Crafting the Contenders: Adam Bricker, ASC on bringing Hacks home

interview and words for Sohonet

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By the time Hacks reached its fifth and final season, Adam Bricker ASC had spent six years shaping one of television’s most distinctive visual identities. The HBO Max comedy, created by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, concluded in May 2026 with 47 episodes, 25 nominations for its final season, and a cinematography profile that had already earned Bricker five Emmy and four ASC nominations.

“From our earliest conversations, Lucia, Paul, Jen, and I agreed that being a half-hour comedy didn’t mean the show had to look a certain way” says the DP who lensed every single episode. “The scripts are so funny and the performances so perfect that the visuals don’t necessarily need to underline the comedy. Our cinematic language is naturalistic, sometimes even moody, and always reflective of where the characters are emotionally.”

That philosophy shaped Hacks from its Las Vegas origins—following legendary comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her young writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder)—through a journey that eventually took the characters to Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, and finally Paris.

Bricker and the creators built the show’s early aesthetic from a mix of references: Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven and Behind the Candelabra, the Judy Garland biopic Judy, and classic Vegas photography. The goal was a modern image with a nostalgic pulse, a subtle nod to Deborah’s heyday.

To achieve it, Bricker partnered with Panavision’s Guy McVicker to rework Primo 70 glass into something more period inflected. “He engineered a custom lens treatment that softened the highlights, added a bit of bloom and gave the flares a warm, vintage glow,” Bricker explains.‍

Carrying the look across five seasons

“Once we established the look in season one, that became our reference point for the seasons that followed,” Bricker says. “It’s been an exciting challenge figuring out how to keep the visuals cohesive as the world expands and evolves in ways we couldn’t have anticipated when we started.”

It helped that Bricker worked with the same core collaborators throughout including colorist Shane Reed, who runs boutique color house MOM&POP. That consistency allowed him to treat the show almost like a long form feature film, evolving the palette and lensing choices as the characters matured.

He established the look in season one with Gaffer Christopher Faulkner and Key Grip Randy Garcia. Gaffer Daniel McNutt joined in season two. Bricker describes the lighting and grip teams as “incredibly dedicated and talented,” helping evolve the visual language of the series over five seasons.

The final season took Deborah and Ava to France, and with it came a major shift in Bricker’s approach.

“The work we did in Paris was the biggest departure from our standard operating procedure,” he says. 

Without the ability to bring the full Los Angeles crew overseas, Bricker and director Lucia Aniello leaned into a more agile, intimate approach. “In Paris, the story really narrows its focus to Ava and Deborah,” he explains. “We talked about approaching it more like an indie film—staying close to them and creating a sense of intimacy in those key, pivotal moments.”

Instead of transforming locations into heightened worlds, as they often did in Las Vegas, Bricker embraced Paris as it was. 

“Working with found light, real spaces, and a smaller crew created a tonal shift that felt right for where the characters were emotionally.”

A cinematic farewell

It’s unusual for a single cinematographer to lens every episode of a multi-season series. Bricker embraced the challenge.

“I loved these characters. I loved the way Jen, Paul, and Lucia told their story. I couldn’t imagine not being a part of it,” he says.

“By the time we reached the fifth season, there was something really satisfying about being able to make choices with a sense of the whole — looking at a script and connecting a palette or a lens to something we’d established years earlier. You start revisiting the work from those first seasons and realize that some of those early choices were setting up things you’re only now getting to pay off.

“But there’s also a wonderful freedom in trusting your intuition — going with your gut and believing those instincts will keep everything cohesive, because that’s what we’d relied on all along to tell the story.”

The final episode even mirrors the pilot which opened on a oner on Deborah Vance’s back. Episode 47 opens on Ava’s back.

“We knew early on that we wanted to connect the two shots as much as possible, so [Production Designer] Rob Tokarz counted Deborah’s steps, and designed the set so that Ava would take the same number. It was shot by Steadicam Operator Joel Marsh who worked with me on every episode, and with the same focus puller, Jamiel VanOver, another longtime collaborator, and on the same custom 35mm lens we designed six years earlier.

“You can really feel that continuity,” Bricker says. “We all gave so much to the show over those six years, so for me it was genuinely special to have the opportunity to see it all the way through. And of course, it’s not just me. The continuity of this incredibly talented and dedicated crew is a huge part of the show. You can put on any episode and immediately feel that consistency.”

He adds, “We all really grew as filmmakers over the course of making this show. Getting to do that together, over five seasons, has been one of the best experiences of my career.”

Bricker’s other work includes Netflix culinary-doc series Chef’s Table (for which he earned an ASC nomination and two Emmy nominations), and Netflix true-crime mockumentary American Vandal.

 

Network Control: Turning 5G into a production tool

IBC

Speed, flexibility, and reliability – that’s the dream for many a live production. However, when public network coverage is patchy, what’s a broadcaster to do? The 2026 Accelerator Project, Network Control, deploys standardised network APIs to tackle this problem head-on.

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When 5G first arrived, broadcasters were told it would change everything. Higher bandwidth, lower latency, and the promise of network slicing suggested a future where live production could finally break free from the shackles of satellite trucks, microwave links, and unpredictable public networks. In many ways, that future has already begun: private 5G networks and bonded cellular systems have proven they can deliver broadcast‑grade workflows in real environments. But as the industry has discovered, 5G is ready for production — just not yet for scale.

A new IBC Accelerator project involving Neutral Wireless, SliceFinity, major European broadcasters, and public mobile operators aims to change that.

