Libyan father. I’m the youngest of four and I was by far the family’s nerd, thanks to my love for films and video games. I also had a fun journey, as I did the whole school, college, and grad school experience. Though I never finished high school, I now have an MFA diploma from Columbia. Which is a fun W to have. Now I’m working in a new and exciting company filled with amazing folks, while still writing and meeting really cool people from our industry.

PH: Who are some of your inspirations? (Personal and/or professional)

Eden Hadad: Sir Alex Ferguson will always be my first answer, right after my parents and my siblings of course. Sir Alex was a European football manager for my boyhood club, Manchester United. The thing I took from him is hunger. How can you start a day and look to be better? Better as a partner, a father, a friend, a storyteller, and an expert in my field. As a leader, he had a never-ending hunger to win and it made him the best coach in the history of the oldest sport in the world. That hunger is something that I saw as a kid and it stuck with me as an adult.

PH: Can you share what drew you to the production world? Was this an industry you always envisioned yourself working in?

Eden Hadad: Storytelling, I think, has the most magic injected into it when it’s being absorbed by the masses. It has the power of telling a unique story about a specific character in a special setting, but then, if told from the right perspective, it reaches so many people and touches their hearts. The moving image has this superpower, and today even more so with new and immersive content such as video games, VR, AR, Metaverse, you name it. Storytelling is becoming even more exciting, and I’m so happy to be at the forefront of this legendary medium.

PH: What is Yoom? Can you share more about your role as the Volumetric Production Director at Yoom?

Eden Hadad: Yoom is a deep tech company founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, that brings real humans into the digital world with cutting-edge volumetric technology. We’re now based in LA, NYC, Tokyo, and more places. We’ve created an AI technology that consists of proprietary neural networks dedicated to volumetric video production. We’re working with some of the biggest names and brands in the entertainment industry and every day we’re doing amazing new things in the Volumetric frontier. My job is to use my vast experience as an established filmmaker and integrate my knowledge with writing, directing, and producing skills into this crazy cool new tech and the possibilities it offers.

PH: What goes into preparing the shooting days and being the on-set producer? What are some of the challenges you face?

Eden Hadad: I’m not just the on-set producer, as I wear a few hats, and so do my collaborators in my company. This is a new way of shooting material, and thus, it creates a new language for everything. So we try to be more dynamic with our work and what we do. The creative result is what’s most important for us. I think that one of the main challenges right now is understanding what’s the final product of the capture that we’re getting and reverse-engineering it so we have the best shooting list and plan for the performance. Unlike 2D content, we need to think about many points of view and many distribution channels as Volumetric content is much more immersive and diverse than your average movie or TV show.

PH: Can you share your approach to this work? What draws you to it?

Eden Hadad: Since the days of the Lumière Brothers, we learned that visual (and later audio) storytelling and technology always went hand in hand. The biggest thing that made me want to jump into this new technology, is the spooky tales of people like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton that didn’t understand that the silent era of films could fade out because of the invention of the microphone. To be a true storyteller, I think, you need to adapt to the future, or else, you’ll be left behind.

PH: Can you share some of the work that Yoom has had a hand in? What types of work is Yoom known for?

Eden Hadad: We just finished a really cool project with the LA Kings and you can see what we did in their new season that just started. Go, Kings! I was happy to lead this project and add value to the team as I’m truly surrounded by so many smart creators and producers. We are also working on something really big with an amazing star, whose music I adore. Unfortunately, I can’t share more right now, as my boss will kill me if I talk about it right now. But there’s a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline and I’m so happy that all of my past work as a filmmaker and even as a podcast director has led me to this amazing position as Yoom's Volumetric Production Director.

PH: You also have experience having your films in film festivals such as Santa Barbara, Athens, and Vienna. Can you share what that's like?

Eden Hadad: So many great experiences! Athens was such a cool festival! They made it so special by using the amazing setting of this incredible city. Wow. Vienna was so unique and had amazing vibes. Santa Barbara was truly amazing. I won an award there and they were so sweet with how they hosted us. The hotel was super cute, and Santa Barbara in general is such a beautiful place with a bunch of wonderful people in their community.

PH: Can you share some of your past projects and how they've influenced where you are now?

Eden Hadad: Wow, where should I even start… The Disposers taught me so much about my tone, but also influenced my thoughts about lighting, something that I’m now implementing within the content we shoot at Yoom. Chorus, my web series, which was a cult show in Israel just before I left for the US, as I still hear from people about it today, has helped me with influencing the way I see scenes with many characters in a small space. When I directed The Stunt Double, which you can stream now by downloading the Fictionz app on the App Store, really inspired me in the way that we tell an audio story. It’s almost like where to shine the spotlight when you have a different medium for your storytelling. All of these projects and my other work keeps informing me so I can get better and better while keeping my hunger for more.