A week in the desert. With Gear. Lots of gear.

From April 14th – 19th, The National Association of Broadcasters hosts one of the biggest events of the year; NAB 2012. Aimed at professionals in the film, TV, video, audio and communications industries, NAB sets down in Las Vegas for five days of panels, exhibits, workshops, trade-shows, luncheons and all kinds of opportunities to further your career. We thought we’d give you a quick run down of what to expect, alongside some useful links and tips.

2012 Schedule

From an array of new product announcements, to the Career Day, to the Country Music Concert and a whole lot more, NAB is already huge, and growing every year. A selection of what’s new in 2012…

‘Focus On’ Workshops
Aimed at content creators who want to learn new software or hardware, or delve into new techniques that will help them master their craft, the ‘Focus On’ series are there to teach tools that can be taken away and applied to your next project. Taught by a combination of certified instructors and industry experts, these classes include half-day boot camps, in-depth sessions, workshops covering documentary editing, Color correction, sound design and more.

DSLR Time-Lapse Video Workshop & Field Trip
A very cool two-part workshop which starts with a classroom session on time lapse video techniques and panoramic photography tips, then takes you out to a National Conservation Area where you can put the newly learned tips into action, capturing the park in a beautiful sunset surrounding. Dont forget your hiking boots, sunscreen and tripods!

StartUp Loft
Designed to be the place to pitch the “next big thing” to a core end-user audience, the StartUp Loft is a lobby attraction where participating companies will feature new products and services that have recently hit the market.

View the full 2012 schedule here: nabshow.com/2012/about/event_schedule.asp

NAB 2012 Tips and Advice

Download the App
You already bank, shop and email on your phone, and now you can organize your convention and limit the amount of print-outs you need to lug around. Get the myNAB app from your phone’s app store and sync it with any planning you have already made online at myNAB Show Planner, then enjoy schedule sharing, direct messaging, GPS locator feature and more. Info: here.

Take the Shuttle
Want to save on overpriced taxis whilst also resting your tired feet? Walter Biscardi recommends taking the free shuttle buses that serve many of the Vegas hotels, on and near The Strip. “Whether you stay in one of these hotels or not, as an attendee, you have access to these buses. So look at the NAB Bus Schedule and pick a hotel nearby to pick up the shuttle, be sure to have your convention badge on you as you generally have to show it to the bus driver to get on.”

Essentials
Those lovely English people over at Quantel have put together a full-blown Survival guide, listing necessary but often overlooked items and habits. Our essential picks: hydration; comfortable shoes; lip balm. Download the full guide here.

Go To The Sessions
With 22 previous visits to NAB shows, Debra Kaufman over at Creative Cow knows a thing or two about planning your week. She says, “Why would you want to spend every waking minute on the show floor when you can sit down, be comfortable and actually learn something? [...] Cool session topics range from converting Titanic from 2D to 3D and creating cross-platform content to cloud computing and mobile TV.”

Carve Out Some Alone Time
Chris Potter at Screenlight has a solid piece of advice here. His chosen downtime solo activity is mountain biking, but you can apply his idea to anything to treat yourselve to a much-needed mini R&R mid-NAB. Go for a swim, get a massage, treat yourself to a nice lunch away from the crowds, go shoot some guns in the desert… whatever floats your boat and makes you come back refreshed after an hour or two away. “After a couple solid days of events, it’s easy to get rundown. I tend to recharge best, when I do something that I love. [...] Take comfort knowing that somewhere in Vegas, you can probably find the thing that recharges you.”

Gear ‘To-do’ List.
With so many innovative filmmaking tools being released in 2012, the show can be a little overwhelming on the gear front. Casey and Danielle of Mindcastle have suggested a gear list including some of the things they are most excited to check out. “If you ever get stuck in one of those “what should I check out next” moments, you can have a good solid list here as reference of gear to check out [...] I added the appropriate booth number as well so you can located it on the map.”

There you have it! If you are off to NAB, have a great trip and feel free to comment on our blog or forum about anything NAB related!

NAB 2012 – Conferences April 14 – 19, 2012 / Exhibits April 16 – 19
Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada USA

by Lee Jarvis.

The 4th Annual Chicago International Movies & Music Festival

We’ve always said that Chicago is a hotbed of TV and film production talent. Last year’s CIMMfest had us salivating at the wealth of global talent that was being supported locally, and this week we were happy to hear the announcement of their 2012 edition.

