NAB 2008 delivered on its promised excitement with technically interesting and artfully designed products for digital media production. The parties were good, too.
In looking back at what I saw (through a haze of overindulgence on more than one occasion) I can absolutely say, the game has changed. Or more appropriately, it continues to evolve at breakneck speeds.
NAB Videos
Video interviews and educational sessions from NAB 2008 can be found here.
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Two years ago, 4K was the next big thing.
Last year, Red debuted their first product offering to audience amazement — with no less than a short film whipped up by Peter Jackson in what can only be called his own personal filmmakers Shangri-La. They started delivering the cameras late last year, and — to my utter delight — managed to fill every non-Sony and Panasonic nook and cranny of the show floor with RED One camera bodies doing funky things. They were everywhere hosting modifications and accessories. Kind of like Arriflex was two years ago. Draw your own parallels…
This year, I went on the hunt for “what’s next in Post production” — workflow, whizz-bang apps and their cohorts — the ever expanding library of plugins and things that make stuff go boom in digital space.
Of note were Eyeon Digital Fusion and The Foundry’s NUKE 5. Both sport stereoscopic compositing — and in case you live under a rock or have a desk in a major Hollywood production house — you have heard of 3D for indies coming down the pipeline.
Scribe did a story on U23D – so if you need a quick primer on how cool this technology is and the immersive feeling one can give a film with it go here.
Back to compositing — the Nuke 3D projection mapping features are truly a thing to love — as is the speed (it’s just so damn fast: 32 bit processing all the time for everything). This just feels like a professionals app from the moment you start slinging frames around and finessing scenes into submission.
The only real thing missing is… the plugins! Noticeably absent from Nuke 5’s lineup was Genarts’ “Sapphire” support and a few of the other higher end plugins, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they are rapidly forthcoming.
As for Eyeon, well, they have been around for 20 years and basically invented nodal compositing as we know it. It just doesn’t run on my Mac. Which sucks for me, but hey, maybe that will force me to do that Linux install after all.
Then there was Editshare. We first ran into Editshare at HD World here in NYC, and got to have a good long chat with their President and founder, Andy Liebman. If you have workflow issues with editing and file management in your post facility, stop what you are doing and check them out.
Andy worked as a producer for many years before getting fed up with the problems of post workflow and disparate file systems making a mess of things for him and his projects, so he started Editshare a few years ago and now they are taking over the planet, one post facility at a time. Great for reality TV traveling crews too as they have a portable solution.
Then there was the production equipment. Yumm. Redrock Micro has a nice as homemade pie matte box for what seems to be a giveaway price. They spent some serious time working out the design before dropping this thing on the market, but it is a ready-for-prime-time fully functional wicked piece of image improving hardware. Go buy one now.
There was also the best grip gear around from Matthews and we got a close up look at their wonder rig: the Roundy-Round dolly. The president of Matthews reminds me of guys that I knew that repaired boats for a living in Hawaii and surfed in the mornings — someone that figured out the key to good living and is keeping it a secret from the rest of us.
My overall impression of NAB was that the content pavilion was a flop by all accounts — not really impressing an audience that doesn’t really give a squat about content that has already been done, but more about the content they are going to make with the new stuff at the show.
That said, the educational sessions were well attended and extremely informative, and included quite a few tracts for career development for independent producers, editors, directors, and camera operators.
Almost everywhere you went there was also something being said about small screen venues (iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc.) and viral web video. There was refreshingly little being blathered about marketing and advertising, audience metrics, Nielson ratings, and the poison of the air of previous NAB shows. All in all, it was a refreshing thing… especially the RED booth.
Did I mention that I now have a reservation for one coming in December?
#4216 baby!
Feel the redliness oozing from my pictures!
And don’t forget to watch interviews and educational sessions here.