Their goal is deceptively simple: To make 5G predictable. In practice, it means turning connectivity from a best‑effort commodity into a programmable, controllable production resource. And if they succeed, it could reshape how live content is gathered, managed, and delivered at some of the world’s biggest events.

5G works, Until it doesn’t

Few people understand this better than Morten Brandstrup, Head of News Technology at TV2 Denmark and a leading voice within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). TV2 has embraced 5G more aggressively than most. “We use 5G for 99% of all live contributions flowing into our newsroom,” he says. “Gone is the old sat‑truck.”

That’s all well and good but at major events such as political announcements, breaking news, or large‑scale sports, 5G’s reliability collapses. Crowds overwhelm public networks. Upload capacity evaporates. And broadcasters, who depend on stable uplink performance, are forced to fall back on legacy or improvised solutions.

“We’re not browsing; we’re uploading,” Brandstrup explains. “But we can’t predict whether we’ll get a usable service when we arrive on‑site.” At events like the World Cup or Tour de France, every broadcaster is trying to push video over cellular. The result is congestion, uncertainty, and a scramble for alternatives. TV2 has even resorted to deploying LEO satellite terminals — a paradoxical workaround in an era where 5G was meant to eliminate such complexity.

This is a common problem for broadcasters across the EU. As Brandstrup notes, “BBC, RAI, France Télévisions — everyone is facing the same issue.”

The broadcast use case is fundamentally different from consumer mobile usage. Public networks are optimised for download, not upload. And while consumers can tolerate degraded performance, broadcasters cannot. A dropped frame or frozen feed is a failure.

Mission: Control

The IBC Accelerator project to solve this gap in guaranteed reliability was instigated by the GSMA with Neutral Wireless, a specialist in private 5G networks, SDR/FPGA engineering, and rapid‑deployment connectivity solutions. The latter’s work with broadcasters has shown that private 5G can deliver exceptional reliability but only in controlled environments such as studios, OB compounds, or temporary event‑specific deployments.

The challenge is extending that reliability to public networks.

“Broadcasters don’t just need bandwidth,” Sam Yoffe, Senior Systems Engineer explains. “They need control. They need to know which device gets priority, when it gets priority, and how the network is behaving in real time. “rivate networks can provide that. Public networks, historically, cannot.”

They believe the solution lies in standardised network APIs, particularly those developed under the CAMARA initiative. This is an open‑source project jointly run by the Linux Foundation and GSMA’s Open Gateway programme. CAMARA APIs allow applications to request network behaviour dynamically: priority, QoS profiles, connectivity insights, and eventually full slice reservation.

“These APIs already exist,” says Joffe. “What’s missing is consistent implementation across operators, and integration into broadcast workflows.”

APIs from connectivity to production resource

Today, broadcasters rely on fragmented, proprietary APIs from individual vendors. These are powerful but inconsistent, difficult to integrate, and impossible to scale across multiple networks or countries. As Yoffe puts it, “No vendor wants to build custom workflows for every hardware manufacturer and every network. For this to work, the APIs must be open standards.”

CAMARA provides that standardisation. The Quality on Demand (QoD) API, for example, allows a device to request higher priority on a congested network. Connectivity Insights provides real‑time metrics about signal quality, throughput, and network conditions — enabling operators to make informed decisions about when to request priority. And QoS Profiles allow workflows to specify the type of traffic they’re sending.

For broadcasters, these APIs aren’t about networks. They’re about editorial speed, flexibility, and reliability. They allow production systems to treat connectivity the same way they treat audio routing, camera tally, or graphics triggers: as a controllable, predictable part of the workflow.

Booking the network like a production asset

Also participating in the project is SliceFinity, a company founded to close the gap between 5G’s programmability and its commercial reality. Its Network Slice Booking API allows industry customers to reserve network resources in advance defining service areas, time windows, QoS parameters, and device access controls.

In other words, says Yoffe, “broadcasters could book network performance the same way they book satellite windows or fibre circuits.”

SliceFinity’s role in the IBC Accelerator is to provide an aggregated interface that simplifies how broadcasters interact with public operators. Instead of navigating complex operator‑specific APIs, broadcasters use SliceFinity’s unified interface to request QoD, reserve slices, or bind devices to guaranteed resources.

This is essential because public operators must balance broadcaster needs with consumer traffic, emergency services, and overall network health. SliceFinity helps manage that balance, ensuring that priority requests are feasible, safe, and aligned with operator policies.

The live demonstration

The Accelerator aims to prove the concept in a live demonstration on a real public network in a stadium filled with tens of thousands of people. The chosen venue is the German Supercup at Dortmund in August, where the project hopes to show that QoD can protect a broadcast feed even under extreme congestion.

Operators are understandably cautious. Instead of testing with 10–20 Mbps video streams, the demonstration will use a lower‑bitrate workflow — around 500 kbps — such as intercom, camera control, or telemetry.

“These are mission‑critical but lightweight, making them ideal for early testing,” Joffe says. “If successful, the demonstration will prove that CAMARA APIs can deliver real, measurable benefits on live public networks. It will also give operators confidence to expand the scope of priority services.”

Path to industry adoption

The IBC Accelerator is not trying to create a commercial product. It is trying to prove feasibility, establish workflows, and build consensus.

According to Joffe, “the real value lies in the collaboration between broadcasters, production vendors, private 5G specialists, and public operators all working together to define requirements and test solutions.”

Brandstrup adds, “We are a small industry. Operators cannot engage with every broadcaster individually. This project gives us one language, one way of connecting with them on behalf of the wider industry.”

