NAB 2009, Day 5 – Wednesday
Started off the day with a one on one conference with Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is the author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and his new book Outliers. He talked about the general concepts behind all of his books. I have heard good things about those before, and I should probably pick them up sometime for some reading. The most interesting thing that I got out of the conversation was that he says he is always trying to get information that isn’t available on google. Seems that a lot of the young reporters are just doing their research on the web and don’t uncover anything new. I like that idea a lot, and maybe I’ll put something together on that a little later.
Went to a panel on reporting from the front lines. On the panel was: Craig White (Chief Photographer, NBC News), Kaj Larsen (Producer/Reporter , Current TV), Phil Alongi (Alongi Media Solutions & 20 Year Producer for NBC News), and Brian Natwick (The Pentagon Channel). They all talked about their experiences in covering wars and conflicts. Pretty scary stuff. I am glad that there are people doing it, but I don’t know if I could do it. I wonder about the students. Will they be going out and doing that type of reporting?
Then I went to see Josh Schwartz, the man behind Chuck and Gossip Girl. He talked a lot about how hard it is to stay afloat if you are doing shows that don’t have a traditional audience. Younger viewers are turning to different delivery platforms to get this entertainment fix. That doesn’t necessarily show up in the ratings, and without the ratings you aren’t going to be on the air for long. He did give some hope in that some people are starting to get into web programming. Not much pay there yet, but there is a lot of freedom.
Saw a lot of equipment vendors. I’ll have a lot more to talk about them when I start ordering for next year.
Finished up the night at the RED User party. There were a lot of speakers talking about the different post production and color correction work flows. There were also a lot of vendors with RED specific accessories and add-ons. Got some good ideas from tonight’s presentations.