Broadcast Tech Talks

​For this week's episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, senior reporter Max Miller speaks to Warner Bros. Discovery's director of graphics and innovation, Alex Dinnin, and Vizrt's head of sport, Andy O'Neil, about the state of play and future of virtual studios. The pair reveal how Warner Bros. Discovery created the TNT Sports studios from scratch, and has managed to centralise its virtual studios for Eurosport across Europe – including innovative uses of space and technology. In addition, they discuss what's next for virtual studios, and how advances in technology could see them become indistinguishable from real studios for viewers at home.

For this edition of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, senior reporter Max Miller speaks to Azimuth head of audio Kate Davis and HHB CTO John Johnson about how AI is changing the way post-production is completed. AI, or machine learning, has long been used in post, but recent years have seen its use grow at an increasing rate. Audio post is one of the most talked about areas for AI, with new tools that can clean up poorly recorded audio, replace dubbing by replicating an actor's voice in another language, and more meaning that it is a hotbed for innovation. Davis and Johnson reveal what they have already seen being done in the industry, and what could be coming in the next 12 months.

This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast series was recorded at the AI Creative Summit at BFI Southbank on 6 November 2024. It features Cyrus Mewawalla, head of thematic intelligence at GlobalData and globally-renowned AI expert and analyst. The session presents the findings of world-leading data and analytics company, GlobalData's most comprehensive and detailed report on AI to date. The report focuses on what AI means for media businesses.

E-commerce business Must Have Ideas has launched an AI-powered TV channel, and Broadcast Tech speak to co-founder and director Amy Knight plus head of Broadcast Michael Wood about how they've done this. The channel aims to look live, while actually being 30 pre-recorded segments that were filmed in an NDI studio. These segments are automatically scheduled and stitched together by an in-house AI tool, which Must Have Ideas has named Spark, and the hope is that no two shows will look or feel the same. 

In this episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, senior reporter Max Miller speaks to Forever Audio's senior sound engineer Alistair Bolt and ADR manager Gabriel Dutru about the present and future of ADR. Delving into the best techniques for the area, the pair speak about how to work with actors, directors, and producers, as well as how to prepare for ADR in production and when it works best. In addition, the conversation turns to the future of ADR, and the tech advances, such as automation and AI cleanup services, that could have an effect on it going forwards.

The Revolutionising Post-Production podcast sees industry experts delve into the cutting-edge technologies shaping the landscape of post-production in 2024 and beyond. From GenAI/AI-driven tools to immersive virtual reality experiences, the panel explore how these innovations are transforming content creation, enhancing efficiency, and pushing the boundaries of creative storytelling. The panelists each predict the major tech trends for the year ahead, with a large focus on GenAI and AI. A long-list of creative functions opened up by AI are singled out, including synthetic voices; face detection and tracking; automated clip selection; productivity tools; automated transcription; metadata enrichment; audio clean-up tools; training post-production skills using AI; and the pros and cons of colour-matching tools. This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast was recorded at the Future of Post Production Event 2024 event Broadcast Tech and Avid held at The BFI Southbank, London earlier this year. Speakers: Rhodri James, Director of Technology and Operations, Gorilla Lily Ketley, Technical Manager, Finish Line Jess Nottage, Operations & Technical Director, Clear Cut Group Craig Dwyer, Vice President Strategy, Business Development & Alliances, Avid Moderated by Max Miller, Senior Reporter, Broadcast Tech

Tim Burgess talks to Broadcast Tech editorial director Jake Bickerton about the development of Tim's Listening Party, from Twitter/X to an Absolute Radio show to a hit podcast series. Tim also covers the influence of AI in music, and reveals he's recorded a song he asked ChatGPT to write in the style of The Charlatans. Find out more in this great episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks, which was recorded live at the Media Production & Technology show at London Olympia.

