FILMCASTLive!: DV EXPO 2011. THE LITTLE BIG EXPO

By George Leon

The DV Expo at the Pasadena Convention Center has showcased the latest technology on digital video for over nine years. When I visited first, it was geared mainly to the "pro-sumer" market (a term that has faded away from the industry lexicon). It was was a busy conglomerate of corporate video vendors and individual presenters introducing the latest technology on digital video production, post-production, software, content creation and ancillary services to a base target audience made of small to medium corporate video producers, wedding industry video producers and of course, the budding filmmaker.

With the r-evolution of the digital video industry on the last ten years, the technical boundaries that separated the designated pro-sumer analog/digital video market to the professional video market blurred to a point of merging into one. This technical merging, upgraded the short lived pro-sumer digital video equipment market in matter of resolution, color quality and other technical capabilities to a professional level, making it ready for use (out of the box) by the already established ENG /EFP broadcasting industry, the independent corporate producers and independent filmmakers.

Panasonic workshop, Do More With Your Handheld. Get the skinny

on Panasonic's powerful hand-helds AG-HPX250 and AG-AC160.

by Jan Crittenden Livingston

The explosion of creativity and content development brought by independent producers and filmmakers during the last years has been enormous. Mostly all these contributing factors were as consequence to the broad availability of today' s new ways of corporate and individual content distribution, (from viral to cable to theatrical) pushing thus the envelope to the technical specifications for equipment requirements to manufacturers. These new standards on acquisition and post production are not anymore the private domain of the big broadcast networks or multimillion media corporations and their expensive suppliers. Evidently to these, are the new working relationships between the manufacturers and its end users bringing then to market the making of better and more affordable digital video technologies to satisfy the demands of content producers.

Carl Zeiss CP.2 lenses with interchangeable mount allows a mix of

HDSLR systems with traditional cine cameras.

Rather swift has been the changes from the outdated broadcast standard of 4:3 aspect ration (640 x 480) interlaced taped -analog/digital- video to today's mufti-platform standard (even in consumer cameras and consumer post) of 16x9 (1920 x 1080p) HD video to the widely accepted HD-3D video acquisition, post and projection to the newest game changer in the digital video industry, the HDSRL cameras.

Schneider Cine 35 Xenar T2.1 35mm on PL mounted Canon 7D

and a Chroziel rig and matte box.

I believe that trade shows and expos are not just a platform for the latest technology on whatever industry, but also serve as a barometer to measure in how much the attending public (who is a pre-measured demographic target) is willing to embrace the benefits of the showcased items and services. Education about the products and services are core to trade shows and at the DV Expo I found many interesting educational seminars and workshops that certainly would enlighten the understanding of any expert and the uninitiated alike.

Some of them were "Raising the Digital Bar" a Keynote seminar by Jacob Rosenberg CTO and Partner of Bandito Brothers, "What Makes an Amazing Time Lapse" by Colin Rich/ Pacific Media to the "Art of DSRL Video" by Kevin Shahinian/Pacific Pictures and Sony F3 Workshop by Andy Shipsides by Abel Cine Tech and much more. 3 days of inmersive sessions were the attending public can learn the necessary tools to apply into their daily production demands.