NAB 2011: Post Production World

Well, my very first NAB Show has come and gone, and in a nutshell, I had a blast.  Walking the exhibit floor was obviously important, but my main focus for the week was to immerse myself in the Post Production World classes.  My coworker, Kevin McGowan, and I arrived in Vegas on Friday night, and stayed through Thursday night.  We figured that we would make the most of our first trip to the NAB Show.  It was a tiring week, but well worth the trip, money and effort.

I ended up taking 15 PPW classes during the week, and listened to two of the PPW keynote lectures.  Not only did I learn piles of new info about many facets of video post production, but it was very motivating being around such stellar instructors as Abba Shapiro, Jeff Greenberg, Philip Hodgetts and Luisa Winters.  Heck, even the motivation to start this blog came from a class with Philip Hodgetts!  These folks could absolutely hold my attention for a three hour class with great teaching and technical skills.  They also really opened my mind up to leaning about aspects of post production that I hadn't previously thought about diving into.  Jeff Greenberg actually has me excited to order a 450 page book about video compression!  I'm pretty pumped about post production right now.

I'm going to make every attempt I can to attend the PPW classes again in the future.  With the upcoming Final Cut Pro X release, the PPW FCP classes will be packed in 2012!

For those of you that are thinking of taking PPW classes, here's a list of things to remember:

1)  Bring a sweater...it's freaking cold in those rooms.
2)  Do your research before you go.  Pour through all the class descriptions and choose what class you will take, as well as a couple of alternates.  You can also leave a class and walk to another if you quickly determine it's just not for you.
3)  Take notes during the classes, but also create a "to do" list.  I have a huge list of software to download, websites to look up, podcasts and blogs to subscribe to, and books to buy....all suggested by the PPW instructors.
4)  Don't skip the PPW keynotes.  Both of them were very interesting lectures to listen to from Hollywood editors.
5)  Please don't ask those super specific questions about why your hard drive is making a clicking sound, or why Premiere crashes each time your cat walks across your keyboard.  It really slows down the entire class, but most of the instructors were great in diffusing those questions and pushing forward.
6)  Use the Creative Cow NAB Expo forum to ask questions while you're doing your pre-show research.
7)  You don't have to stick to a specific track.  As you can see below, I jumped all over between Final Cut, Adobe, and many other tracks.

If you're wondering, here's the list of PPW classes (with instructors) that I took:

Boot Camp:  Getting Started with Video Compression - Jeff Greenberg
From Expert to Master: Advanced Techniques for Final Cut Pro - Jeff Greenberg and Abba Shapiro
Color Correction with Final Cut Pro - Abba Shapiro
Live Streaming Solutions - Alex Lindsay
Optimizing Performance for Adobe Production Premium - Todd Kopriva
Great Shot Composition Every Time - Douglas Spotted Eagle
Cutting Edge Compression Techniques - Jeff Greenberg
Documentary Production Techniques - Hicks/Balog
Lightweight Lighting Solutions for Mobile Productions - James Ball
Getting Started with After Effects - Luisa Winters
Dynamic Noise Reduction and Audio Clean-up - Jeffery Fisher
The New Now: How to Grow Your Production or Post Production Business - Philip Hodgetts
Advanced Techniques for Premiere Pro - Luisa Winters
Mastering the Adobe Media Encoder - Ian Robinson
Color Correction Using Premiere Pro & After Effects - Luisa Winters

 Image:  PPW 4/10/11 keynote address: Chad Beck (editor of Inside Job)