The 2017 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB 2017) Convention in Las Vegas is where professionals in the video production business gather to see all of the latest and greatest technology and software for the production business. As a first time attendee my head was spinning the entire time.

The show runs from Monday to Thursday with seminars starting as early as Saturday before the show. As a first time attendee I didn’t know what to expect so I had planned on flying in Sunday afternoon and staying until Wednesday afternoon. All said and done I spent close to 18hrs on the show floor and I still could have used an additional day to spend more time in the South Hall where all of the software vendors were setup.

The Central Hall is where I spent most of my time checking out every aspect of including lighting, audio, cameras, lenses, camera accessories, camera sliders and gimbals, and so much more. Another big aspect of the show is getting to learn from other professionals in the industry. Each day my calendar was filled with different keynote speakers giving talks at different booths. Monday I was able to learn about mood and tone from cinematography legend Shane Hurlbut (The Skulls, Terminator Salvation, Need for Speed) at the Tiffen booth followed by a motion graphics talk from Andrew Kramer (Star Trek, Super 8, Star Wars The Force Awakens) at the Adobe booth, which I had to cut out early of to head to the Cinema 4D booth to watch a talk about 3D animation from Barton Damer (Vans, Nike, ESPN).

Monday night I had the opportunity to go to dinner with the founder of EasyRig, a camera support system that has quickly become a staple on any production set. We hope to get an EasyRig here at the shop in the near future to take our productions to the next level. Nobu is where we went for dinner and anyone that has ever eaten there knows that it’s life changing cuisine and a real special treat.

I walked away from the show with a new appreciation for every level of production from multi million dollar budgets to small boutique companies working with small budgets. It really seemed there was a lot of different products for every level of production.

A few of my personal highlights were the new Ronin 2 (3-axis gimbal camera stabilizer) and a new camera slider solution from Waterbird that allows the slider track to be straight or curved with the flip of 2 switches, it was quite impressive and a product I’ll be looking forward to trying for myself come summer time when they finally release it to the public.