Austin Reeves & Company

The coverage of the PCMA Convention (Professional Convention Management Association) was a great success!  I was brought on board by the crew of Convention News Television to assist in their excellent coverage of the multi-day convention in Las Vegas, NV.  The convention took place at the MGM Grand with thousands of the professionals from around the country attending.  There, CNTV provided headlines each day to summarize the days events, speak with key industry leaders, and to get reaction from those in attendance on some of the innovative ideas being used to continue PCMA’s Industry Education focus.

For the shoot we had three cameras.  Two P2 cameras and my Canon 5D.  Using the Canon 5D for a news style production can be challenging but delivered exceptional results in almost every case.  There are certainly issues that have to be dealt with.  The matte box was quickly removed in this setting.  Trying to work up close in peoples faces for interviews with a massive matte box just doesn’t get the job done.  Audio was another issue since you’re constantly switching between natural sound, hand held and lavaliere mics, and wireless sound from the board during stage presentations.  After some work and dialing in the settings though I think we’ve hit a sweet spot w/ the dual recording system we currently employ which allows for fast input swapping without the need to run a checklist before pushing Record.  The biggest difference seemed to be w/ the new longer lens for this camera.  The longer lenses w/ a Canon 5D looking exceptional in the dark lighting of a stage presentation.  Throw in some colored accent lighting for the stage and some big projection screens as background and you have the makings of something that leaps off the screen.

The production wasn’t without its hiccups, but hopefully the client was happy.  There were several nights of very late rendering.  The mantra of “make the customer happy no matter what” was definitely in effect in Vegas.  One interesting issue with this show was the need to output to four different types of formats for all our deliverables.  Once our editing was done, rendering out everything from HD video, to DVD files, to 4:3 SD video for every element.  This was of course time consuming, but the reaction at the show was outstanding.  Attendees were able to see the broadcast in a variety of venues, from online, to broadcast around the show on monitors, to the in-house cable system right in their hotel rooms.  It truely pushes the bar higher, especially for a same day turnaround, and I commend my friends at CNTV for pulling it off!