Costar National Lab Prototyping
The CoSTAR National Lab prototyping team is a small multidisciplinary team of researchers, producers, creative technologists, designers and developers from across the CoSTAR National Lab’s core partners: the National Film and Television School, University of Surrey, Abertay University and Royal Holloway, University of London.
Led by Miles Bernie, Co-Head of Innovation for the CoSTAR National Lab, this team typically works on short, strategic projects that connect cutting-edge research with practical and high-impact industry use cases. We use an Agile sprint-based innovation methodology: ideate, build, test, review, course correct. Repeat!
The team aims to tackle between 4-8 strategic prototyping projects per year, with each project usually lasting 12 weeks.
When a project is completed, the National Lab shares the results for the benefit of the wider industry, including via our own platforms (such as Substack posts and our newsletter), presenting at industry events, running open access workshops and hack events, or publishing Open Source code or knowledge via GitHub (where applicable).
Previous Projects
You can find out more about the previous projects this team has worked on here:
Exploring the promise of dynamic Gaussian Splat technology for object and scene capture within a production pipeline.
Realtime Conjuring for Live Performance: the role that audiovisual Generative AI can play in enhancing human creativity in an ethical way using converged media production
Gaussian Splats & Frosting techniques to support character animation along with inclusive markerless motion capture research*
AI video workflow and tooling focused on training digital likenesses, driving motion of AI characters from live actor performances and dressing characters using AI supported costume design techniques*
* to be published late 2025.
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What’s next for the Prototyping Team?
For the first half of 2026 we will be exploring projects that contribute to the development of AI-enhanced Media Production for Screen, Realtime & Live Performance. We have three main areas of focus for prototyping:
Production tooling and workflows - the role of AI in their development for screen, realtime and live performance
Ethical, legal, creative, human-centred uses of Generative AI
AI enhancement of immersive experiences using a private 5G network with compute resources at the edge of the network to support low-latency and high bandwidth applications
Democratised AI enhanced worldbuilding for immersive environments.
We are also always interested to hear of other significant and sector-wide challenges which companies are facing in developing converged media production tools, software, hardware, content and experiences.
If you are interested in collaborating with us on a future prototyping project, please contact costar.pilots@rhul.ac.uk.
Meet the prototyping team
Miles is Co-Head of Innovation at CoSTAR National Lab leading on prototyping and pilots in partnership with the National Film and Television School. He has expertise in digital strategy and setting up and leading innovation and delivery teams. Before joining CoSTAR Miles worked at the BBC for 13 years where he established and led BBC News Labs focusing on the intersection of journalism, data and digital.
Johnny Johnson is a creative technologist based at the National Film and Television School with over two decades of filmmaking and interactive application experience. Early forays in the camera department on feature films and TV dramas were followed by work in virtual reality, virtual production supervision and direction of films and commercials. He currently focuses on creating content with generative AI.
As Inclusion Research Fellow at CoSTAR National Lab Hazel currently leads our approach to inclusive design through applied research. With experience within design research, experience design, and inclusion, including delivering projects for gov.uk and running training for Google, Hyper Island and Arts Council England, their skills lie in designing technologies and experiences that strategically integrate accessibility, usability and creativity throughout the design process. Hazel helps ensure that accessibility and inclusion are embedded within the development of emerging technologies for the creative industries such as XR, AI and immersive experiences. Hazel is a highly skilled communicator who specialises in bringing diverse users and participants together to enable inclusive innovation.