For operators, the project clarifies what broadcasters actually need. It’s not always 20 Mbps video slices. Often it’s reliable intercom, camera control, or telemetry — low‑bitrate but mission‑critical workflows that can be protected without harming consumer traffic.

“For broadcasters, it offers a path toward scalable, predictable 5G usage at major events without deploying private networks along entire race routes or relying on satellite backups,” says Yoffe. “For vendors, it provides a standardised foundation for integrating connectivity control directly into production systems.”

5G was always meant to be programmable. CAMARA, GSMA Open Gateway, and projects like this IBC Accelerator are finally turning that promise into reality.

“If broadcasters can treat connectivity as a controllable resource to be booked, prioritised, monitored, and integrated into workflows then it unlocks new possibilities for remote production, cloud‑based workflows, and lightweight field operations,” Brandstrup underlines.

It reduces the need for heavy infrastructure. It increases editorial agility. And it brings the industry closer to a world where live production is as flexible as the stories it covers.

Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana, Italy’s public service broadcaster, is among those championing the project. Gino Alberico, Director of Centre for Research and Innovation at RAI says, “RAI depends on reliable, flexible and scalable connectivity to deliver high‑quality live content across the country. While 5G has already proven capable of supporting TV production through private networks, current public solutions remain fragmented, inconsistent across operators, and difficult to be used into real production workflows.”

He continues, “This project demonstrates how potential standardised open network APIs, such as CAMARA’s Quality on Demand, transform 5G from a best‑effort network into a programmable, predictable production resource. By enabling dynamic, event‑driven prioritisation of key devices and video feeds, broadcasters gain the ability to protect critical uplinks even in congested environments.

“Working collaboratively with mobile network operators, production technology vendors and international partners, RAI will evaluate the project outcome as a set of integrated production‑ready network APIs that could strengthen the public‑service mission, modernizing its tv production infrastructure and workflow.”

 

Inside Euphoria’s Editorial Heart: Aaron I. Butler, ACE on craft, collaboration and controlled madness

Interview and copy written for Sohonet

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“Our priority was making the best, most powerful, most meaningful story possible,” says Aaron I. Butler, ACE, of shaping the fever dream intensity of Euphoria. The HBO drama’s unflinching look at underage sex, drugs, and loneliness is one of television’s most visually and emotionally ambitious shows, created/written/directed by Sam Levinson and shaped by its editorial team into a multi-award-winning phenomenon.

Season 3 alone shot 348 hours of footage, largely on 65mm film, which the editorial team compressed into nine hours of television. “That’s a crazy ratio,” Butler says. “We like to play with and push the material to see where we can take it.”

‍Joining the Euphoria family

Butler is a six-time Emmy Award-nominated, two-time Emmy Award-winning, and three-time ACE Eddie Award-nominated editor and PGA Award nominated producer who joined Euphoria in its second season. 

He first met the show’s Supervising Editor Julio Perez IV, ACE, Levinson’s longtime collaborator, at a diner. They talked for two and a half hours straight and ended with a hug. 

“We were instant friends,” he recalls. “We went right to the deep emotional stuff. We both had family trauma. Both our parents struggled with addiction. For a show like Euphoria, that’s important. It’s emotional and raw, and you have to be able to talk about these difficult subjects.”

That shared emotional vocabulary became foundational across the editing team for season 2, who together won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series for the episode ‘The Theater and Its Double’.

For Season 3’s eight episodes, all 4 editors are credited on every episode (this season’s editors include Perez IV, Butler, Aleshka Ferrero and Nikola Boyanov), which is unusual for a tv series. They worked as a collective, responding to footage as it arrived. Part of the reason was practical too because the whole season was shot as one big block. 

A collaborative editing culture

Perez acted as Levinson’s proxy while the show runner was on set. Butler explains, “Julio watches everything. It all gets in his head. Sometimes he’ll do selects, sometimes he’ll assign scenes based on who he thinks is right for them. Other times I’ll say, ‘Julio, I really want to do this scene.’”

Once an editor finished a first pass, they screened with Perez, then with the entire team. “Usually once a week we’d get together, all the editors, and watch everything. We’d give each other feedback. We’d see how the scenes were playing into each other. It’s incredibly collaborative.”

This collaboration extended to Levinson himself. “Sam will come in during shooting and watch scenes we’ve cut. That’s very unusual. Most show runners don’t watch anything until there’s a first assembly of an entire episode.” Levinson, however, uses editorial as part of his creative process. “He’ll rewrite things, add things, or shoot different things based on what we do. Editorial and production are informing and inspiring each other along the way.”

Butler calls it “a unique kind of editorial process,” one that demands flexibility, experimentation, and trust.

Finding the style in the finale

Season 3 brought a major stylistic shift and a five-year time jump. “We like to have the footage come in and affect us,” Butler says. “We sat together listening to music — Western themes, Mexican cowboy music, old Hollywood noir. We were trying to feel the world of this season.” 

Once the dailies started arriving, instinct took over. “We react to it and see how the characters have changed.”

The season 3 finale ‘In God We Trust’, which is Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Picture Editing For A Drama Series, is a feature length 93 minutes. It was the first episode the team completed. “Creatively, that’s not a bad thing,” Butler says. “You know where everything is headed.”

His biggest challenge was the Ali–Alamo duel, a sprawling, multi-character sequence inside a strip club. “It was a huge amount of footage and a really complicated sequence,” he says. “You’re in this room with two people having a duel, but there are all these other people in the room. Preserving the sense of space, being on the right person at the right time, was a complex dance.”

