Why the future of remote production may run at the speed of light

Streaming Media

If immersive, real-time and AI-driven production is the future, the underlying network must change, argues members of IOWN.

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It seems only yesterday that broadcasters were rewiring their transport networks from coax to ethernet and SDI to IP but there’s momentum building to integrate new photonic capabilities into existing computing and networking infrastructure.

Technology giants including Sony, Google, Microsoft, Intel and Nvidia are backing a move to shift networks from electrical signal processing to laser light-based transport. Photonics promises superior bandwidth, ultra-low latency, far greater energy efficiency and, crucially for media production, deterministic latency.

“It’s becoming clear that existing network infrastructure wasn’t built for what’s coming next,” Katsutoshi Itoh, senior wireless communication engineer at Sony and head of its R&D lab based in Sweden tells StreamingMedia. “The bottleneck isn’t cameras or codecs — it’s the backbone. In live sports broadcasting, the next innovation on the horizon revolves around photons and transmitting data at the speed of light.”

The need for an advanced data connect system is being driven by AI – and with an eye toward Quantum compute. Data centre bandwidth is doubling every two years under the weight of AI, pushing networks beyond the limits of electrical interconnects.

“Compute systems based solely on electronics are increasingly reaching their limits,” confirms Cambridge Consultants, which is part of Cap Gemini. “The rising demands of AI and increasingly complex computing systems has intensified the development of new routes to high-performance computation.”

Chip maker Broadcom echoes the argument: “The insatiable demand for compute power in AI and high-performance computing is rapidly approaching a fundamental physical barrier: the limits of copper connectivity. As next-generation XPUs demand bandwidths soaring toward 28.8 Tbps, traditional copper interconnects are struggling to keep pace.”

Photonic computing “offers a compelling solution”, argue Cambridge Consultants. “Replacing electrons with photons across all or part of the computing system to process and store data through light waves. Since photons can process at the speed of light, photonic compute offers minimal latency and a 10-50x bandwidth improvement over traditional computing. It also has the potential to give a tenfold increase in energy efficiency as it can increase processing power without increasing the power usually associated with higher clock frequency.”

The first area of photonics adoption will be in data centres. There, according to Cambridge Consultants, photonics will no longer act simply as fibre links but as part of the photonic computing architecture through co-packaged optics (CPO), photonic interposers and high-speed optical switches.

“This will not completely replace electrical processing units, but will create a symbiotic compute system of photonic-electronic integrated circuits,” the analyst notes.

The photonics ecosystem is already building out. Nvidia and Broadcom have commercialised CPO chipsets. Other technology developers are lining up to incorporate CPO semiconductors, switchers and interconnects including Twinstar Technologies, Delta Electronics and Corning Incorporated.

Beyond the data center there are plans to create direct optical end to end communication paths for applications in industry, health, digital twins, remote learning and entertainment. This All-Photonics Network (APN) was developed by Japanese telco NTT and is now moving out of the lab and backed by 170 members of the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN).

This coalition includes telcos Nokia, Ericsson, Orange and KDDI, semiconductor and GPU makers Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia, communications infrastructure vendors Cisco, Ciena and Red Hat, device makers Samsung and Sony and internet/device making powerhouses Microsoft and Google. Its ambition is to deploy APN by 2030.

“Traditional optical networks convert signals back and forth between optical and electrical,” explains Itoh who is Chair of the Use Case Working Group at IOWN. “That adds latency, buffering and power consumption. With a photonics based we reduce or eliminate those conversions. In other words, timing you can trust.”

The implications stretch beyond the data center and IT engineering. Surging data demands for online video and interactive and immersive experiences are predicted to stretch the world’s communication networks to breaking point.

“As data demand grows exponentially and current network infrastructure struggles under growing pressure and increasing demand, the broadcast industry must look toward APNs to deliver the future of live broadcast,” Itoh says.

According to NTT, photonics can eliminate latency fluctuations. Conventional TCP/IP-based networks experience variable delays depending on network traffic, which can disrupt services that depend on real-time responsiveness. With APN, latency remains constant and predictable, enabling accurate remote operations and real-time data communication across long distances.

“In media production, from multi-camera sports coverage to immersive, free-viewpoint experiences, precise synchronisation is critical. Even minor latency variations can disrupt 3D reconstruction and real-time interactivity. Photonic networking introduces deterministic latency, meaning predictable, tightly controlled timing across the network.”

Such technology could “simplify remote production at scale” Itoh says and unlock more immersive formats, including XR and AI-assisted workflows. “As video moves from 4K to 8K and increasingly uncompressed streams, infrastructure must evolve to keep pace,” he adds.

Sony is trailing this with NTT. The Remote Media Production project, details of which were published last month on the IOWN website, aims to connect remote sites such as broadcast stations, venues, and cloud-based production resources purely optically.

“An APN removes much of the optical-electrical-optical conversion that slows and buffers traffic in traditional IP networks,” it says. “Fewer conversions mean less delay, lower power consumption and predictable timing across the network. For large-scale remote production, that could be transformative.”

Photonics could also make streaming a less power-intensive process. Streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime use huge amounts of data to facilitate cloud-enabled delivery of movies and TV shows. Using photonics could boost transmission capacity by up to 125 times while cutting latency to just 1/200 of current levels, according to NTT.

Momentum is already building in Japan where NTT is pushing photonic components into commercial networks yet the industry is not yet at the pace which IOWN would like.

While Nvidia is introducing CPO technology in two new networking chips, CEO Jensen Huang said last year that he wouldn’t use optical in the firm’s flagship GPUs because traditional copper connections were currently “orders of magnitude” more reliable.

IOWN is not suggesting replacing ethernet and IP but integrating photonics so they work together seamlessly with electronics. In practice, this involves the use of fibre throughout the network along with photonic gateways to render the entire network more efficient.

“At the heart of this is photonics-electronics convergence, often referred to as PEC. Once considered experimental, it has already been demonstrated and is now moving towards real deployment,” it states.

The APN is still at an early stage, but it represents a fundamental shift in the way communication networks are designed. By moving away from fragmented, purpose-built infrastructure to a unified optical foundation, APN could provide the backbone for future 6G networks and beyond.”

Earlier this month a group of companies including IOWN members Microsoft and Nvidia alongside Meta, OpenAI, AMD and Broadcom launched the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group.

