The Enthusiasm Project
The Enthusiasm Project
NAB 2024 Recap: Gear & Tears!
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NAB 2024 was an absolutely incredibe experience. I made a recap video that shares a bit about the conventiopnm, but then dives into some of my more personal feelings related to all of the amazing people who have helped me to feel contextualized as a person.
This episode dives into what I learned when trying to make an event recap video along with some of the cool things I saw and learned at NAB (keeping the choked-upness to a minimum 😁 )
My NAB recap video:
https://youtu.be/N1eSdgMVMOY?si=GYH5c47S8czPHrzp
🎙This week's mics:
•Lewitt RAY
https://geni.us/lewittray
•The Ray was running through the Rodecaster Duo on the Broadcaster preset.
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S12E7 | Series Episode 171
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Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez
Thank you, hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project, season 12, episode 7. And is 7? Hard to believe how fast the season is is going. That was not. That didn't work, oh well. But you know what is working this microphone that I'm on right now, which is no longer the mystery mic, it's the Lewitt Ray, so I'll talk about that in just a second. There was a missing episode. There was no episode last week, if you're listening in real time, and the reason for that was because I was at NAB, which was N-A-B-E-A-U-tiful. That was amazing, and so that's what we're going to talk about today is sort of do an NAB recap in maybe a slightly more traditional context, kind of dive into that. It was really cool.
Speaker 1:Nab is something I've wanted to go to since at least 2010. I think that's when I first remember being aware of it. There were several times when I almost got to like convince former school districts I was working at to pay me to go when I was teaching. I remember there was one time very, very early on maybe it was like 2018, like a year after I started my channel, polarpro offered to like give me passes to NAB, but I couldn't go because of, you know, school obligations and work obligations. So this was the first time 2024, at least 14 years after I knew that it was a thing that I actually got to go and it was amazing, and that's we're gonna talk about. But before we talk about that, got to talk about some gear.
Speaker 1:I think this is now the third or fourth episode that I've been using this microphone on, but it's the first one that I can tell you what it is, so it made sense to do it. This is the Lewitt Ray that I'm speaking into and I'm recording into the Rodecaster Duo and I'm actually using the Rode Broadcaster preset, which I haven't used with this mic before but I really like. So if I take off the preset, this is now the Ray with no effects and no processing, and then if I add in the broadcaster preset, this is what that sounds like, which I quite like. And, as you saw in the video lots of videos for the Lewitt Ray, mine included I can kind of I am moving my head all around close and away from the microphone and it is keeping the level there. Of course, if I get further back you can hear the room reverb just like before, but if I'm near the microphone and just kind of moving a little bit around it. It is, you know, keeping the level really consistent. So I can, I can look from. You know, I can just move more, a little more naturally, and the capsule in here is the same capsule as the 440. So it should sound identical and it's a great microphone. So this is the Lewitt Ray and that's been the mystery mic. The only mystery mic I've used this season has been this one, because Lewitt sent it out like months ago, which was great because I got to use it for so long, and that's going into the Rodecaster Duo. So that's what I'm recording on today.
Speaker 1:One quick note about the Lewitt Ray, or, I guess, about the videos for it. This is just sort of a thing Whoa, that was a weird sound. This is just sort of a thing that I don't know how I feel about it. I think it's okay. So here's so, talking to Lewitt when they came out with the Ray and they sent it out to people and talking about it. If you, you know, email them and they're explaining what it does and they're trying to tell you about it. If you, you know, email them and they're explaining what it does and they're trying to tell you about it.
Speaker 1:They describe it as like autofocus for your voice, audio autofocus, which I think should be called audio focus. But I think that's a really good way to describe what the microphone does and it's very rudimentary. It's not, like you know, advanced eye tracking autofocus that you have in lots of cameras and stuff. Now it's like the old school, like early days of like contrast based autofocus, because it all basically just works on a proximity sensor. It doesn't know that I'm a person, it just knows I'm a thing in front of the microphone and so it's adjusting gain based on how close that thing is in front of the microphone, essentially.
Speaker 1:But it's sort of a hard concept to explain because there's never really been anything like it. And so saying that it's like autofocus for your voice works really well because it kind of finds you if you move around the microphone. It feels like it's tracking you, it feels like it's adapting to you, just like autofocus would. So I thought that was good, like when you know, when they were explaining it to me, that kind of clicked to me. Clearly. That's a good way to explain it. That's how they explained it to a lot of people and I wouldn't call it an issue, but so many of the videos that pop up, including mine, say auto focus for your voice and the thing about that is it.
