IBC Conference: BBC Sport’s John Murphy on the evolution of virtual studios

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BBC Sport’s John Murphy divulges the expert insights he gained on AR, LED volumes and camera tracking from setting up the virtual studios for Match of the Day and several major sporting tournaments.

When BBC Sport moved to MediaCity, Salford, in 2011, it arrived with the opportunity to refresh the flagship soccer highlights show Match of the Day (MOTD). Having been produced from a traditional set for its previous 47 years on air, the MOTD production soon broke ground by pioneering the use of augmented reality (AR) with camera tracking systems.

“We were guinea pigs with the use of live AR in the UK,” recalls John Murphy, BBC Sport Design Director, a post he has held since 2011. “Everything was new. Setting up tracking cameras was painful. It was a great idea from a creative point of view, but it had a lot of people in production tearing their hair out at the time.”

Through trial and error, the BBC Sport team cracked AR graphics before they ever saw how game engine technology could be used for virtual live production. “This was at IBC around 2017 and the keying against green screen was amazing. You could key objects like water bottles and fine texture-like hair in software, which we’d not really seen before.” 

BBC Sport decided to go ahead with building a virtual studio for MOTD, a move which also gave the department greater flexibility and creative freedom. It debuted in 2018. 

“We didn’t have to be stuck to one physical set or one look,” Murphy says. “It was a game-changer. We learned a lot of harsh lessons initially around how to work with game engines in the broadcast environment, but we've progressed to the point where virtual studios have become the norm for us.” 

COVERING GLOBAL EVENTS

In addition to the MOTD studio, BBC Sport also operates Studio 1 with a 9.5m x 9m footprint, which comprises a green floor and green walls along three sides. From this studio, BBC Sport hosted the Winter Olympics 2022, FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 and the UEFA Women's Euro competitions. 

Murphy notes: “It's a great business case because that was a physical space that wasn't utilised to its full potential until we added the green screen and opened up a lot more capabilities for different productions. We produce daily iPlayer content from there and now we’re using it for digital and social content more and more.” 

For coverage of the Paris Olympics and the men’s Euros from Germany in the summer of 2024, BBC Sport introduced LED screens to the sets that were built on location and had views of the Eiffel Tower and Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. 

“For the 2024 UEFA Euros, we installed two mixed-reality presentation studio areas opposite the Brandenburg Gate: one on the roof terrace and one inside. Both used extended reality (XR), AR, and LED screens to provide a museum-themed look and feel that complemented the city’s architecture. We also displayed on-screen visuals to showcase match data and statistics for viewers.” 

In both cases, most of the gallery production and editing was performed remotely back in Salford. 

“The reality is that Paris and Berlin were the best use cases for blending the real and the virtual from a creative angle, but they probably weren’t the best from a business perspective,” Murphy says. “In terms of a business and sustainability point of view, the Women's Euros is the gold standard. We were able to give each live presentation a realistic Swiss backdrop while producing it all from the UK.” 

None of this is to say that all technical challenges have been ironed out − far from it. Green screen remains tricky to key, which is why the BBC is reportedly likely to phase that out in favour of LED volumes. 

“With a virtual studio in an LED volume, you don’t need to worry about keying. Your talent can wear what they like and, more importantly, they can see what's actually happening around them. Our talent is adept at working with green screen, but they would rather see what they are interacting with. It’s more intuitive and makes them more comfortable.” 

MURPHY’S TOP TIPS

There can be few people more experienced in working with virtual studios than Murphy. He offers these tips for others thinking of following suit. 

“One of the biggest things that people miss is the editorial and design. You can have all the latest technology available, but it’s actually getting the creative part right that is fundamental. In a sense, you’ve still got to approach it with an architectural design mindset. You've got to have people with an eye for architectural design and modelling, and your floor space has to work for people and cameras. You've also got to think about your single shots for talent because singles are the most used shot.” 

The BBC’s internal sports graphics team is small, and it tends to work with external suppliers like AE Live (for Euros 2024), Moov TV (for the Paris Olympics) and Sunset + Vine (for the Women’s Euros 2025). 

Murphy stresses the importance of putting design at the very start of the process. “You should have ideas about what you want to achieve visually rather than just using the latest virtual tech for the sake of it.” 

While camera tracking has advanced to the point where Murphy thinks it’s solid, he does warn of frame delays introduced by rendering graphics. The BBC currently use Unreal Engine as its main render pipeline, a technology that is more commonly used to build video games. This system delivers photorealistic graphics but still has to be processed on hardware used for live broadcast. This technical feature brings with it certain performance limitations, which need to be factored in as well. 

“It's still not like a box which you open and suddenly have a virtual studio,” Murphy insists. “There are a lot of things still to consider.” 

BBC SPORT AT IBC2025

Murphy’s team is in early planning for next year’s bumper summer of live sports and will use IBC2025 to scout the latest technologies as part of that preparation. 

