World AI Film Festival: “There is no emotion in AI”

IBC

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The World AI Film Festival fielded new and established storytelling voices but the jury is out on whether AI can capture the human spirit of cinema

To some people, even celebrating the role of AI in content creation is a tone-deaf and artless enterprise, but filmmakers participating in the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF) were proud of being at the forefront of a creative revolution.

“We used to say ‘before and after Christ’. Now we’ll say ‘before and after AI’,” veteran French director Claude LeLouch said at the event’s second edition in Cannes.

The festival took place in the same Palais venue which just a few weeks from now will host the Cannes Film Festival. While Cannes has outlawed the technology as a principal authoring tool, WAIFF competition entries must include use of at least three generative AI tools (including one for image creation).

“What we are witnessing here is the equivalent of the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” said musician Jean-Michel Jarre, acting as festival ambassador. “Cannes Film Festival began modestly 79 years ago. WAIFF will take far less time to become a major global reference.”

Entries were overwhelmingly short, typically 10 minutes long, in categories that ranged from advertising to fantasy and ‘emotion’. However, average duration has ticked up considerably on a year ago when films of one minute were permitted with predictions that feature length work will be submitted next year.

As it was, the winner of the ‘feature’ (long-form) award was a 4 x 52 minute docu-series Napoléon III, Le prix de l’audace, already aired on Canal+ and TV5 Quebec.

“Fictional AI features aren’t quite ready yet, but hybrid documentaries with interviews and AI‑generated historical reconstructions are very strong,” said WAIFF Artistic Director, Julien Raout. “Next year we’ll have full AI fiction features over an hour long.”

Searching for soul

Jury members were looking for originality in judging the 54 official competition entries (selected from 7000 submissions).

“Whether AI is used or not the most important thing to me is story,” said Nam Na-young, the South Korean editor of Squid Game. “Then I look for details in the scene, such as lighting and I also look for the editing; how one scene goes to the next, how it links and changes the story.”

She said entries were “not as diverse in terms of genre” as she expected. “Narrative wise they aren’t very strong. The more experimental ones are stronger.”

French actor Elsa Zylberstein, another festival juror, was searching for “soul” in AI generated work and found this wanting. “To be an actor is unique in the way you are exposing your soul and from what I have seen so far there is no emotion in AI.”

Academy Award winning documentarian Ruby Yang thought that the more original stories were being made as animations rather than hybrid films that augment live action with AI.

“I can spot something that's used a piece of IP from somewhere else in live action easier than I can in animation,” she said. “I see slower paced stories with more humanity coming from Europe and faster paced science fiction and action films from Asia.”

By definition, all the films in competition were hybrid in the sense that they are made by humans using AI. There were fewer examples of work which blended camera originated live action with AI‑generated visuals “because it is easier and cheaper to use full AI,” Raout said.

One of them, RendAI-vous, directed by Marius Doicov, won the Best Youth Film. Another film from Brazil featured actors transformed into wolf‑like creatures, something that used to be extremely expensive with VFX, now achievable with AI.

The Best Film of the overall competition was awarded to Costa Verde, a 12-minute personal story about his Corsican childhood from writer-director Léo Cannone produced by the UK’s New Forest Films.

“Just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should,” noted Elena Lyubarskaya, founder of Berlin-based AI producer The Difference Machine. “Before AI we had physical constraints like not being able to shoot a scene at night, or being denied access to a location, or simply lack of budget. Solving these problems is where all the best ideas came from.

“Now I can generate an octopus running around a city but it’s just slop if there’s no story. I think we will have to learn to artificially put constraints on ourselves.”

Director Mathieu Kassovitz echoed this sentiment. “The only limit is my taste,” he said. “I feed the machine with my inspiration, and I must get back something that feels like what I’d get from a human team.

“Right now AI is like a wild horse in a stable. We don’t know how to tame it yet, but we can see it’s an exceptional beast.”

AI exists, for good or ill, so let’s explore it

Established filmmakers like Kassovitz were keen to push AI into sacrosanct areas of performance, cinematography and production design.

Claude Lelouch talked about embarking on his 52^nd feature using AI.

“My last films didn’t do very well. Since I’m struggling to find money, I’m turning to AI,” he candidly admitted.

He has been learning to use it for six months. “I asked myself how is it possible that the greatest filmmakers in the world are being overtaken? They’re being overtaken in the sense that soon there will be financial limits — or even limits of imagination. AI is a camera that gives you images even before you’ve filmed anything. It will change cinema.”

Director and screenwriter Nathalie Marsac described a sequence in her upcoming English-language feature A Beautiful Journey involving tiger sharks and a mermaid—initially planned as a shoot in the Bahamas.

“A year ago, VFX studios told me those scenes would cost hundreds of thousands of Euros. We were facing weather constraints… there was too much uncertainty. Suddenly, with AI I can make something that wasn’t possible before.”

Actor, writer and director Agnès Jaoui, whose L'Objet du délit is set to be premiered at Cannes Film Festival, said she felt “terrorised by AI, and all the fantasies it represents,” which is partly why she accepted the invitation to sit as President of the WAIFF Jury.

“Whether we like it or not, AI exists and we might as well go and see what it is exactly, rather than being overwhelmed by our fears and rumours,” Jaoui said.

She may still be in two minds having seen the results. While directors can ostensibly auteur their vision to screen solely using AI on a fraction of conventional budgets, actors and below the line crafts may feel a chill.

Zylberstein insisted that actors would be protected. “Only an actor like Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks or Gena Rowlands can evoke genuine emotion. AI cannot copy this.”