This consortium of hyper-scalers aims to propel the industry toward development of a multi-vendor supply chain to ramp up optical connections.

Its mission statement: “By aligning on an open specification, the OCI MSA members are promoting a robust optical ecosystem which will ensure that the future of AI interconnects is built with a flexible, multi-vendor foundation to meet the optical interconnect needs of modern AI infrastructure.”

Richard Ho, Head of Hardware at OpenAI, added in the statement: “The continued improvement of artificial intelligence relies on scaling of AI supercomputers with more petaflops, more memory bandwidth and, importantly, more network bandwidth across larger domains requiring further reach. The OCI MSA will be critical to allow the industry to build the AI systems that will get us to AGI (artificial general intelligence).”

According to Cambridge Consultants, photonics will also play a key role in providing control, networking and interconnection of qubits for scaling up quantum computing.

Further down the line, what it calls the “holy grail” of photonic computing, will be to use photons to perform the computation part of compute.

For RED Inside Iron Lung: Cinematographer Philip Roy on Markiplier’s Leap from YouTube to the Big Screen

interview and words for RED

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When Mark Fischbach decided to adapt cult video game Iron Lung into a feature film, he wasn’t simply making a movie. He was testing whether a YouTube creator — one with tens of millions of subscribers but lingering industry skepticism — could storm the gates of traditional cinema and walk away not just intact, but empowered.

For cinematographer Philip Roy, the project represented something equally compelling: a collision between digital-native storytelling and classical filmmaking craft.

“I don’t think cinema was originally in his mind when YouTube took off,” Roy says. “But in the last five years, he got hungry for more. He wanted to elevate his game.”

Roy had first collaborated with Fischbach, aka Markiplier, on A Heist with Markiplier, an ambitious branching narrative project with a 300-plus page script. That was followed by In Space with Markiplier, a 2020 Emmy-nominated interactive series that further blurred the line between platform content and cinematic ambition. Roy co-directed this with Markiplier and Amy Nelson, who is also a producer on Iron Lung.

By the time Iron Lung moved into production, Fischbach was no naïve first-time director. He had already spent years refining his storytelling voice — and, crucially, assembling a crew he trusted.

“He was very intimate about what he knew and didn’t know,” Roy says. “He wanted to grow beyond YouTube — not abandon it, but expand.”

A film inside a coffin

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where an event known as The Quiet Rapture caused all known stars and habitable planets in the universe to disappear, a convict named Simon (played by Markiplier himself) is sent to search an ocean of blood discovered on a desolate moon, using a small submarine nicknamed the Iron Lung.

Iron Lung began as a single camera shoot, originally budgeted at roughly $1 million, and evolved visually and with technical demands in line with Markiplier’s ambition.

“We started lean,” Roy says. “One camera, smaller crew. But once the motion rig entered the conversation, everything escalated.”

Roy noted similarities with Buried a low budget film from 2009 (DP Eduard Grau, Director Rodrigo Cortés) set in a coffin shot and shot with two cameras in 16 days.

“I was kind of obsessed about that film doing my research because basically this was Iron Lung albeit we’re in bigger coffin and one that moves. Mark was cool to work with me on a lot of notes that would simplify our shooting style to make the story feel different in the space as the story progressed.”

The production ultimately employed a full hydraulic motion rig to simulate the submarine’s violent movement. Three tubes of hydraulic fluid powered the system. Multiple generators were required. Production designer Iman Corbani and art director Travis Eisenberg built a life-sized submersible capable of withstanding not only mechanical stress but large quantities of stage blood. Some 300,000 litres of liquid were used in production.

“It had to be structurally sound enough to survive a motion rig throwing it around,” Roy says. “And it had to be waterproof.”

“We didn't have another set with fly-away walls. Nor I could shoot with a 400mm lens from distance and create another style. We had to seal the set off to hold the fake blood.”

Roy’s challenge was to create a visual evolution of the story in a space barely larger than its lead actor. “We developed the visual language in three acts,” he explains. “Act One is locked off and imprisoning. The camera barely moves. In Act Two, we introduce subtle motion on sliders or on Steadicam as Simon is starting to understand the ship. By Act Three, all hell breaks loose.”

The RED Advantage

Roy first shot RED for a Ralph Lauren commercial in 2009 and has shot nearly 40 features almost all of them on RED.

“REDs have always been the camera I’ve felt comfortable pushing to the limit and then in taking all of that experience and applying it to each project.”

For Iron Lung, he deployed two RED V-RAPTOR and a RED MONSTRO, capturing everything in RAW at the full VV sensor size.

“Mark is greedy about image quality,” Roy laughs. “In a good way.”

The choice was partly aesthetic, partly practical. With three cameras configured in distinct builds — one V-RAPTOR inside the sub with Fischbach, one V-RAPTOR on a Ronin for stabilized motion outside, and a compact MONSTRO setup for Snorri-rig shots — maintaining a unified color pipeline simplified post-production.

“I'm always willing to explore using another camera but the versatility that I'm able to get with RED is always a significant advantage.

“Having all three REDs prepped and ready to go in their different builds versus trying to switch out for each set up made things a lot easier for us.”

The real gamble came in Act Two, when the film descends into near-total darkness. “He kept telling me to remove lights,” Roy recalls. “I’d sneak one back in, and he’d catch it.”

In a single-location film, overexposure can kill tension. Reveal too much of the set, and the illusion collapses. Roy pushed the RED sensors hard, trusting their latitude.

“Our colorist (Brandon Thomas at TBD Post in Austin) came in because people were concerned,” he admits. “But it worked. We had zero dead pixels. The exposure strategy held up — even in theaters.”

To soften the hyper-clean digital image, Roy introduced vintage Minolta Rokkor lenses (hired from local rental house MPS) — glass Fischbach became unexpectedly passionate about.

“I’ve never seen a director get that excited about lenses,” Roy says. “Vintage glass takes the edge off digital. It gives you something closer to film.”

Laowa Probe lenses and a 100mm macro allowed Roy to find dimensionality inside the cramped set — capturing microscopic detail, like oxygen shimmering in Fischbach’s eye.

“That intimacy helps the claustrophobia,” Roy explains. “It makes the space feel both bigger and more suffocating.”

Growing Pains

“We started lean,” Roy says. “One camera, smaller crew. But once the motion rig entered the conversation, everything escalated.”

