Hollywood Professional Association announces Innovation & Technology Nominees

The Hollywood Professional Association announced the nominees for the 2026 HPA Awards Innovation & Technology program on Jan. 15. The expanded awards recognize technology contributions across the media and entertainment production lifecycle.

The program broadens the scope of the previous Engineering Excellence Award, which has been presented for nearly 20 years. The new categories cover pre-production, production and capture, visual effects, virtual production and animation, post-production, and distribution and audience experience.

Nominees in the innovation in pre-production category include Bria AI for GenAI Attribution Technology, RivetAI, Inc. for RivetAI, and Yamdu for its AI Script Breakdown and Management Add-On.

The production and capture category features nominees such as the American Society of Cinematographers for Media Hash List, Creamsource for the Slyyd Lighting Control App, and Méduse Inc. for the Safe Guns Phase-Synced Flash-Gun System.

In visual effects, virtual production and animation, nominees are Foundry for Nuke Stage, Nerfstudio and Industrial Light & Magic for Nerfstudio, and Volinga and XGRIDS for the Virtual Production Pipeline.

Post-production nominees include Adobe for Generative Extend in Adobe Premiere, Flawless for TrueSync, and Storj for Production Cloud.

The distribution and audience experience category lists Cineverse for CINESEARCH, SyncWords Inc. for LiveCore + Kobe Muxer, and V-Nova Studios for V-Nova PresenZ.

Winners of the five innovation categories will be announced on Feb. 18 at the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat. The HPA Transformative Impact Award and the HPA Tech Retreat Best in Show Award will be presented on Feb. 19.

Judging criteria included innovation, current industry impact, technical merit, and readiness for adoption. Panels were composed of experts with technical knowledge of media production workflows.