Levinson later told him it was the scene he was most excited to shoot and that Butler’s cut surprised him. In the script, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) fires early, discovers his gun is empty, curses Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), and then Butler was expected to cut to Ali (Colman Domingo) raising his gun before shooting him. “I cut it that way first,” Butler says. “But I thought, there’s something I can do here to make it even better.”

Instead of showing Ali raise his gun, Butler cut straight from Alamo’s curse to Alamo getting blasted with Ali’s gunshot. “I cut it so that the shot comes out of nowhere. The audience isn’t expecting it.” Levinson was totally surprised when he saw the first cut of the scene. During a 600 person New York screening of the finale, when Alamo gets suddenly shot, Butler says, “The theatre just gasped. Then everyone screamed and cheered. That made me feel like mission accomplished.”

Documentary instincts 

Butler’s documentary background is central to his approach. “In documentary, the editor is the writer,” he says. “You have 300+ hours of footage and you’re literally writing the story line by line.”

That mindset shapes his scripted work. “A good scripted editor will cut the scene as written. But a really good editor - especially one with documentary experience - doesn’t stop there. You ask ‘how can I make it even better? How can I elevate this?’”

He offers an example from Season 3 where Ali and Natasha Lyonne’s character are shadowboxing in a drugged-out haze. “Sam shot it like a mini-doc. They were just playing.” The scripted transition cut from their drugged chaos to Ali waking in a hospital bed after heart surgery. Butler felt the cut needed more escalation.

“I thought: addiction feels like fighting yourself. My parents struggled with addiction. I saw them constantly in this internal battle.” So he found one random shot in the footage where Ali fell down on the hotel bed. Then he recut the shadowboxing footage so Ali starts punching himself in the face and then knocks himself out and then falls into the hotel bed (“a symbolic collapse”). Then it cuts right to Ali in the hospital bed, his chest full of stitches. “Sam never expected that. Julio said it was so innovative. The audience will never know it wasn’t scripted that way.”

‍The Idol

If Euphoria blends scripted precision with improvisational looseness, The Idol leaned almost entirely into chaos. “The biggest difference is that Euphoria had eight scripts. On The Idol, we had two full scripts. The rest was outlined.” Levinson received the project late, Butler says, and time was short.

“The Idol was shot like a documentary. They’d throw the actors in a room and just shoot. Sometimes we had four hours of footage for a two-minute scene.” Scenes moved all over the place. 

“It was all made in the edit room,” he notes. “But all of the editors had documentary experience. That’s why we could do it.”

A life built for storytelling

Butler’s path into filmmaking began on a small ranch in Atascadero, California. “My escape was going out into the fields with my dog and making up stories in my head,” he says. He loved movies and books, especially fantasy and science fiction.

His first spark came in seventh grade, when he wrote a creative story for English class inspired by a rose growing outside his bedroom window. It was so accomplished, his teacher accused him of plagiarism. “She said, ‘There’s no way you wrote this.’ It really crushed me.” Despite his parents showing the teacher the drafts he had made she didn’t believe him. “I didn’t want to be an artist after that.”

But what doesn’t break you makes you stronger. Butler’s father bought him a Hi8 video camera. “I fell in love with making little short films. My friends were blown away. I loved making them laugh. I got addicted to it.”

At UC Berkeley, he studied pre-law and theatre but kept making films. “I got a little cult following,” he says. That led him to the Saul Zaentz Film Center in 1997, where he edited his first documentary Learning to Fly with two-time Academy Award-nominated director Bill Jersey. The film won Gold Medals at the New York Festivals and U.S. International Film Festival and aired on PBS. In 2002 Aaron edited on Jersey's documentary series The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, which won the Peabody award, the IDA Award for Best Limited Series, and was nominated for three Emmy Awards.

Other projects he has edited include the 2013 HBO documentary feature American Winter, the Sundance and HBO documentary Cries From Syria, the IMAX short film Jesus is King for Kanye West, the Sundance feature I Am Michael starring James Franco, and the Toronto International Film Festival feature J.T. LeRoy starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern, which was the closing night film in 2018.

Whatever the project, Butler approaches every scene the same way, with curiosity, empathy, and a desire to surprise. “How can I add layers of meaning?” he says. “How can I elevate this? How can I make the audience feel something deeper?”

 

BBC R&D bid to bring interactivity to the TV

Streaming Media

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A new technology being developed by BBC Research & Development aims to reclaim attention by bringing interaction back to the TV screen itself.

“We want to guide viewers back to the heart of the viewing experience,” says Laura Harrison, principal product manager in BBC R&D. “Interaction you actually want to take part in.”

Signals made a public debut as a test during the BBC’s recent coverage of Wimbledon 2026, adding a live, interactive data layer directly onto Centre Court broadcasts. Built by BBC R&D’s Future World Design (FWD) team, Signals blends real‑time ball‑tracking data, dominance graphs, serve‑speed overlays, winners maps, quizzes, polls, and audience participation into the same frame as the action.

“We were trying to think about, with all of this distraction happening on second screens, how can we bring people back to the primary screen?” explains Harrison. “Audience expectations have changed. Watching sport is no longer enough; people want to respond, interact, and feel part of what’s happening in the moment.”

Part of BBC R&D’s remit is to explore how internal technology can be commercialised and scaled beyond the BBC.

“From the start, we were thinking about how Signals could work for other broadcasters, rights holders, or partners and not built solely on BBC infrastructure.

“Initially, we explored whether Signals could sit as a layer on top of Freely interacting with other broadcasters’ content.”

Freely is the internet-based free TV platform that carries the live streams of BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. 

The goal was to build a genre and delivery-agnostic platform that could sit on top of broadcast TV and work across BBC and non‑BBC environments.

