LOS ANGELES—LA28 has announced that the International Broadcast Center supporting broadcasters around the world covering the 2028 Summer Olympics will be located at Warner Bros. Studios’ The Ranch Lot in Burbank.

LA28 has initially announced in May of 2025 that a newly developed facility, the Hollywood Park Studios, located next to the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood would house the international broadcast center.

Instead, the International Olympic Committee Executive Board recently approved plans for LA28 to use two studio campuses—Hollywood Park Studios (HPS) in the Inglewood Zone next to the SoFi stadium and the much larger The Ranch Lot across town in the Burbank Zone.

LA28 will use the HPS facility as a key media and operational hub for the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Paralympic Opening Ceremony, Swimming, Basketball and the Main Press Center (MPC).

More specifically, HPS production facilities will support Main Press Center operations, provide space for broadcasters conducting live stand-ups, and accommodate a variety of other operational functions.

The Ranch will house the International Broadcast Center (IBC), the global operational headquarters for Media Rights Holders who have secured the exclusive rights to distribute Games coverage. This campus offers the scale, technical infrastructure and production facilities required to support one of the world’s largest temporary broadcast operations and will be fully operational for several months before, during and after the LA28 Games.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—The California Legislature has approved a plan to encourage studios to film in-state by increasing the cap on tax credits from $330 million to $750 million.

The trailer bill marks the first of two significant steps to protect and expand good-paying film and television jobs in California. The second step to securing the state’s position as a global entertainment hub will come this week, as AB 1138, the California Film and Television Jobs Act, moves forward in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who proposed the credit increase last fall, is expected to sign the bill.

“More than doubling the program’s allotted cap to $750 million annually underscores just how vital our industry is to the economic health of our state, and the power of our members' voices,” the Entertainment Union Coalition said in a statement.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Democrat representing parts of Los Angeles County, applauded the expansion of the tax credit.

“After years of uncertainty, workers can once again set the stage, cue the lights, and roll the cameras—because California is keeping film and TV jobs anchored right here, where they belong,” Zbur said. “This is a historic investment in our creative economy, our working families, small businesses and the communities that depend on this industry to thrive. We’re not just restarting production—we’re rewriting the script to put workers back at the center of California's entertainment future.”

Since 2009, the Film & Television Tax Credit Program has been successful in creating over 197,000 jobs and generating $26 billion in economic activity across California. According to the L.A. County Economic Development Corporation, every dollar spent through the program generates $24.40 in economic output, $16.14 in GDP, $8.60 in wages and $1.07 in state and local tax revenue.

In recent years, the state has seen a decrease in tax revenues from film and TV production, partly due to the double whammy of the pandemic and the almost year-long actors and writers strike that crippled the industry in 2023. But the governor’s office attributed the main reason for the decline to the limits of the current program.

This program has been oversubscribed year after year, with more productions applying than can be accommodated under the current cap,” Newsom said when he proposed the increase in October. “Between 2020 and 2024, data shows California lost production spending due to limited tax-credit funding and increased competition in other states and countries, directly impacting state jobs and local economies​​.”

INGLEWOOD, Calif.—Los Angeles Rams owner E. Stanley Kroenke has announced plans to develop a massive state-of-the-art movie studio and production facility called Hollywood Park Studios. The facility, which is being developed as part of the 300-acre mixed-use destination in Inglewood, Calif., will initially be used to host the International Broadcast Center during the 2028 Olympics in L.A.

As the host site of the International Broadcast Center (IBC) for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LA28), Hollywood Park Studios will house hundreds of media rights holders from around the world who have acquired the exclusive rights to distribute the coverage of the Games.

During the games, the IBC will offer broadcasters space for offices, studios and control rooms, as well as other services, that will be used to deliver broadcast and digital coverage of the event. Following the Games in 2028, HPS will be available for use for studio production and operations.

Construction on the facility is slated to start in late May.

"The vision for Hollywood Park has always been to build a city within a city combining media, entertainment and technology that will transform the greater Los Angeles area," said Kroenke. "We are thrilled to expand the role we will play in the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games by hosting the International Broadcast Center and the global media outlets who will call it home during that summer. Beyond 2028, Hollywood Park Studios will be open to welcome a new industry to our live, work, play destination and bring a little bit of Hollywood to Hollywood Park."

HPS is part of Hollywood Park's master development plan, focusing on media, entertainment, and technology (MET), anchored by SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater, and the NFL Media office building. All MET facilities, including HPS, have on campus access to retail stores, restaurants, and a hotel, the developer reported.

