This was my first NAB in about six years, the last time I went was shortly after graduating from college. When you’re first getting into the business, the experience can be a little overwhelming. You have no idea what you’re looking at and you sort of just wander around blindly picking up swag. This time was different. I had an idea of what I wanted to check out and I also knew a ton of people going this time. As I jumped around from booth to booth, I was able to run into a lot of people I knew; both that I’ve met before and a number that I’ve only chatted with online. Now I didn’t meet everyone that I would have liked to but the people I did meet were incredibly friendly… I really wish I had more time to chat but that’s the problem with a convention, everyone is always running from one event to another. 

For the most part I hung out in the software area, sort of bouncing back and forth between the presentations at the Adobe and Maxon booths. I was really interested in learning everything about the new integration between After Effects and Cinema 4D. Of course I could have watched all these videos online but it’s great to see the demos live and ask questions. This was the big push / focus for both companies and took up a good portion of the presentations. Adobe was pushing Creative Cloud hard at NAB but failed to really show why it’s better than the old school install disks. With this new release they might be able to sell it better but right now I know a lot of people are still on the fence and for good reason. I like creative cloud but agree that the big upside to it isn’t really there yet. At the Adobe booth I would of liked to have seen more Premiere Pro stuff since Apple isn’t at NAB and more and more people are switching; they should of been showing it off more, in my opinion.

Around the software booths, The Foundry always had a big crowd for their presentations and from what I saw, Modo is really awesome. Thinking about seeing if I can learn a little and fit it into my workflow. It’s always important to stay on top of things and that’s what makes NAB great. You get to see all these tools and applications in action being used by some of the best people in the industry. 

I did wander around the cameras a bit but since that’s not really what I do, it was short lived. The Blackmagic cameras were pretty cool though. I was in the swarms of people in front of the GoPro Booth and caught a free hat and shirt. Really, I wanted to find the movi booth but somehow we must of walked past it. Would have loved to try out their camera rig because it looks awesome. 

That was NAB and it was a blast… exhausting but a lot of fun and hopefully I’m able to make it next year. 

Editing on set isn’t a new thing; it isn’t always possible for everyone’s shoots and it isn’t something I’ve been able to do till now. Boy, does it help and it even saved us some time this past week on our LooseKeys shoot in Sonoma. 

Sure, it’s nice working with digital cameras and being able to quickly review each and every take. But on those small screens you don’t always know if it’s perfect. You can always rent a larger monitor for playback but that would only help to make sure each shot looks right. When you’re able to edit a rough cut on the fly, it allows you to check for more than just that one shot. You’re also able to check if the edit is working, audio levels and give the clients a little tease of what it’s going to look like. 

This is the first time I’ve been able to work with the editor on set and wow, did it help. Having Maeve Price there to drop in footage from the camera was amazing and since we were using Premiere we didn’t need to convert anything. We were able to make sure that the shot looked great and we were also able to make sure that the video was cutting together like I had planned. A couple of times the video really wasn’t flowing right and because Maeve was there to help with the edit we were able to make adjustments on the fly and shoot some pickups. Being able to do the pickup shots and re-shoots that day was great. It saved me from having to deal with it after the shoot was wrapped and trying to come up with a creative solution. 

Not only did it help me and the rest of the team but it also gave the client something to see. They were able to basically see a rough cut a few minutes after we wrapped for the day. Which I think helped to put their minds at ease and made the LooseKeys team look good. At the end of the day I want them to be happy with the product.

Being able to edit on the fly isn’t something that works for every shoot but if the project is right and the budget is there, do it. It will save you later.  

More and more the LooseKeys team is being asked to execute live action shoots. Which I’m all for, it allows us to flex our creative wings and show that we can not only craft a great message and video with animation but with live action too. The videos we get asked to do typically focus on an application that lives on a smart phone, computer or tablet. Which usually isn’t an issue but since we’re shooting a screen, we often run into issues with the screen.

One issue that has been a problem for awhile was the refresh rate of computer monitors but that’s a pretty easy fix, all you do is set the refresh rate of the monitor and the frame-rate of your camera to the same setting, that should get rid of the flicker. Easy enough right, but tablets and smart phones don’t have this setting.

In our past shoots, to avoid any issues with the screen or not showing the correct screen, we’ve tracked and replaced most of the screens in post production. We don’t fill them with green or put a fake screen on it, we shoot it on black. This allows us to grab some of the reflections and that helps sell the shot more. This is often the most flexible solution and will give the best possible result but it does add more time to your post production schedule. It’s a lot easier to handle it this way instead of having to hear the clients tell you that you used the wrong screen and you have to re-shoot. A lot of commercials are done this way and you’ll see in the fine print something like “Screen Images Simulated”. The only issue is you don’t always get the right human interaction with the device. 

In the last video I was working on, we ran into the issue of moire on the screen. The iPhone 4’s Retina Display has been easy to shoot, the pixels are generally too small to cause moire. So I didn’t run into this issue until our last day of shooting for CamScanner. We used the Galaxy Tab 2 and ran into a lot of moire issues which took some time to solve. Our easy fix was just trying to turn the screen slightly until it was gone. It was a lot of trial and error. There are some other tricks like slightly taking the screen out of focus but that wasn’t an option for this since the screen and the device were the focus. 

I’m sure there are some other tricks you might have and please let me know. I’m typically not behind the camera, I work with Sergio Salgado a lot and trust that he’s going to figure out a solution for many of the issue that we run into like this but it’s always nice to offer up suggestions. So please let me now if you have a trick that works every time for you.