Roy was aided by cameramen Brooks Birdsall and Matthew McCloskey but for shots inside the Fischbach and Roy operator were effectively screwed into a vertical, moving structure with no traditional safety rails.

“We didn’t build in all the rigging to support the lights because originally we wanted to stay true to the video game with a single light. I had concerns about that and eventually we did add more lights hidden behind tubes, but then, when the set was sealed, it was tricky to control the illumination since communication outside the set was limited.”

A live feed from Roy’s V-RAPTOR operated inside the sub went out to the video village and both the feed and R3Ds were captured to cards.

“We didn’t have a smaller camera sending out a live feed of the whole ship so the crew didn’t know what was going on inside other than A and B cam. Matt was able to get a single 400mm shot through the pipes which was cool, just very limiting.”

Beyond directing, acting and editing, Markiplier shot pickups for nearly two years — in his garage in California, and at Roy’s soundstage in Austin, Texas, wherever refinement was needed. Markiplier even purchased his own V-RAPTOR for pickups and two sets of Rokkor lenses.

“He studied every department and learned everyone’s job, sometimes as well as they knew it themselves,” Roy says. “It forces you to level up.”

Ninety-five percent of principal photography took place at Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas — the home base of filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. For Roy, the location carried symbolic weight. As a young filmmaker, he had been inspired by Rodriguez’s Rebel Without a Crew ethos — scrappy, self-sufficient, rebellious.

“It felt serendipitous,” he says. “We were these troublemakers inside Troublemaker Studios.”

From Creator to Distributor

Iron Lung’s success at the box office where it took over $17 million on its opening weekend, demonstrates that grassroots demand and the pulling power of a YouTube creator can achieve what marketing budgets sometimes cannot.

“Mark knows his audience deeply,” Roy says. “His community started calling theaters directly. They were demanding screenings.”

In Roy’s view, the most radical aspect of Iron Lung is not its blood-soaked visuals but its proof of concept: a creator with a loyal following can effectively become a distributor.

“That’s empowering,” he says. “It means you don’t necessarily need legacy gatekeepers.”

Roy has begun speaking to film students again — something he once found difficult amid post-pandemic industry contraction and labor strikes.

“Now I can tell them there’s hope,” he says. “You can make something for a million dollars or less and still find an audience — if you understand who that audience is.”

“Mark is completely indomitable. One of my favorite films is Fitzcarraldo with that iconic image of a man dragging something enormous—like an iron lung—into the unknown. I feel like we paralleled that story in many ways. We didn’t fully know what we were doing, or necessarily what was going to happen in theaters. We just believed in Mark because of the relationships we’d built with him. That trust was a huge part of understanding the whole process.”

“If you can find your audience first,” he says, “you’re not asking permission anymore.”

And in an industry still recalibrating its power structures, that might be the most disruptive idea of all.

How sports broadcasters are tackling scale, monetisation and engagement

SVG Europe

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The pressure to deliver more live and on-demand content across multiple platforms – often simultaneously – and with exceptional operational efficiency is a complex, evolving but, let’s face it, exciting engine of the media industry. The most successful sports broadcasters and streamers will be adept at using technology to complete their mission.

SVG Europe took the temperature of the business from sports tech solutions providers Synamedia, Levira Media Services and Amagi. 

“Sport is producing more moments than ever, but most of it still never reaches a screen,” says Martti Kinkar, CEO, Levira Media Services.  “The core challenge is making production scalable, reducing cost and complexity so coverage isn’t limited to premium events.” 

Then comes the platform reality, rights holders need to publish across linear, streaming, social and direct-to-consumer channels, and that can quickly become operationally heavy. On top of that, monetisation is still evolving. So what’s the right mix of paywalls, advertising, sponsorship and free distribution to build audiences?

Kinkar also points to a “capability gap”, explaining that teams often have deep broadcast experience, “but not always the digital, multi-platform skills needed to operate efficiently”.

Delivering quality at scale

Delivering sport at scale may come down to two main challenges: growing fan engagement and monetising those audiences effectively.

Simon Brydon, head of sport (video network), Synamedia, says: “At the most fundamental level, attracting viewers depends on delivering high-quality streams with low latency and reliable performance, even during events with millions of concurrent viewers. Any issues (buffering, delays or poor picture quality) can quickly undermine the viewing experience.”

But proficient technical delivery alone is no longer enough. Streaming platforms are increasingly expected to enhance the live experience with additional features that deepen fan engagement. These include rapid highlight creation, live-to-social clipping, cloud DVR functionality, and multi-view capabilities.

“These features help replicate and extend the traditional broadcast experience while giving digital audiences greater flexibility and control,” Brydon notes.

Additional complexities which OTT platforms and broadcasters must address include regional rights management, rapid highlight creation, and the need for real-time monetisation. 

“At the same time, revenue models are shifting towards streaming and CTV, requiring more data-driven, measurable advertising approaches,” says Srividhya Srinivasan, CTO, Amagi. “Balancing scale, speed, cost control, and monetisation across fragmented platforms is the core challenge.”

Monetisation pressures

Traditional television viewing is still largely advertising-supported, but streaming services have struggled to replicate the same level of ad monetisation at scale.

“With subscription fatigue increasing, platforms need to maximise advertising revenue without harming the viewer experience,” says Brydon.

He points to dynamic ad insertion (DAI)’s ability to enable targeted advertising within live streams. However, delivering ads reliably across hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, of concurrent viewers presents significant technical challenges.

“Many platforms are unable to fully utilise their available ad inventory during large-scale live events, leaving potential revenue untapped. To address this, broadcasters are exploring approaches such as server-side ad insertion (SSAI), AI-driven optimisation, and ad pre-fetching to improve reliability and efficiency.”

New formats are emerging. Some broadcasters (ITV’s Six Nations 2026 coverage for example) have begun introducing ‘squeeze-back’ ads during natural breaks in play, allowing advertising to run alongside the live feed without fully interrupting the viewing experience.

With around three quarters of TV viewing now ad-supported (as reported by Nielsen Q3 2025 driven by the American football season), this underlines the role of SSAI and “advanced CTV ad technologies” in enabling personalised, measurable ad experiences. “This is making digital sports distribution commercially viable at scale,” he says. 