LeLouch, who is also the festival’s honorary president, expressed reservations believing AI would never “replace the tears or the smile of actors, or their eyes. Because truth, for me, exists in the eyes. That’s why I love cinema.”

Yet the tech is advancing at pace. The AI‑generated characters in last year’s entries “looked wooden,” according to Raout. “Now you can feel emotion with micro‑expressions, proper lip‑sync and believable faces.”

“There’s no comparison (year on year). The tools have evolved faster than any technology we’ve ever seen in video creation. Last year’s best films wouldn’t make the official selection of films this year.”

Filmmakers take copyright into their own hands

Caution about infringing copyright was front of mind for many filmmakers present.

Japanese producer Taiki Sakurai said, “Many videos on YouTube are violating copyright but there’s also a grey zone which is widening as people get more and more forgiving about what is illegal.”

French artist Anne Horel, whose work ‘La Tisseuse d’Ombres’ won the Press Film Award, trains AI tools on her own digital work, partly to avoid infringement, partly to create something unique.

“Some filmmakers are creating their own servers to build their own IP,” reported Academy Award winning documentarian and juror Ruby Yang. “Even though this is more expensive it means they avoid the potential trouble with open source models.”

Lyubarskaya worried that being fully transparent about the prompts in her work would expose her own IP.

“There must be a tool we can develop where you can show your workflow to clients that will verify that no Spider-Man or any other IP has been touched without revealing your own creative ingredients.”

WAIFF grows internationally

The festival format is licensed to partners in Korea, Japan, Brazil and China which held local events this year.  Those will be repeated in the year ahead joined by one in Istanbul in November with new locations planned for India, Vietnam, Canada (Vancouver) and Argentina.

“The best five AI films from each country automatically enters the official competition in Cannes so partner countries have a greater chance of winning awards,” he explained.

Films from US creators were, however, thin on the ground with no noticeable Hollywood presence at the festival. “Hollywood studios are scared,” said WAIFF founder Marco Landi. “They haven’t understood that going against this wave is dangerous. They should embrace AI and help the evolution.”

He drew parallels with Kodak’s failure to adapt to digital photography and Nokia’s collapse in the smartphone era; “If you resist, you disappear.”

An edition of WAIFF launching in Los Angeles this October could change that.

When WAIFF returns next April it will include a new competition category for gaming, VR, and AR “exploring how AI is used in immersive technologies,” Raout said.

Launching a ‘Netflix of AI’

Organisers are also planning to launch an online distribution platform for AI-generated content, dubbed a ‘Netflix for AI films’.

It could partner in the venture with SHAIKE, a Marseille-based production agency that already operates an AI content streaming platform boasting 1000+ titles.

“The goal is for creators to upload their films to our platform, participate in festivals through our network, and receive support from promotion, festival exposure and media coverage,” confirmed SHAIKE founder Jeremy Angelier. “After the festival run, we become a distribution channel, providing continued visibility and access to audiences.”

There’s a growing feeling that AI filmmakers should be renumerated for their work. AI filmmaking is not necessarily cheap with creators buying tokens from AI model makers.

“Platforms should contribute financially,” Raout said. “Right now, creators pay the platforms to make films, while the platforms make huge profits. Our sponsors (AI editing tool Capcut and GenAI model MiniMax) support visibility for creators, but we want money to flow back to filmmakers. Our future ‘AI Netflix’ could help monetise their work, but platforms should also pay into the ecosystem.”

As to whether audiences want AI content, Raout was in no doubt. “Young people are bored with low‑effort AI fakes. They want real creators using AI as a tool to tell meaningful stories. They want new voices with new ideas, not the same stories recycled by big production companies.”

DFB taps Deltatre to launch DTC streamer DFB.TV+

Streaming Media

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The German Football Association (DFB) has partnered with Deltatre to launch DFB.TV+, a new direct‑to‑consumer streaming service that consolidates a wide range of German football content previously scattered across multiple platforms. The service, built on Deltatre’s end‑to‑end OTT product Vesper, is scheduled to go live on 22 May, forming a central pillar of the DFB’s first 24/7 pay‑TV channel, DFB.TV.

 

Deltatre’s Vesper platform, a core component of last year’s acquisition of Endeavor Streaming, provides the backbone of the new service, handling live and on‑demand content ingest, metadata and business‑rule management, multi‑device applications and payment and monetisation models (subscription, PPV, team passes) as well as integration with the DFB’s single sign‑on system.

 

“The SSO integration is central to the federation’s long‑term strategy,” Deltatre’s Chief Revenue Officer, Peter Bellamy said. “By unifying user identity across digital touchpoints, the DFB aims to build richer fan profiles and tailor offers—whether discounted match tickets, merchandise bundles, or targeted video recommendations—based on individual behaviour.”

 

He added that the DFB was particularly focused on using the platform to deepen its understanding of domestic and international audiences, and to support both direct and indirect revenue streams.

 

Alongside standard DRM and VPN‑mitigation tools, Deltatre is deploying Spear, a CDN‑level anti‑piracy product designed to detect and shut down illegal streams in real time. The company plans to highlight Spear more publicly later this year.

 

The rollout marks the DFB’s most ambitious digital initiative to date—and one timed to build traction in the run up to this summer’s FIFA World Cup. By the end of May, Deltatre will have taken the project from contract signing to launch in under two months, a timeline Bellamy describes as a key differentiator in the company’s pitch.

 

“With over 35 million football fans in Germany, this collaboration reinforces direct‑to‑consumer as a core pillar of any modern rights and distribution strategy,” Bellamy said. “Our major differentiator is our ability to deliver high‑quality deployments at speed. We can get a full service live in two months because the platform is so heavily productised. If you’re building bespoke components from scratch, you simply can’t hit those timelines.”