“We've still got decisions to make from a virtual production and presentation point of view, so IBC2025 is important for us on that front. We’re discussing internally and with FIFA about how best to approach the World Cup in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Just ahead of that, Wimbledon is another massive live event for us.” 

MOTD is changing front-of-camera presentation for the 2025-26 season. “We're not trying to reinvent the wheel creatively with it, but certainly on the back of the World Cup 2026, we'd like to have a bit of a legacy there and do something new with MOTD visually and creatively for the following season.” 

IBC Conference: Roku on the value of out-of-app discovery

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Watching TV is not supposed to be hard. It should be pleasurable, but the industry has tied itself in knots as content and platforms fragment then coalesce in the shift to streaming.

Roku's founding vision remains ‘All TV will be streamed’. It has gravitated from a purveyor of streaming video devices to a smart TV operating systems provider, building out from its home market of the US to be used by 90 million households worldwide every month. 

“Everyone piled into streaming in a slight panic but now we're at a stage where everyone is taking a step back and asking how do I make this work? How do I make money? How do I get the most value out of it? That’s why you’re seeing interesting combinations of services working together to create new packages and bundles.  

“It's a really interesting time of change where there's still a huge amount of viewing to linear TV channels and massive viewing to streaming-only options, plus hybrids like FAST channels which combine some of the old behaviour with some of the new delivery. The opportunity is to help consumers navigate that and find ways to make it a better experience.” 

Personalisation and discovery 

As viewers increasingly start their journeys in a digital rather than linear environment, Roku is central to the connected TV battle to control the viewing experience.  

“Sometimes a little feature can go a long way,” Price says. “A feature like ‘Continue Watching’ (now rolled out in markets including the UK and Germany) collects all the shows you’re in the middle of watching across all different apps and brings them together in one place. It takes out that cognitive load of trying to remember where you saw what show and makes the experience really simple.” 

Another feature, What to Watch, offers personalised recommendations from across different apps. “This is the way the world is going,” says Price. “Netflix has a view of what you should watch in the Netflix catalogue. Prime Video has a view, and BBC iPlayer has a view, but bringing those together for the consumer has real value.” 

Both features encourage out-of-app discovery, although Price emphasises that Roku is happy for viewers to move in and out of apps as well. 

Spinning to the other side of the coin, Price says that content owners also find it easier than ever to reach consumers. “Anyone can build an app and publish it on an app store. You don’t have to go out and negotiate carriage with different regional cable companies. The real challenge is, once the app is created, how do you launch new hits?” 

At one time you could schedule your new show in primetime on broadcast TV and know that everyone would at least be aware of it. That’s not the case with digital where shows can get lost. 

“At Roku we offer marketing tools like themed takeovers of the whole home screen to promote your show,” Price explains. “Some viewers still go straight ahead and watch whatever they're going to watch anyway, but just giving a new show oxygen ahead of launch is something that Roku works for.  

“Also, if you want to fund development of new shows you've got to make the absolute most you can out of your deep catalogue. Our algorithmic curation is one way of surfacing older, relevant content to consumers. You could also use FAST to take a successful brand and successful catalogue and create a whole linear channel around a particular piece of IP.” 

While Roku (along with other Smart TV OS providers like Samsung and LG) target becoming the default home screen for households (at least those without a pay-TV subscription), Price doesn’t necessarily view the endgame as super-aggregation. He’s not sure consumers want that. 

“The big bundle has been broken apart and consumers don’t want to go back to it, but they do still want it to be easy to get to the shows they love. People will sometimes seek out a particular brand or niche service but if you're not the biggest gorilla in town (like a Netflix or a YouTube) then your content is going to do better in an environment where it can be discovered by people who are not specifically seeking your brand.” 

The value of live sport 

One aggregation function that Roku has yet to transfer from the US to Europe is ‘Sport Zone’. This unites content held by multiple providers (in the US, this includes NBC Sports, Fox Sports, ESPN, Peacock and Paramount+) in one portal, either free to view or with a subscription. There are subzones too for particular sports. 

“Live sport is the most valuable content on TV. Most people will find the sport or team they really want to watch whichever platform it ends up on but you still want to make it as easy as you can when you just want to sit down and watch the game.” 

Price isn’t confirming whether Sport Zone will launch in Europe, but it’s likely on the cards. “In the US, sports rights are super fragmented compared to Europe but even in markets like the UK, if fans wanted to watch every match of a Premier League season they’d have to go to at least three services (TNT Sports, Sky Sports, Prime Video) with other broadcasters taking additional major soccer rights. What Sport Zone does is bring it all together so you can find the game easily and you don't have to do the work of finding which channel it’s on.” 

The company recently announced a deal with Everyone TV to integrate UK broadcaster streaming service Freely into smart TVs powered by the Roku OS. 

“It was a very natural fit that Roku would support Freely,” Price reports. “There were some complexities to the deal, but we're really pleased to find a path that enables us to continue to innovate our platform and give enough prominence to [Freely] channels and content that also meets the regulation for PSB prominence in the UK. 

