Produced at Our Studios
News Sets & News Studio Rental
Rent a virtual news set with the anchor desk, newsroom set and city skyline ready to load, in a turnkey news studio in Burbank (Los Angeles) or Albuquerque.
- National, local, sports and political looks
- Any city skyline behind the anchor desk
- Pioneered in 2007, now patented
- Audience seating at both studios, stadium-style in Burbank
Browse the set library: 250+ ready-to-load sets →
Or call 818-934-3775 Burbank 818-861-7317 Albuquerque
Watch the reel
News and sports desks, taped in our studios.
Click any clip to play it with sound.
Featured set
Upscale Talk Show & News Sets: one set, five looks.
A sports desk, two newsrooms, a skyline stage with a staircase and a gaming arena, all on one set. Hover to preview; click to play with sound. Tap to play with sound.
Newsroom and anchor desk sets
Desks, walls and newsrooms ready to go live.
A national network
A long curved monitor across the back of the desk, or the sleek, modern Studio D with its large screens.
A local station
A studio with monitors behind the anchors: the look of a station newsroom.
A morning show
A bright morning news and talk set.
A sports desk
The sports talk show set for highlights, debate and game-day coverage.
News and talk
Wraparound video monitors, a second-floor balcony and a swappable host desk.
A political story
Cut from the anchor desk to the Oval Office, the White House press briefing room or the U.S. Capitol.
A clean studio
A clean industrial studio with an integrated white cyclorama.
What's included
Anchor desk to control room, already on the floor.
- The operator who runs the virtual newsroom, included in every rental
- Newsroom sets in national, local, sports and political press-room looks
- Anchor desk configurations for one to several presenters; a real desk can sit in the foreground
- Swappable city skylines, with your graphics, photos, video and logos on the set's monitors
- Teleprompter system at both studios; beam-splitter and presidential prompters in Burbank
- Multi-camera ready, with one live render per camera
- Broadcast lighting tuned for skin tones and continuity across multi-day shoots
- Audience seating at both studios, stadium-style in Burbank, for live segments and press days
- Green rooms, makeup, dressing rooms and production offices
Productions that have trusted us
The networks, the streamers and the studios have all shot here.
Hart to Heart, Aquaman 2, Inventing Anna, Bosch, The Mummy, Greenland, Deadliest Catch and national spots for T-Mobile, Amazon and Domino's. Full credit list
Check availability
Tell us the desk, the cameras and when you shoot or go live.
Tell us the format and your dates. A producer replies with availability and a quote.
- Included: the studio, 250+ ready-to-load sets, lighting, grip and audio, dressing and green rooms, and the operator who runs the virtual sets
- Two studios, in Burbank, California and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque shoots qualify for New Mexico’s 30% refundable film credit
- Quoted against your actual shoot, never a rack rate
Rather talk it through? 818-934-3775 · Burbank
818-861-7317 · Albuquerque
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A producer will reach out to talk through your project and next steps. Need us sooner? Call 818-934-3775 (Burbank) or 818-861-7317 (Albuquerque).
Virtual news sets, without building a newsroom
Here the newsroom is a photoreal virtual set that appears around your news anchors live, in camera, on our stage. You see the finished shot on the monitor while you film, with no background added later in post, and the newsroom set can change between takes. The anchor desk can be real and sit in the foreground. The newsroom, the monitor wall and the city behind it are drawn in real time by Unreal Engine, the video game engine behind every set in our set library. It works as a broadcast news set for a real newscast, a TV news set for a series, or a news channel set for a film scene.
So news studio rental here means a working news studio, not an empty room with a green wall. The desk looks, the prompters, broadcast lighting, audience seating and green rooms are in place before you arrive, and the operator who runs the virtual newsroom is included in every rental. Filming a news set this way, with a video game engine drawing the room live, was pioneered in Burbank in 2007 and is now patented. We hold two U.S. patents: one for filming with a video game engine and one for CastleVision, our method for bringing a real place onto the stage.
How a virtual news set works
The anchors work on a green screen cyclorama, and the virtual set turns it into the news anchor room, the monitor wall and the skyline behind them. Every camera is tracked, so when it pans, tilts or moves on the jib, Unreal Engine redraws the newsroom from that exact angle in real time. Ultimatte keyers remove the green and place the anchors inside the set live, so the finished composite is on the monitor, and in the recording, while you shoot. Each camera gets its own live render, which is how three cameras can cover the anchor desk at once, each with the right background behind it. In Burbank, the whole team watches the finished composite on a giant LED video village. The full camera, tracking and keying chain is on the virtual production technology page, and virtual production in Los Angeles explains the method for anyone new to it.