Hosting the IBC is the latest element of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games which will take place at Hollywood Park. It was previously announced that SoFi Stadium will be converted into the largest Olympic Swimming venue in history during the Olympic Games and will host the Olympic Opening Ceremony together with the LA Memorial Coliseum, as well as the Opening Ceremony for L.A.'s first ever Paralympic Games in 2028.

"LA28 is proud to be the inaugural tenant of this new state-of-the-art studio in the heart of Inglewood, a key Venue City for the 2028 Games," said LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover. "The International Broadcast Center will serve as one of our first fully operational facilities for the Games, capturing every inspiring moment of the LA28 Games. We're excited to collaborate with our valued partners at Hollywood Park, the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), International Olympic Committee (IOC), and International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to create a world-class broadcast hub that will showcase the best of Los Angeles to billions of viewers."

The first phase of Hollywood Park Studios will occupy 12 acres and will consist of five sound stages, each 18,000 square feet, two of which open to a single 36,000 square foot stage. In addition, HPS will have a three-story 80,000 square foot office building to support stage, production, and post-production activities. HPS will have a dedicated open base camp area, and a parking structure that can accommodate 1,100 cars. In addition, the ground level of the garage features a 20' high bay area to accommodate sixty trailers with power to support movie production activities. Finally, HPS will have mill facilities and will provide full equipment rental services, HPS reported.

The Hollywood Park campus provides for additional phased development of up to 20 build-to-suit stages and an additional 200,000 square feet of related office space with additional structured parking. The first phase and future development will be connected to the campus-wide fiber ring and power centers.

Global architecture and design firm Gensler spearheaded the design for HPS, Clayco will serve as the general contractor, and Pacific Edge as project manager, with financing arranged by Guggenheim Investments.

President Donald Trump on Sunday ordered the imposition of a 100% tariff on films and TV shows produced outside the U.S., lamenting what he claims is the death of the industry and a “threat” to national security.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote:

"The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!"

Even though the order was posted on a social media platform and not signed at a White House ceremony, Hollywood and its investors are taking it seriously, with shares of major entertainment companies falling in premarket trading, with Netflix stocks down nearly 5%.

The American movie industry in 2023 generated $22.6 billion in exports, contributing to a $15.3 billion trade surplus. The industry supported 2.32 million jobs and paid out $229 billion in total wages that same year, according to the Motion Picture Association.

But Hollywood has increasingly taken its business overseas in recent decades. More shooting and post production is being done in Europe and particularly Canada, which has seen total film and TV production revenues increase 31% over the past decade to $10.4 billion in 2022-2023.

Like their manufacturing counterparts, the studios have been able to cut costs via production overseas, lured by lower wages and tax incentives; in a recent survey of studio executives, their top five choices for production locations in the next two years are all outside U.S. borders.

The impact could be devastating to the industry, resulting in fewer entertainment choices, particularly among top streamers such as Netflix and Prime.

“The problem is that pretty much all the studios are moving tons of production overseas to reduce production costs and leverage foreign credits,“ Rosenblatt Securities analyst Barton Crockett told Reuters. “Raising the cost to produce movies could lead studios to make less content. There’s also a risk of retaliatory tariffs against American content overseas.”

Australia and New Zealand, also popular destinations for film production, have already responded to the threat, with Australia’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, stating “nobody should be under any doubt that we will be standing up unequivocally for the rights of the Australian screen industry.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said they were waiting for more details, “but we'll be obviously a great advocate, great champion of that sector and that industry,” he said.

China, the world’s second-largest box office for U.S.-made films, has also stated that it will begin limiting the number of American films permitted for release within the country as a result of Trump’s imposition of a 145% tariff on imports from the country. That country is reportedly responsible for 25% of major studios’ annual worldwide revenue.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, also advocates more filmmaking in the state, but via tax credits instead of direct order. His goal, though, is to make the state more competitive within the U.S.

Last fall, he proposed to expand California’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program to $750 million annually, more than double the current $330 million annual allocation.

“California is the entertainment capital of the world, rooted in decades of creativity, innovation, and unparalleled talent. Expanding this program will help keep production here at home, generate thousands of good-paying jobs, and strengthen the vital link between our communities and the state’s iconic film and TV industry.”

Politico is reporting that Trump may have gotten the idea from actor Jon Voight, who—along with fellow conservatives Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone—are the president’s so-called “Ambassadors to Hollywood.”