Speaker 1:It feels to somebody who doesn't know any better, I'm worried that it feels like these were all talking points that everyone who was given the microphone was given to say about when I can say Luit is great about. They do not, they do not like, require anything or try to influence anything. They just say like here's the thing, here's what it does, boom, even the release they're like it's coming out on this date. Please don't share anything about it before this time. After that, we don't care. We don't care if you post anything ever. We don't care if you post it right when it's released or three weeks later, like they, they are very good about that. And in fact they kind of specifically said like we really don't. We're not trying to push people to all release at the same time because they didn't. They said that they didn't like that. They like it when it feels more organic and someone made a video when they wanted to make a video or when it made sense to make a video about the thing, and I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And so it worried me that this autofocus thing that popped up in so many people's videos is going to feel like everyone's given the microphone. Everyone has given these talking points and this is what they talked about. Nobody has said that. I haven't gotten any comments that seem to do that. I haven't seen comments anyone else's videos, but I've just.
Speaker 1:I think pretty much every video that talks about the microphone says that, because it is such a good way to describe this like new thing that we haven't seen. And in the world of XLR microphones you don't really see a lot of new stuff. It's been around for a long time. It's difficult and rare to come up with something brand new. So I the there's no real point to that, it's just sort of. I guess I was. I got a little worried because I like Lewitt specifically because, well, their microphones are great, but also because they're so good about letting you be in charge of whatever you want to make, if you want to make anything at all, and I didn't want it to come off on mine or anyone else's videos like it was the opposite of that. So I'm telling you that if you see videos about this microphone and you want to check it out and you notice that everyone's saying autofocus. I think that's just how the thing was described and it's the thing that made the most sense, so everyone kind of latched onto it. It's not a talking point that anybody was told they have to talk about, and I hope you're able to still pay attention to those reviews and opinions and things as authentically as they are, because everybody I've seen has done such an awesome job talking about this microphone and it's a really fun microphone. And again, I think the fact they sent it out so early I'm guessing other people got there as early as well, like I did it's great, because it's not like you got it. If you want to do the video when it's released, you have like a couple days to work on it and then it's done. You actually got to use it for a long time and go back to other microphones, go back to this microphone and kind of live with the thing and really really put it through its paces before sharing any kind of opinion about it. So anyway, that's the Lewitt Ray. That's what we're talking about there. Now we're going to move on to NAB.
Speaker 1:I did post a recap video about NAB, I think, before. I can't remember if it was this or the couple's table or where, but somewhere before NAB I talked about wanting to do a recap video. That was something I'd always wanted to do. I'd always wanted to go and I'd watched channels for many years that did cool recaps. Just this is what I saw, this is what I'm interested in and that's something I wanted to do. I wasn't quite sure how to make that, so I did make a recap video. I shot a bunch of footage and stuff there and then I came home and tried to like contextualize that. I wanted to do it the day after we got back it's literally like the morning after we got back, because all the thoughts are still fresh and everything and so there was my recap video and I posted on my channel. I'm guessing if you listen to this podcast, you probably watched the video.
Speaker 1:It ends, it goes to a place, it goes to a like a very heartfelt I guess you could say emotional place is the term, and I didn't really expect that video to go there, but I'm so happy that it did because it it felt like it. Let me digest and understand what I was feeling and thinking after NAB, which was so much more than just a trade show, and I also thought it was important, you know, if I was feeling and thinking after NAB, which was so much more than just a trade show, and I also thought it was important, you know, if I was sort of having that experience. I wanted to share that so that if anyone else was having that experience they didn't think that they were weird or like you know. Like you know why did I have such a strong emotional reaction to a thing that everyone else kind of just it's? You know, it's the conference they go to every April, and so I thought maybe it would, it would sort of like make it okay for other people to to talk about things like that too, whether it was NAB or something else.
Speaker 1:And and I genuinely wanted to share, because the reason I felt so strongly was because of so many different people and I want, you know, I try to tell everybody in person or at least via text message, as much as I could, how grateful and appreciative I was, but also, if I couldn't, just being able to just put it out on a video I thought was really important and I really liked that video. It's sort of the opposite, because normally something on the channel will be a little less personal, like it has my personality in it but we're not really diving into, I'm not tearing up on most of my videos. And then the podcast is the place where I kind of dive into the more personal side of things and this is sort of a little switched, where the video, which is 30 minutes long, is the more personal thing and this podcast episode I kind of it's almost like the what I thought the video was going to be like a more sort of traditional recap. I uh, I don't think I'm nearly hydrated enough to get as teared up as in the video, so we're going to try to like. Those thoughts are in that video and they mean a lot to me and I feel them still very, very strongly. But I also want to talk about, you know, just the regular part of NAB. But I also thought it might be kind of cool to talk about making that video, not just because of how it ended up, but even if you take that out of it and you just look at making a recap video. I was kind of confused about the best way to do that and so maybe I can share with you what I did and what worked and what didn't work, and then, if you ever wanna do something like that, it might be a little bit helpful. So what I did? I had a couple of different video ideas that I was planning to film at NAB or that I was hoping to film, and so as I was walking around I was kind of shuffling these ideas in my head, thinking you know what kind of shots or what kind of sound bites or interviews would be good for different types of videos or the different videos that I was working on. And so that was helpful and luckily the recap video is so broad that pretty much anything can fit into it. And and that's that's kind of.