This is where cloud-based broadcast infrastructure is playing a major role. “Migrating playout, packaging, and distribution to the cloud enables broadcasters to scale dynamically around major events without heavy fixed infrastructure costs,” Srinivasan says. “AI-driven workflows are improving metadata enrichment, contextual ad targeting, and quality control. 

Amagi advocates the adoption of “unified, cloud-based workflows” rather than operating separate silos for broadcast and streaming. 

Explains Srinivasan: “A single operating layer that supports live production, channel origination, distribution, and monetisation allows sports broadcasters to launch linear and pop-up channels, distribute and monetise content seamlessly across platforms, and create near-real-time highlights. 

“Combined with advanced analytics and targeted CTV advertising, this approach helps attract streaming-first audiences, increase engagement through personalisation, and unlock incremental revenue from FAST channels and new digital ad formats.”

CDN strategy and infrastructure

Another key challenge lies in content delivery infrastructure. While public content delivery networks (CDNs) support many streaming services, high-profile live sports events can push them to their limits. As a result, some platforms are adopting hybrid delivery models, combining public CDNs with private networks deployed deeper within ISP infrastructure. 

Explains Brydon: “These private CDNs can provide more reliable performance during peak demand and help ensure consistent video quality.”

Encoding efficiency is also critical. Brydon says: “More efficient compression enables higher-quality streams at lower bitrates, improving viewer experience while reducing distribution costs.”

Adapting to changing audiences

Audience expectations continue to evolve, particularly among younger viewers. Many expect richer digital experiences, including real-time statistics, personalised feeds, vertical video, and highlights optimised for social platforms.

“Rights holders must balance these approaches carefully,” warns Brydon. “Short-form content can help attract new audiences, but excessive free distribution risks undermining the value of premium live broadcasts.”

He points out that long-form storytelling, such as behind-the-scenes documentaries, have also proven effective at building deeper fan engagement.

“In this rapidly evolving environment, broadcasters need flexible, scalable technology and partners capable of continuous innovation to keep pace with changing audience behaviour and monetisation models.”

Driving engagement 

AI-driven production tools, remote production workflows and IP-based infrastructure are having a significant impact, and for Kinkar this is positive.

“Automated camera systems and AI-assisted production are reducing cost and complexity, enabling coverage of events that would previously have been economically unviable,” he says. “IP connectivity allows signals to be routed and managed more flexibly, removing the need for heavy, on-site infrastructure.  AI is also improving content discoverability and workflow efficiency. Together, these technologies are lowering barriers to entry and making scalable production a reality.”

He urges organisations to adopt a “multi-platform mindset”, distributing across social, OTT, direct streaming and partnerships simultaneously. “Even lower-tier or grassroots content has value when packaged correctly. This broader exposure drives engagement, attracts sponsors, supports talent development, and creates new commercial models.”

Nonetheless, Kinkar feels that many broadcasters still default to traditional production methodology.  He calls for greater openness to new workflows and partnerships. 

“Embracing innovation, experimenting with new models, and bringing in digitally native expertise will be essential to unlock the full potential of modern sports content distribution.”

Amagi’s Srinivasan agrees that the sports broadcast industry needs stronger interoperability between platforms and better cross-platform measurement standards. 

He says: “Simplifying multi-platform sports delivery while improving monetisation efficiency will define the next phase of growth.”

 

Oscars 2026: Contender breakdown for cinematography, editing and VFX

IBC

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Angst and destruction are central recurring themes of the 98th Academy Awards, with multiple nominees using fire as a symbol of humanity’s fatal disregard for the planet.

The Lost Bus is a high-octane docudrama from Paul Greengrass about the wildfire that destroyed Paradise in Northern California in 2018, serendipitously releasing months after the fire that ravaged the LA metro area. The film calls out failed maintenance by electrical companies, as well as drawing attention to changing climate conditions, as typified by Fire Chief Martinez (Yul Vazquez) who states that ‘every year the fires get bigger, and there's more of them. We're being damn fools; that's the truth.’

In melancholic frontier drama Train Dreams, the central character’s family is wiped out by wildfire, and he is tortured by the guilt of being able to do nothing about it.

In Avatar: Fire and Ash the clue is in the title. Varang, the leader of the Ash clan, teams up with the military industrial complex embodied by Colonel Quaritch who says, “If you want to spread your fire across the world, you need me.”

Other Oscar nominees including Frankenstein and Sinners feature scenes in which fire is used to purge and destroy. If you want to look for it, F1: The Movie has a pivotal fireball crash. Even Marty Supreme has an explosive moment involving a gas station and a dog.

Greengrass has said: “The enormity of a wildfire speaks to what we all feel, which is that our world is burning. Everywhere you look our world is burning, and people know it and it troubles us all.”

Best Cinematography

Remarkably, One Battle After Another is Michael Bauman’s first as solo Director of Photography (DoP), yet he has already collected the 2026 BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) 2026 Theatrical Feature Film award for his work on the film. Paul Thomas Anderson’s former gaffer was previously co-credited as cinematographer with the writer-director on Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza before shooting 1.5 million feet of VistaVision over seven months on this sprawling counter-culture comedy.

“These cameras are meant to sit on a tripod for an establishing shot. They’re not designed to be strapped to a car, put on a Steadicam, or dragged through practical locations,” Bauman says. “Their noise is also loud. It’s basically like having a lawnmower on set so we had to design and build a blimp for the camera just to make it usable. That alone was huge.”

Each thousand-foot mag could only shoot about four minutes of footage. “There was all this machinery and process we learned. It was a completely unique experience. I’d absolutely do it again—because it would be easier next time.”

Director Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams wears its debt to visionary director Terrence Malick on its sleeve. This founding fable of America mixes naturalism with magical realism and was almost entirely shot on location across Washington State using available light and weather conditions. DP Adolpho Veloso earns a first Oscar nod for his immersive photography which often frames characters below centre, or with corner framing, to get a sense of their scale in comparison to their environment. One dream-like sequence was shot on a Volume stage with slow shutter speeds while one of two fire scenes was shot practically in a burnt forest.

Danish DP Dan Laustsen would be a worthy winner for his supreme command of colour, and light amid the sumptuous production design of Frankenstein. He’s been nominated for Guillermo del Toro projects twice before; The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. Although destined for Netflix, Lausten gives the story a cinematic look composing wide angles to capture icy vistas and grandiose gothic interiors and on Alexa 65 to produce an image close to 70mm print. For all the detail in sets and costume, this version of Shelley’s classic succeeds in portraying humanity in the monster.