Broadcast Tech editorial director Jake Bickerton talks to president of Picture Shop, Cara Shepherd, Racoon founder David ‘Klaf' Klafkowski and director of post production and partnership at Sky, Adam Downey, about the major issues affecting post-production right now. The discussion covers the ongoing impact of the recent writers' and actors' strikes, and the potential of more strikes to follow from other sectors of the industry. A big focus of the debate is on how post-production houses are having to adapt to deal with several major business challenges coming at once – the strikes, the commissioning slowdown, significant budget pressures, the cost of living crisis, etc. In some cases, these have slashed workload for post houses by half. The good news is things are set to change dramatically in the second half of 2024, which could see facilities being packed out again, as discussed in this podcast. Also discussed is how post is reacting to the growth of GenAI and automation, whether it's a welcome change or a threat to business; whether post houses could or should accommodate the needs of the social-first generation of content creators; and ensuring data security within post-production. This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast is a recording of the opening speaker panel discussion at the recent Future of Post Production Forum we ran in association with Avid at the BFI Southbank, London last month.

Cyrus Mewawalla, head of thematic intelligence at GlobalData explains what the future looks like for GenAI and how it won't take as long as you might imagine for AI to present with 100% accuracy, to be a sentient being with a conscience that's at least as intelligent as a human being. And that's when the future of the human race could be under threat. In terms of the immediate future, Mewawalla looks at how GenAI is already impact every segment of the media and entertainment industry, and how it's evolving fast, improving ten fold every 12 months. This short podcast makes compelling listening. It was recorded at the AI Creative Summit, held at BFI Southbank, London towards the end of 2023.

This podcast is a recording of a speaker session from the AI Creative Summit, held at BFI Southbank, London, in November. The session, called Generative AI & the Art of Storytelling, looks at where Artificial Intelligence can push the boundaries of storytelling; how it disrupts traditional methods of conveying a narrative; and how the industry might harness generative AI and ChatGPT. The panellists talk about how AI will be the catalyst for new forms of storytelling – bringing illustrations to life, creating immersive theatre environments, adding the ability to speak to characters in a narrative context, and more.  Talking about their current use of AI, one of the panellists says their whole team has to use it every day, for everything from mundane tasks to generating short form video scripts, for which they say it does a great job. The panel's use of AI includes for creating post-production deep fakes to make someone speak in different languages and recording professional-sounding voiceover from a smartphone microphone. The panel also talks about the ability to monetise the use of AI by selling prompts to get the most out of GenAI for generating scripts, and how certain jobs in the industry including rotoscoping will likely to replaced by AI. More specifically, one panellist says AI will not steal your jobs but people who know how to use it may. Another panellist believes AI will eventually be better than us at making TV programmes and “might even kill us, but we might as well enjoy it while it lasts”. Speakers: Guy Gadney, Co-Founder & CEO - Charisma.ai Eline van der Velden, CEO & Founder - Particle6 Alex Hryniewicz, Director of Content - Little Dot Studios Chair: John Cassy, CEO & Founder - Factory 42

The Business of AI: Tools of the Trade - Where Artificial Intelligence Can Make a Real Difference Discover how much of a game-changer AI and machine learning is, and how it's benefitting broadcast businesses. Find out how the industry is looking to adapt, what technologies and AI tools have already been adopted, and how to keep on top of innovative technologies in such a rapidly evolving market place. This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast is the full recording of a speaker session at the AI Creative Summit held at BFI Southbank, London on 16 November. The speakers:    Maria Ingold, Strategy & Innovation CTO - mireality Connagh Flynn, Senior Insights Manager - Formula E Asa Bailey, Writer & Director - BAILEY AI Film Company Sanjeevan Bala, Group Chief Data & AI Officer - ITV Philippe Petitpont, CEO & Co-Founder - Newsbridge

