Ok, let's try this again... again. Long time followers know that I'm not great at keeping the blog up to date (and even worse at keeping my YouTube channel up to date!). Most of that is because I've been too busy to take the time to write a blog, and part of that is because I've been focusing my free time elsewhere (including taking the well-deserved mental break to play some new videogames). That all being said, I'm going to try again to keep this blog more up to date with projects I'm working on (and project's I've done but haven't had time to talk about!) and where better to start than to write about what I saw out at NAB earlier this month? I'm not going to go too deep into any of the "news" from the show floor, if you care about such things you've already heard that stuff elsewhere, and if you haven't, it's easy enough to find the details on your own. This is going to focus my experience at the show, and some of my initial reactions to some of the new gear I saw on the show floor. First of all, this year I grabbed a Post | Production World pass at NAB, which is the conference pass that gives you access to a HUGE pile of sessions and classes on various production topics, ranging from specific deep dives of a singular tool, to higher level discussions about cutting edge tech and how we can use it in our various productions back at home. For a taste of it, check out the session schedule here. I sat in on sessions discussing Virtual Production, use of AI in production and post, social media, and color grading. Additionally, there were also a couple sessions I caught on specific things such as microlighting (some of which I use regularly for some of my theatre work), and some sessions that dove into some pain points for me, such as expressions and the particle generator in After Effects. I could go into detail on some of the sessions, but I'm still digesting all the information I picked up. NAB is always a fantastic educational opportunity for this industry, even if you just stick to the show floor, adding in P|PW just takes it that much further. (And also adds an additional layer of networking events - P|PW has a party of their own on Sunday evening). Without getting into the weeds on what I learned specifically, I'd say the biggest takeaway from this year for me is that there's always something you don't know about production, or a piece of software and there's a lot of value in just hearing how other people are doing things for their own needs. Not so that you can copy them, but to give you a better understanding of why some choices are made, and when they're the right or wrong choice to make. One little example - one of the sessions I sat in on was specific to shooting content for social media. One of the things she told us was that she'll shoot some of her content on a GoPro in it's high resolution 4:3 mode, which covers all platform needs, from vertical for reels or tik tok, traditional horizontal for youtube, or square for instagram and twitter. Assuming the framing is right, the higher res 4:3 covers all those aspect ratios, without having to re-shoot multiple times, or cutting the resolution way down for one platform or another. Oh, and of course there were plenty of discussions on AI. I've learned that if nothing else I'm not using Chat GPT to its fullest potential. One person even (briefly) had Google's gemini setup in a way where it was logging b-roll for him. Wild stuff out there and it's only going to get better. The big AI takeaway is that we need to be staying on top of these tools and figure out how to integrate them into our workflows - not to replace humans in post production, but to make the process more efficient, especially when you're working on quick turnaround content.
Sometimes you see companies you don't expect on the show floor at NAB, I was surprised and thrilled to see Neewer at the show. I've had some of their lights for a while, and picked up some of the newer Neewer lights recently - one of which I'm using as my "go-to" light for portrait photography for CCCT for a few months now and I have to say I love it. If you're unfamiliar with the brand, I found them original through Amazon, where the frequently show up as the "amazon choice" for inexpensive film gear. A lot of their more recent products are solid though, and priced at a very affordable range, especially for indie projects.
Finally, there were some new products at the booth, like this new light below. This new light had a plastic Fresnel lens and barn doors, is DMX controllable (via 5pin XLR), is bi-color, and really doesn't weigh much for the size. They didn't have a price available for (brand new!) but it will be launching later this year and this could be a very exciting lighting instrument both for film or small theatrical applications. Continuing on with unexpected appearances, I dropped by Insta 360's booth to see if they had anything new (which at the time they had only teased, but the announcement came the next day - so I had to go back!) and on their stage was Wren from Corridor digital, talking about how they'd used some of the already released cameras on past projects. Of course the next day Insta360 announced the new Insta360 X4 camera, which is absolutely now on my wishlist to upgrade from my severely outdated Insta360 One, but I didn't have a whole lot of time when I swung back by the booth to check it out on the last day. Another thing about NAB - you can't ignore Blackmagic Design. Even if you wanted to, which you usually don't, it's the first thing you see when you walk into the South Hall: So of course on one of my breaks from P|PW I dropped into the Blackmagic booth - and I did not spend enough time in the Resolve part of the booth, so don't even ask me about 19, I don't know anything more than what's online! But I did look at some of the camera gear they had out:
Oh yeah - they also had the URSA Cine 17K camera on display in a case - but they didn't have one you could put your hands on I'm sure there's some people out there who can justify that resolution, but I'm not sure my current system could handle that even if I needed it. I also spent some significant time at the Adobe booth talking with them about different parts of the Adobe suite. They didn't have a working demo of the Sora AI integration in Premiere, but I had a great discussion with one of the After Effects team members about their new native 3D workflow, including what I feel is missing from it being able to replace my current workflow, Element 3D. And while nothing was promised, I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with that toolset in the near future. That's another one of the things I love about NAB - there are very few opportunities to get that level of access directly to the people working on the tools we use every day. Feedback forms are great, but being able to have an actual conversation about the products strengths and weaknesses can't be beat.
I know my NAB posts are always a bit long, but there’s just so much to cover. Perhaps next year I’ll try and break it up into smaller posts earlier on rather than sticking it into one post and taking 2 weeks to get it written. But for now I’ll wrap up with one more image, because of course I had to swing by the Sony booth and see what they had, and they didn’t disappoint. But aside from the new camera and all the high end virtual production that they were showing off, there was also this fantastic example of how to rig up an FX3 for documentary production. (Or any other scenario where you’d want to shoot from the shoulder) Yes, that’s a ronin stabilizer attached to a shoulder rig, with the FX3 on the front of it - just about perfect for a wide variety of smaller projects, especially if you're shooting a documentary style project - I wish I’d had something like this when shooting the ghost hunt I did with Brian Treybig a few years ago.
Anyway, that's it for this post, as I’ve said before, I hope to be getting back into blogging more regularly. (We'll see how that goes in reality though.) For sure though I’m going to write some posts on some recent (and not so recent) projects that I didn’t get to talk about much on social media because I was so busy! As always thank you for reading, and feel free to drop a comment below if you'd like to know more about anything I mentioned in this post, or my thoughts on anything from NAB in general. It wasn’t possible for me to see everything, so if there’s something I missed that you think I’d like let me know! Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, : @tomameek (I'm also on TikTok now if you want to follow me as I decide how I'm going to use that platform!) Until next time. -Thomas |
AuthorThomas Meek is an independent filmmaker living and working in Houston, TX Archives
April 2024
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