It was a good year for NAB 2010, in its usual Vegas home. 3-D everywhere, of course, with the explosion of this past year. Panasonic, in particular, had some very nice devices — active shuttered displays and a prosumerish size 3-D camera. Operating while watching a 3-D display is definitely fun. I’m still not sure that this will ever completely replace 2-D displays, users encumbered by wearing glasses, but the quality of the new devices convinced me more of the potential.
The new Arri Alexa was on display along with many other fun things. Lots of 3-D post support as well. Very nice stuff from the Foundry and other companies.
The RedUser event was impressive again, as well. There’s a nice post here showing some of what was on display. The Epic looks and feels great. It will be amazing to use. It feels about like holding a Pentax 67 and is very manageable, opening a lot of possibilities. Demo reels, particularly with the low-light response of the new Mysterium-X, looked spectacular. No exact dates, but Epic and Scarlet should be coming out over summer and fall.

Sometime close to a year ago, now, I shot the footage for a short film that I wrote — working title “Coffee Talk.” I have been lacking the introduction for the film which takes place in a local cafe. I just recently put this together as a possible opening montage that is needed to set the tone and location. The footage was taken in a little cafe in Amsterdam (a real cafe, not one of the “coffeshops”, by the way) where they serve one of my favorite coffees, Illy. (The temporary music is a song by Carla Bruni). I hope to finish the whole short film sometime later this year to send to festivals.

On another related note, I still need to find a location to shoot as the establishing shot for the cafe. I do not think that the real location where I shot most of the short is very photogenic, so I would like to find the outside of a building that could serve as the setting for a local cafe — perhaps a Caribou Coffee or independent shop somewhere that looks nice from the outside.

If you have any comments related to this opening montage, or ideas for a nice cafe exterior somewhere, I would be very interested in hearing them.