Since the Writers Guild of America two weeks ago voted overwhelmingly to strike on May 2 if an agreement wasn’t reached on new contracts with major Hollywood studios, efforts to avoid a shutdown have been ongoing, but at press time, fruitless. 

When the WGA announced the results April 17, it emphasized the issues driving the union to seriously consider the first writers strike in 16 years: Outdated working conditions that don’t take into account the massive changes that have overtaken the TV and film industry since then, namely streaming and the changes brought on by the pandemic which diluted and blurred the lines between theatrical releases and streaming. Also of concern: AI, and the ability for new apps such as ChatGPT to create entire storylines with just a few mouse clicks. 

“The survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation,” the WGA said in a statement “Driven in large part by the shift to streaming, writers are finding their work devalued in every part of the business. While company profits have remained high and spending on content has grown, writers are falling behind. The companies have used the transition to streaming to cut writer pay and separate writing from production, worsening working conditions for series writers at all levels.” 

If an agreement is not reached by midnight PST, May 2, 11,000 WGA union members could walk off the job, shutting down TV and film production nationwide. 

For its part, the studios have kept silent, letting the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers do the talking for them, which in a recent statement, said that an agreement would be “mutually beneficial,” but “only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining” and “searching for reasonable compromises.” 

Hollywood screenwriters have struck a half dozen times over the past century and they always seem to happen during so-called “inflection points” in the industry—for example in 1987, the industry was shut down for five months over renumeration for syndication and reruns amid the explosion of cable TV. A shutdown in 2007 served as a harbinger of the current impasse: concerns over payment for digital distribution, including DVDs, downloads and even the then-nascent and emerging streaming industry. 

The existing contract between studios and the Writers Guild of America, sets minimum weekly pay for certain television writer-producers at $7,412. Unfortunately the costs of today’s high-end “peak TV” productions have skyrocketed, which means fewer episodes per season, making it harder for writers to determine how long they will be working on specific projects. 

“We want enough money to make a basic living doing what we love, which is writing. Profits for the companies are up, the cost of living is up and payment to writers is down," WGA Board Member Raphael Bob-Waksberg told NBC News. 

“Writer compensation needs to evolve for a streaming-first world,” Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm told the New York Times. 

The subject of residuals has been a particularly contentious issue. Before streaming, writers could receive a certain portion of revenues when shows were sold into syndication or on DVD, but in the current world of streaming, that source of income has dried up. 

WGA estimates it would cost the studios approximately $600 million if their demands were met but media corporations are also looking to cut costs amid a softening economy. 

In addition to money, the WGA would also like studios to do away with the so-called “mini room,” a process that reduces the number of writers to develop story lines and gives an inordinate amount of power to show runners. It also wants guideposts on the emerging use of AI. 

The WGA defended its stance in a tweet on Sunday, taking the media to task for semantics. 

"There's not a single member of the @WGAWest or @WGAEast who "want" a strike,” it said. “We'd kindly ask the press to not use that language. A strike would only occur if the studios lock us out at the expiration of our current contract in lieu of offering a fair and reasonable deal.”

LOS ANGELES—Prime Focus Technologies is opening the doors to a new, state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Hollywood.

Through this new Hollywood hub, PFT says it will offer SLA-driven media services powered by secure, automation-led technology. Among the things offered through the facility will be re-mastering services, VFX, film scanning services, color correction, DI validations with LTO migration, HDR workflows, master QC, localization, AI-led auto form for both TV and motion pictures, digital distribution and providing PFT’s Clear technology as a service delivery and service enabler platform.

PFT will also make available its Lowry Digital technology, which delivers quality restoration and enhancement of content from SD to 4K resolution, according to Allan Tudzin, vice president of business development for PFT.

For more information, visit www.primefocustechnologies.com.  

IZMIR, Turkey—Zero Density, a provider of virtual studio production tools, is setting up a new office in Los Angeles. The Hollywood office, which is set to open in September, will be led by Zero Density's former business development manager for Europe and APAC, Umut Özdemir, who has been appointed West Coast territory manager.

“I’ve been with Zero Density from the beginning and had the pleasure to recruit new regions to ZD’s vast network,” said Özdemir. “Today, I am excited to be assigned at such an important region to work with talented creative professionals to tell their stories in the most immersive way possible. Furthermore, I’ll dedicate myself to solidify partner and user relationships as well as introducing our ground-breaking product arsenal firsthand.”

The Hollywood office will expand its team and offer all Zero Density product suites alongside on-site supervision, technical consultancy and other services.

