Betting on homegrown AI

IEC Tech

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How IEC Standards are helping India to become an AI powerhouse and jump ahead of the queue.

At the start of the year, the Indian government gave its electronics and tech sector a mission to develop the country’s first large language model (LLM). The artificial intelligence (AI) model, expected to be ready as soon as this winter, is part of a broader vision for the country to become a global AI powerhouse by 2047.

Key planks of the programme include the IndiaAI Mission, which launched in 2024, promising a budget of over ₹ 10,000 crore (USD 1,5 billion) a year to develop India's AI ecosystem through public-private partnerships. This builds on an earlier National Strategy for AI published by India’s public policy think tank to guide R&D in the emerging technology across healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure.

The overall aim is to build standalone or sovereign capability in a technology which is seen as transformational across many sectors. “Unlike in the past, AI in India is no longer confined to a privileged few or dominated by global tech giants,” it argues. “[The] government is empowering students, startups and innovators with world-class AI infrastructure, fostering a truly level playing field, paving the way for innovation and self-reliance in this critical sector.”

Core to the strategy is for LLMs to be developed and hosted in India, tailored to work for the specific social, cultural and business diversity of its 1,46 billion people, who converse in 22 officially recognized languages. This approach is supported by Sovereign AI, a concept which refers to a nation’s capacity to be self-reliant by using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks. In India’s case, the objective is to be competitive with China and the USA, which are currently leading the AI race.

Growing adoption of AI in India

India’s AI market is growing at a rate of 25-35% per year and is projected to reach USD 17 billion by 2027, according to a trade association for software and services. In a separate report, the association says it expects the broader technology industry in India to deliver USD 300 billion in 2026, driven in part by steady advances in AI, as enterprises expand their tech initiatives at scale.

Gnani.ai is one of hundreds of AI-focussed start-ups in India. “People are excited about AI and impatient to adopt it,” says founder and CEO Ganesh Gopalan. “Every board of every organization is putting pressure on their employees to use more AI in the workplace. It could be for cost reasons, to increase revenue or to improve customer satisfaction. Whatever the end goals are, I see a lot of interest in using AI in India.”

Anecdotally, there appears to be a lot less fear in adopting the tech than in western economies, which, Gopalan suggests, is partly because of the country’s rapid growth. “The question of AI replacing jobs comes less into the equation in developing markets like China and India compared to developed markets. In India, the discussions are always around return on investment (ROI). We are a nation culturally obsessed with ROI and that’s not necessarily the case in developed markets.”

Handling multi-linguistic complexity

Gopalan believes that Indian sovereign LLMs are a huge opportunity. He says global models like GPT (developed by OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google) and Meta (Llama), trained on largely English language and Western cultural databases, work less effectively in a country as diverse as India. “The world is not just one in which English is spoken. There are complexities within languages. So, when you translate global LLMs into other languages, they often fail because there isn't enough training data. The same is true for countries in Latin America or Africa. Even the basic things that global LLMs do for the US or the UK just cannot be done for many markets around the world.”

His company develops AI models from an India-first perspective. He explains, “The number of tokens [base units of text that LLMs use to understand language] that you would use for a typical LLM is very different when it comes to India. An AI model in Tamil or Telugu local language requires very different inputs and parameters.”

Gnani.ai has launched a speech-to-speech LLM that it claims can handle over 30 million voice interactions daily and supports 14 languages for businesses across India and the US. Speech-to-speech (or voice-to-voice) AI technology enables humans to converse with digital chatbots and other AI systems. As a subset of its LLM, Gnani.ai has developed small language models (SLMs) targeted at specific verticals, including the banking industry. It is in the process of launching another for insurance, with a retail model in the works.

“Every industry has a different vocabulary, phraseology, pitch and tone so in the context of customer management, for example, each will be different,” Gopalan says. Beyond addressing a specific audience with local and sector specific languages, the development of India-first AI models is also deemed important to counteract potential cultural bias, or lack of nuance, in global LLMs.

Addressing bias, a key concern

“It is incredibly important to take bias into account,” Gopalan adds. “Even without getting into the ethics of copyright, the first and most important component in your model is bias. It is a huge issue since you can’t ever be sure of the exact weight [or bias] on which a global model has been trained. You don't even know if it's biased until you use it. You can make an assumption, but basically, it's an unknown factor.”

A practical use case his company is trying to solve is to automate the underwriting of loans or insurance at a bank. “What if your underwriting process actually gave people loans they could not repay or unfairly denied people access to finance because the AI model had a bias? It’s not only highly unethical on your part, but it’s going to negatively affect your business.”

He advocates training models for corporations using the data they own and control. “These SLMs are not trained on trillion-parameter models [like LLMs] but on a few billion-parameter models that the [corporation] owns to make sure that biases are under control. That's why the concept of Sovereign AI is important. You can’t just write an application programming interface (API) for a global LLM.”

Gopalan says private industry, government and education are in lock-step in developing the country’s AI capability. “Educational institutions will adapt their course curriculum to include more AI components to feed demand from the private sector for jobs,” he explains. “Since AI is fundamentally software and coding, things at which Indians tend to be broadly good at, the future is looking good.”

Indian investment in education for AI

The government is building homegrown expertise to fuel research, innovation and the workforce in concert with multinationals. Mumbai’s Universal AI University, founded in 2023, was the first in the country to integrate AI across its curriculum, with the backing of a leading Indian IT company. A Fortune 500 company funded Mumbai’s Jio Institute (named after the multinational’s telecom division), including the Centre of AI for All, which advances “India-centric AI capabilities”. The Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology has its AI programmes supported by an American computer processing giant. Another multinational is backing a training scheme to boost the AI skills of over 2 million Indians, and one of its leading researchers is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to build “gender-intentional” datasets in five Indian languages that together are spoken by over 1 billion people.

Standards for responsible AI

As Gopalan made clear, an AI model is only as good as the data it is trained on, and bias can creep in, creating all sorts of problems, depending on the application area. International benchmarks which set guidelines to check the data quality and avoid any form of bias are a way of ensuring systems work efficiently and ethically. The joint ISO/IEC committee, established to develop standards in the area of AI, has published ISO/IEC 5259-5, which provides a data quality governance framework for analytics and machine learning to enable organizations and companies to direct and oversee the implementation and operation of data quality.

To identify and prevent bias in outcomes, the committee has published ISO/IEC TS 12791, which provides mitigation techniques that can be applied throughout the AI system life cycle in order to address unwanted bias. This document is applicable to organizations of all types and sizes .

AI is making huge strides in India. By favouring homegrown systems to compete with worldwide tech giants, India is rapidly becoming an AI force to be reckoned with. Standards can help it avoid some of the mistakes made by companies based in the USA or China, which started earlier in the race but initially lacked internationally recognized benchmarks to guide them.

 

Indian solutions for water scarcity

IEC Tech

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An Indian entrepreneur is promoting tech that recovers water from the atmosphere and from data centres. International standards are there to help him scale the technology further.

A teenage Star Wars fan may have solved one of the world’s most pressing problems of water shortage. Eighteen-year old architecture student Swapnil Shrivastav was enjoying George Lucas’ 1977 film when he noticed the vertical pumps called “vaporators” on Luke Skywalker’s desert planet, Tatooine, which were drawing water from the air. “In 2012, I was in my second year of college and we were doing a project called ‘Imagine the future of water and cities’, which asked for innovative solutions for water scarcity,” he explains. “The idea came from science fiction but when we investigated further, it seemed that we could actually make it happen.”