“We weren’t thinking of sport specifically,” Harrison explains. “We were thinking quite broad about how we can use engagement and interaction to bring audiences outside the broadcast environment into the room.”

The opportunity to collaborate with the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) ahead of the BBC’s 100‑year Wimbledon anniversary accelerated the sports use case. Tennis, with its rich ball‑tracking data and clear momentum shifts, offered fertile ground for experimentation.

The technology wasn’t quite ready for use on TV but was instead deployed both on the BBC Sport website and at Wimbledon.com, proving it could run on external platforms with keyboard and mouse interactions.

“We had our own landing page on BBC, but we also worked with the All England Tennis Club to have an instance on their website,” Harrison says. “Proving we could publish externally was a key part of the next step.”

Signals runs as an internet‑delivered layer alongside the broadcast stream. It is agnostic of the TV’s media player, making it easier to integrate and scale. In case of Wimbledon, the system ingested real‑time ball‑tracking data from official third‑party providers — including Hawk‑Eye — and processes it through a custom Signals hub.

Synchronisation was the hardest technical challenge. Wimbledon’s broadcast stream can carry a delay of around 30 seconds, while ball‑tracking data arrives in real time.

“If we’ve got a tennis serve coming in at 100 miles an hour, and you’ve got a 30‑second delay on the stream, it’s really key to get that synced up exactly,” Harrison says. “Timing was probably the most difficult thing.”

Two‑way participation

Signals overlays during Wimbledon included a ‘Dominance graph’ showing who is in control, updated continuously; Serve performance cards comparing serve metrics and a animated serve‑speed overlay reacting instantly to every serve, plus quizzes and polls triggered during breaks in play.

“Tennis produces a huge amount of data, but much of it has traditionally been out of reach during live play,” Harrison says. “Signals turns that data into clear, timely stories that make matches easier to follow and more engaging. Signals is about two‑way participation — letting audiences respond to key moments and see the collective reaction unfold in real time.”

Audiences response was encouraging. “Interaction varies by match and by tournament stage — second‑week matches, especially with British players, saw spikes in usage.”

BBC R&D say 66% of users rated Signals five stars (the overall rating was 4.5/5). Average dwell time was an impressive 19–20 minutes.

For comparison, previous BBC interactive experiences — such as the World Cup 3D model — saw average engagement of around 5–6 minutes.

Serve‑speed overlays and quizzes were standout features, but Harrison notes a clear audience split. “Entry‑level fans gravitate toward quizzes and fun interactions and data‑driven fans dive into dominance graphs and detailed stats. Signals is designed to serve both.

“Two‑way participation is key editorially. If audiences respond in certain ways, that can influence the types of quizzes or polls editors push out, both in the moment and in future matches. Some questions might be driven by real‑time data — serve speeds, spin, rally length — helping fans understand the sport better. Others might be more light‑hearted for entry‑level viewers. Audiences could see responses coming in live, so they felt part of a group rather than interacting alone.”

Next steps

BBC R&D is already prototyping experiences for entertainment formats and current affairs. Instances include viewers scoring a routine on Strictly at the exact moment the judges reveal their scores. Or choosing which route contestants should take in reality game show Race Across the World, building a living map of their journey. Or responding live to discussion points on current affairs flagship Question Time, generating a real‑time snapshot of national sentiment.

Signals also integrates emerging R&D technologies such as time‑addressable media and ‘claim extraction’, a new R&D project which identifies factual claims within speech. In a talk‑show context, viewers could jump directly to moments where specific topics were discussed.

Voice, gesture, and ATSC 3.0

Future trials will take Signals to the TV screen with viewer interaction enabled by the TV remote control.

“As TVs become smarter, with more sensors and AI on the edge, we’re exploring voice, gesture, and other new ways audiences might interact.”

Signals is also being explored for international deployment. In the US, that could mean integration with ATSC 3.0 / NextGen TV, which supports interactive layers and data‑enhanced broadcasts.

BBC R&D sees multiple commercial pathways: TV manufacturers, rights holders, distributors, or broadcasters. Wimbledon itself is a good example — the BBC is the UK distributor, but the AELTC works with NHK in Japan and ESPN in the Americas. Signals could sit at different points in that chain.

“We’re still working through opportunities. After Wimbledon, we had a lot of incoming interest from external companies. Internally, we’re exploring how Signals could integrate with BBC product and editorial teams.

Externally, we’re looking at partners who might move quickly — likely in sport, at least in the near term. But we’re also thinking about other genres such as entertainment, current affairs, talk shows.”

Live from the Esports World Cup: Inside the production gallery

SVG Europe

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EWC2026 runs for seven weeks and caters individual production for 24 games and multiple games publishers. It’s a mammoth undertaking but in the sprawling production area of the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, south of the city centre, the engineering philosophy is pragmatic.

“Instead of trying to rely on one brand for everything we really look at the challenge we need to solve per game and try to bring in the right tool for the right place.,” says Sebastian Fjellström, Technical Manager for the EWC at ESL FACEIT Group (EFG). “Our main TD sits with a Grass Valley Maverik modular control surface for GV Kahuna. We also use Blackmagic ATEMs (20 of them) for sub‑switching or sponsor streams. For converters, we run Blackmagic Micro Converters, YelloBriks and Barco.”

Each of the four big stages runs two ATEMs plus a Kahuna. The smaller stages run two ATEMs or more depending on needs.

“When we need additional language streams or specific localised sponsor stream for regions instead of throwing in a giant mixer it's sometimes easier to just go for a Blackmagic, key some graphic on top and then send it out again always ensuring that the graphic is triggered with the rest of the package.”

