Why We Film on Location — Always

No studio, no backdrop, no exceptions. A look at how Ottawa Podcast episodes get made, and why the room matters as much as the conversation.

Every Ottawa Podcast episode starts the same way: we load the gear into a vehicle and drive to wherever the story lives.

We've filmed between the service vans at a plumbing shop, on the pass of a 28-seat kitchen during prep, in a warehouse aisle between towers of moving boxes. It would be easier in a studio. The light would be controlled, the sound would be clean, nobody would have to move a pallet jack out of frame.

But something happens when people talk in their own space. Denis Lavoie is a different interview standing next to his first van than he would be under studio lights. Amelia Tran reaches for a pan mid-sentence to show you what she means. The room does half the storytelling.

There's a practical philosophy here too. Ottawa Podcast exists to document the city as it actually is — the workshops, kitchens, warehouses and side streets where the real economy happens. A studio would flatten all of that into a backdrop.

So the rule stands: we go where the story is. The audio team has learned to hate us politely.