Uravu Labs, which Shrivastav co-founded in 2017 in Bangaluru, has raised USD 4 million to develop a means of extracting water from the air. The startup is one of a myriad of technology solutions addressing India’s challenging and complex water management.

Access to water is not guaranteed

The statistics paint a dire picture. Thirty five million of the country’s 1,46 billion population lack access to safe water, according to global nonprofit Water.org. It cites extreme water stress, contaminated surface water and lack of access to piped water supply, in addition to the impact from climate change, which is exacerbating the availability of safe water and sanitation for families in India.

UNICEF estimates that waterborne diseases cost USD 600 million a year in India, hitting people living in drought and flood-prone areas the most. A recent WHO report indicates that providing potable drinking water could stop 400 000 people dying from diarrheal disease. It adds that with universal coverage of safely managed drinking water, 14 million DALYs (disability adjusted life years) could be averted. “The stark reality is that, even after high rainfall, we still rely on groundwater,” says Shrivastav. The reason is that the water pipe infrastructure is far from universal, and in many places, piped water is also polluted. Instead, people have resorted to digging boreholes to tap groundwater.

UNICEF says the fast rate of groundwater depletion in India is one of the world’s highest, due to the proliferation of drilling. The World Bank predicts that, if current trends persist, at least a quarter of India’s agriculture will be at risk. “Agriculture in India is groundwater dependent and lots of domestic and even industrial uses are groundwater dependent,” Shrivastav explains. “But groundwater is not a renewable resource, and the deeper and deeper you go, the more it becomes unviable to tap into. There are places in Bangaluru where, even at depths of 1 500 ft to 2 000 ft, there's no groundwater.”

An alternative is to transport water over long distances in tankers to areas of the country which don’t have piped water supply or reliable groundwater. However, it is an expensive solution, forcing people to pay over the odds to access the resource. It is also environmentally questionable. “We wanted to find a solution which could solve two or three of problems at once,” Shrivastav indicates.

Drinking water from the air

Atmospheric water generation (AWG) is widely seen as one of the environmentally sound answers to water scarcity. The technology harvests moisture from the air, can be powered by renewable energy and, since the systems do not rely on traditional freshwater sources, can be placed where water is scarce. The global AWG market was estimated at USD 2,8 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8% from 2025 to 2034.

Shrivastav’s company uses a hygroscopic desiccant to absorb vapour from the air, which is then heated to between 50-70 C° to release drinking water. Its standard unit fits into a 20-foot shipping container and can output 2 000 litres per day. Powered by renewable energy (such as solar) the operating costs are less than two cents per litre, making it 10 times more efficient than its competitors, Shrivastav claims. The “proprietary combination” of liquid silica desiccant it uses is “abundant, non-hazardous and costs less than one dollar per kg”.

Nonetheless, capital costs are high, and the cheapest model currently is priced at around USD 85 000. “The cost of borrowing is very high in India, even for established enterprise customers,” Shrivastav admits. “Interest rates are anywhere from 14 to 18%.” This means that local Indian communities with a water access problem cannot afford to take out loans to buy the containers.

The start-up is hoping to attract investors – either Indian or international – and is also looking for more funding from the Indian government, which in turn could help in producing the containers on a more massive scale and reduce their price.

In the meantime, the company switched its attention to more commercial applications, including selling renewable drinking water to hotels and restaurants in glass bottles, which it recollects after use. “It’s an alternative to the packaged water market, which draws on a lot of groundwater.”

Where standards and conformity assessment can help

Basing new or emerging technologies on internationally agreed standards can help to build trust in the investor community by ensuring they are safe and perform as expected. In the medium term, standards will help to bring down the price of newly launched products and also ensure that they can be exported to other countries.

For example, the IEC publishes most of the standards relating to renewable energy systems, from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels right down to tidal energy conversion. All the solar PV standards are published by IEC Technical Committee 82 and include the IEC 62257 series of technical specifications which make recommendations for small renewable hybrid systems, involving, for example, a solar panel and a battery. They have been recognized by the World Bank and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) as an important contribution to electricity access in remote and deprived areas of the world and can be used as a blueprint to power solutions like those promoted by Shrivastav’s company.

IECEE, the IEC System of Conformity Assessment Schemes for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components, offers a scheme for solar PV panels, which gives access to qualified testing laboratories for the certification of PV components and modules in accordance with the relevant IEC International Standards. IECEE PV certificates demonstrate that all elements and components are designed, manufactured and tested according to IEC Standards, ensuring compliance with quality and safety requirements worldwide.

The company is also developing a product which captures waste heat generated from data centres to produce water and uses that water to cool down the servers. Pilot projects are being set up in India and the Middle East. “Data centres can cut down on their cooling cost and also become the infrastructure which produces water rather than consuming it,” Shrivastav says.

That is where the work of one of the ISO/IEC joint technical committees, JTC 1/SC 39: Sustainability, IT and data centres, comes in. Its key publications include ISO/IEC 30134-1, which defines common requirements for a holistic suite of KPIs for data centre resource efficiency, including the use of cooling water and the recovery of energy.

The company plans to double operations in Bangalore this year to output 8 000 litres per day and to launch factories in two more Indian cities, targeting the hospitality sector. Additionally, it is developing an industrial-scale unit capable of generating 30 000 to 50 000 litres per day.  Shrivastav is hopeful about the future: “If, instead of making 10 or 15 units a year, we make a thousand units per year, it can drastically reduce capital expenditure. If we can also find better local financing, then a village in South India would only have to pay for maintenance because the running costs are very cheap, especially if paired with solar. Then it becomes viable.”

 

 

Behind the Scenes: Jurassic World Rebirth

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The VFX blockbuster opts for an old school production by shooting extensively on location and on film

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Director Gareth Edwards returns to Thailand after filming The Creator there for another science fiction but this time with a far bigger budget and a decision to shoot on 35mm in order to recall Steven Spielberg’s 1993 franchise starter.

Universal Pictures’ Jurassic World Rebirth starring Scarlett Johansson is the seventh in the series and has a reported $265m budget, three times that of The Creator which was shot mostly on Sony FX3.

While Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom had been shot by Oscar Faura using digital cameras, and Dominion shot by John Schwartzman was primarily captured on film, Edwards’ film is entirely shot film by cinematographer John Mathieson (Gladiator) and in manner which harks back to classic location pics of the 1950s.

“Gareth immediately asked me, ‘If you were to reshoot the Spielberg Jurassic Park now would you  shoot it on film?’ Absolutely, I said. I've been dying to shoot something on film again since Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019).

Mathieson noticed the recent trend of a higher ratio of Oscar nominated films that are shot on celluloid compared to the number of digitally shot movies overall. “This reaffirms my suspicions that anyone can work a digital camera,” he says. “I don't think they're that difficult. You've got lots of people who will look after you on set and the cameras have got almost too much latitude. There's no real decision making with those damn things. With film you are working in stone. If you screw it up, you screw it up.”

Edwards has a reputation for using DIY techniques and agile camera gear in making films like breakthrough hit Monsters. “It struck me as interesting that he’d gone for a potentially more cumbersome route to shoot this project,” says Mathieson. “Film cameras are the weight of labradors.”

Film discipline

There was some resistance to shooting on negative even though executive producer Steven Spielberg has yet to convert to digital in his own movies. “We had to prove that we'd be responsible and shoot within budget of 22,000 feet a day which we never got near. We were down at 6000-7000 ft a day.

