The Starting Pixel Podcast

Ed Tracy, BAFTA winner, Emmy nominee and self-declared forever 32, is back on Starting Pixel for a short teaser ahead of Starting Pixel Live on the 14th of October at Rich Mix in Shoreditch. We start with an argument for calling them visualised podcasts rather than video podcasts, because the moment a show forgets it's audio first, it risks turning into really bad TV. Then there's a bit of ribbing about awards, ageing and two rambly middle-aged men.Ed explains Studio One, the browser-based creative studio he's building. It chains together the image, video, editing, sound, music and script AIs he was juggling as a filmmaker, so a whole team can log into one project, iterate and leave notes. That leads into how much MCP servers and vibe coding have changed what one person can build. Highlights include a plug-in that turned out to be easy to make and a native VeePod drop-down menu that Claude wrote straight into an Unreal Engine project. We also ask whether anyone actually wants another dashboard, or just a pair of scissors that cuts.Then we get to virtual production. Ed's reasoning is simple: anything made with pure AI can be ripped off, so he wants to make work that's harder to copy. He walks through the workflow he's been testing with Ben Saffer, which involves shooting performers in a flatly lit grey box with physical set pieces and proper camera tracking, then sending that footage through Seedance. He also covers the support from CoStar and the tests at Royal Holloway. It's a taster of what he'll show in the room in London.Chapters0:00 Visualised podcasts, not video podcasts4:26 Ed returns, and how we met6:07 Starting Pixel Live and last year's talk7:49 What is Studio One?10:19 Why podcast editing got so hard11:16 MCP servers and vibe-coded plugins12:50 Claude builds a VeePod menu in Unreal Engine14:53 Dashboards vs a pair of scissors17:00 AI for virtual production18:53 Grey box, camera tracking and Seedance22:02 CoStar, Royal Holloway and the Live dateHosted by The Dean Street Podcast StudioBecome a member of Starting Pixel, receive our exclusive weekly e-bulletin, join our WhatsApp chatrooms, and receive early access to live show tickets. Head to startingpixel.com to sign up.✅ Subscribe: @StartingPixel🎙️ Podcast playlist: The Starting Pixel Podcast📱 Follow on socials: Instagram / TikTok / Bluesky @starting_pixel

Director of photography Beatrice 'Bea' Delgado Mena joins Rob at Starting Pixel to talk about the practical realities of shooting on virtual production stages. Drawing on eight feature films and dozens of shorts split between London and Spain, Bea walks through what VP genuinely nails — car interiors, night scenes, and impossible-to-reach environments — and where it still falls apart, from the sun you can't place behind an LED wall to the long-lens shots that break spatial believability.
Bea gets into the nitty-gritty of collaborating with art departments and Unreal designers who haven't yet learned to think like a camera, using a university short film and a one-day, six-scene UN Women shoot ('Bystander') to show how DOPs often end up owning the space on set. It's an honest look at the give-and-take between budget, testing time, and the illusion of realism.
The conversation then turns to AI, where Bea is refreshingly blunt: she hates it — not mainly out of job fear, but over environmental cost and what it does to human creativity and attention. Rob pushes back with an optimist's view, and the two range across coding, capitalism, phones as the next cigarette, and whether we'll ever reclaim the time technology keeps promising us.
Chapters
0:00 Framing up and camera talk
0:59 Blackmagic Micros and the right tool for podcasts
4:00 Warner Brothers rooms and recording setup
5:52 The origins of Starting Pixel
7:00 Meet Bea: DOP across London and Spain
9:02 How Bea got into virtual production
15:33 What VP nails: car shots and night scenes
20:20 Where VP breaks: the sun, lenses and space
29:45 Designing sets that think like a camera
35:45 The one-day Bystander shoot for UN Women
44:20 Who really owns the space on a VP set
49:12 AI: Bea's blunt take vs Rob's optimism
66:00 Phones, attention and reclaiming our time
Hosted by The Dean Street Podcast Studio
Become a member of Starting Pixel, receive our exclusive weekly e-bulletin, join our WhatsApp chatrooms, and receive early access to live show tickets. 
 Head to startingpixel.com to sign up.
✅ Subscribe: @StartingPixel🎙️ Podcast playlist: The Starting Pixel Podcast📱 Follow on socials: Instagram / TikTok / Bluesky @starting_pixel

