El Skid hits Hollywood - I'm not a tit I promise

I’m back in the UK. My cat is staring out the window watching pigeons shiver in the rain. What’s wrong with this picture? In LA my view was downtown LA shrouded in smog while the sun scorched down with 110 degree heat. The question is, why even bother to go to LA for an Expo about DSLRs when there are plenty of similar events going on over this side of the world. Could have saved myself a big wedge of cash, for sure. Dan Chung, the brains behind DSLR News Shooter, a man who has never met me and was possibly a little surprised to hear another English voice out there, put it pretty bluntly: ‘Sorry, I didn’t quite understand… why are you here?’ Well, the simple answer is this: the DSLR craze is going to be very shortlived and if you’re going to benefit from it in any meaningful long-term fashion then you need to be connected to the guys in LA, because that’s where the action is. I’m a director with ambitions to be working in LA and the contacts I’ve now made across the pond will be very handy in helping me establish a foothold over there when it comes to ‘the big move’. When I started writing the blog I made a clear decision to build relationships with US news sites and use the blogging I was doing over here to build a platform for future work over there. As luck would have it I alighted upon Photocine News, the site behind the Expo and the guys who brought together Vincent Laforet, Shane Hurlbut and many others this time last year for the Collision Conference, when the DSLR movement was still very young. Dan Chung put it neatly – ‘The best thing about the DSLR craze has not been the cameras, it’s been the community that’s grown up around it.’ and I couldn’t agree more. As a filmmaker, you need communities to support you and this one has been so so so good to me. I’ve only been blogging for ten months but I now enjoy 25,000 visitors a month, reading the rancid brain effluent I choose to inflict on them. That’s incredibly rewarding.

Zeiss lens cut in two, amazing workmanship

Beautiful Marshall 5inch Monitor

Redrock ops rig

Jared Abrams with that monster Zeiss zoom lens

I’ve seen a Zeiss compact prime cut in two, I’ve used the Redrock Ops rig camo edition, I’ve tried the new Marshall 5″ (love it, fabulous bit of kit) I’ve used the Zeiss badass zoom lens and I’ve eaten a lot of Mexican food but what have I learned? Well, lots of things really but these things in particular:

1. EVFs – the new black

When Vincent Laforet turned up at the Expo his first words were ‘Right now I’m all about EVFs for DSLRs.’ Twenty minutes later Brian Valente from Redrock dropped their EVF. What’s really tragic is what played out on Twitter over the next 24 hours as Zacuto scrambled to get their own EVF announced. I’m not going to pass judgement on the Zacuto EVF as I haven’t seen it in the flesh (oh wait yes I am, it looks ill-conceived and it’s just too expensive), but I have seen the Redrock EVF in the flesh and it’s another example of a smart, simple, affordable solution from that company. The big challenge for these manufacturers is developing products for a market that is clearly so temporary. With the new Panasonic handycam offering lurking on the horizon, the kinds of people who are likely to drop the money for an EVF are exactly the ones who are likely to buy that new camera. We’re in an arms race, be in no doubt about that and it’s almost more important for Redrock to have been first to announce (where’s that fabled remote follow focus by the way?) than to actually deliver a working, purchasable unit.

Redrock EVF - Boom, have that Zacuto

2. Teradek Cube - it rocks

I was lucky to spend a lot of time with some cool people out in LA, none cooler than the guys from Teradek. If you don’t already know, their killer product, the Cube, is a tiny box that sits on your camera and transmits a feed to a laptop, ipad/ipod or a TV. Wireless monitoring, affordable and on any kind of platform. It’s not there yet in terms of latency but I’ve seen it in action and it is a very very good product with all future upgrades simple firmware downloads. We’re all accustomed to buying third party products for our DSLRs now but the ones I really like are those which will carry beyond the current bodies I own, that I can transfer to other applications and the Cube is definitely one such product. Beyond that I just want these guys to do well, a cooler company you’d be hard pressed to find – oh wait possibly the Jag35 crew!

Teradek Pube... er sorry, Lube... er, dammit, Cube

3. The Content Creators will always be the big winners

For me the most interesting talks involved the content creators, the people who are exploiting their work for profit. Jon Reiss, Freddie Wong, Brandon Laatsch, Sam Gorski and Clinton Jones (young, talented, fearless and ferociously intelligent, these are my kind of guys) all contributed hugely interesting talks about how they’re earning money from their own IP. I can only look at a new lens so many times before I start to shut down, but when it comes to plotting a future beyond the zip and zang of the DSLR movement then these guys are the ones I want to talk to. It’s fantastic that we can all shoot work that looks amazing but the value of really great intellectual property is as high as its always been and there’s no danger of that being superseded by some new offering from Panasonic. It was interesting hearing Vincent Laforet talking about the early days of his 5D experiences, how he shot Reverie and how that single piece of work catapaulted him into being a director and DP high up the commercials tree. Like I said, the content creators are the big winners.

Vincent Laforet - laughing all the way to the bank, and a big fella too

4. This community looks after its own

I took a punt on this trip to LA. I could have come home with no contacts, nothing to show for the trip and a big dent in my wallet. But I didn’t. To be fair I’ve been working pretty hard at this blogging nonsense, trying to get smarter about producing work and getting it out to people but I’ve been blown away by how welcoming and helpful the folks over in LA have been. We really are a tiny tiny community at the heart and I think everyone appreciates how ephemeral the DSLR explosion is likely to prove so anyone who’s been prepared to stick their hands up and be counted is welcomed with open arms. Huge thanks to Michael Britt and Lou Lesko at PhotocineNews, August Bradley, Chris Marino, Rod from Teradek, the Jag35 crew, Brian Valente at Redrock and the biggest shout of all to Jared Abrams from Cinema 5D (not forgetting Chris Collins) all of whom made this trip such a blast. Jared took me round LA and made me assault members of the general public in the name of a cheap gag (video coming soon) and for that I’ll be forever grateful! I’m just a dumb Brit but embracing this technology in such a massive way has completely altered the shape of my career for the better and given me a new excitement about my work. Knowing that I’ve got guys like these covering my back in the US means so much. What’s really struck me is just how fond of a laugh all these people are, no-one takes themselves too seriously and that just made my trip such a ridiculous fun time.

Jared Abrams - this is the worst photo I could find of him

If nothing else, I’ve confirmed what I already knew to be the case about the opportunities in this industry and that I’ve pissed away five years of my career in England barking up the wrong tree. If I’d taken the time to really look around at what was going on the way I am now I’d have been in a completely different place right now. That’s dispiriting, but at the same time, you just have to accept where you are in life and redouble your efforts to push forward with the things you care about. So, expect much blood, sweat and tears over the next 12 months as I attempt to turn all of this into some serious moolah. When people tell me they don’t care about money I just don’t believe them. Everyone does.

Technorati Tags: Chris Marino, CInema 5D, Dan Chung, DSLR News Shooter, Jag35, Jared Abrams, Lou Lesko, Photocine News, Shane Hurlbut, Teradek, Vincent Laforet, Zeiss