In the first episode of the new series of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, Jake Bickerton talks to Trevor Back from Speechmatics and Mira Pelovska from Broadteam about large language models and the future of multilingual automatic speech recognition. The focus of the episode is about how AI-driven speech-to-text engines can more accurately and more effectively handle different dialects and accents, and what goes into the machine learning training to enable this to happen. Trevor and Mira explain in straightforward terms what's currently possible for applications such as live subtitling utilising speech recognition, and how highly trained AI from Speechmatics makes it possible to cope with different voices from around the world and produce highly accurate speech transcriptions in a matter of seconds. The podcast also covers what the future holds for AI-driven transcription and translation services as their accuracy and abilities continue to grow, especially with the introduction of genAI enabling a move from speech transcription to speech comprehension. What this means in practice is Speechmatics will, in the future, be able to understand what was said, how it was said and the context in which it was said, which will have a huge range of benefits and potential uses within the broadcast industry.

Airspeeder head of media Stephen Sidlo joins Base Media Cloud CEO Ben Foakes to talk to Broadcast Tech & Sport Group editorial director Jake Bickerton about how they are capturing and handling broadcast and a host of digital content during the inaugural season of Airspeeder flying car races. Airspeeder is the world's first racing series for flying electric cars. The first competitive races are with the remotely piloted EXA Series, which navigate tracks in the sky in a series of close-proximity races. Airspeeder and Base Media Cloud work together to create an end-to-end digital media workflow, which handles digital media content to be distributed online and used on social media. It also takes care of the analytical data for the robot Aviators that takes the place of pilots. They digitally receive remote inputs and mimic the movements of the human pilot on the ground. The series includes multiple teams, with multiple craft transmitting data that needs to be processed, tagged and stored. The isolated locations where the races take place require flexible, scalable applications that can be scaled up and down as demand fluctuates on race days.

TikTok head of UK media partnerships, Normanno Pisani and BBC Studios VP commercial, digital, Matt Ford talk to Broadcast Tech & Sport Group editorial director, Jake Bickerton, about how BBC Studios is bringing high-profile properties, including Top Gear, Eastenders and Doctor Who to the TikTok platform. Pisani and Ford discuss how they have been working together to plan the content mix and editorial tone of the different BBC Studios' TikTok accounts, in advance of their launch on the short-form video giant. The podcast offers advice for all content creators on how to plan and roll out a successful TikTok account; how to create 'trends' on TikTok and utilise existing trends; and how to ensure your account complements your broader content strategy across social media. Pisani and Ford also talk about the rapid growth of vertical video and how to best present content in this format.

Outside broadcasts, post-production and studios provider Timeline CEO Dan McDonnell and head of operations Dave Harnett talk to Broadcast Tech reporter Max Miller about the company's recent expansion in Ealing. It has opened a 9,700 sq ft broadcast facility specifically designed for remote productions, and including a 2,000 sq ft virtual studio space. McDonnell and Harnett explain the thinking behind the facility, and how it's been designed to complement the company's existing range of live production services. They also discuss the future of live production, sustainability in production and the possibilities opened up by virtual studios. The podcast also covers the impact on the outside broadcast industry of the collapse of Arena TV, and why Timeline are continuing to invest in outside broadcast trucks despite the huge growth in remote production over the last few years.

Podcast with Jet Omoshebi, senior colourist at Goldcrest and Natascha Cadle, co-founder, Envy for IWD 2022. Omoshebi and Cadle talk about gender representation in the different areas of the post-production industry, to mark International Women's Day 2022. The podcast discusses what can and is being done to encourage more women to pursue careers in grading, picture and audio editing, VFX, engineering roles etc within post-production. Omoshebi and Cadle also talk about whether being a woman in a fairly male-dominated industry has ever held them back at all during their career to date, and they offer their advice to young women who might want to pursue a career in post-production.