 

The new platform brings together content from across the DFB’s rights portfolio, including:

men’s and women’s senior national teams, Youth national teams, the Frauen‑Bundesliga and

Lower‑league competitions plus domestic cup finals DFB‑Pokal and a growing slate of original programming.

 

The launch includes two complementary products: DFB.TV – a 24/7 linear channel featuring archive content, highlights, and original programming. It will also be distributed through partners such as Vodafone’s GigaTV platform and DAZN. DFB.TV+ is the premium OTT service offering live matches, full replays, and the complete on‑demand library.

 

The DFB emphasises that neither product competes with existing broadcast partnerships; rights‑holder relationships remain protected.

 

Much of this material was previously fragmented or unavailable. Some content like the lower leagues has never been centralised before.

 

“We’ve seen with the English Football League that there is real fandom and monetisation potential in those lower tiers,” Bellamy said. “Some rights will be newly utilised, and others have been pulled back from third‑party platforms to sit within the new service.”

 

The DFB sees consolidation as a way to strengthen fan engagement and build a more complete picture of audience behaviour.

 

“We are proud that so much content previously not available or scattered across different platforms is now being consolidated, making it easier to discover, access, and enjoy,” said Dr. Holger Blask, DFB General Secretary and Chairman of the Management Board in a release.

 

DFB.TV+ will initially be available in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with international expansion planned in later phases.

 

Deltatre has “invested heavily” in Vesper and is now fully integrated into the company alongside other products and services including Axis, a modular platform for major broadcasters; digital publishing platform Forge and a data, graphics, VAR, and officiating business.

 

The company is also preparing to launch a hybrid digital‑and‑OTT solution combining editorial, ticketing, social features, gamification, AVOD, and SVOD into a single ecosystem.

 

Product aside, Deltatre also develops strategy for clients “helping model the total addressable audience, pricing, propensity to pay, and subscription growth.” It also advises on marketing spend, market prioritisation, content proposition, and running content operations (geo‑restrictions, licensing rules, etc.).

 

Deltatre runs the Ligue 1+ DTC streamer for the top French soccer league, and is a long standing partner with UEFA on UEFA.tv, which started as a multi‑competition value‑add service and evolved into a core part of UEFA’s digital strategy.

 

“We expect a similar journey with the DFB: monetisation, flexibility, and long‑term digital ecosystem development,” Bellamy said.

 

As for whether similar conversations are underway with Germany’s top tier soccer league Bundesliga, Bellamy acknowledges there is a “path over time,” though no details were disclosed.

Regions: UAE AV market holds firm

AV Magazine

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The fallout from war has economically impacted UAE with a nosedive in tourism and disruption to ‘business as usual’. Yet no-one expects decades of investment, technological development, and foreign traffic to the region to contract for good.

The Iran conflict caught most people by surprise not least AV Magazine and our respondents who were some way down the route of replying to us before war broke out.

The fallout from the conflict has impacted UAE materially with drones and missiles on and economically with a nosedive in tourism. Yet no-one expects decades of huge inward investment, economic realignment and foreign traffic to the UAE to contract for good.

It can feel a little surreal, if not inappropriate, to be talking about the ‘wow factor’ of ProAV installations or luxury lifestyles for which the region is known when missiles are being fired just a few miles away.

That said, it is anticipated that this momentum is only temporarily hindered which is why contributors based in the region are taking a longer term view of prospects. The ProAV climate is judged resilient as the Emirates continue to evolve beyond oil-dependency.

United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) aspires to be join the top 20 academic institutions in Asia – and the top 200 globally – by 2030. To modernise its communication infrastructure and enrich the overall learning experience UAEU chose a suite of VITEC solutions for live streaming and digital signage across its 80-hectare campus.

Uncertain in the short-term
Calling the outlook for Emirati ProAV “generally positive” Mahesh Singh, regional sales manager, UAE, Christie says, “We are observing consistent demand for integrated AV systems across corporate, education, hospitality, events and retail. However, it’s important to acknowledge that ongoing political uncertainty in the region could affect business operations in general.”

“Despite the current uncertainty in the region, the ProAV climate in the UAE is extremely dynamic,” says Al Tikriti, chief product and technology officer, Disguise.
As of early 2026, the market continued to see momentum driven by increased AV-over-IP deployments, more European and U.S.-centric manufacturers and solution providers enhancing their MEA (Middle East Africa) presence, and growing expertise within the Pro AV system integrator community.

“Post-pandemic recovery, tourism rebound, and continued diversification away from oil have created steady demand for high-end integrated systems across government, corporate, hospitality, education and entertainment sectors,” reports Johnny Hickman, sales account manager, Matrox. “Looking ahead, the UAE’s long-term development strategies, smart city initiatives, control room infrastructure, corporate expansion, and major events are expected to support continued demand for AV.”

Singh identifies the UAE’s commitment to smart cities leading to increased investment in interactive displays, video walls, AV-over-IP solutions and networked control systems for public buildings and business campuses.

Furthermore, the UAE’s status as a global hub for conferences, corporate events, exhibitions and international tourism is “fuelling demand for immersive AV experiences, large LED walls and projection mapping,” he says.

Ambitious AV design
State funding may be on tap but this coupled with a willingness to go above and beyond in using AV to drive development in every sector.

“The bar for what counts as a successful installation is genuinely high here, and that pushes the whole market forward,” says Netgear’s head of sales, Annamalai Ar. “What is changing is the nature of the ambition. We are seeing a clear shift away from purely showpiece installations toward smarter, more integrated and sustainable solutions,” he adds.