Director of photography Beatrice 'Bea' Delgado Mena joins Rob at Starting Pixel to talk about the practical realities of shooting on virtual production stages. Drawing on eight feature films and dozens of shorts split between London and Spain, Bea walks through what VP genuinely nails — car interiors, night scenes, and impossible-to-reach environments — and where it still falls apart, from the sun you can't place behind an LED wall to the long-lens shots that break spatial believability.
Bea gets into the nitty-gritty of collaborating with art departments and Unreal designers who haven't yet learned to think like a camera, using a university short film and a one-day, six-scene UN Women shoot ('Bystander') to show how DOPs often end up owning the space on set. It's an honest look at the give-and-take between budget, testing time, and the illusion of realism.
The conversation then turns to AI, where Bea is refreshingly blunt: she hates it — not mainly out of job fear, but over environmental cost and what it does to human creativity and attention. Rob pushes back with an optimist's view, and the two range across coding, capitalism, phones as the next cigarette, and whether we'll ever reclaim the time technology keeps promising us.
Chapters
0:00 Framing up and camera talk
0:59 Blackmagic Micros and the right tool for podcasts
4:00 Warner Brothers rooms and recording setup
5:52 The origins of Starting Pixel
7:00 Meet Bea: DOP across London and Spain
9:02 How Bea got into virtual production
15:33 What VP nails: car shots and night scenes
20:20 Where VP breaks: the sun, lenses and space
29:45 Designing sets that think like a camera
35:45 The one-day Bystander shoot for UN Women
44:20 Who really owns the space on a VP set
49:12 AI: Bea's blunt take vs Rob's optimism
66:00 Phones, attention and reclaiming our time
Hosted by The Dean Street Podcast Studio
Become a member of Starting Pixel, receive our exclusive weekly e-bulletin, join our WhatsApp chatrooms, and receive early access to live show tickets. 
Head to startingpixel.com to sign up.✅ Subscribe: @StartingPixel🎙️ Podcast playlist: The Starting Pixel Podcast📱 Follow on socials: Instagram / TikTok / Bluesky @starting_pixel

Rob sits down with Louisa, a virtual production supervisor whose career runs from being the first VP hire at DNEG through House of the Dragon at Leavesden to the biggest LED volume in the world in NantStudios, Australia. They dig into what it actually takes to shoot on a 12-metre stage where full houses with running water and two-storey barns get built inside the volume — and why, at that scale, the classic VP headaches like depth of field and parallax quietly disappear.The conversation gets into the craft: the shift from Unreal Engine environments toward as-much-photographic-as-possible backdrops, the 2.5D vs full-3D debate, and the minimalist VFX-style approach of building only what the camera will actually see. Louisa is refreshingly honest about the human side too — how you win over experienced cinematographers and DOPs by going on a discovery process with them rather than dragging them away from their craft, and where the decision to 'go VP' actually gets made on a production.They close on the big shifts reshaping everything: AI as a productivity tool rather than a threat, one-button VP demos, the bridge between AI-generated concepts and real production budgets, and how influencers, podcasts and traditional film-and-TP are all merging into one messy new frontier. Plus high-vis on film sets, floppy disks, and skating to where the puck is going.Chapters

• ​0:00 Solo setup and recording paranoia
• ​0:50 Why does everyone wear black on film sets?
• ​2:41 Meet Louisa: DNEG, Lux Machina and Australia
• ​2:56 The VP journey: pre-volume days to The Mandalorian
• ​3:56 House of the Dragon and reflections that give VP away
• ​5:02 Image-based lighting and back screen projection
• ​7:05 The world's biggest LED volume: 12 metres and giant sets
• ​8:48 Parallax, 2.5D and the minimalist VFX approach
• ​12:00 Photographic vs Unreal: marrying set and screen
• ​13:51 Winning over DOPs and where the VP decision is made
• ​20:05 AI as a productivity tool and one-button VP demos
• ​32:15 AI concepts vs real budgets; rebuilding sets from AI
• ​33:27 Shifting sands: cinema, podcasts and new frontiers
• ​36:21 Influencers, brands and the new star ecosystem
• ​40:00 Big screens vs small, IBC and a film that made the team cry

Become a member of Starting Pixel, receive our exclusive weekly e-bulletin, join our WhatsApp chatrooms, and receive early access to live show tickets. Head to startingpixel.com to sign up.