“When you shoot on digital the temptation is to let the camera roll and roll,” Mathieson says. “You’d even shoot the blocking, even though you know it’s going to be wrong. In a film like this it makes no sense to spray the cameras around and shoot everything. I mean, our screen is going to be filled with dinosaurs and clearly you’re not capturing them in camera.

“You're actually saving money because you're not doing overtime. You haven't got a bunch of DIT guys running around transferring data and doing the layoffs. These calculations don’t really come out on paper but I think producers and accountants should realise that shooting film can be more economic than digital, provided you are disciplined.”

Mathieson shot Kodak 500T and 50D 35mm with Panavision E and C series older anamorphic lenses, a simple camera package that he says harks back to how films were shot in the 1990s.

Principal photography between June and September 2024 visited Bangkok as a backdrop for some urban sequences and Thai coastal regions of Trang, Phang Nga, and Phuket for exotic and jungle settings. The Huai To Waterfall at Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, Krabi also features in the movie.  Greenwich University played a role in establishing the film’s setting. Additional scenes were shot in Manhattan’s DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) area.

Location location location

“People don’t tend to go on location any more. Not truly. We want on lots of recces, dealing with more old-fashioned logistics rather than popping along to Leavesden and a bunch of green screens.

“How do we get in there and what's the monsoon doing? Will the road still be there, or do we have to build a bridge? Are we going to get the trucks in and should we lay down sand ladders if they’re going to sink.

“The only way to do an epic movie was to go somewhere fantastic. We were in Thailand with amazing limestone stacks and deep heavy jungle. Trees wider than this room. Massive things. All the  holiday makers disappeared [because the tourist season ends in the spring] which was great. But then the weather came.”

He says, “Thailand's great if you go from the beach to the bar to the sea and back to the bar but if you go into the interior its tough. The jungles are spectacular and beautiful. Everything's overscale.
The palm fronds appear to be 30 foot long. There’s bugs. There's snakes. Big spiders. Lots of nasty diseases you can pick up. You're always wet. You're always sweating. Your feet are rotting. It was old style in that you go somewhere with a camera that people don't really want to go to you. You go around the bend of the river that no one goes around.

“We lived in the jungle, on some islands, then some caves that were full of bats. We had a Batman come to get rid of the bats because they are rabid. There's bat shit everywhere. Our crew came down with dengue fever, yellow fever, even cholera.

“We had a snake guy to get the snakes out of the jungle which is so absurd it's like trying to get worms out of a potato patch. Then the snake guy got bitten, so he disappeared.”

Mathieson recalls this with humour. He clearly enjoyed the experience as part and part of the rigours of filmmaking, much like Werner Herzog literally having his cast and crew haul a boat over jungle and mountain for Fitzcarraldo.

Feeling the heat

Even for the scenes set at sea they shot from two boats in the Mediterranean, as well as filming in large water simulation tanks at Malta Film Studios.

“We’d much rather experience the humidity and the sweat and toil to put it on film rather than doing it on a green screen or on a volume stage,” he says. “Even on this film we had bad weather and I got the wrong film stock at the wrong time but I’ve built up experience of being in the shit before, right back from making documentaries. If you had the wrong stock then you had to improvise. Push the stop. Open the windows. Shoot wide open. Anything you can to make it work.”

He says he partly got into the film industry for the adventure - “for going around the bend in the river to see things that tourists wouldn't see otherwise. I remember seeing Man with the Golden Gun in a crappy old cinema on a rainy November in suburban London and thinking I have no idea where that place is but I want to go there some day. Filmmakers went to beautiful places, photographed them and presented the wonder of the world back to cinema audiences at home.”

He thinks too much production these days is “unadventurous” in sticking to blue screens at home.  “Even though [this shoot] was ugly, difficult and hard work I still believe you get better results if you go somewhere for real. You can take people there.

“Some of the shots we have of the jungle in this film are designed to be spectacular when you see them in a cinema. Enormous leaves. Huge fronds. Towering waterfalls, burbling rivers, massive banyan trees. It feels real because it is. You couldn't build that in a stage.

“When we try and double it back in London [at Sky Studios Elstree] with foliage or a banana tree it’s a banana tree from a local nursery and it’s tiny. Even though you have great production designers you can't actually get that feeling of size, scope or sweep that you get from filming on location. We have some big deserted vistas so you really feel you're on this magical island in the middle of nowhere.”

It didn’t all go according to plan. Mathieson thinks they shot in Thailand at the wrong time of year. “We went from using some 5205 to fast Tungsten stock because it was so dark in the jungle. The canopy does it’s job very well if you’re a plant. Every little leaf is looking for a bit of photosynthesis. And if you've got no sun, you don't get lovely spaghetti stripes, you just get great sludge.”

They did “struggle” to bring in some lighting equipment but the DP says this didn’t offer much help. “You can put a bit of brightness in the background to offer some depth but you hope for a clearing or a fallen tree so you have a bit of contrast somewhere. I'd preferred it if we'd shot earlier in their winter with clearer skies and the sun beating straight down on us and we’d put in smoke to look like
jungle mist and steam.”

Even in humidity and temperatures of 100F in Malta the film camera survived.  He says, “Film cameras don't mind getting wet because once you load that film and close the door they are waterproof.  They don’t have fans to cool them down. If we'd shot digital, we’d be wrapping them up to keep it dry. With all the tropical rain I'm sure we'd have overheated them. Digital cameras don’t like moisture or dust and Malta has to be the dustiest place in the world.

“Film cameras are very user-friendly in tough situations where I think digital cameras would have failed. They’re more like Land Rovers. Built tougher.”

“Everyone loves a dinosaur”

Mathieson says the Spielberg was very involved. “He was speaking to Gareth every day and he’d give us notes on the rushes. He’d say ‘this is a bit dark’ or ‘this is too close-up’. You have to realise that Jurassic Park is his baby. He has had astonishing success but Jurassic Park might just be his biggest. It’s as big in terms of audience fandom as any Marvel or Star Wars project.”

The DP who has worked with Ridley Scott, Guy Ritchie, Joe Wright and James Mangold says he was drawn to the project as much by wanting to work with Edwards as to have his own stab at making a summer blockbuster.

“Gareth’s fantasy and science fiction films have a freshness. As a viewer you feel more in his pictures than you would in some of these other Godzilla King Kong space movie. The way he introduces monsters or dinosaurs is almost casual. You just feel that's the way it would be so you believe it more.”

Mathieson’s main regret is that they didn't use many animatronics with ILM taking charge of dino VFX. “That's one of those things that you mourn about the digital age because the days of big special effects are dying out,” he says.

Spielberg’s original movie is famously the first blockbuster to give generous screen time to CGI creatures but it also used a lot of practical effects, such as the T-Rex head and eye glaring into a jeep full of petrified humans.

“The mechanical effects make it feel much more present. It’s why the original is such a favourite. That said, everyone loves a dinosaur. Every kid loves dinosaur. And ours are enormous.”

Esports World Cup plans biggest video game tournament ever staged

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Returning to Riyadh this month for its second outing, the Esports World Cup is being billed as the most ambitious and technologically advanced global competitive event in history.

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With 25 tournaments across 24 games and 200 Clubs from over 100 countries, the EWC will feature the largest prize pool in esports history, over $70 million.

“It's monumental. There is nothing like it,” says Mike McCabe, COO, Esports World Cup Foundation. “Most other esports events are built for a week or less of operation. We're talking about seven weeks of operation on a scale that is of an order of magnitude greater than anything else in esports.”