There are 110 physical encoders sending out around 280 streams concurrently for different platforms, different media partners and also for monitoring and remote productions. The goal is to build a flexible, scalable system that can support dozens of simultaneous outputs.

“We’re producing almost 10–12 live hours per stage, four to five days a week — sometimes Monday to Sunday,” he says. “On top of that, we produce in multiple languages. There are dedicated Chinese, French and English studios on site, plus studios across the world.”

Some 7000 hours will be produced over the tournament. Content is stored on EVS systems and NAS arrays.

“We dump clips weekly to archive or media services, then clean out the rest,” he explains. “It’s rotational content.”

Real‑time game data

Where traditional sports rely on manual data entry or AI‑driven analytics, esports offers direct access to game servers.

“We work much more with computer sources and real‑time game data,” Fjellström explains. “We can grab stats directly from the game server and integrate them into graphics packages, stage elements, and triggers.”

This allows for dynamic storytelling, instant stat overlays, and automated triggers that sync with in‑game events.

“It’s something traditional sport can’t do in the same way,” he says. “It lets us build features around the game that would be impossible otherwise.”

Sync is a huge deal and relies on automation. “We have a whole dedicated team for developing our internal tools and supporting us with game integration. That’s really helpful for a project like this. We also have our own IT department on site making sure that all the data packages arrive at the right time at the right place. That means that our broadcast engineers and producers can focus on what they need to focus on while everything in the background works.”

EVS setup

Instead of a mix of EVS XT-3s, XT-4s and LSM-VIA controller of previous years, the production has equipped entirely with VIA “because we wanted to make sure that we can use a lot of the IP features and send content back and forth in real time, to be able to edit and also for integrating cameras with Xtra Motion.”

Last year Xtra Motion was on one stage; now it is a feature on every stage for capturing player emotions.

“We also have some areas where we use VMix for different reactions, where we feel like an EVS might not be needed or that we have a limitation because an EVS cannot do the compositions we want.

“For instance, we may want to do a composition with a whole team's camera with a replay. We could do that by creating it and sending it to an EVS and so on but in a VMix you can make a composition, turn it into virtual source and replay it all in one place.”

Setup began on June 1st with remote testing beforehand, some of it in Poland. Last year’s event in Riyadh used a full SMPTE 2110 core. This year, however the team opted for baseband and 125 Riedel MediorNet Micron nodes.

“Everyone has their preferred solution,” he says. “We evaluate what scales best each year.”

In-game observers

Esports also requires a specialised form of camera operation: in‑game observers.

“Our in‑game camera operators specialised for each game,” Fjellström says. “They know exactly what is most interesting for the viewer.”

The multiplayer Battle Royale titles such as Free Fire, Apex Legends, PUBG: Battlegrounds and Fortnite (introduced for the first time) add another layer of complexity.

“For games with many teams playing at once, we use scouts around the stages to follow the action and alert observers,” he explains. “It’s about capturing the most interesting action and creating the best storytelling.”

EFG already do REMI productions for other events and is looking to expand that for EWC. Its broadcast team numbers around 300 people, with additional remote operators working virtually from Sweden.

“In our facility in Stockholm, we have a team working with different remote tools to control, either the gear here, or do stuff on their own and send it to here. So we can, for example, have graphic editors working remote and sending the packages to us, and we can have operators sitting in one of our facilities and physically controlling devices here.”

“We’re always looking to adapt. For instance, how do we improve the space for our co-workers on-site and also the experience for the viewers? It's always a balance of what can we do without risking anything because games are so time sensitive.”

The players play on their own gaming computers and the game server [from the publisher] they're playing against are also located nearby. This means that the game data is able to be tapped in real time and in turn that enables EFG to build new features around the game’s on-screen presentation.

“We're trying as much as we can to have the game server and the players and a lot of the API machines together on one network to maximise what we can do and minimise the amount of delay.”

The venue’s dark fibre is connected to a local data centre “so we have the possibility of really scaling the amount of bandwidth we need.”

 

 

Live from the Esports World Cup: How EFG rebuilt a global production in just eight weeks

SVG Europe

article here

When the Saudi Arabia-backed Esports Foundation announced that the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC) would relocate from Riyadh to Paris with barely two months’ notice, the headlines focused on logistics, travel, and venue availability. But behind the scenes, the most dramatic pivot was happening inside the broadcast engineering department. Hundreds of technicians, operators, and systems specialists were suddenly tasked with rebuilding one of the world’s largest esports production environments from scratch.

“Moving an event of this scale is complicated,” admitted Ralf Reichert, CEO Esports Foundation. “The principle guiding us was simple - to put players and clubs first. Our job was to elevate the competition, protect the integrity of play, and make sure fans get the experience they deserve. The competition remains unchanged — what changes is the city.”

The EWC format is more Olympics than World Cup given there are 24 different games being played, many of them simultaneously. These include Honor of Kings, League of Legends, Dota 2 and EA’s soccer game FC Pro. Together they represent a mix of genres, including first-person shooters, multiplayer online battle arenas, fighting games, and strategy games.

“Esports is fragmented like most other sports,” Reichert explained. “Every game has its own language, heroes and traditions. EWC respects this and brings it together. No single game can unite esports – but EWC can.”

Running from July 6 to August 23, the event bringing together more than 2,000 players and 200 clubs from over 100 countries competing for a $75 million+ prize pool. Individual players can win cash prizes while the winning club, which last year was Saudi team Falcons, shares a $7 million bonus.

