Createasphere show floor

In Burbank, Createasphere‘s annual Entertainment Technology Exposition was booming: its show floor, meetups, panels, educational intensives and networking events were crowded. The event’s organizers said the show logged a 25 percent increase in attendance over last year.  Createasphere’s Entertainment Technology Expos, which was once called HD EXPO, has been presenting shows in LA and NYC since 2001.

Photos by Vince Gonzalez

The highlights of this year’s Createasphere included a DSLR meetup and a meetup for the LA Final Cut Pro Users Group. The free educational intensives—in which sponsors take attendees on deep dives into particular products and processes—were a particular hit. Speakers included Bandito Brothers’ Jacob Rosenberg for Adobe, Peter Crithary and Dhanendra Patel for Sony‘s new 35mm digital film camera, and cinematographer Bruce Dorn, an “explorer of light” for Canon.

The most talked-about panel focused on “how they got that shot.” The SOC panel featured a gathering of outstanding cinematographers and operators including Mitch Dubin, SOC (Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, War of The Worlds); Steven Poster, ASC (Donnie Darko, Blade Runner); Sasha Calzatti (Soy Cuba); Dan Pearl, ASC (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Obama Effect); Chris Tufty, SOC (The Spirit of Yosemite, Boomtown,The Closer); Paul Babin, SOC (Valkyrie, Terminator, Magnolia, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and Stan McClain, Filmtools. Moderated by Dave Frederick, SOC (Sons of Anarchy, Driving Miss Daisy), the panelists had a vibrant, engaging discussion that focused on how some of the most amazing shots made it from idea to reality.

Another panel from the AFI Cinematography program led by Senior Artist in Residence Stephen Lighthill, ASC was a great discussion about helping the artist become a successful creator. Featuring Uta Briesewitz (Hung, The Wire), Darren Genet (CSI: Miami), Petra Korner (My Soul To Take), and Tommy Upshaw Maddox (When The Levees Broke), the panel was an honest look at creating beautiful images

Educational offerings book-ended the two-day show, and covered the production to post pipeline featuring the artemis camera stabilizer workshop with the inventor of the camera stabilization system artemis, Curt Schaller; an in-depth course on 3D cinematography from Panasonic, and the newly launched Post Production Master Class.

The Post Production Master Class featured two days of expert-led and moderated panels on topics as diverse as the vocabulary of post production to digital intermediate, camera to post workflow, conversations with editors, and developments in the television post process. Experts on stage at the Post Production Master Class included Richard Kroon (author, A/V, A-Z); Joshua Pines and Ed Elliott, Technicolor; Joel Ordesky, Wexler; Sarah Priestnall, Codex Digital; Steve Cohen, ACE; Scott Weintrob, director; Vincent Maza, Avid; Dan Lebental, ACE; Dave Stump, ASC; Cory McCrum, Revelations;  John Daro, Fotokem; Tom Vice, nextLAB; Jeff Olm, stereo colorist; Marcie Jastrow, LaserPacific; Devin Sterling, Ascent/Co3; Alex Grossman, Active Storage; and Bryan Carroll, BC Entertainment, and more.

Createasphere also featured its Gear Alley, where major camera manufacturers showed off their latest cameras and other vendors demonstrated their latest technologies.

Plans for 2011 include Createasphere’s Digital Asset Management Conference in March 2011 in Universal City, and in New York in September 2011 including the second annual DAMMY Awards. Createasphere is also more deeply involved with Cinema India, in Mumbai in June 2011.