Virtual production experts Final Pixel join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton to provide invaluable insight into the burgeoning world of virtual production. Final Pixel's Monica Hinden, Chris McKenna and Michael McKenna talk in-depth about what virtual production offers producers; the long list of advantages for filmmaking in an LED Volume stage; and the planning and approach required to maximise the potential of virtual production. The Final Pixel team bring to life the world of virtual production through real-life examples, showcasing where they have worked with a wide range of clients across a variety of genres to create fully immersive environments that make great use of real-time, in-camera VFX. 

Fadi Radi, director of creative at Al Arabiya News Channel, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how an ambitious mix of state-of-the-art virtual studios and virtual production sets are being used to visualise the week's biggest news stories. Every week, Al Arabiya creates a new eye-catching virtual set, immersing the viewer in a virtual world related to the topic under discussion. The environments created in these extended reality (XR) sets are whatever the editorial requires, with the presenter seamlessly embedded into the scene. So far, they have included the Amazon rain forest, an underwater scene, a space scene, immersive 360-degree views of Afghanistan and Iran, and the blood stream. The quick-turnaround sets are created using a combination of Unreal engine and Vizrt for tracking the camera movement in real-time. Vizrt chief technology officer Gerhard Lang also joins the podcast to explain how Vizrt works in partnership with Al Arabiya News Channel to enable the broadcaster to fulfill its editorial vision.

Gareth Capon, CEO of 'video production, editing and publishing in the cloud' platform Grabyo talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how the sports production sector is transitioning to cloud-based working. Capon talks about how Grabyo evolved from a sole focus on live video clipping to full-scale live production in the cloud, with its product range now including tools for packaging and streaming live broadcasts, post-production editing and live clipping and distribution. He also reveals what he believes to be the future of live video production, with flexible, lightweight browser-based tools becoming the norm across all forms of sports production.

Cara Kotschy, the former managing director of leading post-production house Fifty Fifty talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about her decision to quit her role last year and how she's been busy creating a new model for the post-production house of the future. Kotschy was only 28-years old when she became MD of current Broadcast Post-Production House of the Year, Fifty Fifty, and spent a decade in the role before she stepped down, to the surprise of the post-production community. Following a number of consultancy roles, Kotschy has spent her time devising a new type of post-production facility, which is dedicated to becoming best-of-breeds in a specific niche service, offers fully flexible working, recruits a diverse workforce from all areas of the community, and is based on a co-operative business model. She explains her vision and her timescales for rolling out her new take on the post-production facility during this enlightening episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast series.

Sky Sports director of cricket Bryan Henderson talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the launch of The Hundred cricket tournament, which begins next month. The Hundred aims to bring a new audience to cricket with simple-to-understand rules, fast-paced game play and building the format around an entertainment-first approach. Henderson explains why The Hundred is different to what's gone before, and then provides great insight into Sky Sports' plans for its coverage of the new cricket format. Sky has been involved in The Hundred since the early stages of the development of the format and has devised five pillars that underpin how it will present and produce content from The Hundred. These are: Cricket is for everybody Sport-led entertainment Who's winning? Closer to the players Force for good Henderson explains all these pillars in detail in this podcast, focusing on how they have influenced Sky Sports' approach to the production and broadcast of the series. He also covers the rights deal that sees Sky become the host broadcaster and showing all games, with the BBC also airing 18 live matches from the tournament.

Ron Chakraborty, lead executive, major events at BBC Sport talks to Broadcast Tech and Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the BBC's new virtual studio at the club, which will be its main presentation space at Wimbledon 2021. He also talks about Covid-19 enforced changes to the broadcaster's camera positions as well as its production setup at Wimbledon, to ensure social distancing of production staff. Chakraborty also covers the BBC's expansion of UHD 4K content from Wimbledon, to cater for increased demand from the public for high-resolution sports.