“We want all TV to be streamed. You should just plug it in and watch. It should be that simple.” 

Reimagining Creative Studios: EngineLab CEO Sam Reid Talks Cloud, AI, and Virtualised ClearView Flex

 interview and words for Sohonet

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EngineLab launched earlier this year as a premium technology consultancy focused on providing cutting-edge cloud-based solutions for the creative industries. It is notable for being led by the team that wrote the blueprints for cloud-native studios helping to shape how creative technology operates today.

Sam Reid, CEO, EngineLab was CTO of Untold Studios where he built its infrastructure from the ground up, enabling 500+ creatives across London, LA, and Mumbai. He now guides EngineLab’s vision and growth with a focus on creative impact through technology.

EngineLab CTO Matt Herman led Psyop’s migration to a fully cloud-based workflow and co-founded Trace VFX, scaled to 1,200+ artists before its acquisition by Technicolor.

Third co-founder Daniel Goller, CRO, drives AI innovation and R&D. He holds a PhD in Engineering and worked on infrastructure efficiency and AI integration at Untold.  

As premium postproduction shifts dramatically from on-premise hardware to data center-based power and compute, EngineLab acts as the interface between cloud superscalers and the creative front end.

Hey Sam - Let’s start from the beginning - what sparked the idea for EngineLab?

S: My history is building studios and cloud technology and evangelizing in that space.  After having done that for eight years with Untold, I felt it was the right opportunity to recreate that for other budding studios wanting to spin up or people wanting to modernize their technology.

The market opportunity was right too. We could see larger studios being downsized or folding completely as a result of the pressures from Covid, the 2023 strikes and knock-on squeezes on production. Small groups would splinter away to do their own thing. I guess my colleague and I were a part of that churn happening in the industry.

Our idea was to take our expertise and experience into the market for all those other studios who are starting up, and potentially do not want to spend lots of money on equipment at the start.

At EngineLab we offer the ability for these studios to easily access Next Generation technology at a far more affordable rate than they would be able to do if they had to procure it all themselves.

‍And when it comes to the tech, what exactly does EngineLab offer studios?

We offer everything that would go into building a traditional studio. Let's say, you’re leaving a big business to start your own studio with five to ten people. You’re going to need high-powered workstations and machines with a high-quality graphics card in them and a decent amount of RAM and CPU. Not only are they pretty expensive to buy but they would take a while to arrive after you order them.  Each of those workstations needs central storage so everyone can work off the same files together. If you’re doing complex simulations like landslides or water simulations then you’re going to need a much bigger group of computers with the power to process the data. Then you need to connect them together so that every asset and file is synchronized where necessary and secure always.

These are the elements that comprise any studio. What we’re saying is that you don't need to buy anything. You can just rent them. When you get the work then you pay for use and when you enter a quiet period you don't. This opex model is replacing the traditional capex model.

At Engine lab we’re helping studios build studios tailored to their requirements. We’re onboarding them. We’re teaching them how to work in this new way and how to leverage new technology so that they work quicker and get a better result in terms of creativity. Because your machines are running faster and everything is just happening quicker you can produce more iterations on your content. More iterations, I would argue, gives a better creative outcome.

The story behind Arc Creative is an interesting one, can you tell us more about how that came together?

Our first customer is Arc Creative based in Los Angeles. When Technicolor Creative Studios closed its offices and its constituent studios in February, a number of the creative leadership and around 100 artists found a lifeline with a new venture with multi-studio VFX house Dream Machine, dubbed Arc Creative.

All of this all happened really quickly. They needed to build a studio from scratch and in very short time in order to be able to continue to work on the projects that they had been working on. That presented a good challenge for EngineLab in terms of helping them create the technology framework for them to maintain continuity of work.

Arc’s artists needed extremely high-powered workstations to perform bespoke finishing workflows with Flame. The timeline for us to set this up was aggressive but because we don't need to go out and buy anything we were able to provision machines and connectivity and have it spun up within a matter of days as opposed to the weeks or months that it would take to try and procure and implement this hardware themselves.

‍When you're building out a virtual studio, where does something like Sohonet’s ClearView Flex come in?

Sohonet offers a wide range of tools that a lot of our clients really value. The one we’ve focused on initially is the virtualised version of their review platform, ClearView Flex (VFlex) - which is a vital piece of the puzzle for us because it presents a way to get video out of the cloud. That has always been one of the biggest challenges in terms of cloud technology. In a traditional studio you’d have dedicated cables for this but over the past few years this connectivity has been virtualized and Sohonet hooked into that advance and created a product around it. We deploy VFlex in AWS, which gives us the flexibility and performance needed to meet demanding postproduction workflows.