For more information, visit www.zerodensity.tv.  

Los Angeles, CA - July 26, 2018 - Blackmagic Design announced today that the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) named DaVinci Resolve 15 as one the recipients of their 2018 Engineering Excellence Awards. The awards are a spotlight outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution and archive.

DaVinci Resolve 15, released at NAB this year, offers a major step forward for post-production workflow, a significant shift in technically and creatively matched toolsets as well as overall efficiency. The platform, designed to provide a full suite of post-production tools, from ingest to delivery, directly integrated in a single ecosystem, includes significant improvements in quality, functionality and time to delivery. Exchange formats, translation and conform can be eliminated, and last-minute change efficiently managed for feature film, episodic TV and short form productions.

DaVinci Resolve 15 features an entirely new Fusion page for feature film quality visual effects and motion graphics animation. Fusion was previously only available as a stand alone application and is the world’s most advanced visual effects and motion graphics software. It is now built into DaVinci Resolve 15. The new Fusion page gives customers a true 3D workspace with over 250 tools for compositing, vector paint, particles, keying, rotoscoping, text animation, tracking, stabilization and more. Adding Fusion to DaVinci Resolve has been a massive project that will be completed over the next 12-18 months. Customers can get started using Fusion today to complete nearly all of their visual effects and motion graphics work. The standalone version of Fusion will continue to be available for customers who need it.

In addition to bringing Fusion into DaVinci Resolve 15, Blackmagic Design has also added support for Apple Metal, multiple GPUs and CUDA acceleration, making Fusion in DaVinci Resolve faster than ever. To add visual effects or motion graphics, customers simply select a clip in the timeline on the Edit page and then click on the Fusion page where they can use Fusion’s dedicated node based interface, which is optimized for visual effects and motion graphics. Compositions created in the standalone version of Fusion can also be copied and pasted into DaVinci Resolve 15 projects.

DaVinci Resolve 15 also features a huge update to the Fairlight audio page. The Fairlight page now has a complete ADR toolset, static and variable audio retiming with pitch correction, audio normalization, 3D panners, audio and video scrollers, a fixed playhead with scrolling timeline, shared sound libraries, support for legacy Fairlight projects, and built in cross platform plugins such as reverb, hum removal, vocal channel and de-esser. With DaVinci Resolve 15, customers no longer have to worry about audio plugins when moving between Mac, Windows and Linux because the FairlightFX plugins run natively on all three platforms.

DaVinci Resolve is the fastest growing nonlinear video editor in the industry. It’s also Hollywood’s favorite color corrector. Blackmagic Design has listened carefully to feedback from professional colorists and editors. DaVinci Resolve 15 includes over a hundred new features and improvements that editors and colorists have asked for.

Colorists get an entirely new LUT browser for quickly previewing and applying LUTs, along with new shared nodes that are linked so when one is changed they all change, multiple playheads for quickly referencing different shots in a program, over 5x performance improvement for stabilization, improved noise reduction, and new Super Scale HD to 8K up-rezzing. DaVinci Resolve 15 also expands HDR support with GPU accelerated Dolby Vision metadata analysis and native HDR 10+ grading controls. In addition, new ResolveFX let customers quickly patch blemishes or remove unwanted elements in a shot using smart fill technology. There are also new ResolveFX for dust and scratch removal, lens and aperture diffraction effects, and more.

Professional editors will find new features in DaVinci Resolve 15 specifically designed to make cutting, trimming, organizing and working with large projects even better. DaVinci Resolve 15 has dramatically improved load times so that large projects with hundreds of timelines and thousands of clips now open instantly. New stacked timelines and timeline tabs let editors see multiple timelines at once so they can quickly cut, paste, copy and compare scenes between timelines. There are also new markers with on-screen annotations, subtitle and closed captioning tools, auto save with versioning, greatly improved keyboard customization tools, new 2D and 3D Fusion title templates, image stabilization on the Edit page, a floating timecode window, improved organization and metadata tools, Netflix render presets with IMF support and much more.

Winners will be recognized at the annual HPA Awards in November.

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve, and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

As a fan of movies and after having studied through my corollary sequence under Ohio University’s School of Film, I have a great interest in movies and movie making. I’m always seeing a movie and certainly appreciate the work involved in creative story telling. Adding to my love for story telling is the idea that technology has now “evolved” (that word might not be the same word used by die-hard “film” people) into 4K video and even 8K video. Besides my radio engineering career, I’m also a video engineer currently converting a full facility from HD to 4K (technically, UHD in this instance, but many people use them interchangeably). This Off the Beaten Path column is about the movies and the HD and 4K/UHD technology behind them.