“One of the scenes I like very much is the first time the creature sits with his father in the lab, and his father is tenderly shaving him,” Lausten says. “It’s a simple scene with the sunrise reflecting in a broken mirror. You feel the chemistry between the two actors, and you can also see that daddy doesn't understand anything about kids.” 

At cinematography festival Camerimage, Autumn Durald Arkapaw ASC revealed that Sinners starts with a different sequence than was scripted. “It was only a few days before schedule when [director Ryan Coogler] decided he wanted to turn that into an IMAX sequence. It's a heavy dialogue scene and we’re shooting IMAX which is not a sync sound camera so presented technical challenges.” It's now one of her favourite scenes of any she’s shot; “I can't see it not being in IMAX so it was a beautiful decision that he made.”

Technically, this was first movie to be simultaneously shot on Ultra Panavision 70, incorporating 65mm in its widest aspect ratio, and in IMAX, at the tallest ratio for 65mm.

The standout scene is a hallucinatory dance that transcends its 1930s setting by birthing rock‘n’roll, electric guitar and hip hop from Southern blues. Dubbed the ‘Surreal Montage’, Durald Arkapaw designed the shot in three parts with hidden transitions because the IMAX cameras would spool through 1000ft of film in little more than two minutes.

The kinetic narrative of Marty Supreme may be driven by the intoxicating charm of its title character but it’s the pantheon of indelible supporting characters which brings the film to life.

“There are more than a hundred featured characters in the film — every day on set different actors arrived with these unforgettable faces,” says Darius Khondji, previously nominated for Evita in 1996 and Bardo (2022). “The faces look like something out of a Honoré Daumier painting — [and] were incredible to photograph.”

Reuniting with director Josh Safdie after collaborating on Uncut Gems, Khondji shot Marty Supreme on 35mm film using anamorphic lenses and referencing the work of 1950s street photographers and turn of the century painters.

“Every director has their own way of doing things, but Josh has an obsessive, intuitive way of making movies,” says Khondji. “Stylistically speaking, he knows you usually don’t capture wide-angle shots using long lenses — but the rules don’t matter to him.”

Best Editing

Norwegian drama Sentimental Value has gathered a full house of Oscar nominations for its principal actors Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning so it’s interesting to hear his long-time editor Olivier Bugge Coutté explain how writer-director Joaquim Trier’s approach has evolved over successive films.

“At the beginning he was a little bit more controlled in terms of the latitude of performances,” he explained during an interview with CinemaEditor magazine. “Over time he’s gravitated to what might be called ‘jazz takes’. That’s not to say there’s improvisation but there is much greater freedom for the actors to move around the core of the text. Sentimental Value is the furthest he’s gone in allowing actors to deliver a different emphasis or change words provided it remains in the spirit of the scene.”

This means Coutté received a lot of material with different tones. “Joaquin often says that he's looking for a life-like moment, an event to happen that feels representative of a moment of life. So, the edit becomes a meticulous process of stitching together from a huge variety of possibilities.”

The brattish character of Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme may not be to everyone’s taste but Timothy Chalemet’s infectious performance and the ping-pong pace of the screwball drama glosses over his faults. According to co-writers and co-editors Josh Safdie (who also directs) and Ronald Bronstein (also a producer), the intensity of the script and its convoluted storyline comes from an equally combative writing and editorial process.

“Everything gets highly abstract by the time it reaches the screen but every exchange is coming from some lived in experience,” Bronstein says. “So we're sharing very intimate things with each other. The process is invasive and we're not nice in the sense of not being sensitive to the other's experience. One person throws an idea out and then immediately the other person is tying it to a chair and beating the shit out of it, trying to get it to confess its weaknesses.”

You might think that the huge volume of material required to juggle for the Grand Prix action scenes were the most difficult for Stephen Mirrione to manage in F1: The Movie. This included reviewing and selecting takes from 20 cameras of actual broadcast race footage combined with original material filmed by DP Claudio Miranda enhanced with layers of VFX.

“You're talking about less than a minute or so of material, versus hours and hours and hours,” he says of the workflow.

Yet keying into the main characters was most important for the editor who won the Oscar for editing Traffic in 2000. “Even in terms of the storytelling style, it took on Sonny's personality — a little bit looser than the world he's in, a little bit crazier, unexpected,” he says, about Brad Pitt’s maverick racer. That held true for the romance between Sonny and his lead engineer (Kerry Condon).

“One of the first scenes that they did together was that scene in the pub where he's asking her about the car and he goes a little bit reckless with her, and she pushes back at him. Once we knew that part of the relationship was dialled in, and that she could really give it back to him, then we knew that the script was working.”

The genre-fluid Sinners switches in and out of supernatural and vampire elements mixing in comedy, erotica, romance and music. “A lot of what editors do is play with subtext that allow people to engage with the movie on a subconscious level,” says Michael P Shawver who lands his first Oscar nod. “There's one part when Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) makes the Mojo bag for Smoke (Michael B Jordan) and I realised she lights a match three times as part of her ritual. Then I noticed that at the end of the movie, when Smoke gets the cigarette from Hogwood (Dave Maldonado), he lights the lighter three times. I didn't ask if that was intentional but in the film’s prologue, I took those same match strikes and put them as the first thing you hear in the movie after the music comes in. It’s the rule of three. Having three strikes three times in the movie. Did it do anything? I hope so, but it's stuff like that that I like.”

Such subtly is in marked contrast to movies like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which Shawver also cut for Coogler.  “In the Marvel world you have to over explain. It's very complex. Things are happening. You don't want people to be like doing the math,” he says. “In this movie, because of how good the performances were, the cinematography, the costumes, the writing, even if it wasn't over explained we trust our audience to absorb that for the actual experience it is without worrying about explaining everything.”

Action scenes are interspersed with slower paced dialogue in One Battle After Another and these peaks and troughs become literal in the mesmeric final car chase dubbed the River of Hills.

Having broadly mapped the sequence out, editor Andy Jurgensen started by making selects of different camera views: in front of and behind Willa’s [Chase Infiniti] car, and the cars in foreground and background shots. “Then I pulled together the best reactions from Willa and the shots where she's looking in the rearview mirror,” he explained to CinemaEditor.  “After that it was a case of experimenting, piecing together, shaving things down. We didn't have Jonny Greenwood’s score at first so we sent him a really long cut, and then he sent something to us with that percussive beat. The sound department elevated it to another level.”