Now you don't need a physical cable plugged into the back of a Flame going into a monitor in the room, because you can now do it over IP. You can send video over huge distances. The stream is a lot more stable and much more efficient. IP technology is also maturing, so it's just getting better to the point where I feel extremely confident going into a customer like Arc who operate with demanding deadlines and specifying Sohonet. I know they need something that works straight away and we don't have time to make this a science experiment. We need to know that we can buy something, plug it in and it will work instantly for the customer because they have projects depending on it. ClearView Flex fits in really nicely to that. I can install it quickly and it provides great value for the client because they have a robust and efficient method to view work in progress at an extremely high value point in the chain.

 

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So once a studio is up and running, like Arc, do you stay involved?

Exactly right. I see very little value in us going in and doing a big build of something really complex for a customer and just leaving it there. We help studios make smart, scalable technology decisions. From CTO-as-a-service to custom software development, we deliver hands-on technical leadership and solutions that integrate with any standard toolset.

Our model is to provide Next Generation technology for them to work on and an extremely capable top tier support team to maintain it. We make sure that it keeps running because the risk of downtime for a studio is that all those hundreds of artists just sit there idle. The clock is always ticking for a studio and downtime means no work but you still have to pay your team and cost can soon balloon. We should be able to do it better and cheaper relative to a studio hiring their own permanent technology team. And, as we grow our customer base we should be able to achieve some economies of scale which we would pass on to customers as well.

‍What does the immediate future hold for EngineLab?

Our bread and butter is building cloud technology for studios and I don’t see that slowing down at all. It’s something we are probably always going to do but it won't always necessarily be our core focus. That’s because the technology business is constantly changing and right now it is being continually shaken by artificial intelligence. As a tech company we can quite easily pivot to do different things and create different products. We can build custom AI tools that integrate seamlessly into creative pipelines, enhancing workflows, automating time-consuming tasks, and unlocking new possibilities. From prototype to production, we can help studios harness the latest advancements in AI. So going forward, it’s likely AI is going to form a big part of our offering that we'll be able to use to further empower studios and create more efficiencies.

 

IBC Conference: Yahoo Mail’s Harish Sarma on the “untouched territory” of broadcaster emails

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Yahoo Mail Vice President (VP) of Business Development and Partnerships Harish Sarma will speak on the IBC panel ‘The Power of Collaboration: How strategic partnerships are transforming broadcasting’ on 12 September.

“At the moment, emails are loosely linked to a calendar, a planner and/or a to-do list. Moreover, today’s email calendars are effectively a set of time blocks with text in them. Imagine instead if that entire experience was reinvented with the end consumer in mind. In that world, the broadcaster or IP owner could have a more meaningful conversation with its customers. For example, a marketing email highlighting upcoming events or shows could be integrated with a calendar feature to enhance discovery and attendance. 

“This is completely untouched territory. There's no real solution that exists for this yet, and that means there’s an opportunity. The key to this opportunity is changing the conversation, which starts with IBC.” 

Describing recent changes at Yahoo Mail as “an important part of the next chapter for the brand,” Sarma says the 30-year-old business operates in a field – email – that hasn’t seen innovation in decades. “Millions of people use the product every day all over the world. It’s purely functional but it doesn't necessarily bring much more to your life.  

“If I ask people about how they feel about email, they'll probably tell me that it frustrates them because of the volume of messages they receive. If it's for work, you need to process it. If it's personal, it ends up being another task to attend to on top of work. Yet, amid all the chores and chaos, sits a tremendous amount of value.” This is what Sarma, with all his expertise, has been hired to unlock. 

“Email is one of the highest utility digital products you can have in terms of the value it provides each person, but it also drives a tremendous amount of angst, and frankly, it doesn't feel like people get a lot of joy from emails. Yahoo Mail’s mission is to change the consumer experience with email. Can we keep the good stuff, eliminate the bad and change the game? That’s what caught my curiosity when joining Yahoo.” 

NBA TO TIKTOK 

As a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley who left to join the National Basketball Association (NBA), Sarma thrives when working out of the box. 

At the NBA, he initially focused on deal strategy and valuation before concentrating on commercial licensing, to build out content distribution in more than 190 international markets. “While the NBA is massively popular in the US, China, and now in France, in some countries it's still a niche sport. The challenge was how to bring value and growth to a property like the NBA in non-core markets.” 

In 2019, Sarma was recruited by Bytedance to head the Content Business Development department at TikTok at a time when the platform was starting to grow exponentially. TikTok was already a client of the NBA and Sarma doubled down on this, bringing more of the NBA's content onto the video sharing platform.  

“We ultimately built out the content function within TikTok not just for sports but also entertainment, lifestyle and gaming. Prior to this, content was categorised, but impact was evaluated based on engagement. Content that drives virality doesn't necessarily translate to what people want to be watching. It could just be what is garnering a lot of attention at a moment in time. Over time, we learned what we really needed to build was silos of high-quality content that met the niche needs of each user across content categories.” 

Additionally, Harish is also a member of the IOC Esports Commission, chairing the Platforms and Distribution sector.   