In the first week beginning July 7, for example, the four venues will host the group stage games of Valorant, Dota2, [sim racing game] Rennsport, Fatal Fury and Apex Legends building to play offs and then finals.

“If you imagine we're building the equivalent of a traditional three day Esports event but we're doing that in four different venues simultaneously for seven weeks in a row.”

McCabe is a former head of digital for Nike, senior exec at Electronic Arts and managing director of international publishing at Epic Games who joined EWC to build on the inaugural event.

That saw 250 million hours of content streamed across 21 different games to 500 million viewers. The League of Legends hit a peak viewership of 3.5m during its grand final, according to organisers. The EWC also claim that over 2 million people attended the event in person last year.

“There have been lots of singular gaming events around the world but this one is unique in bringing it all together,” says McCabe. “That's important from a broadcast standpoint because it enables us to create an economy of scale when it comes to the technology we're building into the venues. We can aim for a far wider audience than traditional Esports events where they're focused very much on an endemic Esports community.”

He says, “The only way we can elevate esports is to go as broad as we can within the gaming ecosystem both from a genre perspective and also from a geographic perspective.”

He also aims to increase “esport literacy” in order to reach audiences less familiar with the intricacies of first person shooter Call of Duty or battle royale formats Free Fire and PUBG Mobile.

To achieve that objective, linear broadcast is an important component. KSA broadcaster MBC took all the games live last year and is likely to do the same this time out. The event will be live streamed over Twitch and YouTube and also by some of the game publishers “within their own ecosystem.”

There are also a larger group of content creators or “co-streamers” on site delivering content to their followers on social platforms.

“They have that connection with their audience so for us to be able to broadcast to that full gaming community is incredibly valuable from a co-streaming standpoint,” says McCabe. “It’s very important for us to reach out beyond all the traditional streams.”

One of the key lessons from last year was that more needed to be done to make mainstream audiences feel at home with esoteric to gameplay.

“We found latent appetite to understand more. People are inquisitive. They keep hearing about esports and they want to know more but the core content that we create from a game stream doesn't have enough explanation or enough entertainment content. We're creating a new broadcast product that we will be trialling this year to specifically target that more mainstream audience.”

While there a lot of similarities with traditional sports broadcasting there's also a lot that's different.
“There's no one party that has that skill to be able to span across all of the different pillars,” says McCabe. “It is much more of a first party and very game specific because there are specialists at the publishers who really understand a particular franchise. The crew supporting EA Sports FC are very different from the people supporting League of Legends. But having that in-depth understanding of the intricacies of the game and what action should be focused on screen is vital

“It's a little easier perhaps with EA FC because the action is where the ball is but for a game like Tekken 8 or Starcraft II, where the strategy is often happening in different parts of the screen, you want to take the fans and the audience there too.”

While camera operators in the venues covering fans in the stands will span all of the different game many of the producers and technicians in charge of a particular esport production will rotate in and out based on their specialty.

The competition is facilitated by ESL Faceit Group (EFG), a division of esports’ event organiser ESL and a subsidiary of Savvy Games Group – itself owned by the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund.

EFG is integrating the studio-based infrastructure capable of taking in all of the live feeds into the main control room as well as the technology on the venue stages, such as LED screens.

Vlad Petrescu, EFG Executive Producer EWC 2025 explains, “Each stage has multiple production lines that interact with one another. It starts with In-game production, which shows the match and directs the observers. Then comes Stage production, which handles the stage show and big moments like player reveals. From there, our English, Arabic, and Chinese teams take the feed and add localised content like match analysis and custom video assets.”

All production lines are equipped with Grass Valley vision mixers, EVS media servers for replays and playout, Lawo audio stations, and 2110 IP distribution.

Although each venue is host to multiple different games and the stages are dressed with different layout and presentation, the basic broadcast infrastructure remains consistent. Every gaming station across all of the different stages features player-based cameras from Chinese PTZ developer OBSBOT which have the ability to dynamically track movements. OBSBOT is also supplying its Tiny 2 webcams.

McCabe says, “We're going to test some features at the beginning just see if they work because there's a lot of gesture controls that are able to recognise player actions but these actions will differ according to game and even individual player. These cameras will give us really high quality player-based feeds that we can then use whether in venue on the LEDs or pull into the live stream.”

Another key objective is to make the EWC a destination and “repeat draw” for people in the wider Middle East. “That’s why the supporting events as part of the Festival are so important and why will rotate fan engagement activities each week. It’s the reason the EWC will be rotating games in venues over the seven weeks to give people a different reason to come in week one and return in week four based on the games that they're passionate about. That is a massive differentiator from my perspective.”

Alongside multiplayer games like DOTA and Rainbow 6 Siege, online chess makes its debut at the event with a huge $1.5m prize pool and world number one Magnus Carlsen leading one of the teams.  Also helping influence sports fans outside of the esports bubble is Saudi resident CR7. Cristiano Ronaldo is an ambassador for the EWC even appearing as a playable character in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, one of the tournament’s official games.

Another piece of brand marketing is a five-part docuseries chronicling the EWC 2024 and providing background stories to players. Level Up, from Oscar nominated director R.J. Cutler and his team at This Machine Filmworks, is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

McCabe explains that the Esports World Cup is divided into two ‘products’: the Club Championship which is where gamers compete in teams in one of the xx tournaments. The club that generates the most points is crowned Champion. Running in parallel is the Festival, described as “a celebration of everything that is gaming from cosplay to education to influencer content creators.”

This area of Riyadh also includes live music, retro arcades and cafes. The tournament is played played over 7 weeks this year, as opposed to the 8 weeks of 2024, with the addition of a fourth stage accommodating an increased number of games. The number of competitors rises from 1500 to between 1600 to 1700 this year.

The EWC is intended as an annual event and would also run parallel to an Olympic Esports which is planned to be held every two years, also in Riyadh. The KSA is busy constructing a dedicated entertainment, sports and video gaming city called Qiddiya in the southwest of the capital.

“We will ultimately end up there, but that is scheduled to be completed closer to 2030,” McCabe says.

BBC goes hybrid for coverage of UEFA Women’s Euros

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A hybrid remote and on-site production with Sunset+Vine, editorial about alpine bees and a deluxe Swiss chalet on the banks of Lake Lucerne. The BBC is ready for the Lionesses to defend their trophy.

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The 2025 UEFA Women’s European Championship kicks off on July 2, as reigning champions England defend their title and try to become just the second nation to win back-to-back Women’s Euros.

“England going in as defending Champions has really increased the attention on the women's team,” says BBC Sport executive producer Phil Bigwood. “It’s Wales’ first ever major tournament, so we've got strong focus there as well. The Euros is the centrepiece of the BBC’s women in sport season on top of the Rugby World Cup and Athletics.”

England’s win over Germany in Euro 2022 final pulled in a peak audience of 17.4 million on BBC One.

“We’re all aware of the growth in the women's game since England won last time. The way things have moved on are pretty unprecedented. Let's hope England can get out the group and we can we get close to those figures again.”

The BBC is exclusively showing three of the four quarter finals, as well as one of the semi-final fixtures and the final on Sunday 27 July, live on BBC One and iPlayer, as part of its 15 match allocation. ITV has another set of 15 and both share broadcast of the final.

Women’s Euro 2022 winner Jill Scott and Champions League winning manager Renee Slegers are joining the BBC’s line-up alongside seasoned presenters Gabby Logan, Alex Scott and Jeanette Kwakye.