First, a quick explanation of 4K/UHD video to get you up to speed. The easiest way to put it is that UHD a combination of four HD images. The difference between 4K and UHD? 4K is what the movie people use for big displays in theaters. The aspect ratio is just a little wider than the standard TV widescreen ratio of 16:9, while UHD follows the 16:9 aspect ratio. Unlike common HDTV, 4K/UHD now has something thrown in called HDR or High Dynamic Range. The interesting thing about HDR is that it’s like pre-emphasis in FM. To use an FM analogy what it really means is that if you use HDR with UHD/4K, you really need to have a monitor capable of decoding that HDR — something like encoding audio with dbx then listening to the audio without running it back through a decoding circuit. It sounds odd.

To take it a little further, an HDTV image streams over coax/BNC at 3 Mbps. To send 4K/UHD video over a coax (or four of them if being done as “quad-link”), you need to push 12 Mbps. Oh, and the next generation of video, called 8K, requires 48 Mbps of bandwidth!

So that’s the Cliff’s Notes version of 4K/UHD, which is the current main display spec for movies. 8K is on the horizon, but for a typical consumer TV in a home, you won’t see big differences on images unless your screen size is excessively large — such as viewing on an 8-foot TV screen! Remember when the days when a 25-inch RCA or Zenith console TV was considered a “big screen”?

The First Film Makers

Just like radio & TV’s history, film history becomes a little checkered and cloudy when you go back in time. Who is taking credit for what become a common issue with technology. Though Edison has a large influence in the U.S., Luis and Auguste Lumière (“The Lumière Brothers”) are generally credited as the first true film makers. By 1881, the young teenaged brothers had created a developing process which took Edison’s “peephole film viewing” technique and gave it the ability to become something that could be “projected;” which is the reason they’re more frequently credited with inventing “film” (or something more closely resembling film today).

Early Movies

It’s simply amazing to see where we’ve come from and where we are going with movie-making technology — from the earliest days of Edison and the Lumière brothers, to Charlie Chaplin, to Walt Disney and his multiplane camera, George Lucas, and into today. We began with studios where the roofs were open because they needed more light than was technically possible using the then current lighting technology. Then came “rocking” sets. “Talkies” followed. Visual effects like forced perspective created size illusions while matte paintings created incredible backgrounds. Now computer graphics and digital animations make “virtual everything” — from people to places to create pretty much anything we want in film (from the truly believable to the unbelievable!). When you look at movie technology and consider all the invention behind it, a lot has happened in just over 100 years!

Technicolor

Here’s an awesome video about the technology behind Technicolor. Technicolor was not the first movie film available, but it really became the first great color film technology. The Technicolor process really held its own over the years and through the life of 35mm film.

Movie Mistakes

For fun, I’ve had this link about the worst on-set mistakes from Hollywood. Just like staying until the end of a Jackie Chan movie where you get to see the outtakes, it’s interesting to see things when they don’t go right!

Movie Technology “Past Predictions”

This link is now six years old, but I included it because it was a look at the future of movie technology. Now we can look at it and see what came true and what hasn’t. For instance, they talk about IMAX “with lasers,” and the fact is that now high-lumen projectors are incorporating laser technology! Long gone are the days of carbon-arc projecting … and now even xenon bulbs are seemingly old technology. Instead of a massive 6,000 watt bulb, projectors have transitioned to multiple stacks of bulbs (no more single point of failure with a “bulb blow-out”) and laser technology. Just three years ago, I had the opportunity to see a 90,000 (!) lumen projector in Christie’s digital labs in Kitchener, Ontario. Until then, 35,000 lumens was about the brightest output for a projector. To give you an idea how bright 90,000 lumens is, if you stand close in the path of the light, dark clothing can start to smolder and ignite! Though this technology hasn’t advanced, likely due to the danger involved and the very unique need for something that bright, laser technology has continued to advance.

More on Movie Technology

Since the days computers found their way into movie making, things have changed a lot. Here’s another look at the technology today and where it’s going.

Time to Think About 8K?

And here’s a sneak look into 8K video and the development. By the way, the next Olympics from Japan will be shot in 8K.

And finally ...

If you stumble across a good or unusual website that might be of interest, please don’t hesitate to send me the link and any info you might have about it. My email address is dan_slentz@yahoo.com.