“I’ve got my feet in the clouds, got my head on the ground.” – Paul McCartney
The New York City soundtrack is one of noise. The sounds envelope our “Brooklyn Dodging,” an art we carry into Manhattan; dipping, diving, dodging and weaving around selfies, cabs, electric scooters, jackhammers, slow walkers, rats, and more. Information and sound is thrown at you constantly. The bright lights of Broadway promise a dazzling performance. A small yellow sign informs you that The Equalizer is filming next door. Sirens. Chatter. Yells. Subway screeches. Train rumbles. Street meat sizzles. And yet it’s an energy that rises into the air, like smoke from the carts, through to the clouds.
Which is why the arrival at the Westin Times Square for NAB’s Post Production World seems so alarming. So opposite.
It’s…quiet.
There is no fanfare. There are no signs. In fact, in order to point me in the right direction, a Westin employee has to double check their list of meetings to point me in the right direction: head to the 9th floor. No signage there either. Just three conference rooms holding lectures for National Association of Broadcaster’s Post Production World in New York.
An area like the 9th Floor, somewhere between the ground and the clouds, is where NAB Show operates, with the experience, devices, and technology to bring you to one, or the other, and communicate in between. And in a city like New York known for its rooftop bars, and subterranean mesh of subways, it too operates and exceeds the space between earth and sky.
Learning is Loud?
In teaching, I’ve been told that learning is loud. The sounds, conversations, energy, and activity that accompany a lesson may actually mean that students are learning. But here, at the Westin Times Square one mile away from Javitz Center, learning is a murmur. Here, the Post-Production lectures delivered to 40 people in a cold but comfortable conference room did not always leave time for questions. Conversations felt muted. But the strength of a program like PPW is in the personal reflection and goals it prompts you to make. Personal conversations, if you will. And the desire to research, shift, and adjust your own personal work.
(Touch)down on the Ground?
“We came from the other guys and they gave us this shirt. What do you got?” questioned an NAB Show attendee at a booth. The focus on snagging complimentary swag is hard to avoid. By 10:15am, B&H bags, stickers, FUJIFILM tote bags, and even mini footballs by Broadfield Distributing Company found their way into the hands of swag seekers. But for most visitors, what they were seeking were conversations. And NAB Show New York is far less about the toys and presentations and far more about the meetings and the connection points. While theater chairs felt half full, booth chairs were constantly occupied by interested parties. AVID’s space demonstrated this perfectly: while the company was there to converse about video editing platforms, there was only one monitor for demos, but several couches for caffeinated chats.
In Vegas, part of the floor feels like an obstacle course. You have to be careful and dodge tripods, microphones, and interviews. Yes, the artful Dodger is back. But there was one feature at NAB Show New York that made everyone stop: the FUJINON Duvo HZK25-1000mmF2.8-F5.0 PL Mount Cinema Box Lens. The $250,000, 62-pound behemoth mounted on an ARRI Alexa 35 caused every single person who walked by to pause. Foot traffic transitioned to questions and curiosity. It’s HOW bright? And HOW long is it? And Bob Poole has one of these for his work right now? And people are interested in using it cinematically? And it’s how much?
The curiosity and questions continued. “Want to play with some lenses?” a Tamron representative eagerly asked a group of young creatives. While the students were eager, a personal camera was required, and with just one point and shoot between them, their interactions would be limited to observation only.
A younger generation of creators is a group that Blackmagic Design hopes to entice with their lower entry point and consistent ecosystem.
“For people who are not using our cameras, the entire generation are recording just on their phones…”
As if on cue, a mobile videographer distracted us with a sort of ballet; creative spinning and creating transitions with a phone attached to a DJI Osmo. They were even using the Blackmagic Camera App.
We laughed at the serendipity of the scene. And we continued alongside the dance.
“We’re always talking about creating less of a barrier to entry for anybody who’s getting involved in the industry or trying to grow within the industry,” Nick Martins of Blackmagic Design shared. “What I like about the company is that the same user interface that’s on the phone, on our most basic camera, is also the same user interface on our 12k or the most expensive camera. The fundamentals don’t change.”
