Things I Learned At NAB...

In no particular order…

1. The music industry may be all high and mighty and proud of itself for being “cool” and such, but the entire balls-to-backbone conglomeration of manufacturers, record labels, musicians, and retailers ain’t a drop in the bucket to the TV and movie industries. I’ll grant that AES is a pretty small show by show standards, but the entirety of AES would fit in Sony’s NAB booth, with room left over.

2. The little “edgy” companies trend to a certain type of person in their booths, with “edgy” haircuts, “edgy” clothes, and “edgy” tattoos. The big giant companies like Canon and Sony have professional polished attractive booth-folk who could easily hold down an anchor job on any medium-sized city’s nightly news. Virtually everyone else in the entire entertainment industry is a bearded MAWG with a beer belly, as far as I can tell. If NAB was anything to judge by, Polo and the companies that make ass packs are in no danger of going out of business any time soon.

3. There are approximately 23 * 1030 ways to hold a camera off the ground.

4. The ratio of companies that provide production music to companies that need production music appears to be about 1:1. The very essence of the concept of symbiosis, I think. Probably a good racket for a musician to be in, if you can stand to be so utterly and completely banal, and without an iota of pride.

5. I’m a fairly savvy person when it comes to this sort of thing, but there were companies at this show with huge elaborate multi-million-dollar booths, and I’d have no fucking idea whatsoever what it is they did. All I know is that they want to streamline my workflow. I saw that phrase in various permutations a lot. I’m sure it’s a nice concept and all, but I think asking someone from the broadcast industry for help in streamlining your workflow is like asking Gary Busey for tips on quitting blow. It’s just not something they know anything about. I mean, there is an entire sub-industry dedicated completely to turning [video codec A] in to [video codec B]. The NAB organizers conveniently placed all this sub-industry’s booths next to the booths full of guys that that are marketing new video codecs. I imagine they have a lot to talk about.

6. I especially disliked the Panasonic 3D televisions, which gave me a more-or-less instant blinding headache. The BoothDude (although calling the Panasonic extravaganza a “booth” is a gross understatement) said this happens to about 1 in 20 people, for some reason they can’t discern. I told him they should probably think about discerning it. The Sony 3D products looked fine to me, and their glasses caused much less attenuation. (The same glasses you got when you went and saw Avatar.) Sony had a 3D 50-foot jumbotron showing the Masters, and it was, quite simply, the most unbelievable video playback I’ve ever witnessed. Absolutely stunning.

Anyhow, it was an eye-opening experience, and I’m definitely going to allow more time next year so I can do more than just sprint by everything. Thanks to synthetic for talking me in to going and to TASCAM for the badge.