Planning began in earnest about 10 months ago.

“First and foremost a lot of planning comes down to budgets,” says Bigwood. “Where can we get the biggest bang for our buck? Switzerland isn't the cheapest country in Europe so we've tried to prioritise where we can around covering the home nations.”

The approach is split between having a remote presentation from a virtual studio on the site of key group games involving England Wales in Switzerland (with plans for the quarterfinals onwards) and all other games to be produced from Quay House, Salford.

The host feed is being produced in 1080P with surround sound by Uefa which is using its established campus in Nyon, outside Geneva, rather than building a temporary IBC.

As luck would have it from a British broadcaster perspective, the majority of the match directors are English including the BBC’s own regular matchday director Andrew Swift and is Sarah Cheadle from Sky Sports.

Sunset+Vine won the tender to produce the TV output for the BBC at the end of 2024.  “We knew from day one we would want an indie to produce it. The fact that they are based with BBC Sports really helps us with all the multi-platform content with digital and the radio teams. There's a lot of crossover and sharing, which might not have been the case if we'd had a different setup.”

The BBC is taking in eight IP feeds from the host broadcast, via the Eurovision Services Content Hub, managed by S+V.

“Eurovision are used to distribute the Champions League which very conveniently the BBC have started taking as of last season, so that connectivity was already in place,” explains Mark Dennis, director of technical operations, Sunset Vine.

The feeds include a main and backup match feed, reporter cam, ISO cams and a clean backup. As part of belt and braces redundancy there’s a satellite backup too.

“There’s a dual fibre path and a satellite backup to bring in the main feed so that gives us access to a lot of feeds when we are not on site,” says Dennis.

Timeline TV is hired for the remote production travelling an OB truck between venues for on-site presentation. “Two data circuits have been booked from Eurovision from each of the venues that we may end up in, depending on how England and Wales progress through the group stages,” Dennis says. “These go to Telehouse North (data centre in London) and with help from BBC technology we have then piggybacked onto existing BBC connectivity up to Salford.”

A remote interface unit is installed in the Timeline truck which dovetails remotely with a Timeline rack at Salford. The presentation from the truck will be covered with six cameras.

“That also allow us do some ISOs ourselves, for example if our commentators or on-screen talent want to focus on a particular player, we've got our own big lens camera for close-ups of that player or particular area of the field,” says Stephen Booth, executive producer, Sunset Vine. “That gives a bit more flexibility in production.”

“From Sunset’s point's point of view we pitched in November midway through the Euro’s playoffs. It is actually a S+V Scotland production. We confidently told the BBC that Scotland were going to qualify. We got that wrong. But we're still here.”

Back in Salford, the post-production team will work from four Avid suites to clip and publish to various different platforms. This is done in conjunction with Picture Shop, the facility that provided a similar job to the BBC’s Paris Olympics efforts.

The main virtual studio, designed by Lightwell, is described by Booth as “a deluxe Swiss Chalet on the banks of Lake Lucerne. It features an exact replica of Lake Lucerne in the virtual environment behind it.

“That’s our main studio area. We also have a downstairs green room represented as well. We have virtual screens to conduct two-way interviews and analysis.”

We've got a lot of learnings ourselves at Sunset+Vine from designing a virtual setup at Ealing eating Broadcast Centre for the Amazon Prime Every Game Every Goal Premier League programme. This studio is next generation and has AR capability. We hope it’s going to be striking and impressive.”

Alongside cost, sustainability was at the forefront of planning. “It’s the reason to go with remote productions,” Bigwood says.

Crew are travelling to the country on Eurostar as much as possible. “There's a lot of logistics. And Switzerland's not the easiest places to get to sometimes,” says Tracy Van Ross, production executive.

ENG crews with LiveU packs will cover the Wales and English camps. A BBC Wales crew is covering the Welsh camp and also looking after S4C Welsh language coverage.

Sustainability is also a key theme for BBC editorial as well. “For example, we’ve got pieces planned about the stadium roof in Zurich (where England's group match versus the Netherlands takes place)
which has a wildflower meadow on it to aid the journey of bees coming from the mountainous areas in Switzerland,” says Booth. “One of the Welsh players is writing a thesis about sustainability and football which we're going to explore more deeply.”

In previous recent tournaments the technical resources have been shared with ITV but that’s not the case this time around. In part this is because there is no independent IBC

Bigwood says, “The majority of our sharing with ITV, whether it be feeds or space, is because there's been an IBC. In addition, while we’re in Salford they've got a different approach from us in London. So it’s not as straightforward to share, as we have done in the past, but there's been various conversations along the way.”

The broadcasters did however share access to time with the teams prior to kick-off at St George's Park in which squad players were filmed in their full kit for repurposing into TV graphics.

This is a much smaller event than the FIFA World Cup next summer which will host 78 matches. While there is little that can be taken into USA, Mexico and Canada from Switzerland as a template, the BBC will be taking note of tests by BBC R&D to reduce the delay that live matches take to reach iPlayer versus its broadcast channels.

“It's actually quite a big focus as we look ahead to the World Cup,” says Bigwood. “Because of the time differences and number of matches more people are going to be consuming matches on iPlayer. It's a big priority of the BBC to try and bring [delay] down.”

Bigwood suggests Switzerland’s work in time directive, which protects the hours people work, has been “something to contend with and plan for” but that it’s all been a smooth process. “We'll find out in a few weeks’ time,” he adds.

BTS: Tour de France

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How wind tunnel data, official route topography, multi-screen live feeds and 21 daily outside broadcasts bring the most brutally mountainous Tour De France ever to fans on their sofa.

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The 112th Tour de France begins on Saturday, July 5 in Lille with 22 teams and 176 cyclists covering 3,338.8 km over 21 stages six of which are hilly and six classified as mountain stages including an individual time trial which finishes on a mountain summit.

Those might be the bare facts but it doesn’t begin to tell the story of the herculean effort of the athlete’s toiling up hills most of us would give up on within a metre, nor of the travelling circus that constitutes the tour’s organisation and media coverage.

This is last year that the Warner Bros. Discovery owned broadcaster shares rights in UK with ITV. From 2026 it will have exclusivity.

This year TNT Sports has linear coverage of every stage in the UK and Ireland. Eurosport will deliver linear coverage of every stage across Europe; every stage is streaming on HBO Max and discovery+ is streaming every stage in the UK, Italy, Germany and Austria ahead of HBO Max launching next year.

The host broadcaster is France TV working for Tour organiser Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) with technical provision subcontracted to Euromedia Group (EMG).

TNT Sports takes the clean feed and the dirty feed which is produced by France TV and EMG, plus the six isolated feeds from motorbikes covering the peloton and feeds from two helicopters which circle the route.

New for this year’s Tour from TNT Sports is a second screen experience available on discovery+ in a quad screen format.  The multiscreen format debuted for the Giro d’Italia and gives constant coverage of one heli feed and three motos.

The feeds are brought into TNT Sports’ gallery containing a video and audio switcher and replay functions. “We produce that with commentary so viewers are always getting the front of the Peloton, the mid of the Peloton and the back plus the heli feed,” says TNT Sports Head of Cycling Guy Voisin.

TNT Sports also has a unilateral motorcycle feed in amongst the Peloton, the feed from which is also delivered alongside the host feed and muxed by EMG.

Currently viewers are unable to select one of the quad views and play it full screen. “It’s strictly a platform limitation on D+ but we we're going to be able to do it from next year on HBO Max,” Voisin says.