It helped to project the sequence at full VistaVision scale. “I’d sometimes sit right in front of the screen and play it loud and try to get that feeling of motion sickness. It helped me figure out where people's eyes were going to land and to calibrate the rhythm of everything for a theatrical experience because we knew this would be shown in IMAX.”

Best Visual Effects

Having ‘solved’ water in The Way of Water, James Cameron and the team at Wētā FX in New Zealand turn their skills to fire in all its multiple forms for Avatar: Fire and Ash. The film’s 3500 FX shots contain more than 1,000 of digital fire, ranging from flaming arrows and flamethrowers to massive explosions and fire tornadoes.

“Physical fire is really hard to control, so we had to come up with how to bend the physics towards the direction that Jim was giving it,” explained Wētā senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri to VFX World. “He was very specific where he wanted the fire, what kind of speed, rate, size, how much or how little energy.”

Cameron places as much emphasis on the performance capture in his story as distinguished from genAI actors which he has called “horrifying”. In post, the story is edited first based on the captured performances before Weta applies facial animation and the CG backgrounds, before re-editing the movie all over again.

When you set out to make the most authentic racing film ever made, you're not supposed to notice the visual effects. That was the brief that Director Joseph Kosinski gave Framestore’s Supervisor Ryan Tudhope following on from their partnership on Top Gun: Maverick. For F1: The Movie Framestore blended shots of Brad Pitt (as faded hero Sonny Hayes) and Damson Idris’s (protégé Joshua Pearce) stunt driving with real Formula One broadcast footage, using detailed digital skins, reconstructed frame by frame. Six Formula 1 circuits were scanned using an eight-camera array, allowing for millimetre-accurate match animation of racing environments. The shattering of carbon fibre debris, sparks, tyre deformation and engine smoke are all rooted in real racing incidents.

The Lost Bus might have got lost in the public eye given its almost straight to Apple TV release, but it’s docu-dramatisation of a real-life Californian wildfire is everything you’d expect from the director of Captain Phillips. It also vies with Avatar for the VFX realism of fire ranging in intensity from crackling bushes to hellscape inferno.

Paul Greengrass wanted authenticity as far as safety would permit for the journey of the yellow school bus loaded with children and driven by Matthew McConaughey. Live action exteriors mostly shot on a backlot in New Mexico were augmented by teams of vendors including ILM, beloFX, Cinesite, Outpost VFX and RISE. Outpost’s main task was 100+ shots of an intense smoke-filled trailer park sequence. Cinesite contributed 200 shots including massive smoke plumes, drifting ashes, heavy dust, and fire-driven atmospherics to show the bus escaping through a burning landscape.

Much of the environment around the bus was digitally enhanced with moving trees, flying debris, shaking power lines and blowing grass, while scenes inside the bus were enhanced with CG backgrounds, digital cars, dust layers, and glowing embers. Everything was matched carefully with live-action plates using compositing, lighting, and tracking work to make the danger feel real and immediate. 

Not an obviously heavy VFX film Sinners does rely on a dual performance from Michael B. Jordan as twins Smoke and Stack. “For half of the shots we went with a classic split screen approach, where we shot Michael twice, and then combined the two passes,” explains VFX Supervisor Michael Ralla. “With the other 50 per cent of scenes where there's a lot of physical interaction between the twins we developed what we call the Halo rig.”

This is a carbon fibre harness with a ring of 10-12 cameras that allowed them to capture Jordan’s whole head (not just facial) performance in 360 degrees. Australian VFX shop Rising Sun Pictures took the data to recreate Jordan’s performance replacing a body double’s head.

The film’s 1000 VFX shots, which also include vampire work, were completed by Storm Studios, ILM, Base FX, Light VFX and Outpost VFX.

Back to the future for this franchise which kickstarted the era of photoreal FX in 1993 landing Industrial Light & Magic the Best Oscar for its work – all 52 shots. Jurassic World Rebirth sees ILM delivering 1500 shots, more than any in the series’ history.

“There’s a narrative in the press about how everything is done in-camera,” says VFX Supervisor David Vickery. “Well, yeah, everything is shot in camera because you can’t ‘shoot’ visual effects. What you’re trying to capture is as many practical things on set as you can because you can’t go back and get it in post-production.”

Director Gareth Edwards tasked cinematographer John Mathieson with shooting on film, recalling the aesthetic of Steven Spielberg’s original.

“For a while, it was very ‘in’ to be shooting on green screen, or fashionable to use animatronics, and that’s what the public wanted to see,” Vickery adds. “Now there’s a desire to see things filmed on location, and there’s an acceptance of visual effects, so filmmakers respond to that in the way they make their films.”

 

Rakuten TV doubles down on ad-supported streaming in Europe

Streaming Media

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In a market defined by subscription fatigue and advertising reinvention, Rakuten TV is betting that FAST is not simply an add-on to streaming but one of its defining next chapters.

“The appetite is huge, and it’s growing,” Cedric Dufour, CEO of Rakuten TV tells Streamingmedia. “We are seeing a real shift in consumer behaviour and in advertising budgets. The momentum behind FAST is not just cyclical; it’s structural.”

Rakuten TV was early to the opportunity. Founded in Spain in 2010 as a subscription service before transitioning into transactional VOD, by late 2019 early 2020 it had pivoted to AVOD and FAST becoming the first platform to rollout those propositions across 42 countries in Europe.

“Developments in the US had signalled that premium content could thrive in a free, ad-supported environment,” Dufour explains. “We realised there was room for free content with ads as a new way of delivering content. So we invested heavily in AVOD and FAST.”

The platform now distributes approximately 500 FAST channels across Europe, including around 120 owned-and-operated channels reaching more than 150 million households. Individual markets typically carry about 100 channels, balancing Rakuten-owned IP with third-party offerings such as CNN and a range of sports, news and lifestyle brands. 

“Technically, we could offer 250 channels in each country,” Dufour says. “But consumers already complain about too much content and too many choices. The priority is quality and curation, not quantity.”

Virtuous circle

The early days were not straightforward. European audiences were unfamiliar with FAST channels and often confused them with traditional linear broadcast channels. Studios, too, were cautious.