He says the market is becoming more mature in planning, technical standards and lifecycle thinking.

“Clients are asking harder questions about system management and long-term supportability, not just headline performance. For Netgear, that shift is significant: it moves the conversation from spec sheets to network architecture, which is where we do our most meaningful work.”

Walid Tabet, Vitec’s regional director, says UAE’s AV culture is fast moving, highly visual, and aspirational; “it is shifting towards integrated, immersive, AI driven experiences across all verticals. What makes it exciting is how aggressively the country uses AV as a canvas for smart city living, and a global creator economy rather than just ‘equipment in a room’.”

Hickman calls local AV “ambitious, fun, luxury-focused and experience-driven, yet always with an eye on value. [Eye-catching] installations continually push market trends forward.”
What’s exciting, he says, is the speed of execution. “Projects here don’t just adopt technology — they create environments that genuinely engage millions of international visitors every year and enhance the daily experience of people living in the country.”

Netgear continues to see strong investment across the board in a market that remains “active and genuinely competitive,” according to Ar. “The conversation has matured: clients are more focused on ROI and long-term value than on spec for spec’s sake.”

Singh judges the region’s approach to AV as “technologically progressive, increasingly localised yet deeply connected with global trends”. He elaborates: “It’s characterised by a strong infrastructure that is fostering the trend toward the use of digital and AI tools as artistic practice, with greater emphasis on regional stories and Arab cultural expression.”

Operating from October to April, Global Village Dubai functions as a hybrid of theme park, cultural fair, and shopping destination, serving tourists, and local visitors in a high-density, high-traffic environment.

Creative, strategic, and impactful
Technology in UAE is commonly treated as a foundational layer of new developments, observes Tikriti; “This helps the region to push boundaries and achieve things we’ve never seen before when it comes to next-generation experience.”

He thinks the demand for immersive and technically sophisticated environments will only accelerate. “Technology is actively being considered as part of the core infrastructure of buildings and districts from the very beginning of the planning process. What’s exciting is the freedom here to rethink fundamentals – what a museum, public space, or cultural destination can actually be.”

Assessing UAE as “an opportunity rich, innovation driven market” Karan Kathuria, director of sales & business development at Renkus-Heinz says: “The role of AV will only become more creative, strategic, and impactful.”

“AV in the UAE has evolved from a hardware-led installation market into a highly experience-driven, design-centric ecosystem tied closely to architecture, events, tourism, and national ambition,” she says. “Dreams are big and time is the only answer for them to be executed, whether these are large or medium scale.”

Dubai began its ascent in the 1990s encouraging foreigners to base themselves in a tax free climate while infrastructure was built around them. The last decade has seen the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia attempt to turn its own oil tanker of an economy. Specifically the KSA is rapidly expanding its audio-visual market as part of its national transformation strategy under Saudi Vision 2030.

Masdar City is a $22bn sustainable eco-city project in being developed to rival California’s Silicon Valley but also to incorporate all aspects of city life. This includes an emphasis on narrow shaded streets, walkways and paths. Its orientation uses the cool night winds to reduce solar gain.

Nation to nation competition

“The UAE hasn’t been overshadowed so much as refocused,” argues Kathuria. “It’s winning more project awards and doubling down on pragmatic, high impact developments that create steady, real world demand for AV, immersive tech and integrated digital experiences — a strategy that appeals strongly to project owners, investors and tech partners alike.”

Saudi Arabia’s mega projects attract global attention, but the UAE maintains its position “through stability, execution capability and international connectivity,” argues Ar. “Rather than competing on scale alone, the focus here is on quality, innovation and timely delivery — and that is a fundamentally different value proposition.

“The UAE’s advantage has always been execution maturity,” Ar says. “Predictable procurement cycles, a deep and experienced integrator community, and projects that move from specification to commissioning without the delays that characterise more nascent markets. The current regional volatility tests that reputation, and it would be dishonest to say it creates no headwinds. But clients here have enough market experience to distinguish between regional turbulence and structural risk, and our pipeline reflects that.”

A focus on business operations

Dubai and Abu Dhabi continue to grow with a focus on business operations, entertainment experiences and global event readiness. “Dubai in particular is often perceived as ‘shiny’ because of its international scale and agility, and it truly leads in terms of ease of doing business and global tech partnerships,” says Singh.

Hickman suggests that, of the Emirates, Dubai leads in volume and visibility. “Dubai leads because of tourism and events infrastructure,” he says. “Abu Dhabi focuses on cultural prestige and government projects with a very different vibe.”

Netgear completed a full network infrastructure modernisation at Global Village Dubai, for one of the region’s largest cultural and entertainment destinations: a 10G fully redundant backbone, M4350 and M4250 switching across core, distribution and access layers, and managed wireless covering the entire park. “The scale and operational intensity of that environment made it a demanding brief, and one that reflects the complexity of projects increasingly coming through across the UAE,” says Ar.

However, as Ar points out, it would be a mistake to treat the UAE as synonymous with Dubai alone. “Beyond the two main centres, other emirates are steadily developing commercial and mixed-use projects, each at their own pace and with their own priorities. The result is a genuinely balanced national landscape rather than a single-city story.

There are seven Emirates
Hickman elaborates, “Sharjah is more focused on education and smart-community developments, and the northern emirates on eco-tourism and hospitality. Economically, Dubai and Abu Dhabi account for the majority of projects, yet the smaller emirates benefit from spillover investment and targeted incentives. AV trends follow the same pattern: flashy, high-profile in Dubai; institutional and immersive in Abu Dhabi.”