BT Sport COO, Jamie Hindhaugh and BT Sport director of mobile strategy, Matt Stagg talk to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the broadcaster's Innovate 21 competition. Innovate 21 is the latest in a series of large-scale competitions run by BT Sport seeking ideas for forward-thinking new sports broadcast experiences. The previous incarnations of Innovate have resulted in BT Sport teaming up with two products – Sceenic (which won the 2018 BT Infinity Lab competition), and Seenit (the winner of the 2016 BT Infinity Lab competition). Sceenic has worked with BT Sport to support last year's launch of Watch Together on the BT Sport App, and Seenit has enabled fans to send in short video reports and comments from stadia around the country as part of BT Sport's Premier League Tonight show. Innovate 21 is looking for entrepreneurs, creatives and start-ups to pitch products and services that will play a significant role in BT Sport's broadcasts and productions.

Mike Cronk, vice president of advanced technology for Grass Valley talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how to make the transition to the cloud as straightforward and cost-effective as possible for media companies. The bandwidth and technical requirements for media companies has made the move to cloud-based working more challenging than many other industries, and there's also latency issues that come into play too. To address these issues, minimise latency, and enable true live cloud production, Grass Valley recently launched a cloud product that's been specially designed for the production and broadcast industries – the Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP). It has also created something it calls the GV Media Universe that is attempting to bring the industry together to work on the next generation of cloud-based services. Cronk explains all this technology and talks about how it's been used to enable seamless live high-quality cloud production on 20+ camera events, including the EA Sports FIFA 2021 European qualifiers. For this event, the camera feeds originated in the UK, the signals were processed in a data centre on the East coast of the US, and the vision mixer was 3,000 miles away in California.

David Ross, CEO of Ross Video, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how Ross Video has addressed the many challenges of the pandemic. The Canadian company offers a plethora of products and services in more than 100 countries that are used by television networks, sports teams and stadiums, esports producers, live events and production companies. A big focus for Ross during Covid-19 has been on its Ross Mobile Production division, which provides OB and studio services, predominantly for sports and esports.  As soon as the pandemic hit, it started utilising robots on-set to reduce the amount of staff required, and created a fully decentralised production environment that enables production/gallery staff to work in isolation from any location, including their homes. During the podcast, David also talks about the pros and cons of cloud working and his concerns about cloud security, and being able to work at higher resolutions such as 4K UHD in the cloud. He also covers the fragmentation of content; the growth of esports; the automation of sports production; his predictions for 2021; and how Ross Video chooses which innovations it will focus on and bring to the market.

Jamie Hindhaugh, COO at BT Sport and Sam Kemp, marketing technology director at EE join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton to talk about an innovative new set of features on the BT Sport app called the Match Day Experience. It's a collection of complementary tools that enhance live matches with a series of immersive features. These include AR insights and behind-the-scenes stadium tours, a 'Watch Together' function, and a 360-degree 8K pitch view so you can watch a high quality image of the game from any angle of your choice. The real-time AR graphical insights offered by the Match Day Experience include team line-ups and formations; in-game stats and graphics augmented on the pitch; a mini-map tracking the positions of all players for a tactical viewpoint; player names; player speeds; and tracers marking the path of shots.

Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton talks with Daniel New, operations manager, BBC Global News; Byron Wijayawardena, strategic development manager, UK and Ireland, Adobe; and Ben Foakes, founder, Base Media Cloud, about how to create virtualised Adobe editing workstations to enable news editors to work from any location.

BBC Breakfast editor Richard 'Fredi' Frediani has been in his role for a year. And what a year it's been. It's fair to say coping with the pandemic and its impact on the 20 year old BBC show has been a key challenge he wasn't predicting when he took up the role. The programme is famously built around the red sofa, with guests dropping into the studio each day. With this no longer possible as lockdown hit, the whole look and feel of BBC Breakfast had to change, almost overnight. The changes were sweeping and affected everything going on in front of and behind the camera. This podcast explains what happened next, and how the show adapted to enable it to continue producing three hours of television every morning. Standing still was not an option, with Zoom, Skype and Facetime suddenly becoming a central part of the production. The podcast also covers how BBC Breakfast has managed to continue doing outside broadcasts, including the live broadcast of Captain Tom walking his 100th lap, which went out exclusively on BBC Breakfast.