That is the difference between a virtual news set studio and a virtual set template you download for a switcher. A template is a background file. Here the news set runs on a working studio floor, with cinema cameras, camera tracking, teleprompters, audience seating and an operator who drives the set in real time. If you only need an empty chroma key wall, see the green screen studio.
Newsroom sets for film and TV scenes
Films and series need newsroom credibility on demand: the breaking news scene, the scandal reveal, the election night cold open, the press hit montage, the cable cutaway on a news channel set, the local anchor on a news station set. The usual approach is to build a newsroom for two days of shooting, then tear it down. Ours is already standing, and it looks like a network, not a soundstage.
Bosch and Inventing Anna shot news scenes here (more on our news sets), and Aquaman 2, The Mummy, Greenland and Deadliest Catch have also shot on our stages. Planning a picture rather than a newscast? See feature film and series production for the scene-by-scene side of the work.
News anchor desk sets for national, local, sports and political looks
For a national network feel, load the network news set, with a long curved monitor across the back of the desk, or the sleek, modern Studio D news set. For a local station, start with the broadcast studio set. A morning news show fits the morning show set, and the upscale news and talk set adds wraparound video monitors and a swappable host desk. For a sports desk, the sports talk show set. A political story can cut to the Oval Office and White House set. A reporter’s live shot can stand in front of the US Capitol, on a rooftop or against a city skyline, and trial coverage can cut to the courtroom set. Every desk and newsroom in the library sits on one page: newsroom and news desk sets.
The set look and the city behind the anchors both swap in minutes, to New York, L.A., Chicago, Atlanta or a fictional skyline of your own. Every monitor on the set and the desk can carry your graphics, photos, video and logos. When nothing in the library fits, our set builders and artists build a custom newsroom to your spec, branded to the station or the story.
Want a real news anchor desk or table under the anchors’ hands? A physical desk can sit in the foreground and blend with the virtual newsroom, so the anchors have a real surface while the room changes behind them. If the desk is for a host and guests rather than anchors, our talk show desk and set rental page covers that format.
Where you shoot: the Burbank and Albuquerque news studios
Both studios run the same pipeline and share the whole set library, so a newscast or a news scene can shoot in either city and keep the same look. Here is what is on the floor, and in the building, at each news studio.
| Burbank, Los Angeles | Albuquerque, New Mexico | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 154 S. Victory Blvd, across from Nickelodeon, about 5 minutes from Warner Bros. | 8610 President Pl NE, about 10 minutes from the Sunport |
| Studio floor | Pre-lit green screen cyclorama, 20-ft ceiling (15 ft to grid), silent HVAC, isolated power | Green screen cyclorama |
| Cameras | Three Panasonic Varicam 35 cinema cameras with Fujinon Cabrio zooms | Three ARRI Alexa 35 cinema cameras with Fujinon cinema zooms |
| Camera movement | 13-ft CamMate jib, encoded Vinten heads and dollies | Carbon-fiber telescoping crane with dolly, carbon-fiber pedestals |
| Live compositing | Three Unreal Engine systems, three Ultimatte 12 keyers, Mo-Sys StarTracker camera tracking | Unreal Engine render machines, three Ultimatte keyers, three camera-tracking systems |
| Teleprompters | Beam-splitter and presidential teleprompters | Three teleprompters |
| Recording and switching | Multi-camera ISO and composite recording | AJA Ki-Pro recording, Blackmagic switching and routing, Teranex processing, Allen & Heath SQ7 audio console |
| Audience | Stadium-style seating, with a giant LED video village where the team watches the finished composite | Audience seating for live segments |
| Talent and production spaces | Five green rooms, makeup and dressing rooms, writers' rooms and production offices | Green rooms, makeup and dressing rooms, a full furniture and prop warehouse for set dressing |
| Parking and load-in | 20+ parking spaces, drive-on load-in | Extensive parking, easy load-in |
Burbank shoots require a city film permit. More on the building: the Burbank studio and the facility tour. For series and specials beyond news, see TV studio rental in Burbank.
A qualifying production that shoots at the Albuquerque studio can put its studio days toward the New Mexico 30% refundable film credit. Confirm eligibility with your production accountant and the New Mexico Film Office.
Going live from the anchor desk
Both studios run a live video-linking pipeline, so the composited newsroom goes out live in the feed to your channel or stream while it records. So the same desk works as a news broadcast set for a live newscast, a streamed briefing or a recurring segment, not only as a backdrop for a film scene. The lighting plot is built for broadcast continuity, so segments shot on different days cut together cleanly. Because both studios seat an audience, a press conference or town-hall segment can play to a real room.