There are a number of hugely exciting projects on the horizon that have technology and visual experience sitting at the heart. Billed as “an oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment at this crossroads of the world” Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati” when it opens sometime between 2030-33. Immersive destinations and experiences creator Miral, based in Abu Dhabi is helping design the resort on Yas Island.

Echoing the scale of the 20,000-capacity Sphere in Las Vegas, Sphere Abu Dhabi promises to “re-define entertainment in the region” if and when construction begins. The country even plans a Harry Potter theme park from Warner Bros.

Twenty years after its announcement, the world’s largest Guggenheim is still waiting its official launch party. Frank Gehry, now 96 years old, and the original architect of Bilbao’s iconic art museum, has described this project as his “late masterpiece.”

Projects of scale
Abu Dhabi’s government want to overtake Paris and London as the art capital of the world and has commissioned Zaha Hadid to design a new Performing Arts Centre, located alongside a version of the Louvre and the Guggenheim in the Saadiyat Cultural District. Also there is the Zayed National Museum, architected by Foster + Partners with five lightweight steel wings, which opened its doors in December.

“Such plans will make meaningful additions to the UAE’s arts and culture scene, while much-publicised developments such as Disneyland and Sphere will secure the UAE’s spot on the world map when it comes to pioneering next-generation immersive entertainment,” says Tikriti.

“Immersive experiences at museums and cultural destinations as one of the most exciting sectors right now. There’s a strong desire to tell national and regional stories through contemporary immersive techniques, combining cutting-edge technology with deep cultural narratives to connect with younger, digital-native audiences.”

Sports business
The live events and sports technology vertical deserves particular attention in the UAE context. The region has committed not just to hosting world-class events but to using them as platforms for genuine technological innovation. The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (ADRL) is a case in point. The debut event at Yas Marina drew over 600,000 online viewers and required a network infrastructure from Netgear capable of supporting real-time AI decision-making across multiple autonomous vehicles simultaneously. “Here, the AV network is not a support system for the event but integral to it,” says Ar.

Despite the cancelling of Grand Prix in neighbouring Bahrain and Saudi Tabet notes “substantial investment directed toward the sports industry across the region, including football, e-gaming, and multi-sport arenas.”

A recent disguise highlight was powering the Phygital Games of the Future in Abu Dhabi, created and delivered by bright! Studios. “The event fused esports with physical sports in a live event that was broadcast to millions of fans across the globe, filled with jaw-dropping visual moments,” Tikriti says. “Disguise has further plans for expansion in the region which we will be sharing more on very soon.”

Other projects supported by Disguise in the region over the years include projection mapping at the Burj Khalifa, Al Wasl Dome and the One&Only One Za’abeel hotel, to immersive digital experiences at Dubai Airport.

Infrastructure and residential build out
The 900km-long Etihad Rail passenger network development expects to launch its first services this year across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and beyond. This is the region’s first cross border rail network connecting 11 cities and towns across the seven emirates. There are also major airport expansions (such as at Al Maktoum International in Dubai).

Marsa Al Arab is a seafront resort being built on two artificial islands near the Burj Al Arab, focusing on tourism and luxury living, with plans for hotel and entertainment facilities. Masdar City is a $22 billion sustainable eco-city project in Abu Dhabi near the international airport. Debuting next spring, Wynn Al Marjan Island is being developed into a “opulent and entertaining beachside destination” in the port city Ras Al Khaimah (capital of RAK).

While the Burj Khalifa remains Dubai’s most recognised symbol, the Creek Tower Dubai due to open this year is intended to be a landmark on par with the Eiffel Tower. Designed to surpass the Burj Khalifa in both height and symbolism, the tower is part of the Dubai Creek Harbour Tower development of luxury living and shopping, one part of which was hit by an Iranian drone.

“These are all expected to support continued AV investment in transport, entertainment and smart-city environments,” Hickman says. On a smaller scale he notes the need for increased security control rooms with higher levels of IP decode/encode “as is the need for corporate clients to transmit video at low bandwidths at high quality to reduce networking costs whilst increasing national and international collaboration.”

Overall, the UAE’s successful diversification of economic development, cultivated organically over five decades across various sectors, has helped reduce its dependence on oil.

“This strategic shift positions the UAE favourably,” Singh says. “Consequently, the UAE is not under immediate economic threat from any neighbouring GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, particularly given its consistent announcement and execution of diverse projects. Its well-established and multifaceted economy offers a robust foundation for growth going forward.”

NAB 2026 review: “Live immersive production is here, and it’s extraordinary”

IBC

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If there is a single takeaway from NAB 2026 it’s that the broadcast media industry is rebalancing. The centre of gravity is shifting, the customer base is diversifying, and the definition of “media” is expanding across sectors.

The International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers (IABM) reflected this by changing its five decades old brand to IAMT, standing for the International Association of MediaTech.

In its annual ‘State of Media Tech’ report unveiled at the show, the IAMT revealed that up to half of future revenue growth for its members is coming from parallel markets compared to traditional broadcast. These are verticals like banks, retailers, and schools “organisations that want broadcast-quality production capabilities without the infrastructure complexity that has historically come with them,” said Chris Evans, Head of Knowledge and Insight.

Show organisers capitalised on this by programming a series of ‘Enterprise Video Strategies’ with the aim of bringing TV professionals together with heads of AV to learn lessons from each other.

Creator talent pipeline

With these shifts in mind, it was no surprise to see the creator economy out in full force at NAB this year. IAMT CTO Stan Moote describes a stratified ecosystem: from phone-first hobbyists and semi-professional “solopreneurs” to fully professionalised creators with managers, monetisation strategies, and studio grade workflows.