EMAIL REVOLUTION 

On the IBC panel, Sarma will be joined by executives from Snap, Sling TV and Sky, which may give some clues as to how Yahoo Mail is addressing a media and entertainment audience. 

The product is changing too. The first of many expected revamps is a catch-up feature to help users tackle inbox overload. AI-powered summaries provide scannable email previews, giving users the option to ‘delete’ or ‘keep in inbox’ with a simple tap. The final reward? A celebratory screen for users to see how many emails they deleted, and how fast they did it.  

“The idea is very simple. Can we transform the email experience to help users filter the information they need from details they do not. The catch-up feature is an AI-powered triage system that we made into a game.” 

Announced alongside the news that nearly half of Yahoo Mail users are Gen Z or Millennial, the feature rolled out to Yahoo Mail users on 12 June 2025 with an exclusive partnership with comedian, musician, actor and TikTok creator Morgan Jay and with streetwear brand Anti Social Social Club (ASSC). Snapping this offer up, Comcast has already begun transitioning all Comcast.net email accounts to Yahoo Mail’s AI-driven platform, in under two months since this initial launch.  

“There’s a misperception that email is for the older generation and our job is to debunk a lot of that because the data doesn't support it. Knowing that nearly half of our users are Gen Z or Millennial is, for most people, surprising to hear. However, we know we can leverage that to enhance the user experience. 

“Another myth is the idea that email is going to die out and be replaced by something much more efficient. Another way to look at it is: ‘What if we can evolve email to work for today’s users?’ We envision an experience where email can do more of the work of organising your personal life for you. We want to change the conversation around how email has worked, and been used, for decades,” concludes Sarma. 

YouTube streaming continues fast track to distribution domination

Streaming Media

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YouTube has become the UK’s second most watched streaming service, overtaking Netflix, marking a turning point in how audiences discover and consume content on TV. 

According to UK regulator Ofcom in its annual report, YouTube has become the UK's second most-watched media service, behind only the BBC.

One in five viewers aged four to 15 years go to the video sharing platform first when they turn on their smart TVs, it found, while older generations aged over 55 are watching nearly twice as much YouTube as they did two years ago.

TiVo’s Q2 2024 UK Video Trends Report reinforces this shift: social video (YouTube, TikTok etc.) now accounts for nearly one in five minutes of TV viewing, and over a third of UK viewers watch social video on their TVs several times a week - a 9% year-on-year rise. 

The content audiences are watching on YouTube has evolved too. Half of the platform’s top-trending videos now more closely resemble traditional TV, including long-form interviews and game shows. This shift positions YouTube as a direct competitor to ad-supported TV services, while offering broadcasters a way to reach wider and younger audiences.  

According to Chris Kleinschmidt, VP of EMEA Advertising Sales at connected device software developer Xperi, these trends demand a reappraisal of content strategy across platforms.

“It’s not just the idea of shortform versus longform it’s the amount of content that still gives a huge misconception that it is all UGC or cheap, bad content. There is a lot of that on the platform but there’s a lot of professional content too and it’s also very niche. The combination of shortform, longform and user specific niche contentYou makes it difficult for broadcaster content to organically bubble up. Because there’s so much content you almost need have to have niche angle to stand out.”

Kleinschmidt argues that broadcasters need to be more open to putting their content on YouTube. “There are a lot of issues that come with that including licensing and revenue share agreements but if you want to hit key demographics then YouTube is where your audience is spending their time. When broadcaster create high value content they need to have that distributed on as many platforms as possible to recoup investment.”

Most broadcasters are doing this already though not necessarily their primetime first airing on YouTube. They still prioritize their own channels and BVOD apps. That old strategy needs to be challenged, says Kleinschmidt.

“The age-old debate was that putting premium content on YouTube risks cannibalizing your audience but what is the alternative scenario? You’re not going to get that audience any other way so you run the risk of key demographics not seeing your content at all.

“This is the main dilemma. Is YouTube going to be the main source of content distribution in 20 years? Probably not. Something else will have come along but you have to realise that right now YouTube is where the audience is spending their time.”

Some broadcasters are increasingly offering their own programmes on YouTube, for example ITV and Channel 4 make full length programming available on their channels, retaining control over adverts. Ofcom has identified these sorts of partnerships, making public service content available and prominent on online platforms, as critical to sustain the future of public service media in its recent report, Transmission Critical.

In the UK, per Ofcom, the BBC still hold the largest share of total viewing at 19 per cent, with YouTube at 14 per cent, and ITV, Netflix and other broadcasters accounting for 12 per cent, 8 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively. While traditional broadcasters continue to make up the majority of in-home viewing, with 56 per cent of the total share, UK consumers spent 39 minutes on YouTube per day in 2024, with 16 minutes of this via the household’s TV set.

Ofcom's interim group director for strategy and research, Ed Leighton, said scheduled TV is "increasingly alien" to younger viewers, with YouTube now "the first port of call for many" when they pick up the remote.