The same can be said about the progression through DaVinci Resolve. “If you’re an editor and you’re working in DaVinci Resolve, you don’t have to learn an entirely new program to learn how to color grade,” Martins continued. “You don’t need to have another program to learn audio editing. It’s all built in so you’re more you’re more inclined to to expand your skills, because it’s right there. And on your first production, you might just edit, get it out the door. Second production, you’re quicker and more efficient than your editing. Now you have a little more time to start messing with your color grading and get better in that in that regard your next production, you can start moving into Fusion. You can start adding that to your bag of tricks.”
Up in the Cloud?
For Blackmagic, their own “bag of tricks” has expanded to Blackmagic Cloud Live Sync. The system allows an H.264 HD proxy to upload directly to a DaVinci Project straight from the camera as it is recording. This means editors at DaVinci workstations connected to that cloud project can receive files as soon as possible. Cloud Live Sync is also available on the Blackmagic Camera App, which itself is no longer limited to iPhones. Behold: the Blackmagic App is now available for Android, a long-held dream by users.
A long-held dream of mine was for Canon to address the issues of the C70. As a frequent C70 user, I came to the Canon booth with a few specific (very VERY specific) nitpicks that I brought right to Paul Hawxhurst, Senior Technical Specialist and Sales Engineering at Canon USA. The new Canon EOS C80 manages to address most of these, including a new multi-shoe and an additional mounting point (demonstrated by having the camera comfortably and not awkwardly on a DJI RS 3 Pro). Similar in size and dimensions to the C70, and utilizing the same sensor as the C400, the C80 promises to deliver steps forward in autofocus (if AF has ever stopped tracking on your C70, you’ll know what I’m referring to) as well as video and frame rate flavors, with 4K Full Frame 120fps when you’re not shooting in raw. They even bolstered the connection points of the LCD screen, a great to thing to hear if yours, like mine, became loose (a heads up here: Hawxhurst did mention that they will fix the C70 LCD screen if has started to become loose. Hooray!). The LCD screen also now has touch screen menu capability so you no longer have to use the buttons. This is NOT an operating system update, so unfortunately it is restricted to the C80 only. Speaking of the C400, it was not on display at the Canon booth but it could be found at the B&H booth capturing a resident of Pandora (staged next to the Sony Burano shown below). The upcoming 28-70mm RF f2.8 lens was not on display.
All Together Now
When we daydream, it is said that our head is in the clouds. And while the traditional notion is that we are not grounded in that exact moment, that we’re floating in a dream, in the NAB realm, we are actually looking on the ground and in the sky at the exact same time. And FUJIFILM’s photo walks, returning from last year’s show, is illustrative of this change. This year, the two hour workshops offered topics such as Camera to Cloud and Street Photography. “We’re going to give you a mission,” shared Victor Ha, Vice President of Electronic Imaging Division and Optical Devices Division at FUJIFILM North America Corporation. “We created a series of photo walks that would allow us to help organize some of the interest, and then also for us, kind of see where the interest laid.” The smaller group size allowed for hands-on experimentation and experiences. “I think that the broadcast community tends to be a high touch community, meaning they’re not going to want to sit there in a group of 40 making the same image,” Ha shared. “If they’re going to invest their time or spend their time, they’re going to want to actually go in and learn something be more deliberate. So we made the conscious effort of putting only five people into each photo walk and then pairing it with a tech, pairing it with a PA as well as instructor.“
I noted that the photo walks, where one was experiencing the New York City streets while using cloud based functionality of the FUJIFILM cameras was an interesting combination, being as its both street level and yet high “above” at the same exact time. It was how I was describing NAB New York. And I asked Ha to respond.
“I grew up in a world where the core function of broadcast was news. And I think that that, more than anything, is still one of the pillars of why cloud delivery is so important… that authenticity, that delivery in journalism is absolutely important. And so I think you need to go on the ground to do that. You need devices that are able to provide that ability, to push the ability for us to get content out…I think it’s only going to expand upwards and downwards, but I think it’s going to expand horizontally across a lot of different devices and platforms.”
Photographers and creators had the opportunity to capture New York through FUJIFILM equipment, and I find myself wondering now: With Blackmagic’s new URSA Cine Immersive, which allows one to capture material for the Apple Vision Pro, what would New York City look like or sound like? Could we try it next year? Should we try it next year? Are we able to truly recreate the noise and the feeling? Or would we find ourselves somewhere in the middle, like the 9th floor, somewhere in between where we are, and where we’d like to go, with feet in the clouds and our head in the clouds (or vice versa) but always having the capability to be the intermediate, with everything you need to communicate and grow horizontally in between.