“We spoke with a manager who represents a hundred influencers,” Moote says. “He’s helping them professionalise – buying lights, cameras, tripods, editing tools. It’s like talent management in film or TV, just with a different pipeline.

One example is the recent phenomenon of microdramas, where platforms hook people into stories with free episodes then attempt to convert them subscribers to watch the full series. According to Natalie Jarvey, Editor of Ankler Media’s Like & Subscribe newsletter speaking at a panel on the topic, it is creators who are going to own the microdrama space.

Evans frames it as a continuum rather than a separate industry. “The idea that creators and media entertainment are two worlds is a misconception. It’s a talent pipeline. Their storytelling techniques such as hooks, pacing, and audience engagement are now influencing traditional media. And on the enterprise side, we’re seeing companies hire internal storytellers and content creators. It’s a multi-faceted ecosystem.”

AI: From hype to hard ROI

AI is no longer the abstract, speculative version of 2023. This year, the focus was on tangible, operational value.

“We’re seeing real AI, not just talk,” said Moote. “AI-driven sign language interpretation; AI orchestration and scheduling that saves money; AI repurposing linear news into vertical formats automatically. And on the business side, AI-powered churn management for streaming platforms.”

IAMT data backs this up: 66% of respondents cite AI/ML as a key technology priority, and 34% say it is the single most important. But buyers are demanding clarity.

“They want outcomes, not buzzwords,” said Evans. “How does this reduce power consumption? How does it reduce operating expenses? How does it increase content output with flat staffing? Those are the questions driving investment.”

Show launches include the latest version of editing assistant Eddie AI with Night Shift mode that turns raw footage into a rough cut while you sleep. In the same ballpark, Adobe was showing the Firefly AI Assistant which is a new agentic tool that can orchestrate complex, multi-step workflows across the company's entire Creative Cloud suite (Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom, Express, Illustrator etc) as well as third party tools like Kling. As ever, the emphasis is on the creative driving the process while the AI chugs away at pulling the idea together from a variety of apps.

The challenge, though, is that competition is intense with rival vendors claiming to do broadly the same thing. There are plenty of companies, for example, using AI for metadata tagging to achieve similar results.

It’s no longer primarily about quality, because AI has effectively standardised that; quality is now almost assumed. Increasingly, differentiation might simply come down to cost and speed.

“AI is a huge topic everywhere right now,” confirms Hossein ZiaShakeri, SVP, Media and Entertainment, Spectra Logic. “From a storage perspective, the focus is really on how to enrich content so it can be better monetised. Ultimately, it comes down to one core question: how quickly can you find the right piece of content? If you can locate assets quickly, you can repurpose them, build new stories, and unlock more value. That’s the key driver behind a lot of the innovation we’re seeing.”

Immersive, cinematic sports broadcasting

The value of sports rights continues to soar, reckoned by S&P Global to be worth north of $67bn in 2026, along with fan interest in the live event. The pulling power of live broadcast will be self-evident this summer during the FIFA World Cup and was a clear trend at NAB as leading cinema camera makers fielded new versions fit for the stadium.

Chief among these, and arguably the headline grabbing deal of the show even though it was announced beforehand, was ARRI’s sale to Riedel Communications.

ARRI had already begun to expand into live production and under Riedel’s parentage that development will come on leaps and bounds.

“The two companies are highly complementary,” explained founder and owner Thomas Riedel at NAB. “ARRI brings world-class camera technology, while we contribute expertise in transmission, both wired and wireless, network control, processing, video servers, and live production solutions.

“We won’t lose sight of ARRI’s legacy,” he added, “but expanding into live sport and entertainment is a natural next step, and it’s an area where we can really add value.”

On cue, ARRI announced new software features for the Alexa 35 Live camera and Live Production System LPS-1. These will be used at the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest in May, which will see 25+ Alexa 35 Live cameras used in partnership with Riedel.

Other cine-cam vendors Sony and RED are also developing their broadcast capabilities. At NAB, RED was showing the latest version of its Cine-Broadcast Module which includes an automatic record-triggering via external tally commands from the video switcher. This means R3D files are captured only for the portions of an event actually directed live, which should significantly cut post-production overhead and making it straightforward for editors to relink to the camera raw source.

CBS Sports and NBC Sports have already used the broadcast module, while Fuse Technical Group has captured several concerts using RED cameras.

What started as a stylistic experiment has become the new visual language of sports broadcasting, where storytelling, emotion and image texture define the fan experience. As ARRI’s Corporate Development Expert Philip Durst put it, “The line between sports and cinema has all but disappeared: every frame now carries emotional purpose, and every production decision – lens choice, camera angle, colour tone – serves the larger narrative of human performance.

“What used to be a race for higher resolution and faster frame rates has transformed into a creative movement driven by Hollywood-style storytelling.”

That race has now gone to the next level: live immersive content.

On the showfloor, RED demonstrated an 8K live streaming basketball demo built around RED Connect and an output to an Apple Vision Pro. Live streamed immersive VR has been promised for a while now, but the pieces are beginning to fall into place.

Blackmagic Design made the biggest waves in this area by debuting the URSA Cine Immersive 100G, an immersive cinema camera with dual 8Kx8K RGBW sensors costing $26,495. A series of live Lakers games have already been captured in the format for viewing on Vision Pro.

“Live immersive production is here, and it’s extraordinary,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “URSA Cine Immersive 100G makes it possible, and the images from this camera are just incredible to watch. It truly feels like you’ve been transported to the middle of the action. From sports to concerts, this opens up an entirely new world in live production.”