The loose netting which groups all the events of the four day-long festival, is ‘Where Movies and Music Meet’. Films are a big part of it, and the weekend will represent many genres and backgrounds, including a screenplay of Irvine Welsh’s rave novel ‘Ecstacy’, a documentary of the founders of the Sugarhill Gang who have battled to regain control of their stage name, and a fictional feature film about youths fighting to save their roller disco. In addition, expect an eclectic mix of live sights and sounds; artists playing out live scores, short music videos, music-culture themed features, stunning VJ-DJ sets, along with a handful of Q&A session and other learning and networking opportunities. As the CIMMfest website puts it, “The films come from all countries and cultures [...] they just have to be about music and/or use music in a creative, integral way. The live performances are inspired by film or feature visual accompaniment.”

The weekend culminates with and awards party, with awards in five categories: Best Feature Fiction, Best Documentary Feature, Best Short Fiction, Best Short Documentary, and Best Music Video.

April 12th-15th are the dates for this year’s vibrant fest, and tickets are available for individual films or as a festival pass, allowing you full access to almost 70 films, 20 musical performances, and several afterparties for just $60. Check out the lineup, and buy tickets here.

For a sneak preview, check out the trailer below of ‘Charles Bradley: Soul of America‘. Showing at The Society for Arts on Friday, April 13 at 9pm, ‘Soul of America’ follows singer Charles Bradley as he releases his debut album, at the age of 62. The releases rocketed him from a hard life in the projects to world tours and being in Rolling Stone’s top 50 albums of 2011.

Trailer Credits
Director: Poull Brien
EP/Producer: Alexander Brough
DP: Stuart McCardle
Editor: Poull Brien
Titles: Robert S. Dunbar
Music: Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band

by Lee Jarvis.

The world’s only film festival dedicated solely to bike-themed independent short movies takes place every April in bike-loving Portland.

Ranging from animations to documentaries to love stories to comedies and much more, the Filmed By Bike festival is approaching the ten year mark, and has just opened up a call for entries for the 2012 festival. Submissions are limited to eight minutes and must revolve around the central theme of cycling (obviously). In each of the previous years, hundreds of entries are submitted, but only the best 30 make the cut, as evaluated and judged by an esteemed jury of nine bicycle and film enthusiasts from the Portland-Seattle area. There is no fee to submit a movie, entries are open to worldwide filmmakers, and the deadline for entries is January 20, 2012.

Staged at and around the Clinton Street Theater in Portland, Oregon, the festival involves music, bike culture, street partying, unicycles, penny farthings, and movie screenings, and has attracted bike lovers and film makers from across the country. Although there are no plans to extend the festival to other cities, there are DVDs for sale and limited screening rights available from the website.

Filmed by Bike 2011 takes place the weekend of April 13-15, and you can get into the mood and prepare for your submission by checking out the 10th Anniversary Festival Trailer below. The trailer was made by producer Burk Webb, a filmmaker well known for both cyclocross videos and movies about unicycling zombies(!) featuring his Unicycle Bastards crew in Portland, Oregon.

by Lee Jarvis.

Interested in finding more TV, film and video production jobs in Chicago?

Join Media Match at Bangers & Lace in Chicago! Alongside our sister website, Music Jobs, we will be meeting and mingling at an informal (free) gathering in Chicago’s West Town/Wicker Park neighborhood.

Who is invited? Everyone!

Our wonderful members (that’s you), who include editors, producers, DPs, animators, directors, camera operators, production houses, effects specialists, journalists, sound designers and more. Also attending will be some of the team behind Media Match, and you can ask us questions, share your feedback, get to know our musical tastes and initiate new rivalries just in time for the football season. We want to meet new faces, see old friends and spend some time getting to know our local members. If you can stop by at any point, it’d be great to hang out with you.

INFO

Where? Bangers and Lace, 1670 W.Division, Chicago, IL (view map)
When? Thursday, October 6th
Time? Starts at 5:30 pm – 9:30pm
Price? FREE
Cool? Then RSVP here if you’re coming

Hope to see you there!

The Media Match Team

Media professionals worldwide will gather to celebrate all things computer graphics with the week-long extravaganza that is VIEW Conference and VIEWFest, featuring four award-winning keynote speakers and the Italian premiere of Disney/Pixar’s ‘La Luna’.

Taking place in Turin from October 25th to 28th, VIEW Conference is four days of “inspirational talks, extraordinary educational workshops, and astounding visual and audio experiences“, and is attended by a vast scope of TV, Film, Video, Graphics and Audio professionals . It sees contributions from various filmmakers and computer graphics artists, as well as the inventors and visionaries behind products and technologies that have changed the way we work.

Recently they have announced the addition of Randy Thom, award winning Sound Designer for Skywalker Sound. Thom’s first film credit was as a post-production Sound Recordist for the film Apocalypse Now (1979), and he has since designed, edited, or mixed the sound for 99 live-action and animated films, receiving two Academy Awards and a further 14 nominations along the way.