"But we're also seeing signs that older adults are turning to the platform as part of their daily media diet too," he noted.

TiVo’s report also found social video fuelling in-car habits, with 66% of people watching short videos while charging their EV.

“It’s a growing environment and one of those areas where see positive traction,” says Kleinschmidt. Waiting for 30 minutes to charge your EV is a perfect opportunity to watch snackable content. Two use cases that are worth watching over the next five to ten years are the rise of autonomous vehicles which potentially enable passengers and drivers to stream content on the move; and the increasing number of screens built into new cars.

“Screens are a commodity and relatively inexpensive to add into vehicles. High market value vehicles today have multiple screens onboard. This will filter down the market to the point where it’s conceivable to have personalized video streams for individual screens.”

BTS - Bookish

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Writer and actor Mark Gatiss tells IBC365 about why his new murder mystery series Bookish has teeth.

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It seems unlikely that Mark Gatiss would ever get angry but mention ‘Cozy Crime’ and the Sherlock creator exhibits mild exasperation.

“I find the term pejorative because it suggests there's no teeth to it when sometimes cosy crime can amplify issues or push against them. Jolly macabre is the kind of thing I like.”

The writer and actor is promoting his new murder mystery drama set in post-war London. Bookish centres on Gabriel Book (Gatiss) an antiquarian book dealer and amateur sleuth. Gatiss, who wrote the six part series, acknowledges his debt not just to Conan Doyle but to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and the gentleman detectives Lord Peter Wimsey (created by Dorothy Sayers) and Albert Campion (who featured in novels by Margery Allingham) all of whom have TV versions which could be categorised under cozy crime.

“It’s an easy thing to say for a genre that has many different styles in it,” Gatiss tells IBC365 at Italian Television Festival IGSF in Riccione. “As well as being a murder mystery the best of them have a lot to say about the world. Agatha Christie is very underrated in terms of the satire on class and social prejudice she wrote into her novels. The longer format [of TV] helps us explore character.”

He admits that some cozy crime can be too casual, “like a warm bath” adding, “I like to have consequences. Bookish exists in a broken world full of possibility but also sadness.”

He based his performance of Book on Pimpernel Smith the character played by Leslie Howard in the 1941 British feature of the same name about an archaeologist smuggling people out of Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Technicolor look of the show was informed by his love of the films of Powell and Pressburger who captured war time surrealism in A Matter of Life and Death.

Another inspiration was actor and novelist Dirk Bogarde who experienced the liberation of Bergen-Belsen death camp in 1945 and a decade later made Doctor In The House comedies and became a matinee idol. “He journeyed from darkness into escapism,” says Gatiss. “I didn’t want Book to be too flippant. Getting the tone right was quite a job. He needed to be light hearted because he’s seen so much dark.”

Like Bogarde and Gatiss himself, the character of Book is gay. At a time when homosexuality is illegal in England he’s in a “lavender” marriage of convenience with best friend, Trottie (Polly Walker). It’s partly based on past relationships Gatiss has had with his best female friends.

“Post-World War II is an extraordinary period of horror and liberation. Women and gay people were liberated during the war. They had a different life experience and then after the war society tried to put a lid back on things which didn't quite work. I think we all should be educated about what a dangerous world it used to be and how privileged we are today. Equally how easily that can all be taken away.”

He adds, “One day we’ll have a lead detective who just happens to be gay and then we’ll know we made it.”

Writing a whodunnit

Gatiss conceived the idea during lockdown, originally as a novel, before turning it into a script.  Eagle Eye, an ITV Studios owned indie, learned of the project and fast-tracked development, largely filming it in Belgium where streets and sets were dressed for London. The series is being broadcast by UKTV’s crime channel U&Alibi with a second season ready to film in August.

Whovians might spot similarities in a narrative device in Bookish that mirrors one Gatiss penned for Matt Smith’s Dr Who in ‘Victory of the Daleks’ back in 2010. Dr Who, like Book, is in possession of a letter from Winston Churchill - the result of some undisclosed favour - which grants him access to crime scenes.

“You need your maverick detective to have access to the crime scene so I stole the idea I’d written in Dr Who to cut out the ambiguity,” he explains. “Book can just produce this letter and it gives him a way in.”

He continues, “I don’t like my detective to have too antagonistic a relationship with the police. I find it very reductive and dumb that the professional who works the case [in TV murder mystery] doesn’t get the credit. I wanted to make the police detective here into an ally. At the same time there is another character Sergeant Morris who is less sympathetic and suspicious of what he sees as Book’s meddling in the case.

Before “freely adapting” Conan Doyle for the BBC’s Sherlock Gatiss adapted three Poirot murder mysteries for ITV, and appeared in an adaptation of Miss Marple novel, The Murder at the Vicarage.