Recorded earlier in 2026, in this episode, Rob talks to Andrew Leeke, who's spent time working in advertising, music, and now virtual production. From that vantage point, he's watching AI hype with a sceptical eye: yes, the tech is impressive, but is anyone actually watching what it makes? He talks about authenticity, the danger of homogeneous content, why animation is worth protecting, and what filmmakers should actually be worried about—spoiler: it's not AI.

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What does AI actually do for filmmaking? Chris Jorna shares how he made a sci-fi film in one day with minimal budget by rethinking what tools are for. Discover why the most powerful use of AI isn't about impressive visuals — it's about supporting authentic performance, enabling independent storytellers, and building worlds from a single image.

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In this episode of The Starting Pixel Podcast, Rob is joined by John Murphy, Design Director at BBC Sport, for a deep dive into the creative and technical realities of virtual studios in live broadcast.John reflects on BBC Sport’s early adoption of real-time game engines, green screen, and later XR and LED workflows—beginning with Match of the Day and evolving through major global events including the Olympics, World Cups, and European Championships. He shares candid insight into balancing creativity within engineering-led environments, managing risk in live transmission, and bringing presenters, directors, and operations teams along on the journey.The conversation explores what it really takes to design virtual broadcast environments that serve editorial purpose rather than spectacle, the lessons learned from early virtual studios, and how hybrid approaches combining real locations with virtual elements often deliver the strongest results.A practical, experience-led discussion on virtual production for broadcast—covering green screen, Unreal Engine, LED XR, creative process, and why technology should always support the story, not distract from it.

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Filmmaker and YouTuber Joshua M Kerr joins Rob Chandler at the Dean Street Podcast Studio to unpack the rise of YouTube-first virtual production and what it means for indie creators. Joshua shares how his fascination with The Mandalorian led him from claymation to building one of the most practical and educational VP channels on YouTube.

Together they dive deep into accessible filmmaking tech — from low-cost LED panels and green screen workflows to real-time tracking with iPhones — exploring how Unreal Engine, AI, and virtual production are redefining what’s possible for storytellers without blockbuster budgets.

They discuss the creative freedom these tools unlock, the ongoing myths around “expensive” virtual production, and how today’s “lo-fi done right” approach might just be the next revolution in independent filmmaking.

🎥 Topics include:

• Building a VP channel from scratch

• Low-budget real-time filmmaking

• Green screen vs LED vs AI keying

• Creative paralysis inside Unreal

• Monetisation and creator burnout on YouTube

• The future of indie virtual production

More from Joshua M Kerr:

www.youtube.com/@JoshuaMKerr

e: [email protected]
www.joshuamkerr.com

Recorded at The Dean Street Podcast Studio, powered by VeePod.

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In this episode of The Starting Pixel Podcast, Rob Chandler talks with Tucker Downs, colour scientist at ROE Visual, about the hidden science behind LED panels in virtual production. Tucker breaks down the essentials of pixel pitch, brightness, scan ratios, reflectance, and why these factors matter to filmmakers and cinematographers. The conversation explores how colour order systems like Munsell and standards such as Rec.709 and ACES shape what we see on screen, and why cameras and LED walls don’t always “see” colour the same way. Tucker also unpacks the challenge of moiré patterns, the compromises in LED wall design, and how RGB vs. full-spectrum solutions affect skin tones and immersion. The discussion closes with perspectives on the economics of large vs. smaller VP stages, how AI might streamline shot planning and workflows, and where LED panel technology is heading.

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In this conversation, Rob Chandler and David C. Smith delve into the fascinating world of virtual production, particularly focusing on driving plates and the technology that enhances realism in filmmaking. They discuss the evolution of driving techniques, the importance of 360-degree filming, and the challenges of managing data in high-fidelity productions. The conversation also touches on the role of Unreal Engine in creating immersive environments and the future of driving plates in the film industry.Plate Pros

email: [email protected]: www.instagram.com/plate_proswww.platepros.com

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