This episode of Broadcast Tech Talks is with Greg Rochford, IT manager at Little Dot Studios and Michael Clayton, sales account executive at BASE Media Cloud. They talk with Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how they worked together to transition Little Dot Studios to the cloud. It's a journey that began five years ago, and has paid dividends during lockdown with everyone able to seamlessly work and access all production assets from any location. Little Dot has 1.4PB of data (and counting) in the cloud on accelerated secure cloud storage. An Iconik smart media management platform plugs into this cloud storage, and when new content is added it's automatically scanned, transcoded and made into proxies, ready for editors to work on. The setup is discussed during this podcast, as well as why Little Dot Studios still needs a big London office despite the cloud enabling all its staff to work remotely.

Sunset+Vine chairman Jeff Foulser talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the sports production company's successful bid to become the host broadcaster of the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham. Sunset+Vine will produce more than 2,000 hours of coverage from the games; a 12-part documentary series leading up to the games; and coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies. It is also creating a Host Broadcast Training Initiative to give under-represented groups in and around the Birmingham area the opportunity to receive training to work with the Sunset+Vine team on the Commonwealth Games.

Jigsaw 24 head of audio Matt Ward is joined by pro audio consultant Saxon on this Broadcast Tech Talks recording with Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton. Together, they talk about the current trends in audio post-production, including a rapid move to enable remote audio post-production, including ADR/voiceover recording remotely, and making Dolby Atmos immersive mixes at home. The conversation also covers the cost-saving and practical benefits of network audio in post-production.

Formula 1 global head, digital media and licensing, Frank Arthofer talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the F1 Virtual GP series, which replaced the real grand prix races during lockdown. It involved 11 x F1 drivers and high-profile celebs racing head-to-head on virtual versions of real F1 grand prix circuits. The series received impressive viewing figures, across digital and linear, and proved a notable success for F1 at a time when real racing wasn't possible. Arthofer talks about the popularity of the series and about F1's future plans for esports, including whether F1 might bring in real-time virtual racing to enable fans to join in live races virtually in an esports environment at home.

Ingrid Silver, partner, Entertainment and Media Industry Group at global law firm Reed Smith, talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the 'gradual return' of sports to our screens, following Government guidance that enables different sports and events to resume over the coming months. Silver also discusses the legal side for sports broadcasters and sports federations of the Covid-19 cancellations of sports events during lockdown. The podcast was recorded the day after the Premier League resumed.

Ron Chakraborty, executive editor, major events at BBC Sport talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the BBC's plans for Wimbledon 2020 following the cancellation of the tournament due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than live tennis from Wimbledon, the BBC has lined up a varied mix of archive tennis content during what would have been Wimbledon fortnight. It includes three hours of classic archive Wimbledon games each day, followed by a live show in the evening, hosted by Sue Barker at Wimbledon. This again raids the Wimbledon archives to re-run some of the best moments from the tournament. Barker is joined by tennis stars at the BBC pop-up studio at the club, and from around the world through the now ubiquitous wonders of Zoom. As the fortnight progresses, the BBC will show the Top 10 men's and women's finals of all time. It also plans to host interactive quizzes, polls and tennis challenges on the BBC Sport website to encourage fans to take part.

Melanie Jones, managing director, Manchester Studios, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about her role in bringing fully-equipped high-end TV studios back to Manchester City Centre. Manchester Studios is on the site of the former Granada Studios facility (famously home to many classic LE shows as well as Coronation Street), and is utilising many of the spaces used by productions at Granada Studios. The facility is currently undergoing the complete overhaul and renovation of the former Granada Studios to make the spaces fit for the modern age, complete with an entirely new infrastructure, 4K facilities and plush superstar dressing rooms. In this podcast, Jones talks about how Manchester Studios began by offering drama productions four-waller space in the old Granada Studios building, before setting its sights on TV productions. It opened its first fully kitted-out TV studio space (the 13,000 sq ft 4K Studio 1) at the beginning of June, and now plans to have a full TV studio complex up and running by the end of next year.