The same desks serve press days and company announcements: see press junkets on a news set and corporate video production.
What a virtual news set takes off the budget
A newsroom built for one scene means design, construction, a strike and somewhere to store it. Here no set construction is required, there is nothing to strike, and nothing to store: the sets live on drives, so a pickup months later reloads the exact set, lighting and framing. Loading the newsroom takes minutes, and the room is already tuned for camera, lensing and lighting. That is why productions come back when their next show needs a newsroom scene.
The operator who runs the virtual sets is included in every rental. Every production is quoted individually, and here is how a production is priced. Send the rundown or the scene and your dates. A producer, not a sales queue, replies with availability at both studios.
See a virtual news set composited live
Producers with a project can book a studio tour at either studio, by appointment, and watch a news set composited live on the monitor. To see a green screen turn into a finished broadcast first, watch the news set video, and more finished work from both studios is in the video gallery.
Sample gallery
Anchor desks and newsrooms, on camera.
A look at news shot at L.A. & ABQ Castle Studios.
Click any image for a closer look.
Selected credits
- Aquaman 2 Warner Bros.
- Bosch Amazon
- Inventing Anna Netflix
- The Mummy Universal
- Greenland HBO
- Deadliest Catch Discovery
Questions
News set rental: what news producers ask first.
- What is a virtual news set?
- A virtual news set is a broadcast-ready newsroom rendered in real time on our stage and composited live behind your anchors, in a national, local, sports or political look with a city skyline behind the desk, all in camera. There is no newsroom to build or strike. You load the look you need and shoot it the same day in Burbank or Albuquerque.
- Can you customize the news studio backdrop and city skyline?
- Yes. Both the newsroom look and the skyline swap in minutes, and the branding, lower thirds and monitor content can be tailored to your production.
- Which news set looks do you offer?
- National network, local station, sports desk and political press room, with anchor desks for one to several presenters. Each look loads in minutes.
- Can I rent a news studio in Los Angeles?
- Yes. The Burbank studio at 154 S. Victory Blvd, across from Nickelodeon, runs as a turnkey news studio: newsroom sets and anchor desks from the set library, beam-splitter and presidential teleprompters, multi-camera ISO and composite recording, stadium-style audience seating, green rooms and makeup. A second news studio in Albuquerque runs the same pipeline and the same set library. The operator who runs the virtual sets is included in every rental; camera and teleprompter operators are an optional crew package.
- How much does it cost to rent a news set?
- Every production is quoted individually; there is no rate card. The quote depends on shoot days, crew size, set complexity, which studio you use, the number of cameras, the audience and any custom set work. What it leaves off the budget: no set construction required, no strike and no storage, because the sets live on drives and reload exactly as you left them. Send the rundown or the scene and your dates, and a producer replies with availability and a quote.
- Can we go live from the news set?
- Yes. The composited newsroom goes out live in the feed to your channel or stream, not only to the recorder. Tell us where it airs when you check availability.
- Can we use a real anchor desk on a virtual news set?
- Yes. A physical anchor desk or news table sits in the foreground and blends with the virtual newsroom behind it. The library newsrooms also come with their own desks, and in Albuquerque a furniture and prop warehouse is on site for set dressing.
- Do you provide teleprompters, cameras and operators for a news shoot?
- The teleprompter system is included in every rental, and so is the operator who runs the virtual newsroom in real time. Burbank has beam-splitter and presidential teleprompters; Albuquerque has three teleprompters. Each studio has three cinema cameras on site, and each camera gets its own live render, so three cameras can cover the anchor desk at once. The optional crew package adds three camera operators (one on the jib) and a teleprompter operator, or you bring your own team.
More for news and live producers
- Newsroom and news desk sets Every desk and newsroom in the library
- Network news set A national look with a curved monitor wall
- Broadcast studio set An anchor desk for a local station look
- Watch a news set go from green screen to broadcast The live composite, start to finish
- Talk show set rental Host desks and panels on the same floor
- Press junkets on a news set A backdrop per outlet, switched live
- TV studio rental in Burbank Series and specials beyond news
- The camera, tracking and keying chain How the newsroom is drawn live
- The Burbank news studio Stadium-style seating and a giant LED video village
- The Albuquerque news studio The same sets, with audience seating
- How a news set rental is priced What moves the quote
- Other formats produced here Specials, awards shows and formats without their own page
- Feature Films and Series
- Vertical Drama and Micro-Series
- The set library Every set, searchable by room and theme
- Tour the facility What is on site at each studio
Tours run by appointment at both studios. Bring the script or the rundown and we will price the shoot against it.
