Kalshi's Election Night Spot, Filmed at L.A. Castle Studios

Hot off the presses: Kalshi has released “Midterms,” a 30-second spot that plays as election-night news coverage, and every frame of the newsroom was filmed at L.A. Castle Studios in Burbank.

The spot

“Midterms” opens the way election night does on every network: two anchors in a split-screen two-shot, a red, white and blue Election Night banner across the bottom of the frame, and a Capitol dome glowing behind one of them. The edit cuts to each anchor in turn, then widens to the anchor desk itself, where the joke lands and a phone with the Kalshi app comes into frame. The tagline closes it out: Markets over noise.

The election-night split screen that opens the spot.

The newsroom

The wide shot is where a news set earns its keep. Behind the anchor desk, a video wall carries a Capitol skyline on one side and a red-and-white star field on the other. Over the anchors’ shoulders is a glass-walled newsroom, lit for a late night, and a curved balcony of monitors overhead reads BREAKING. On the desk, network mugs, notepads and a pair of reading glasses sell the idea that these two have been on the air for hours.

The anchor desk wide, with the Capitol on the video wall and the newsroom behind.

Every one of those details has to read as real in a single glance, because the audience has watched a thousand election nights and knows exactly what one looks like. That is the whole job of a news set in a commercial: be believable in the first second, so the story can do its work in the other twenty-nine.

Why there is no better studio for a news scene

We pioneered real-time virtual production in Burbank in 2007, and we would put our news floor up against any studio in Los Angeles. Here is why.

• Your network, on every screen. The video wall, the monitors and the desk graphics all carry the production’s own graphics, colors and logos. An election-night look, a morning show, a sports desk or a fictional network can be on screen before your call time.
• Many looks in one day. Our news sets are standing virtual sets, so the split-screen remote look and the full anchor desk can be shot back to back, with nothing to build or strike. Change the look between setups in seconds.
• The finished shot, live. Talent appears inside the newsroom live, in camera, so the director, the agency and the client see the final frame on the monitor while the cameras roll, and our LED video village in Burbank puts it on a giant screen for the whole room.
• A news track record. Kalshi joins a long list of news and sports desk work here, from a news-desk spot for Domino’s and a SportsCenter-style desk for 7-Eleven to Wolf & Shepherd’s sports-news spots. You can watch them in our video gallery.
• The Media Capital of the World. The studio sits at 154 S. Victory Blvd in Burbank, across the street from Nickelodeon and minutes from Warner Bros. and Disney, with the crews who make this kind of work close by.

Coverage at the desk, with the set’s red light behind the anchors.

Planning a news scene?

Whether it is a commercial, an episode, a film scene or a live show, start with our news set rental page, browse the news and broadcast sets in the Set Library, or see how commercial shoots run at our studios. Tours are by appointment in Burbank and Albuquerque, and we will price your shoot day against your board.