Camera tech to watch

Announced last year as a kickstarter project and shipping from May 1 is the new Spark high-speed camera from Pixboom claiming 4K at 1,000fps. This compact Super 35 global-shutter camera could give Phantom a run for its money in slow-motion work since, at €12,000, it costs many times less, and the global shutter is useful for fast motion sports or action movies, nature docs and volumetric camera arrays where RED cameras dominate. A 12-bit RAW sensor pushes dynamic range to 14 stops was announced at NAB, along with internal ProRes RAW recording that streamlines post into Resolve.

GoPro arrived with a new range of action cameras headlined by the €600 Mission 1 Pro which can shoot 8K resolution at 60fps or 4K at 240fps from a 50MP sensor. A Mission 1 Pro ILS version, due later in the year, will accept interchangeable lenses from a Micro Four Thirds mount. The company claimed this to be one of its most significant product launches ever, as it targets winning back prosumer market share from Chinese competitors like DJI (Osmo Action 5 Pro) and Insta360 (Ace Pro).

A new drone caught the attention. Touted as the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone, the Antigravity A1 (which launched last year and is made by a subsidiary of Insta360) reinvents aerial filming with video-game inspired control. The operator of the A1 ‘views’ a first-person perspective through a pair of goggles and uses either head movements or gestures from a Wii-style hand control. It costs €1280 and weighs less than 250g.

Colour and edit tools are merging fast

Adobe debuted Colour Mode which is built directly into Premiere’s editing interface reducing the need for separate specialist (i.e. actual colourist) workflows. In Adobe’s words, this is a “completely new colour grading system” with a new operations system for grade management and dozens of built-in styles and modules. One of those offers complete cinematic looks applied in one click. In linking colour grading with editing Adobe is competing with Blackmagic Resolve which has offered this for a while. All the tributes to Adobe’s move seem to come from creators, rather than professional video editors, which is where its target market lies for this initial launch at least.

Until now, the workflow between edit and grade (offline and online) required much back and forth between systems, people and facilities but developments like Adobe’s are collapsing this. Imagen Video has gone a step further and made its AI-driven editing platform available to the colour grading tools in Premiere and Resolve. It offers AI Profiles trained on professional colour styles with support for custom LUTs and can deliver a baseline grade up to “10 times faster” than traditional, manual methods, it claimed.

Behind the scenes: Rooster

IBC

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When Cinematographer Blake McClure signed on to shoot HBO’s new comedy Rooster, he wasn’t looking to reinvent the sitcom; he was looking for a way to stretch the visual language of comedy to integrate the intimacy of large format.

As an arena where dialogue often dominates, camera grammar in comedy is usually expected to stay politely out of the way. What emerged was a bold, large‑format aesthetic built around the Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65, a camera McClure initially doubted but ultimately used to redefine the show’s emotional texture.

“Comedy is driven by dialogue. It’s about timing, tone, the speed of the joke. There’s not a lot of air between lines so there’s less room for expressive camera language. You don’t get the lingering, the following of characters, the visual storytelling you get in drama,” he explains.

McClure has balanced a career shooting comedy (Miracle Workers, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Apple TV’s Loot and numerous segments for ​Saturday Night Live!) with drama (Ryan Murphy horror Grotesquerie, The Dropout starring Amanda Seyfried and psychological thriller Ratched).

“Rooster finally gave me the chance to merge those two worlds,” he says.

Rooster stars Steve Carrell as an author of pulp fiction teaching who lectures at an Ivy league university where his daughter is a professor. It’s the latest show from creators and showrunners Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses whose back catalogue includes Scrubs, Spin City and Ted Lasso.

“While still a comedy at heart, Rooster is more character‑driven themes blending humour with more dramatic and personal themes,” McClure says.

The show’s visual identity began with Dream Scenario, a 2023 satire starring Nicolas Cage and shot in 16mm by DP Benjamin Loeb. McClure and director Jonathan Krisel initially explored Super 16 to emulate its contrast and texture but the idea quickly ran into practical and aesthetic limitations.

“Our sets were tight. We couldn’t throw backdrops out of focus. Super 16 has a deeper stop, so it wasn’t helping,” McClure recalls. “I started thinking: what’s the exact opposite? Medium‑format 65mm.”

Large‑format portraiture—epitomised by Hoyte van Hoytema’s work on Oppenheimer —had long fascinated McClure. “The emotional closeness, the lack of distortion, the way longer lenses compress space without pushing the camera back,” he says. “It felt right for Rooster’s character‑centric storytelling.”

There was just one problem: 65mm is rarely feasible in television. Multi‑camera setups, tight schedules, and data demands make it a luxury. ARRI’s Alexa 65 had been used to shoot The Revenant, Barbie and Dune: Part Two but was not an option for a TV budget.

But in Spring 2025 with Rooster in pre-production, Blackmagic announced the release of the URSA Cine 65, a camera McClure admits he initially dismissed.

“They’ve been very consumer‑oriented. I wasn’t sure it would hold up to a demanding TV schedule,” he says. “But the idea of 65mm portrait storytelling kept pulling me back.”

Camera placement in large format

The URSA Cine 65 didn’t just change the look it changed how McClure approached position and framing.

“I did initial tests to see if I even wanted to use the camera. Then I brought the director in for more tests. Finally, we did hair, makeup and wardrobe tests representing the show’s tonal range. That’s where we figured out focal lengths for over‑the‑shoulders. With the wide field of view, foreground shoulders sometimes looked too close or made actors feel far apart, so we often eliminated the foreground shoulder entirely and shot just inside the eyeline.”

They always ran two cameras, and about 80% of the time had a third. He shot with a full set of Camtec Falcons, mostly using a 55mm T1.3.