“There are two reasons to do this. The first is for super fans who gets to watch images that they may not see in the host produced version. We know from Giro d’Italia that super fans are watching. It’s not a huge amount, but we're in the percentages.

“For example, in a time trial instead of just the helicopter we can offer a motorcycle following individual riders. If you’re a fan of a Norwegian or Greek rider you can follow them from start to finish and not necessarily rely on the production feed who may think that the French or English riders are more important and cut to them more.”

It also helps explain the story of the race when the peloton, leaders and stragglers are split along way apart.

Additionally, the race teams themselves are able to view the multi-screen and react more quickly to events on track then would be immediately obvious from just seeing the traditional host broadcast.

TNT Sports trailed the concept during Italian race Strade Bianche sharing the ISOs with 13 of the 18 World Tour teams. “For them the importance was, they were able to see an incident happen in the race and report it back to their chase cars 90 seconds before they would have seen it on the broadcast feed. They’re able to judge tactics and the safety of the race. We offer it to all the teams so it’s equal.”

A prime example during the Gira was when a sporting director of one of the teams messaged Senior Cycling Producer Doug Ferguson to say he was watching the quad split in the chase car when one of their riders had a fall.

“It was a minor fall but the incident wasn't shown in the world feed because it happened in the middle of the Peloton (not affecting the race leaders),” Ferguson explains. “Because they were watching the quad screen it meant that their mechanic in the back of the car was ready straight away to fix a new wheel and get the rider back in the race quicker than normal. That, they said, was fantastically helpful. It probably saved them two minutes of race time.”

21 OBs and a moving town

The RF technology that EMG provides has improved to the point that there are rarely issues with signals dropping.  Signals from the motos are broadcast to a plane circling at 26000ft and received by its onboard satellite. This is retransmitted back to the TV compound on site where there are two antennas (main and back up) that are constantly tracking the plane for the best signal.

“The only real dropout is where we get incredibly bad weather or when they're going through a tunnel,” Voisin says.

The host feed is effectively a production of 21 different outside broadcasts in which the TV compound moves from stage to stage over three weeks. “It’s a moving town every single day,” says Ferguson. “It's a sight to behold. It's at least 4000 vehicles (teams, media etc) on the road. Each official vehicle is allocated a number and I’ve seen numbers over 9000 on the road.

“The guys who put the barriers out in the last 3K drive through the night to get to the next finish town, set them out then sleep all day. They don't see the race.”

TNT Sports receives its ten signals at one of two tech hubs at Hilversum and London’s BT Tower. There it is demuxed and enters the TNT network as IPTV which is then manipulated into unilateral feeds for 47 countries.

A number of countries have their own TNT Sports’ production wrapping around the race, among tem Spain, France and the UK. A team in Paris produces the ‘pan feed’ for countries that don’t have a local production. This is a multilingual feed produced in 19 different languages.

The UK show is presented from The Curve at Stockley Park Studios where Ferguson is senior producer. He also helps develop different analytical techniques, several of which are new this year.

For example, with Italian time trial specialist Filippo Ganna, who rides for Ineos Grenadiers, TNT Sports gained access to wind tunnel data from the testing Ganna made in April for a slightly tweaked riding position.

“Basically, he had his hands slightly lower down on the handle bar which completely changes the aerodynamic profile,” Ferguson explains. “We convert that raw data to explain why the teams take so much time and effort to use expensive wind tunnels and find 10 watts of difference, which could be the difference between first and second place.

“We recreate this data with all the coefficient drags and air particles showing the air flow over the rider in different positions. We can show how different riding positions can make a critical difference in time on the course.”

During the coverage, ex pro cyclist Adam Blythe can use the graphic to explain why, when the rider is in a lower position, they could hold it for a longer time.

“We take highly complex science and make it understandable and functional which for the Tour is vital because the aim is to attract new fans,” Ferguson says. “This is the sport’s Ryder Cup or Lions Tour or Grand National. It’s the event that everybody watches who doesn't normally watch pro cycling.”

Original data for meticulous storytelling

TNT also got access to wind tunnel tests with double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel last November in California. He was working on a position for a mountain time trial (which features in the Tour this year).

“His position was really low on the bike,” Ferguson says. “He's like a blooming eel. Highly wind resistant but for a climb when the bike is at such a steep angle his normal riding posture was restricted. So, they were trying different positions to get him higher on the bike. While they were trialling that, they realised that his hands were bumping off the visor of his helmet – so they cut a piece out of the visor out and eventually got him to a position where his hands are right up to his face but he can still see.

“We're going to use that wind tunnel information to explain it in presentation - none of which we could do if we were just in a normal studio.”

All the top riders post some elements of their data although many won’t reveal their weight so as not to give too clues to the opposition.

Voisin says the teams are understandably a bit secretive about some of it. “At the same time, they are dealing with the recent history of cycling which is not always pretty. The more they can explain their speed and their preferences in a fair and technologically advanced way the better it is for the sport. They all understand this.”

He continues, “We’re in constant discussions with the teams. They give us good access. They’ll let us into team buses and wind tunnels. This is a lot to do with how we share back with them.”

Since 2023, TNT Sports has given the teams three minutes of bespoke video content. Voisin explains, “Whenever we own worldwide rights for highlights [and it has the rights to two thirds of the 300 pro cycling races worldwide] we give them three minutes for their social media. That helps us because they will promote our wider coverage but they also give us access because we're giving them something back. We have the rights, you guys are the gladiators, here's a little something back in exchange for putting on a great show. They have opened their doors much wider than ever before and specifically in the last year.”

The Tour makes available data about power, cadence, speed and heart rate but these are a fraction of the amount of sensors the athletes’ wear. Most data is restricted. The Jumbo-Visma team, for example, have a shirt which contains a breathing sensor revealing information about the exchange of oxygen in the blood.

“They pull that data off it in real time but use it internally since during the race it could be very determining,” Voisin says. “There are sensors that can determine when an athlete is low on blood sugar and therefore a good time for the opposition to attack. These sensors have been banned. The UCI is working very hard at making sure that nothing can be taken out of context to affect the race.  We have limitations on which sensors we can use in the race right now.”

“You can even get stress and strain levels out of the WHOOP data [a wrist worn sensor that captures data on an athlete’s physical condition] and that could be considered useful to a competitor. It's a big negotiation every time we want to put any type of data in the feed.”

Mapping mountains and explaining incline

The routes are announced in October for the following year’s tour. APO provides the teams with GPS files and mapping which they input into an app called Velo Viewer.  TNT Sports has just begun using this too as the basis for analysis presented in 3D AR graphics.

“The red sections are very steep uphills, the blues are very steep downhills, and you can select whatever section you want to look at in any detail,” Ferguson explains of the source topology. “You've got maps so that for a Finish Line, teams can look in detail to understand where to position themselves for specific turns. Teams will have all of this displayed in the car and we're now using this on set.

“One of the hardest things to get across is how difficult a climb is. Most people can't really get their head around numbers like 19 kilometres at 7.5 percent. In the UK, in particular, there's absolutely no comparison that we can make. Hardknott Pass is 30 per cent in sections but it's only 4-5k long.”

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Tour’s King of the Mountains competition, the organisers have constructed a route with over 50,000 metres of elevation gain.

Stage 6 on July 10 covers 201.5km from Bayeux to Vire Normandie through the heart of ‘Norman Switzerland,’ a hilly region in northern France known with tight roads and more than 3,500 metres of elevation gain in one day.

