N.A.B.

...if I was really into blogging I would have posted this a week ago. I went to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas from April 20-23 to see what's new in the toolset for digital content acquisition. It was impressive, even though, in this down economy this year's show drew only 80,000 people. I needed to go. I most likely will have need of a new video camera and related production gear in the fourth calendar quarter this year. I went to see, get hands-on and evalutae the latest Panasonic, Sony, Canon & JVC cameras. Likewise, lighting, grip, monitoring, sound, post-production and storage vendors were quizzed and offerings viewed and evaluated. It was a well-spent three and a half days as I firmed up several decisions regarding tools for my next documentary project. I also discovered PhotoMotion, a nice post tool for my current project - a Final Cut Pro plug-in that does a great job and does it easily. And the Final Cut Supermeet Tuesday night at the Rio, just off the Strip, was good fun too -- even though I didn't win anything in the "World Famous Raffle".

Small World Principle Affirmed: At the beginning of the second half of the Supermeet, after the break, I walked down the center aisle to get within the first 10 rows from stage. Looking for a vacant seat in the dim lighting, I spotted one on the right, slid in past three or four people, and took a seat. The person to my left greeted me by name. I looked at the person I had just passed by in the dark and recognized Antonio Rego -- from Davis -- sitting there. What are the odds? Small world!

website for documentary

Just got through with a meeting with web designer Gary Kim. He had some great ideas for the documentary film site and I am enthused. The site should be "live" around May 15th.

my first blog entry

Well, here goes. My first blog entry. I'm preparing to meet this afternoon in another hour with a web developer to get some sort of website up to host a trailer for my documentary "The Closing of The Palms Playhouse". So I'm looking at other filmmakers' sites and many of them are blogs and at the bottom of one there's a button inviting one to create your own blog. OK! This is hosted by Google it seems, and in less than 3 minutes I'm typing my first blog entry - 'Easy!' is very much an understatement. I have no idea how the finished page will look even though I selected a 'theme' or look as instructed a couple minutes ago. So now I will stop typing and click on the Publish-Post button and I will be the first to see what you are looking at right now.