“Because the sensor is so big, I didn’t want to just use longer lenses and push the cameras far back—that defeats the purpose,” he says. “But being physically close created challenges with shadows and angles.

“We were also physically closer to the actors than they were used to. They’d look at the camera and say, ‘Why are you shooting an extreme close‑up?’ But it was actually a medium.”

For example, in scenes set in the College president’s office, he would sometimes put two cameras on the wall or cross‑shoot. “If an actor stood up, our close cameras couldn’t tilt without shooting up their nostrils, so we’d have a third camera higher up to maintain continuity. Sometimes that third camera became a profile shot. We had to rethink placement constantly.”

The 8K workflow

The URSA Cine 65 can shoot 17K, but McClure settled on 8K, balancing quality with practicality. Convincing HBO required transparency, but he had an ally: British DP John Brawley had already used Blackmagic’s 12K camera on Apple TV comedy Shrinking which was also made by Bill Lawrence’s production company Doozer Productions.

“It helped that DigitalFilm Tree was the same postproduction facility [as Shrinking] so they were familiar with Blackmagic RAW. Working with the URSA Cine 17K 65 wasn’t a huge leap for them. But studios don’t want to hear ‘8K’ because of data costs,” McClure says.

Even the idea of capturing to the camera’s 8 Terabyte media mags was off-putting because the hours it could potentially take to offload the footage would not be conducive to fast turnaround TV schedules.

Instead, Blackmagic advised the team to use CFexpress cards which hold about 1TB. “We used about 10 per camera and rotated them as the studio cleared media for deletion.”

Also making an 8K workflow viable was McClure’s choice of compression options offered by the camera.  

“We tested all the compression settings and landed on Q3 which uses a variable bit rate to encode only the moving parts of the frame,” he explains. “More specifically, Q3 allocates more data to areas of high detail and less to static parts of the frame, reducing the overall data rate. You don’t notice it visually, but it meant that our 8K files were actually smaller than an Alexa 35 show I’d just done. This made it an easier sell to the studio, since we weren’t asking them to approve a massive data storage footprint for the DIT or post production. Plus, it held up beautifully in grading.”

Delivery in 4K gave ample room for reframing in post. “We shot 8K using the full width of the sensor within our 2:1 aspect ratio. You can zoom into this camera 350% and it still holds up,” he says. “I’m fine with punch‑ins if they serve the story.

Lighting for naturalism

The script’s first line mentioned ‘New England fall colours’, so that became the guiding idea for the look of the show, despite shooting exteriors at The University of the Pacific’s Stockton campus near San Francisco and on stages in Los Angeles.

“We pushed as much sunlight‑feeling light as possible—20Ks, Molebeams, anything to create that fall atmosphere,” McClure says. “We embraced blown [overexposed] windows. That allowed us to use exterior light as bounce and fill, then augment with smaller sources inside.”

With colourist Josh Bohoskey, he referenced Dream Scenario for its blown‑highlight, high‑contrast look. “Josh built LUTs that brought the lifted shadows back down while keeping a slight lift. We also kept the palette warm, dialling out blue computer‑screen hues, for example. Production design was fantastic and set the foundation.”

He employed a LED colour contrast filter from Camtec. The Color-Con consists of a diffusion filter surrounded by LEDs in a filter holder that occupies two spaces in the mattebox. In addition to controlling colour and contrast, the LEDs can create a controllable, directional hot spot. McClure likens it to modern version of the Lightflex that Freddie Francis, BSC used on The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) or the ARRI Varicon.

“With the sensor being so large, every lens naturally has a bit of shading toward the edges of frame. The Color-Con filter exaggerates that. I could focus more LED light on the centre of the filter. So it’s a little bit brighter in the centre and that enhances the shading. Depending on our stop, some shots almost look like there’s a hole punch while others are very gentle.

He explains, “It lifts the highlights and shadows, almost like shooting through smoke without needing smoke. I’m obsessed with baking-in as much of the look as possible; colour, tone, LUTs, everything.”

Lessons learned

Even now, finishing colour on the tenth and final Season 1 episode, McClure is still learning from the format.

“The biggest lesson is: don’t drift back into old habits. Sometimes I drifted back into lensing in instead of physically moving closer but then you lose the charm of the format. Staying committed to that closeness takes more time and sometimes means sacrificing coverage, but everyone agreed the results were worth it.”

It’s a testament to how a comedy series became a proving ground for large‑format storytelling.

“I wanted the show to feel like a portrait, intimate and relationship driven. I’ve always loved medium format photography, and this was the closest I’ve been to that in motion. The intimacy we got was worth every bit of problem‑solving.

“It’s not the right camera for every project—just like anamorphic or 65mm isn’t always right—but it now sits alongside Alexa and Venice as a legitimate tool. It should be considered seriously.”

Country music to comedy

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, McClure got his first spark of inspiration from an unlikely source, the Ernest movies (​Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Scared Stupid, ​etc.), because they filmed in and around his neighbourhood. Seeing crews moving about and setting up big lights revealed the world of filmmaking to McClure, who went on to attend and graduate from Watkins Film School.

His worked as a PA on the Coen Brothers’ ​O Brother, Where Art Thou? shot by Roger Deakins and credits those two months on set with Deakins with teaching him as much about cinematography as he learned in film school.

“When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had a reel full of country music videos. The first people I connected with happened to be comedy filmmakers, including Oz Rodriguez, who directed on Rooster. I started shooting shorts with that group, and as often happens in this business, one connection led to another. That was 15 years ago, and it built from there. I haven’t shot a music video since—but I’m shooting my first one since then this weekend, in Key West.”