Edward Dawson Taylor

While technology has always served creativity, has creativity ever been driven by technology more profoundly than in 2026? Some of the world’s most distinguished experts at the intersection of film, content creation, vertical video, VFX, virtual production and AI will share their work and insights into the latest developments shaping the future of creativity and technology.

After their presentations, practitioners working in film, vertical video, VFX, virtual production and AI come back on stage for a joint discussion moderated by Kate Bulkley. It picks up the threads from the talks: which tools have genuinely changed the craft, which have mainly changed the budget, and what both mean for the people who work with them every day.

In 45 minutes, Edward Dawson-Taylor takes a slower and closer look at how virtual production actually works. Drawing on his work as Virtual Art Department Lead on The Lion King and as a senior artist on The Jungle Book, he goes through the core principles of in-camera VFX — the camera frustum, tracking, the relationship between wall and lens — along with the biggest opportunities the method brings and the challenges that come with it. Worked through on the wall itself rather than on slides. The aim is that the audience leaves understanding how virtual production works, and able to judge where it fits.

In 45 minutes, Edward Dawson-Taylor from CG Pro shows what virtual production can do right now — from 2D plates and 2.5D layers through to fully rendered 3D environments, alongside newer approaches such as Gaussian splatting and AI-assisted content creation. All of it live on the LED wall with the tracked camera running. Less a lecture than a run through the possibilities: what the technology reaches today, and what that opens up for filmmaking. The aim is that the audience leaves with a real sense of what the medium is now capable of.