“Murder mysteries are fiendishly difficult to write,” he says. “You have to find a balance between providing clues for the audience but not being so obvious that they get them straight away and not making them so obscure that at the end people feel cheated. You have to play fair.”

“There's a lot to be said for starting at the end and working backwards because then you can cover it up. It's actually true that the identity of the murderer can and does change in the course of writing unless their identity is absolutely intrinsic to the story.

I've read an awful lots of whodunnits so you become very used to the tricks and then you have to start second guessing the tricks. If someone does something out of character – like they suddenly knock a vase over – the viewer thinks that's important. Then you as a writer think does the audience know that I think that’s important therefore it’s a red herring? Paul McGuigan, director of Sherlock, said the murderer is always the first person you see twice. He’s right. In The Hounds of Baskerville (2010) I deliberately made the murderer not the person you saw twice. You can drive yourself mad trying to second guess the audience.”

The impact of AI

The books in Book’s shop aren’t arranged by category or alphabet but in accordance to a logic only the bookkeeper can deduce. A tome called ‘Cataracts of the Nile’ is filed next to one on eye conditions. Gatiss calls the arrangement an “analogue computer” and presumably has a similar library at home. He says he read from an early age and was in an advanced reading group as a child.

“When I was about five, I remember being able to pronounce the word Subterranean and I got a prize for it. I vividly remember being given a copy of Great Expectations also aged five from Santa. I didn't read it then but when I did many years later the plot twist blew my mind. It's still my favourite twists.”

Once, when ill with German measles, his parents bought him The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a cheering up gift. “I never looked back,” he says. “I love the smell of old books. The feel of them and everything that comes with entering one of those antique book shops. That’s what informed the show.”

Oddly, for such a bibliophile, he has embraced electronic book readers.  “My Kindle has changed my reading habits. I read a lot more because it's so easy. That in no way takes away from the physical beauty of a lovely book, especially an old one, but it is incredibly useful.

“I've just read an amazing book about Dr Crippen called Story of a Murder [by Hallie Rubenhold] on Kindle and after I’d finished it suggests some others which are sometimes 99p. It actually has made me read more books.

“This is what AI should be. It's technology which is useful as opposed to replacing creativity. When the Kindle came out people were talking about the death of physical books but people still love books and physical media as a whole has staged a bit of a comeback despite what we were told. I'm hoping the same will be the case with AI.”

Gatiss recently appeared in Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning as head of the NSA helping to battle a rogue AI.

“I think the impact of AI will get quite bad everywhere and then there'll be a kind of arts and craft type of revolution,” he says. “People want to see other people's fingerprints on things. We were always told that when the robots came the machines would do the mundane jobs, like washing up, but weirdly, it's come for the Arts first. We didn't see that coming. I do not understand why we would want to replace the creative instinct. That's why we're alive. I understand why corporations want AI but why people would voluntarily do it I find baffling.”

The IGSF in Riccione and Rimini is a new incarnation of the Roma Fiction Festival, which ran for 10 years until 2016. It is organised by the APA, Italy’s producers’ association APA, in partnership with the Italian Ministry of Culture and SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers). 

“You come to other countries like Italy or France and the TV and film industry plays a huge part, not only of the culture but of the economy,” Gatiss says. “People just accept that. But in Britain we simply don't value the creative industries. We’ve got a major problem. It’s an ideological thing which baffles me constantly.

“We have two things left in Britain. One is the Second World War and one is the 1966 World Cup and we cling to them like a life raft. We increasingly aggrandise and mythologise them out of any perspective. The British are obsessed by having once ruled the waves.”

Nostalgia is one reason why British TV continues to produce cozy crime murder mysteries, whether Gatiss likes the term of not.

“It’s one of our only remaining industries,” he winks. “We murder very well.”

ends

 

Mathematic and Sohonet pioneer sustainable VFX postproduction

interview and copy written for Sohonet

article here

Mathematic, a leading independent VFX and 3D animation studio, is revolutionizing the creative industry through sustainable workflows and a commitment to environmental responsibility. The multi award-winning French facility has embarked on an ambitious rewiring of its global infrastructure connecting 350 artists across studios in Paris, Montreal and Los Angeles on Sohonet and its world class remote collaboration file transfer. The project has taken on renewed relevance post-Covid delivering workflow resilience, productivity gains and substantial energy efficiencies.

“We have positioned the environmental impact of Mathematic at the heart of all our projects,” says Clement Germain, VFX Supervisor at Mathematic. “Thanks to Sohonet, cutting-edge file transfer tools and Qarnot’s revolutionary cooling technologies we are able to increase creative output and dramatically reduce our carbon emissions in all our facilities.”

‍The Backbone of Global Creativity: Mathematic’s Sohonet Strategy

Nothing if not foresighted, Mathematic began transitioning out of the legacy IT in its offices in 2015. At the time, Mathematic faced issues caused by a siloed, distributed infrastructure and disconnected production teams. This resulted in delays, additional CAPEX and OPEX costs, and significant complexity as copies of project data had to be continually shuttled back and forth between sites. More importantly, the friction this added to production workflows was limiting the facility’s ability to grow its business and react to rapidly changing demand.