“It was really, really hard to move such a big show in such a short time,” says Sebastian Fjellström, Technical Manager for the EWC at ESL FACEIT Group (EFG), which is also owned by Saudi’s public investment fund (as part of Savvy Group). “But it’s been amazing to see everything come together and see how talented the crew are at adapting to all these issues.”

The result is a temporary control room built almost entirely from flypacks accommodated on about a quarter of the floorspace inside the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Its production footprint spans four main broadcast stages for finals, three smaller stages for group rounds, and another area for public gameplay. Every one of those stages feeds into a central engineering hub.

“Every event we do is a mix of our own gear, rental gear, and partner gear,” Fjellström explains. “We don’t have a fixed control room building. It’s a modular kit we transport with us. A lot of our equipment is purpose‑built for us, but it lives in flight cases because we need to be flexible.”

That flexibility was essential when the Foundation made the call to leave Riyadh as a result of the region’s current instability. The engineering team had already shipped some equipment to the Middle East, and some en route had to be turned around immediately.

“It was an eleven‑hour decision,” he says. “If we had waited another two or three days, more equipment would have been in transit. We had to reverse shipments, rebuild racks, and redesign the entire layout for a completely different venue.”

The Paris venue is packed with simultaneous productions and dense with RF. For this, the EWC relies heavily on Riedel networking.

“We have around 300 Bolero belt packs deployed at this venue,” Fjellström says. “That’s quite insane. We needed additional frequency licences approved by the government to deploy this amount in such a small venue.”

Another coup for Riedel and Arri

One of the biggest upgrades for 2026 is the introduction of ARRI Alexa 35 Live cameras with the intent of bringing a cinematic aesthetic to esports coverage.

“It gives us a completely different look in terms of colour and image quality,” Fjellström says. “We’re testing different lenses to improve further.”

The Alexa 35 Live systems were first deployed at scale by the EBU at the Eurovision Song Contest earlier this year, where there were some integration challenges. The EWC team benefited from that experience.

“We had the luxury of getting some of the experts who handled Eurovision’s ARRI integration to help us,” he says. “There were challenges — especially power systems and RF congestion — but we’ve made it work.”

There’s no HDR which was considered too great a leap for this edition in the time available.

“The game capture is already amazing from the publisher. We work on frame rate improvements, super slow‑mo, and stage LED colour control to ensure everything looks good both on camera and in the arena.”

Fighting game Fatal Fury for example is being captured in 120hz and broadcast at 60hz with options for replay and super-slo.

Each stage has to be reconfigured from the proposed plans for Riyadh given the different height, weight load, and space of the Paris venue. Partly because of that, and also to provide presentational diversity, each of the stages here are designed differently with a unique set of camera gear, though they all share player POV cameras on each gamer PC. These are PTZ units from Chinese firm Obsbot.

The Alexa 35’s feature mainly on stage one. There are 11 of them; only four are cabled. One is on a winch camera — top‑down in the middle of the stage for effect shots. Another is mounted on a four‑point wire-cam to capture the audience.

Some compromises were necessary due to the accelerated move from Riyadh. “We wanted to fly more systems in Stage 1 but we needed additional screens installed [for audience view]. Maybe not the ideal workflow, but together with the RF cameras we have here, we can still capture the whole venue. We can film all the way up to the top when players walk onto the stage.”

 Stage 4 uses a mix of Sony systems cameras and handheld RF units. “It’s easier to have long shots on the gamers so we don’t interfere with play,” he explains. “Operators usually have both options - the handhelds can rest on tripods or they can take them off when needed.

 “On Stage 2 we’re using rail cameras to get different footage because the stage design is very different. You don’t want everything looking the same. It’s really about choosing the best tool for the presentation.”

Four cameras with RF links are roaming the entire area doing studio segments or interviews inside and outside the building encoded with Haivision.

For some games, EFG also has a full vertical video production line.

Balancing Core Gamers and Mainstream Audiences

The media strategy behind the EWC is to create a product that can generate interest worldwide for hardcore gamers and mainstream sports enthusiasts.

It has signed have more than 100 media partners broadcasting in more than 160 countries, in forty languages.

In France, that includes daily segments on France Télévisions and partnerships with L’Équipe and NRJ, the country’s biggest radio station.  Since the French interest is so high, EFG is running a French language production on top of the main feed.

“Not only are we broadcasting it in French, we also have a local team working with us to make sure that we do everything with the right wording in the French language,” Fjellström says.

In the US, Fox Sports will carry the event. In Saudi Arabia, Tamanya, the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League, has taken rights. China, meanwhile, will see non‑exclusive distribution across Huya, Douyin, Bilibili, and Kuaishou. Eurosport, DAZN and TNT Sports are covering in Europe.

That’s on top of 5000+ co-streamers who are permitted to take live streams, apply their own commentary and stream on their own Twitch, YouTube or TikTok channels.

“We always work on the balance between what core gamers want to see and what mainstream audiences can understand,” he says. “We want to create a story even for someone who’s never seen the game before.”

In part two of SVG’s coverage of the EWC2026 we dive into the massive – and massively complex - production gallery.

End part 1

 

 

 

 

Inside the production gallery

In the sprawling production area the engineering philosophy is pragmatic.

“We use a mix of equipment,” Fjellström says. “Our main TD sits with a Grass Valley Maverik modular control surface for GV Kahuna. We also use Blackmagic ATEMs (20 of them) for sub‑switching or sponsor streams. For converters, we run Blackmagic Micro Converters, YelloBriks and Barco.