Stage 18, Vif to Courchevel Col de la Loze on July 24 is 171km long has a 5,000m elevation gain, with summits culminating on top of the 2,304-metre Col de la Loze. It’s the hardest stage in the 2025 Tour de France.

“That's horrendous. We can display that animated out of the floor in front of our studio position so our presenters, when they step towards it, will almost be dwarfed by its scale. It looks much more dramatic than saying its 20K at 6.4 per cent.”

A returning graphic is the inclinometer, a life size Subbuteo figure on a bike, demonstrates the angle of the rider on the climb, which at one point on the route inclines to 20 per cent.

“It's horribly steep, but saying that it’s 20 per cent for these 200 metres is nowhere near as good as showing it. It's a serious point. That could be the point where a rider breaks. At this point they’ve already got three weeks of fatigue in their legs. It might only take 200 metres at this severity to lose the race. It gives us an emotive but simple way to talk about it."

 

Scott Gershin Takes the Audience on a Sonic Journey

interview and words for HPA 

Scott Gershin is an award-winning sound supervisor, sound designer, and mixer who has been a pioneer and leader in the film and gaming community for over three decades.

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After studying mixing and music at Berklee College of Music, Gershin was one of the first to use computers to edit and design sound against picture (using an Atari computer to design Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, 1987).

From the mid-1980s, he became the main sound designer at Soundelux, working on award-winning films like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Born on the Fourth of July, Glory, and Steel Magnolias during his first two years at Soundelux. In 1991, he established Soundelux Media Labs, later called Soundelux Design Music Group (DMG). His vision was to create a sound design think tank supporting multiple industries. In addition to his film work, Scott and his team also supported sound design for theme parks, commercials, music videos, and industrials (such as Nike) before lending his talents and entering into the interactive entertainment industry, expanding their services to include voice-over recording and casting, as well as music composition.

Scott has designed and supervised such films as Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Maya & the Three, Nightcrawler, Pacific Rim, Hellboy 2, Chronicles of Riddick, Team America, Shrek, Star Trek, Blade II, Flubber, Heat, Braveheart, JFK, Home Alone, Cliffhanger, The Doors, Book of Life, Tarzan, and American Beauty, to name a few.

After 29 years and the sale of Soundelux, Gershin departed and joined and founded several divisions including Formosa Interactive, Sound Lab at Technicolor, and The Sound Lab, a Keywords Studio, contributing to more than 100 movies and the same number of video games.

He is credited with bringing film-quality sound into the interactive entertainment industry, including working with major game studios such as Riot, Capcom, Square Enix, Platinum, Microsoft, Sony Games, Activision, Tencent, NetEase, EA, Insomniac, and id.

Earlier this year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Audio Network Guild to add to his 13 MPSE Golden Reel Awards (close to 40 nominations), an Emmy (for Maya and the Three), a Lumiere Award (for his VR work), numerous G.A.N.G. and TEC Awards, and a BAFTA nomination for American Beauty.

With thanks to Scott Gershin for taking the time to talk with HPA.

You have described yourself as an ‘audio photographer.’ Can you explain what this means?
Where people will use a camera to capture a moment, my job is to collect audio snapshots or samples of the world around us. Anything that makes a sound—from animals to weaponry to vehicles, to banging objects together, to the sounds of people living their lives… A lifetime of collecting or recording sounds that can one day be used on a variety of movies and games to tell stories and create experiences. It’s my paint.

I’m constantly listening to everything everywhere I go, creating a mental database of the sounds of life—how they differ from city to city or country to country… cultural differences, technological differences. Such as how emergency sirens sound different in different parts of the world or something as simple as the sounds of children playing in a schoolyard or the way different professionals communicate, such as traffic controllers or police dispatch operators. Trying to capture the vernacular. To understand the similarities and differences of each area and generation within an area.

There are just so many wonderful sounds. Often, I will capture them and manipulate them to create something else. But one of the most effective uses of sound is silence—to create contrast between chaos and nothingness. A high-contrast black and white picture. Having an audience only hear themselves breathing. The sudden void of nothingness in a brief moment. When used properly, there’s nothing more powerful.

Do you keep a personal library of sounds that you’ve collected?
Yes! I have close to 5 million sounds now. Even if I am not able to capture a sound, I hear it in my head. So I can reference it later. For instance, I did the FX show Mrs. America, which is set in 1970s New York. Growing up in my early years in NY, I remember the sound of Greenwich Village and New York City. I remembered the sound of the city… I wanted to replicate what I remembered so you could even smell it. I wanted to capture and recreate what I remembered, including the accents, the sounds of the city, and the slang and vernacular of that era. I spent a lot of time with the actors in our loop group to capture that sound.

Whether I remember it or research it, I need to be able to capture that realism to be able to do justice to whatever project I’m on. That includes anything from regional dialects to the way people talk when displaying levels of aggression. Or cars. Or weaponry. Or anything. To me, sound is endlessly fascinating. I’m always listening, and I’ve always got the urge to grab clips and samples of life. I’m always listening to sounds and imagining how I can manipulate them.

Can you give us some examples?
I could grab the ‘whoosh’ of an airplane toilet being flushed and turn that into a weapon or a hurricane. With weaponry, I need to be able to capture the essence of a weapon at a volume that people could listen to without blowing their ears out. That’s tricky. At the beginning of my career, I worked with Oliver Stone on JFK and needed to be able to capture the fatal shots from Dealey Plaza. During production, they shot blanks in Dealey Plaza so I could hear the echo. With the technology at the time, I was able to replicate that echo, and every time that SFX was played, it started from a different perspective and a different place in the theatre.

These are all things that you find through experimentation and play. That’s the creative component of the job. It’s using your craft to enhance the project. Bringing the director’s vision to fruition. Figuring out how to make an audience giggle, cry, fear, awe, or think. Creating the sounds of 25-story robots and creatures in Pacific Rim by going to Long Beach Harbor and dropping 80-foot cargo containers on top of each other to create the sounds of their footsteps and punches. That was loads of fun.

Anyone wanting to do what you do seems to need the ability to tune their ears into the environment. Can you elaborate on your process?
I don’t hear any better than anyone, but I listen better than most. I refer to something I call your inner ear—the ability to hear and imagine sounds in your head. I’ve been such a fan of films, TV, and games my whole life. Watching thousands of hours and listening my whole life, I can hear shows in my head. It’s like playing music. You need to hear it in your head first before playing it. This is the same when I read a script or watch a rough cut. I’m able to hear and feel the movie in my head before I start, which helps guide me as to how I should approach the upcoming project. In addition, when I am starting my sound design, I’ll often try by making the sounds with my voice. The reason I do that is I’m trying to figure out how to make the sound. And also I’ll do that with clients to better describe what I am thinking… Words just don’t work… sometimes I need to vocalize it. It’s extremely helpful if I can imagine what that sound can sound like or remember what that sound sounds like in real life, to determine if I have recorded it and it’s in my library or if I need to record or design it.

The next thing needed is a good understanding of technology. I think of audio tools as paintbrushes that I can use to manipulate pitch, amplify, attenuate, modulate, or otherwise tweak in dozens of different ways. Then I need to figure out what I want this sound to now become, and equally important, when it should be used. I am constantly learning all the newest tools. Did I mention I love technology and those who create it?

On The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), I wanted to approach the design of the spaceships differently, so I had this idea to use guitars. I loosened the strings via a Floyd Rose, then used the whammy (vibrato) bar, tightening them up while I passed through a Marshall amp. I used it as an element to create the sound of the spaceship rising.

