[Flux]

Brilliant series - the expectations were so high but they more than lived up to them. I’ve certainly screamed at my TV a lot more these past few weeks than I ever have before!

Tonight’s episode of the visualised podcast was the first I’ve seen, but presumably they weren’t all filmed in the radio theatre?

As a general point, I’m still not really sure what is gained from doing the spin-off as a visualised podcast - they could have still done a TV spin-off and the podcast in the same way as they did this series, but I don’t think the TV show gets anything out of being branded as part of the podcast. The audience surely doesn’t care about this sort of thing and, apart from the mics being front and centre (surely a lapel mic wouldn’t have sounded *that* bad for audio listeners!) and there being a couple more rough edits than you would expect (the odd mic left up, one of the lights on Ed turned off part-way through and there were a few odd camera cuts), the production quality was still very similar to just a normal studio-based TV show. At least they weren’t all wearing headphones on-screen for no reason (looking at you Newscast!).

Budget. Planning a podcast first and then shooting and reversioning it is visually is cheaper than making a programme first. I know it sounds like they’re interchangable, but you’d be surprised at how much it changes the approach and budgeting at the pitch and commissioning stages when a few cameras and basic lighting rig (plus an edit, of course) is added on top, rather than budgeting for a full studio show from the off.