“There was reluctance,” Dufour admits. “Studios were concerned that if they opened their catalogue to free ad-supported distribution, it would cannibalise subscription or transactional revenues.”

The breakthrough came through monetization. “We were able to demonstrate that FAST could generate meaningful advertising revenue without eroding other windows. As performance data improved, content supply followed.”

With better monetisation came more catalogue access. “With more qualitative content came larger audiences. And with larger audiences came more advertising revenue.”

That “virtuous circle” is now firmly established. Advertisers are steadily reallocating budgets from traditional linear TV into connected TV (CTV), drawn by targeting precision, measurable performance and access to younger viewers.

Recent internal research shows that 70% of TV viewers watch FAST channels at least once per week. Among those viewers, a significant share — particularly younger demos— no longer consume traditional linear television.

“If advertisers want to reach younger audiences, CTV is essential,” Dufour says. “If they stay only on traditional TV, they will not reach this population.”

That said, Dufour believes CTV is additive to linear. “They will coexist,” he says. “There is space for both, just as streaming did not eliminate cinema.”

Ad loads on Rakuten TV’s FAST channels are broadly comparable to traditional TV, he says, but user perception differs.

“Better targeting, geolocation capabilities and first-party data (where user consent is granted) allow for more relevant advertising, which improves tolerance.”

Telcos, once sceptical, have also shifted position. He says, “Three or four years ago, many operators questioned the need for FAST alongside hundreds of broadcast channels. Now, they recognise the distinction — and the incremental value.

“The advertising model with FAST on CTV is different. The consumption model is different. It reaches new audiences,” he says.

 Movies remain Rakuten TV’s strongest-performing genre, reflecting its origins in film distribution. Last December for instance it launched its flagship FAST movie channels (themed around action, romance, comedy and crime) with over 100 hours of curated on-demand films on French telco provider Free Ciné.

Drama and action also perform strongly. Notably, single-IP channels have exceeded expectations. Dedicated channels built around series such as Alerta Cobra and 21 Jump Street have delivered consistent engagement.

“You might think audiences would tire of watching the same show continuously,” Dufour admits. “But the performance proves otherwise.”

Local nuance matters. Operating across 42 territories gives Rakuten TV a substantial comparative data set. Japanese manga performs particularly well in France and Germany, for example, but less strongly in other markets. In Poland, the platform operates a dedicated local-language movie channel to address domestic demand.

“Local content is very important,” Dufour says. “It must sit alongside global content.”

Partnerships with smart TV manufacturers including Samsung TV+, LG Channels, Hisense VIDAA, TCL Channels, Xiaomi TV+, Free and Netgem have secured branded remote-control buttons, home-screen placements and EPG integrations.

“Our bet from the beginning was on television — because we’re primarily about movies, and movies are best enjoyed on a big screen. Today, around 90% of our viewing still happens on TV screens. However, we recognise growing consumption on mobile and tablets and are adapting accordingly. While TV remains our core, we aim to be present wherever audiences want to access content.”

From B2C to B2B expansion

In recent years, Rakuten TV has expanded beyond its own D2C platform. Through Rakuten TV Enterprise, it now distributes channels and powers VOD stores for partners.

An agreement announced last week with Prime Video will see Amazon’s platform carry Rakuten FAST channels in Spain, Italy and Germany.

“We could have said they are a competitor but we do not decide where users watch content. Therefore, expanding distribution across multiple platforms - smart TVs, telcos, and streamers - is central to our strategy. Our own app remains important, but future growth will primarily come from expanding touchpoints and partnerships across Europe and beyond.”

Telecom partnerships further extend reach. Rakuten TV operates the VOD store for Orange in Spain and works with Germany’s 1&1.  Last December its app became available on Virgin TV in the UK, “significantly expanding reach across one of Europe’s most competitive households.”

It has previously funded content, notably as part of its contractural obligation to operate in Spain, but Dufour says covering production costs through advertising alone proved challenging. “We scaled back original production to focus on channel curation and distribution.”

The company is a division – and a relatively smaller one at that – in Japanese parent Rakuten Group which is valued at US11.05 billion. It was formed in 1997 and has built a plethora of digital services around its core online retail platform including fintech, travel and mobile. The group’s scale also supports cross-platform loyalty initiatives. In France, for example, Rakuten e-commerce customers can redeem loyalty points for Rakuten TV rentals or ebooks via the Rakuten Kobo app.

“The strength of the ecosystem is differentiation,” Dufour says.

For now, Rakuten TV remains focused on Europe, but the US market is under consideration. “It is very saturated,” Dufour acknowledges. “We are having discussions around distributing selected channels, potentially leveraging Spanish-language or movie-focused offerings.

“Beyond that, opportunities in the Middle East and parts of Asia are being evaluated, subject to rights agreements. In VOD, scale is everything. If you do not reach scale, content costs are too high.”

 

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Barbara Ford Grant: “A lot is happening behind closed doors”

IBC

In a world where production capability is ubiquitous and content costs nothing, creative vision is the only thing that matters, according to VFX pioneer and Hollywood consultant Barbara Ford Grant.

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Barbara Ford Grant hasn’t wavered in her belief since making an experimental short film from scratch using AI tools a year ago.

“You don’t prompt your way into a movie,” she says. “You build workflows and pipelines. You layer AI into existing processes. What worries me most is that there’s still not enough understanding of how much AI is already integrated into everything we do.”

A creative technologist who began her career as a digital artist before leading award-winning teams, and projects including Game of Thrones, Alice in Wonderland, and Shrek, Ford Grant is a pioneering technologist and creative executive whose advise is sought across Hollywood.

“When I entered the industry, computer graphics were the disruptive technology,” she says. “People were worried then because it displaced old methods — though many still exist, like stop motion and miniatures. But what CGI really unlocked was new storytelling. You couldn’t have made Toy Story, Jurassic Park, or Avatar before CGI. That’s what I hope we see again — entirely new forms of storytelling.”

Movie studios would like to do things better, faster and cheaper - or at least two of the three.  Ford Grant only sees a race toward faster and cheaper. “I’m not seeing enough focus on using these tools to make content more interesting, to truly empower talent or push culture forward.”