“The rationale was to streamline operational efficiencies using leading-edge technologies running on Sohonet optical fibre,” Germain explains. “Instead of working from existing storage at each site what we wanted to do was to assimilate file metadata in the cloud and tie all our sites together.”

To accomplish this, the facility began by interconnecting its Paris studio with its U.S and Canadian counterparts over Sohonet. By deploying Hammerspace software, Mathematic seamlessly bridged all sites into a multi-site global namespace. In this way, artists spanning Paris, Montreal and LA are able to collaborate on the same files in a live file system, eliminating the problem of wrangling file copies between sites.

“The new infrastructure means all our artists can collaborate on global projects by sharing assets without friction – as if they were sitting in the same office,” says Germain. “It also allows us to deploy a new studio anywhere, rapidly, and then recruit talent, regardless of their geographical location.”

‍Gateway to the Global Creative Network with Multiport

At the same time, Sohonet’s Multiport service provided access to the (Sohonet) Media Network, the largest private network for film, TV, and advertising industries. This allows Mathematic to directly connect with thousands of companies including industry giants Disney, Warner Bros. and Netflix, and hundreds of thousands of storytellers worldwide, facilitating smoother collaboration and data transfer.

Moreover, Multiport offered Mathematic the flexibility to scale bandwidth capacity as needed. This agility allowed them to adapt to varying workloads, such as upgrading to higher bandwidth during intensive projects and scaling back down afterwards, ensuring a seamless workflow management process.

Closing the Gap for Remote Teams ClearView Flex

The company first started working with real-time collaboration platform, ClearView Flex during the pandemic. “We developed a close relationship with Sohonet to keep our productions running by solving the last mile of remote collaboration,” Germain explains. “Previously, our remote teams were isolated from each other, limiting their ability to work effectively.”

Mathematic has since doubled down on using ClearView Flex. “We have boxes in Paris, Montreal and LA and we use them every day to stream sessions. It is fast, robust and the very best experience for clients and artists.”

‍Aligned with ‘France 2030’ Objectives

Mathematic’s strategy aligned with France Project 2030, a multi-billion Euro French government-  funded initiative to develop the country’s industrial competitiveness. Centered around next-gen technologies, the France Project 2030 is also intended to drive down carbon footprints.

To meet these sustainability goals Mathematic embarked on a scheme to decarbonize all its VFX renders.  “We decided to decarbonize our historic render farms by placing our old render nodes into Qarnot’s infrastructure. This innovative technology repurposes the heat generated by computing to feed district heating networks, swimming pools, and industrial facilities.” says Germain.     

There’s more to come too. Mathematic is installing new render nodes directly into Qarnot computing cluster, a technology that directly valorizes rendering heat to warm a swimming pool spa complex in the Paris region. This will not only deliver further energy savings but ties Mathematic’s global creative VFX into the circular economy.

Sixty servers were installed in Qarnot clusters at the end of 2024 and another 60 will be added this year. The facility next plans to double that amount to 240 servers and predicts that this will decarbonize 15 tonnes of Co2 per month across its network by 2027.

“Our journey is still evolving but we can already see tangible returns from our philosophy,” says Germain. “We can have artists working on a project in our LA or Montreal studio using the power of the render farm in Paris to decarbonize.”

For example, for the IMAX spectacle T.Rex (2024), the photoreal VFX was designed in Paris and animated in Montreal with rendering in France.

Mathematic has doubled production capacity alongside an 80% reduction in carbon output as a result of repatriating renders to Paris.

“Plus, if we were to open a new office in New York we would just plug it into Sohonet and our global file system and be able to scale up on projects within hours.”

Mathematic’s leadership in sustainability and fostering global collaboration was recognized with a prestigious nomination for a César et Techniques 2025 award.    

Mathematic creative excellence

Having art direction central to its core, Mathematic’s work spans commercial, music video, feature films and series, video game trailers, and entertainment creative content production.

With an average of 200 projects a year, Mathematic has collaborated with notable artists including Ed Sheeran, Lil Nas X, Harry Styles, Coldplay and The Weekend. The studio’s work includes commercials with brands such as Apple, Sprite, Adidas and Tag Heuer; television series such as Parallels from Disney+, and feature films including Vesper, The Whale, Asteroid City, and Les 5 Diables.

Mathematic also creates special effects for shows and concerts, including those by Drake and The Blaze. For its participation in the cyberpunk rock opera Starmania, Mathematic was awarded the prestigious Molière award for Best Visual Creation in 2023.

The studio’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the UK Music Video Awards (UKMVA), the Moliere awards, the GENIE Awards, CLIO Awards, Ciclope Awards, D&AD, EPICA Awards, London International Awards (LIA), MTV Awards, Cannes Lions and The César Award (nominee).