An Overview of NAB 2009: Best of NAB for Microfilmmakers
by
AJ Wedding
Sin City (the actual location, NOT the Rodriguez film) set the stage for emerging and converging technologies in the film industry at the 2009 NAB convention this April. Billion dollar broadcast systems, complicated digital distribution pipelines, and then, after all that, the stuff WE care about. Here are my highlights from NAB, focused on gear microfilmmakers can afford, or at least charge on their Visa.
Adobe showed off a few innovations they are working on, including ‘Story,’ their brand new screenwriting program. You can import scripts from Final Draft, Movie Magic, Microsoft Word, or start from scratch. Its advanced metadata capture allows for your script to be organized into a shot list, or dialogue list, or any other necessary format for production support or distribution. No set date for release, but it's definitely looking great.
Behind the scenes look at Creative Suite 5 allows you to see the new rotoscope features that will be available.
The next version of Adobe Creative Suite looks like it will have a bevy of amazing upgrades worth every penny that you spend on it. One of the most impressive is the new tool that allows you to rotoscope something from a single frame of video, and use multiple tracking tools that can follow the roto'd object throughout your entire video sequence....Taking the rotoscoping process from a days/weeks process to an hours/minutes process. Low budget filmmakers will now have the time and the tools to get some amazing effects into their projects.
The new Canon EOS 5D Mark II outfitted with redrock micro's support system for the new world of DSLR filmmakers.
The gargantuan Canon booth was hiding some very interesting information. Their famous 5D Mark II could be seen at any number of booths, and several of their HD video cameras were fitted with redrock M2Encore’s, trained at a group of actors. Canon let me in on an interesting fact about their company: the photo division and video division work in separate departments, and often are unaware of what each other is working on. The 5D Mark II was not intended to have the popularity and success that it has garnered from the low budget filmmaking community. The video ‘option’ was added to the camera as a simple extra. So without even trying, Canon managed to change the world in regards to film quality video, and the size of the camera you need to achieve it. Canon set up their booth this year so that the photo and video engineers were sitting next to each other (and could, perhaps, I dunno, talk with one another), which makes me think the next product from Canon is going to be something amazing...