Another example was when I recorded a submarine. I found out the real sub was pretty boring, so I created the sounds of the sub from stuff at my home. The air conditioner blades became the engine, the rotating jets in my hot tub became the torpedoes (using an underwater mic), and the depth charges were me in a pool with my aluminum canoe. I blasted the canoe with air releases from the tanks underwater as well as hitting the canoe underwater with many objects, recording with an assortment of mics, including a hydrophone.

For Pacific Rim, I brought in Tina Guo, who’s a famous cellist. I had her scraping and manipulating her cello, playing below the bridge and everywhere we could think of—bowing and plucking—while processing it in real time and running it through a guitar modeler to create an element for the Kaiju’s vocals. Also using exotic synths, processors, anything that makes noise and sound.

People may not realize that you’re the voice of a lot of movie and game characters such as Flubber in Flubber, Herbie in Herbie Fully Loaded, Antie in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Reapers in Blade II, the Dragon in Shrek, and Dogfish in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, to name a few.
Even though none of these characters recite any words, they have to portray emotion. I like to use my voice and manipulate it in real time to create something new. Not human-sounding. A creature—big or small or cute—I use my voice to portray a character that can emote without words, creating the emotion of that character so audiences can understand that character. The illusion has to be perfect. If you know it’s me, I have failed. It must be a perfect marriage, a perfect blend that transcends to be that character. Then the illusion is successful. I vocalized Herbie in Herbie Fully Loaded. I get told a bunch that they didn’t hear my voice… I ask if they found Herbie endearing and cute. They say yes. I say, it’s just a Volkswagen bug… cars don’t sound cute. That’s when I know the illusion worked. It’s one of the things I love to do the most in my career and also the most challenging.

Does your creative process change if you’re doing a video game or a feature film, or are there more similarities than differences?
I find that the creative process in the creation of sounds between video games and movies isn’t actually that much different. Especially when you compare theatrical animation and video games. The design process is very similar.

In a theatrical environment, I’ve got a controlled linear medium in a dark room played back in numerous formats—Stereo, 5.1, or Atmos. I use those spatial formats to their fullest potential. I’m able to playback material at certain volumes and move them around the room to enhance whatever scenario and scene we’re trying to create. I like to take into account the life of the movie. Where it might play in a theatre for 4–10 weeks, it will live the rest of its life in a smaller playback medium like your home theatre, TV set, or headphones. I try to take into account how sound will translate to other mediums—how the dialogue is going to be heard and how it’s going to translate against a full mix.

In gaming, I am creating sounds and mixes that will play back in a user-defined perspective. The player controls perspective and panning and how sounds will mix against other sounds based on gameplay. The audio playback format is similar to TV and movies played in a home environment. In the sound design for film, the sounds are edited in a linear format and will playback exactly the same every time you watch it. In games, the sounds are created and designed as elements that get played back based on how the player interfaces with the game. A keystroke can trigger a sound such as a weapon; a joystick can move the character forward and reverse, left and right; and the sounds being played back that aren’t controlled by the player are triggered based on how the game is progressing or the decisions the player is making. Those sounds and music are being used based on numerous factors… where every time you play the game you’re getting a different variation of the whole soundtrack and the mix.

But at the basic level, when sound designing a creature, a weapon, or an object, it is very similar in both formats. How it is used is very different. Also, in linear formats (film, TV), I am considered post-production. In gaming, I am considered production because I am making assets for a game that, at a later date, will be integrated into the game.

Does sound for film bleed into games or does sound for games influence the sound of film?
Right now, games and film are very much locked in creatively. For instance, video game developers grew up on Star Wars, The Matrix, or other action, science fiction film classics, and they want that sort of experience in their games. Many people from the game world have a deep appreciation of film sound. Even outside of science fiction or combat games, you have more dramatic games which now inspire great TV—The Last Of Us, Arcane, Fallout, Resident Evil are glowing examples. I think where comic books created generations of IP, moving forward I believe games are now taking that space. Both the movie and games industry are in the business of making IP that can be viewed and played on all formats. That’s where, I believe, we’ve been heading. Both mediums are great forms of entertainment.

Is the craft of sound design threatened or enhanced by AI?
Put it this way: we pay a few hundred dollars a year for subscription to Pro Tools, but that’s nothing compared to the technology needed to do visual effects. If you look at budgets on tentpole projects, they’ll spend $100 million on VFX and $400,000 on sound editorial. It’s the other end of the scale. So if it costs $10M to invest in training a decent AI tool for sound, you’ll never make a return on your investment. For that reason, I’m not worried that the art of sound will magically disappear with AI.

AI can also play an important role in aspects of our process. For example, if we’re recording dialogue on location in a big noisy city, often you’re plagued by the background noise. There are already technologies that will clean that dialogue up and make it usable, but AI will take this capability to the next level—enhancing syllables, D’s, S’s can be enhanced to better hear them. Bringing forward mumbled dialogue will be an option. Better ways to blend production dialogue and ADR. These are the tools being created now.

I’m not a big believer in AI as the boogeyman coming to replace my job. I believe and hope AI is going to create better toolsets to help us save time and allow for more creative time. But I am speaking from the point of view of sound design. The use of AI to replace actor dialogue or to automate scriptwriting, etc.—that’s another matter entirely. A lot of discussion is being had in these areas. And I support controlling the use of AI to not replace performers and artists, but to create tools to enhance what we’ve been doing—such as file searches, cleanup and restoration, organizing assets, spotting against picture, creation of pan-able objects following pixel clusters, applying EQ profiles on other sound files, “better EQ matching,” etc. It’ll just be better and more useful plugins.

Do you have a personal favorite of all the titles you’ve worked on?
I’m proud of the diversity of work that I’ve done. I haven’t been pigeonholed to a single genre or style. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best creatives in the business—to tell a diverse style of stories, emotions, and experiences. To make an audience laugh, fear, cheer, and think.

There are projects that define and accent periods of my life—my first movie Honey, I Shrunk The Kids; my close relationship and work with Guillermo del Toro; my experiences with Oliver Stone, James Cameron, Jorge Gutierrez, Wolfgang Petersen, Sam Mendes, John Hughes, David Twohy, and so many more. I was very fortunate early in my career to be exposed to filmmakers who wanted to use sound as a style, not just to create realism, but to create emotion.

What is your goal as a sound designer?
The aim is to try to create a feeling, an emotion, or a reaction—whether that’s making little kids giggle or making people feel uncomfortable. In Alive (1993), I made the plane crash so loud in the theater because I needed to create a sense of audio deprivation after the crash. The only way to do that is through contrast. Using guitar wood and organic elements to bring to life a wooden puppet and allow it to capture the hearts and minds of an audience—to take them on a journey of thought and reflection.

With all the mediums that I work in, you try to get the audience to buy into the sound emanating from that element or character. I don’t create sounds and designs “looking for a movie.” I start with a blank canvas. I take cues from the filmmakers. I read the script. I see the way it’s cut. I see the way the actors are performing within it, and that gives me—as an enthusiast who loves movies—a feeling. How do I contradict or support that feeling? What tricks, tools, and techniques do I have that can enhance that story in ways that don’t break the illusion? You shouldn’t notice the person behind the curtain. Pace and rhythm and pitch all feed into it.

To me, making a movie or a game is similar to being in a band. Everybody has some part to play, and when it comes together and it locks in, then it’s magical.