Other keynotes speakers include Sharon Calahan, Director of Photography / DP at Pixar, Tom Wujec (Autodesk fellow) and Cory Doctorow (contributor to The Guardian / The New York Times / Publishers Weekly / Wired). There are far more speakers and workshop hosts, including; Scott Farrar (Senior VFX supervisor, ILM, ‘Transformers 3′), Roger Guyett (VFX Supervisor, ILM, ‘Cowboys & Aliens’), Davide Pesare (Technical Director, PIXAR, ‘La Luna’), Enrico Casarosa (Director, Pixar Animation Studios, ‘La Luna’), Peter Nofz (Digital Effects Supervisor, Sony Pictures Imageworks, ‘Green Lantern’), Adriano Rinaldi (Head of Effects, MPC, ‘X-Men: First Class’), and many more.

Discussions over the four days will touch on topics such as the impact of games in modern design, robotics, augmented reality, the challenges of designing, character rigging for animation feature movies, and helping people understand how to turn concept art into creatures. VIEW Conference also appeals to professionals from other areas of visual effects and computer graphics, by delving into the world of Graphics Designers for automotive design, vizualisation and in-vehicle safety, as well as medical imaging. There will be workshops on design and innovation, as well as exhibitions from industry names such as Autodesk, Adobe and Nvidia.

For more information check out http://viewconference.it/

Immediately preceding the conference, is VIEWFest, the Computer Animation Festival and Italian evolution of global touring digital film festival Resfest. Running from 21st to 23rd October 2011, VIEWFest features director Enrico Casarosa from Pixar Animation Studios introducing the Italian premiere of ‘La Luna’. other higlights screening include “In Praise of Love (Elogie de l’amour)”, written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, ‘Fratellini D’Italia’ (‘Garibaldi and the kid Brothers of Italy’), and futher Italian premiers.

For more information check out http://www.viewfest.it/


by Lee Jarvis.

Held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard have once again joined together to host their 10th annual conference on the role of music in film and television. The event, on October 24-25, reaches out to all kinds of industry professionals, and anyone interested in agent jobs, composer jobs, director jobs, producer jobs, music supervisor jobs, songwriter jobs and many more.

Speakers at the conference include composers for blockbuster films The Fighter, The Hangover, and hit TV show Mad Men, as well as record label bosses and TV production company execs. Marketers and music supervisors will also share advice on how to connect your art with the right people. Outside of the keynote talks and panels, there are also roundtable discussions and cocktail parties to help people connect.

Panel topics include;
-TV Competition Shows and Their Music
-Real Time Critique: Music Supervisors
-Songwriters Turned Film/TV Composers
-Case Studies of Hit TV Shows and Their Music
-Case Study of Major Fall Films

Expect to learn a lot from the conference; not only how to get your songs into films, TV, commercials, sports programming, trailers and video games, but also how to make money from your placements. Hear about new projects from composers and music supervisors, and see how the film and TV business is evolving in other territories and countries.

For more info check out the Billboard website, and below you can view highlights of The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard’s 2010 Film and TV Music Conference.

Readers interested in networking with TV and Film industry pros should also check out our very own Speed Networking event coming up on September 21st, also in Hollywood.


by Lee Jarvis.

Always a big date in the film industry diary, the 36th Toronto International Film Festival is fast approaching. This year, the week-and-a-bit of September 8th to 18th sees over 250,000 people flock to see over 300 films from a wealth of independent directors and Hollywood studios. It also often lays the foundations of the preceding Oscar race. In recent years, we have seen movies such as ‘Ray‘, ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘, and ‘Precious‘ hold early screenings at the festival and go on to win Academy Awards the following spring. Since it’s inception in 1976, the festival has become on of the most anticipated and influential events of the movie-world, with many arguing that it may have even surpassed Cannes.

Known as ‘the festival of festivals’ for the way it has always tried to bring in the best cinema from around the world, TIFF is non-competitive – there are no Best Picture of Best Actor awards to be lobbied for, and no jury to stir up a fuss. Instead, the main prize is a People’s Choice Award, which is given to the feature-length film with the highest ratings from the festival audience. 2010 saw a standing ovation and first accolade of many for Colin Firth and ‘The King’s Speech‘.

2011 kicks off with a Davis Guggenheim documentary on the iconic rock band U2 entitled, ‘From The Sky Down‘. This will also mark the first ever opening with a documentary. In the official Press Release, Piers Handling, Director and CEO of TIff, says, “Davis Guggenheim’s fascinating account of this world-renowned band is the perfect film to kick off our 11-day celebration of artists, stories and voices from around the world”. More films will be announced throughout August.