Currently a consultant to Paramount and board member of Sohonet, Grant has been an AI technologies strategy consultant to Marvel Studios and held key executive leadership roles at HBO, DreamWorks Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain and Walt Disney Studios. She was the first woman chair of the Academy’s 95-year-old Scientific and Technical Awards Committee (2018-2024) and is a member of both the Television Academy and the Motion Picture Academy.

“It’s pretty clear that the technical difficulty to produce content - moving images, convincing sound, plausible narratives - is evaporating fast,” she says. “What took weeks can now take minutes. What cost thousands can now cost tens. The industrial complex approach to production, which has been the gatekeeper for determining who gets a seat at the table for many decades, is dissolving. But you cannot train a model on vision and judgement that takes a lifetime to develop.”

This creates an interesting paradox that she believes will define the next era of filmmaking, “As content floods every available channel, the scarcity shifts entirely to the human capacities that determine whether any of it is worth watching.”

The power of creativity

On the plus side, the power of creativity has always been with artists. “The possibilities have never been greater for them to push limits. I would be surprised if studios don’t see enabling artists as morally imperative — and also strategically necessary. Not doing so would be an existential threat because others will step in.”

However, she urges artists to step up and let AI in. “Different parts of the ecosystem have different points of view about AI. Studios have one perspective. Artists have another. Early adopters have their own. It’s not even just about where you sit — it’s about how you visualise the role of these tools.

“Particularly on the artist side, there’s this notion of choosing to resist, or virtue signalling that they’re not participating,” she says. “But the fact is, AI is already embedded in how people consume entertainment, how content is marketed, how studios plan a ten-year slate or pipeline.

“I don’t think creatives should be forced to use AI but it already exists within the infrastructure, and that’s only growing. There are people who aren’t negotiating labour deals or representing unions, who are fully embracing these tools. They see this as a watershed moment — access to capabilities they didn’t have before. And they’re going to move at rapid speed, regardless of what legacy institutions do.”

One AI battle after another

In the U.S, actor’s union SAG AFTRA is renegotiating a new deal with the studios less than three years after the strikes that brought production to a halt.

GenAI was a hot topic then and is among the union’s priorities now. In the interim, studios have advanced their AI strategies including training models on in-house content libraries and promoting executives with an AI-first brief.

Lionsgate, for instance, tied the knot with AI firm Runway to develop ‘capital-efficient content creation opportunities’ and recently hired its first chief AI officer Kathleen Grace. She joined from Vermillio, a platform that helped content owners and talent track, authenticate and monetise the use of their work in AI models.

Disney recently inked a $1bn licensing deal with OpenAI allowing users to make content with Disney characters. Its new CEO Josh D’Amaro has vowed to integrate AI into production workflows, albeit doubling down on artist creativity as the company’s strongest selling point.

“After the last strike, a lot of people left the industry and won’t return,” says Ford Grant who is not involved in negotiations. “Some of that work isn’t coming back. Arguably YouTube was the only winner.

“I hope that unions think strategically about their future role in entertainment, rather than trying to claw back leverage that may no longer exist. They need to understand what AI is, where it’s going, what they can control, and what value they uniquely offer.”

Practical lessons in AI
With the 2023 strikes, Ford Grant found herself with extra time and decided to make a short film to explore the possibilities and limitations of AI filmmaking.

“I’d been working on machine learning R&D for about 15 years, but once generative video tools like Midjourney came out, I wanted to play around with them unencumbered by the studio system.”

Under the banner of BFG Productions, she developed, wrote and produced a 22-minute film, Unhoused, on a shoestring $40,000 budget.  The majority of that was used to shoot the production traditionally with real actors on location with a union crew.

“Humans are still the best performers. You’ll still shoot practical photography. But if you want to accelerate how you blend that footage with generative content — matching colour, lensing, camera movement — what does that workflow look like? That’s what I’ve focused on.”

She incorporated different models into different parts of the process, including writing software to connect practical production with generative compositing.

“Foundation models are stabilising. What matters now is what you build on top such as LoRAs (Learnable, Reversible, and Adjustable operations), ControlNets (which gives precise control over AI image generation) and custom workflows. I’m also exploring tools like Cursor, Cloud, Figma — asking what the ‘new studio’ looks like.”

The immediate future of production won’t be purely generative. “It will be hybrid — traditional VFX combined with generative techniques,” she says. “A lot is happening behind closed doors. AI is being discussed everywhere.  What we see publicly right now is mostly demo material. The most promising work I’ve seen privately involves animation and non-photorealistic character work.”

Future of cinema

She worries for that cinema could atrophy unless there’s innovation in its production and presentation.

“Someone once said cinema risks becoming like opera; it will still exist, but for a nostalgic, aging audience. I hope it retains enough revenue to remain a meaningful distribution model, not something supported by benefactors.”

Immersive multi-sensory experiences designed for venues like Sphere or Cosm could be an salvation. Crucially, they are also communal experiences. Cosm call it Shared Reality.

Ford Grant, who once worked at immersive art project Meow Wolf, says connected physical-digital narrative worlds have always inspired her.

“Game of Thrones (on which she also worked) came close with its world-building across series, podcasts, VR and live activations. The next step is connecting those experiences in real time across locations. Imagine being in Cosm in Los Angeles and feeling connected to someone experiencing it in Barcelona. We’re not fully there yet technologically. But it’s coming.”

As keyed into technology as she is, Ford Grant maintains that storytelling is nothing without human taste and judgement and it is this curation which she sees as the most rewarding role for creatives.

“Creativity is the accumulated judgment that comes from years of sitting in the back of screenings watching how people respond, understanding why one cut lands emotionally and another dies, recognising when something is technically correct but spiritually dead on arrival.”

Take the craft of the cinematographer. AI tools might help them test 30 filters instantly, emulate different lenses and explore visual ideas rapidly but it is their trained eye for an image in service of the story which should stand them in good stead in the era of instant image making.

“The individual impulse for an aesthetic and a sensibility is something that a model can’t predict. Then there’s the alchemy of the group. Filmmaking is a team sport in which each person brings expertise, instinct, and reaction to the material and the world around them. That creative mix is hard to program.

That’s why I’m excited that the playing field is levelling in a way that has the potential to reward the very thing we've always valued most - the quality of the idea, the depth of the vision, the truth of the telling. Not who has the biggest budget or the most expensive equipment, but who has something genuine to say and knows how to say it.”
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