“Instead of trying to go one brand for all we really look at the challenge we need to solve and try to bring in the right tool for the right place. For example, we have Blackmagic ATEM for some parts where we feel like we didn't need to go all in with an additional Kahuna.”

Each of the four big stages runs two ATEMs plus a Kahuna. The smaller stages run two ATEMs or more depending on needs.

“When we need additional language streams or specific localised sponsor stream for regions instead of throwing in a giant mixer it's sometimes easier to just go for a Blackmagic, key some graphic on top and then send it out again always ensuring that the graphic is triggered with the rest of the package.”

There are 110 physical encoders sending out around 280 streams concurrently for different platforms, different media partners and also for monitoring and remote productions. The goal is to build a flexible, scalable system that can support dozens of simultaneous outputs.

“We’re producing almost 10–12 live hours per stage, four to five days a week — sometimes Monday to Sunday,” he says. “On top of that, we produce in multiple languages. There are dedicated Chinese, French and English studios on site, plus studios across the world.”

Some 7000 hours will be produced over the tournament. Content is stored on EVS systems and NAS arrays.

“We dump clips weekly to archive or media services, then clean out the rest,” he explains. “It’s rotational content.”

Real‑time game data

Where traditional sports rely on manual data entry or AI‑driven analytics, esports offers direct access to game servers.

“We work much more with computer sources and real‑time game data,” Fjellström explains. “We can grab stats directly from the game server and integrate them into graphics packages, stage elements, and triggers.”

This allows for dynamic storytelling, instant stat overlays, and automated triggers that sync with in‑game events.

“It’s something traditional sport can’t do in the same way,” he says. “It lets us build features around the game that would be impossible otherwise.”

Sync is a huge deal and relies on automation. “We have a whole dedicated team for developing our internal tools and supporting us with game integration. That’s really helpful for a project like this. We also have our own IT department on site making sure that all the data packages arrive at the right time at the right place. That means that our broadcast engineers and producers can focus on what they need to focus on while everything in the background works.”

EVS setup

Instead of a mix of EVS XT-3s, XT-4s and LSM-VIA controller of previous years, the production has equipped entirely with VIA “because we wanted to make sure that we can use a lot of the IP features and send content back and forth in real time, to be able to edit and also for integrating cameras with Xtra Motion.”

Last year Xtra Motion was on one stage; now it is a feature on every stage for capturing player emotions.

“We also have some areas where we use VMix for different reactions, where we feel like an EVS might not be needed or that we have a limitation because an EVS cannot do the compositions we want.

“For instance, we may want to do a composition with a whole team's camera with a replay. We could do that by creating it and sending it to an EVS and so on but in a VMix you can make a composition, turn it into virtual source and replay it all in one place.”

Setup began on June 1st with remote testing beforehand, some of it in Poland. Last year’s event in Riyadh used a full SMPTE 2110 core. This year, however the team opted for baseband and 125 Riedel MediorNet Micron nodes.

“Everyone has their preferred solution,” he says. “We evaluate what scales best each year.”

In-game observers

Esports also requires a specialised form of camera operation: in‑game observers.

“Our in‑game camera operators specialised for each game,” Fjellström says. “They know exactly what is most interesting for the viewer.”

The multiplayer Battle Royale titles such as Free Fire, Apex Legends, PUBG: Battlegrounds and Fortnite (introduced for the first time) add another layer of complexity.

“For games with many teams playing at once, we use scouts around the stages to follow the action and alert observers,” he explains. “It’s about capturing the most interesting action and creating the best storytelling.”

EFG already do REMI productions for other events and is looking to expand that for EWC. Its broadcast team numbers around 300 people, with additional remote operators working virtually from Sweden.

“In our facility in Stockholm, we have a team working with different remote tools to control, either the gear here, or do stuff on their own and send it to here. So we can, for example, have graphic editors working remote and sending the packages to us, and we can have operators sitting in one of our facilities and physically controlling devices here.”

“We’re always looking to adapt. For instance, how do we improve the space for our co-workers on-site and also the experience for the viewers?

“It's always a balance of what can we do without risking anything because games are so time sensitive.”

The players play on their own gaming computers and the game server [from the publisher] they're playing against are also located nearby. This means that the game data is able to be tapped in real time and in turn that enables EFG to build new features around the game’s on-screen presentation.

“We're trying as much as we can to have the game server and the players and a lot of the API machines together on one network to maximise what we can do and minimise the amount of delay.”

The venue’s dark fibre is connected to a local data centre “so we have the possibility of really scaling the amount of bandwidth we need.”

Balancing Core Gamers and Mainstream Audiences

The EWC has signed have more than one hundred media partners broadcasting in more than 160 countries, in forty languages globally.

The Foundation’s strategy is two‑pronged: reach endemic esports audiences while simultaneously breaking into mainstream media. In France, that means daily segments on France Télévisions and partnerships with L’Équipe and NRJ, the country’s biggest radio station.

Since the French interest is so high, EFG is running a French language production on top of the main feed.

“Not only are we broadcasting it in French, we also have a local team working with us to make sure that we do everything with the right wording in the French language,” Fjellström says.

In the US, Fox Sports will carry the event. In Saudi Arabia, Tamanya, the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League, has taken rights. China, meanwhile, will see non‑exclusive distribution across Huya, Douyin, Bilibili, and Kuaishou. Eurosport, DAZN and TNT Sports are covering in Europe.

That’s on top of 5000+ co-streamers who are permitted to take live streams, apply their own commentary and stream on their own Twitch, YouTube or TikTok channels.

“We always work on the balance between what core gamers want to see and what mainstream audiences can understand,” he says. “We want to create a story even for someone who’s never seen the game before.”