Adam Heyhurst is former head of events at the BBC and now heads up the broadcast operations of marketing agency Amplify. While at the BBC he set up the broadcast infrastructure for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, which he talks about in detail during this conversation with Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton. His passion for live streaming over pre-recorded content is also covered in this podcast, with Heyhurst presenting numerous compelling reasons why live streaming is the best way forward for many productions. Heyhurst also provides his top tips for creating high quality images while filming subjects at home during lockdown.

Defected Records chief business officer James Kirkham talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about the dance label's hugely popular weekly Virtual Festivals, which kicked off as soon as the UK went into lockdown. The 12-hour live streamed events, which went out on a plethora of social media platforms every Friday night, brought in an audience of millions of dance music fans each week. Each Virtual Festival brought together DJs from around the world, who each had an hour to spin discs from their home, before the next DJ kicked off their set. The complexity of how each set was filmed ranged from a single iPhone camera stream to a multi-camera setup, including drones. Kirkham explains how it was all put together and what the future for Virtual Festivals might be post-lockdown.

Senior colourist Paul Ensby began his career in 1990, following his father and grandfather's footsteps into the film lab. He started as a 35mm laboratory feature timer and moved to digital grading in 2001. Since then, Ensby has notched up an impressive credit list, including Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Asif Kapadia's Oscar winning Amy and Josie Rourke's Mary Queen of Scots. After some years working at a number of other facilities, Ensby has now rejoined Technicolor where be began and spent the majority of his career. He speaks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about his life as a grading artist, and the changing role from the film lab to digital grading and working through the coronavirus lockdown.

With TV studios on lockdown, Eurosport presenter Orla Chennaoui turned to Zoom to film interviews with a who's who of British athletics for Eurosport's re-runs of the London 2012 Olympics next week (24 May-31 May). Her interviews, with the likes of Mo Farah, Adam Peaty, Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington, Greg Rutherford and Bradley Wiggins, were all recorded with the athletes at home, recollecting their memories of the hugely successful Olympic Games. This came with its own challenges, and also a number of key benefits, as discussed in the podcast. The entire production was created remotely – it was filmed and edited remotely, the archive clips were all accessed remotely, and some re-commentating was also done remotely. Impressively, the production values still manage to mirror that of a typical studio-based show. Orla discusses how it all worked in this 11-minute chat with Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton.

Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton talks to freelance lightning cameraman Graham Howe about what he's doing to keep busy during lockdown. With the Covid-19 pandemic cancelling almost all his future bookings, Graham decided to make the most of his new-found free time to learn new skills that would be useful for his job. So, he's learned how to live stream content; he's completed Health and Safety courses he's been trying the find the time to do for years; he's learned how to expertly use a DJI Ronin-S gimbal and a motorised slider; and he's also found the time to put the Sony FX9 camera through its paces. You can hear how he got on with it all here.

Sebastian Gray, co-founder and SVP of football content platform Dugout talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about what the company does, how it does it, and the growth in demand for previously undiscovered archive football clips. Dugout is co-owned by 10 world-leading football clubs (including Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City) and offers access to the archives of 100+ football clubs from around the world. It receives 400m views a month of its football content.

Mark Benson, CEO of Academy Award winning VFX house/creative studio, MPC, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about the changing needs of commercials producers during lockdown. With Covid-19 severely limiting options for live shoots and with the tone of advertising messages necessarily adjusted to be appropriate for the global circumstances we're living through, there are many challenges facing content creators. MPC is seeing a shift to CG/VFX work to replace what might have previously been live components, and Benson talks about how it is collaborating with clients to ensure they get the most out of this approach, and that its honed to suit their needs and budget. He also talks about the impact of lockdown on MPC, both from a practical and business point of view, and also how its Shanghai office has all but reverted back to business as normal after the lockdown was lifted in China.

