After a three-year absence due to COVID, the NAB Show has returned to Las Vegas with what the National Association of Broadcasters projects could hit 55,000 delegates — what they point out would be a large number for a pandemic-era trade show.
The last time NAB was held in person, in 2019, the event had a reported attendance of roughly 91,000. As the exhibition opened Sunday, attendance is visibly, significantly down, though also greater than many anticipated.
“For day one, I’m pleased to see a lot of people here. It not normal but great to engage with customers again,” said an “optimistically, cautiously happy” Dan May, the U.S. president of exhibitor Blackmagic Design, who caught up with The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday. “We can still do product launches without trade shows, but it does lack the conversation, the feedback. We value these type of shows, still.”
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This year, the NAB continued to use the familiar Central and North halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center, but the South halls were vacant and instead, exhibitors such as Amazon Web Services took real estate in the new West Hall, which opened during the pandemic (as did Elon Musk’s now operational Vegas Loop, which transports attendees between the various halls in Teslas via underground tunnels).
Not surprising, two of the biggest production trends in the exhibition advanced during the pandemic: virtual production and cloud-based remote production.
“Virtual production is a mainstay of physical production because we continually need to collapse geography for certain stories where we just can’t travel to enough locations and satisfy the director and producer needs to tell a story in a productive manner,” said Glen Gainor, head of physical production at Amazon Studios, who caught up with THR on the exhibition floor. “We are shooting on location [again]. … [But with virtual production], you are going to be able to tell a bigger story in less time.” Amazon recently made use of virtual production techniques in the making of thriller All the Old Knives, which debuted earlier this month.
Sony was also promoting the benefits of virtual production and its tools that support the process, including its Crystal LED displays and new Venice 2 camera, which is already being used by select DPs, including Oscar winner Claudio Miranda, who used the earlier model of the Venice to lens wildly anticipated Top Gun: Maverick.
“What was impossible a year ago, is possible today,” said Sam Nicholson, founder of Stargate Studios, which offers virtual production systems for feature and series productions. “The pandemic accelerated virtual production tremendously.”
The pandemic also drove growth at Frame.io, which in 2021 was acquired by Adobe in a deal valued at $1.275 billion. It was at NAB to show developments to its Camera to Cloud collaboration system, including expanded support through integrations with partners including Atomos and FilmLight.
Other developments include Canon’s new AMLOS, a software-and-camera system designed to support collaborative meetings. And Blackmagic — the maker of the Resolve postproduction system widely used for color grading — is highlighting its new Blackmagic Cloud, which can be used to host Resolve project libraries (it’s not a software subscription service) for remote collaboration.
“Traffic has been really solid, all day,” said Canon senior product manager Len Musmeci. “To see everybody back, engaging, it’s been really great. Over the last two years, we have see so much innovation, because everyone has struggled to stay connected, and we have seen a surge in use of imaging products to make that happen.”