Attended by a wide range of film industry professionals, with all kinds of itineraries and budgets, the festival has several ticket options, allowing you to pick and choose individual films, or opt for one of many package deals. Check out all the options here.


by Lee Jarvis

The 48 Hour Film Project is an international tour spanning over 80 countries, in each of which a team of TV and Film production professionals make a movie – that is, write, shoot, edit and score it – in just 48 hours. Last year saw over 40,000 participants ball their wears, emphasising the amount of growth the project has seen since it’s inception in 2001.

The whirlwind weekend aims simply to encourage filmmaking and promote filmmakers in various locations across the globe, holding events in 55 different US cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Boston, Austin, Washington DC, and more. On the Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week. Having the 48 hour time limit is not meant to be seen as restricting, instead emphasizing that creativity and teamwork skills will serve you well. There is also something liberating about just going for it, and getting the shots, editing, and effects completed rather than talking too much about them and accomplishing nothing.

From the 48 Hour Film Project’s History, “Back in May 2001, Mark Ruppert came up with a crazy idea: to try to make a film in 48 hours. He quickly enlisted his filmmaking partner, Liz Langston, and several other DC filmmakers to form their own teams and join him in this experiment. The big question back then was ‘Would films made in only 48 hours even be watchable?’ The answer was a resounding ‘Yes’ “.

Entries for the Chicago weekend (July 29th) have just opened today (register here), and a full calendar can be found here. Rules and information for filmmakers can be found here, and they even include a list which you can join if you are not able to form your own team but wish to offer your services as part of a team in your area. (That’s right……… here.)


by Lee Jarvis.

The Chicago Underground Film Festival is an annual event showcasing independent, experimental and documentary films from around the world. Building on last year‘s success, CUFF once again provides a place for cutting-edge filmmakers and film fans to delve into the lesser known (or, lesser-screened) independent film scene. Established in 1993, the festival has become the largest underground film fest in the country, and has also grown into an important date in Chicago’s cultural scene.

“What you get for your money is not just admission to the films but admission to a subculture”

– Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

When Jay Bliznick and Bryan Wendorf began CUFF, they wanted to create a festival for the kind of films they wanted to see, which were, in their words, “primarily films that the established film festival circuit – increasingly dominated by distributor product – refused to show.” Unlike many other independent film events, they aimed not to imitate old guard, market-driven events such as Sundance, but instead chose to focus on the artistic, aesthetic and fun side of independent film-making. CUFF promotes works that dissent radically in form, content and technique from both the tired conventions of Hollywood and the increasingly stagnant IndieWood mainstream.

This year’s festival is held once again at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and will offer a mix of independent features, shorts, documentaries, experimental films, fine art films, avant-garde videos, as well as nightly parties and concerts, drawing on the cross-over blend of artistic creative talent that is thriving in Chicago.

The event runs from Thursday June 2nd until Thursday June 9th, and the schedule can be found here.

by Lee Jarvis

This weekend, Chicago welcomes the third incarnation of CIMMfest. The Chicago International Movies and Music Festival is a weekend full of entertainment highlighting the crossover between film and song, punctuated with short documentaries, live concerts, panels, art exhibits, music videos and more. Musicians, indie filmmakers, producers, directors, students and enthusiasts from all backgrounds get the chance to mingle and enjoy works from a whole depth of like-minded folk.

“We’re really excited to bring together movies and music from all over the world to Chicago. CIMMfest is unique in its scope, from ethnographic films about Balkan folk songs to Mike Watt in concert, to video mashup DJs, to live musical accompaniments, and music from all over the map: Brit pop, hip hop, gospel, experimental, Americana, funk, industrial, and more.” says Josh Chicoine, CIMMfest Director. ” We aim to show our interconnectedness through the lens of film and music.”

The Festival sees 70 films being screened from over 20 countries, and includes 17 world, North American and US premieres. There are also free screenings at the Chicago Cultural Centre, a variety of afterparties at venues including Subterranean and Berlin, a Record Store Day celebration event at Big Star, and an event called Chicago Punk Night at Double Door.

Tickets for various screenings and events are available individually, via this CIMMfest page at Brown Paper Tickets, or you can purchase a Movie Pass, which lets you see all 30 of the films for one price of $45. Included with your ticket is a one-year subscription to Time Out Chicago magazine ($9.99 Value).

So, get out and about over the next three days and see and share as much of the festival as you can!

Fancy a quick preview? How about ‘Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then’….

2nd Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then trailer from Brent Green on Vimeo.

The story of a man who builds his cancer-stricken wife a magical house in a desperate act of love, accompanied by an all-star musical line-up. Self-taught animator Brent Green uses stop-motion photography to illuminate Leonard Wood’s doomed gesture. See it at WPAC, 2215 W. North Ave., Saturday, April 16 at 10:30pm.)


by Lee Jarvis.