Gorilla TV managing director Rich Moss and Jigsaw24 sales director Rupert Watson join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton for a chat through the tech enabling post-production houses to transition overnight from office-based to cloud-based remote home working. The companies work together at the cutting edge of post-production, with Gorilla having a long history of innovating in new workflows to continually enhance its service to clients. This informative, educational discussion explains the practical benefits of products such as Avid Edit on Demand, Deja Edit, and vMix in enabling post houses to ensure business as usual and the same high-end service levels while their staff work from home. The podcast also looks more broadly at cloud-based working and how remote collaborative working will be further enhanced over the coming months as the industry beds in for an extended lockdown.

Blast Premier esports CEO Robbie Douek talks to Broadcast Sport reporter Max Miller about the appeal of esports – what draws fans to the games, and how esports can capitalise on the cancellation of live conventional sports. Blast Premier runs a year-long series of tournaments that are typically held in huge arenas with thousands of fans watching the gaming live at the venue. With the pandemic putting a halt to this setup, Douek reveals how the Blast Premier events have transitioned to online, with the players based at home. He also presents his ideas on how esports and the Blast Premier series can continue to grow in a post-pandemic world.

BT Sport chief operating officer Jamie Hindhaugh explains how the broadcaster has created a 'virtual BT Sport studio', taking 400 people out of its physical studios in Stratford and replacing the studios with decentralised production to enable home working. With the system up and running, BT Sport is able to continue to broadcast presenter-led live shows with each of the presenters and the crew working from their homes. Hindhaugh talks through the new programming it's creating during lockdown and how it can implement long-term changes based on its reaction to the pandemic.

Ronnie O'Sullivan, snooker superstar and Eurosport pundit joins Eurosport UK senior director of production and broadcast Jamie Steward to discuss the snooker content Eurosport is rolling out to replace the postponed World Snooker Championship. It includes exclusive vodcasts from O'Sullivan and fellow snooker players, re-runs of classic matches and twitter polls to choose an archive match from the World Snooker Championship finals each day. 

In this revealing and insightful interview, LADbible Group's head of programming, Ben Powell-Jones talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about the content his team is creating for the world-leading social media group. Powell-Jones discusses the innovative use of data by the LADbible Group to determine success and to influence future edits and original programming strands, as well as the style and editorial focus of the social media giant's content around coronavirus.

Renowned colourist Jet Omoshebi (senior colourist at Goldcrest) talks with Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about working in a near empty Soho facility during the coronavirus pandemic, and about how the crisis could lead to long-lasting changes in the post-production industry, and TV production in general.

BBC presenter Gavin Ramjaun talks with Broadcast Sport and Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how his role has changed during the coronavirus pandemic. He also talks about his men's health and positivity podcast Manzilla and how as a tech novice he managed to set up his own recording studio. Ramjaun also offers his own words of wisdom on how to stay positive during lockdown.

Football statistician, broadcaster and author Duncan Alexander talks to Broadcast Sport and Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how data never fails to unearth new stories from the football archives; how Stats Perform is ramping up its engagement with football fans through its immensely popular OptaJoe twitter account, during the coronavirus pandemic. The future for OptaJoe and how AI is playing a key role in extracting new data from old games.

Grant Phillips, executive producer and director at Sunset+Vine talks to Broadcast Tech/Broadcast Sport reporter Max Miller about how weekly BT Sport series Scottish Football Extra has morphed into Scottish Football Extra From Home during the coronavirus outbreak. The series is being produced remotely, with content captured on mobile phones, sent to editorial via WeTransfer, edited online and broadcast weekly at 6pm on BT Sport.