Speaker 1:You know, my goal was to sort of just film a lot of stuff. I wanted to get establishing shots of the convention hall, and you know there's 60 to 70,000 people there. There's so many vendors. The Las Vegas Convention Center is massive. I forget how many millions of square feet it is, but it's huge and I wanted to kind of show that. So I knew I needed that footage. There are so many booths I don't need. I honestly don't know if you could actually see every booth, every vendor, in the two to three days that you have much less like film or get something meaningful from all of them. So it's kind of like, you know, focusing on the ones that are most interesting to you, and that's what I tried to do. But even that got kind of overwhelming really fast.
Speaker 1:Just trying to, you know, remember, and then you go somewhere and trying to talk to someone. Trying to, you know, remember, and then you go somewhere and trying to talk to someone. It's pretty nuts. I will say the first day that the exhibit hall was open was significantly less crowded than the second day. The second day was like Disneyland around the holidays, like packed. The first day was a little easier to kind of make your way through and talk to people or brands or whatever it might be. Second day was totally nuts. I don't know if it's always like that, but that's just something, something to keep in mind if you're ever putting footage together or anything.
Speaker 1:And kind of my plan, which I basically did, was to, you know, if I found a booth that was interesting, say, I'd film that and just get shots of it. If there was somebody that needed that I wanted to explain something to or ask questions to, maybe I could film them and they could, you know, the person from the company could explain the things themselves. So those are kind of the shots I was going for, and then, you know, some B-roll shots of, like, actual products and close-ups and things like that. That's kind of basically what I tried to do throughout the whole time. And then I didn't really know. I was trying to think like how to put that together and I decided I didn't want to film the whole thing at NAB. I wanted to do the recap, you know, film all the footage I could, but then sort of digest it and come home and then be in my normal studio explaining kind of what is happening and what you're seeing, and I thought that would kind of help contextualize things a little bit. It would feel a little less chaotic. I also thought because I have a thought like oh, I should go out in front of the convention center and just film my intro here and explain things here. But I don't know if this is true or not Sometimes you can see videos where people are like on location, quote unquote and in a weird way some people do it well and some people don't do it as well, and I feel like it's something I struggle with in a weird way.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it feels like they're almost like boasting, like look, I'm here and I'm making a video because I'm here, which is fine, but I have a hard time doing it in a way that I feel comfortable with. Other people are great at it and so I knew that if I filmed a video about NAB, anybody who was at NAB would be interested in that, probably. But everybody else you know, who watches the channel, watches the video they might not want to see. It's almost like okay, I've been rewatching the entire series of Bob's Burgers for like the past year and I love that show, absolutely one of my favorites, and the episodes are all great. But pretty much every season has one episode where it's like, instead of being an episode, a regular episode, it's like a three stories episode. So like each of the kids you know they're trying to figure something out and each kid sort of like tells sort of like a wacky story about the thing and it's you know, it's a chance for them to do kind of weird stuff and it's sort of like that almost like a treehouse of horror kind of thing from the Simpsons and those are. It's funny, like those are really good episodes and they're funny and they're entertaining. But I always get a little bummed out when one pops up, because I want the regular thing of like I want to see the characters in the environment, I want the episode to matter. In future episodes, like there's something about those where I'm always like, ah, a little bummed out when one pops up and I didn't want this.
Speaker 1:I feel like a video like this has the potential to do that. Like if someone actually likes my videos, they see one pop up and then they see like, oh, it's not the normal thing, he's like somewhere else and I don't know. So I thought that by filming sort of the bookend and the contextualizing part of the video in my normal studio, it would then make it appealing and accessible to people who weren't familiar with NAB or didn't go to NAB. And again, this is all before. I kind of knew where the video was going to end up going when I thought it was just going to be a regular recap. And then that also really eased my mind when I was filming, because it's so overwhelming and there's so much happening and it's hard to keep track of things that I wasn't 100% sure I filmed everything I needed to. But at a certain point it's like okay between me recording a talking head portion and being able to edit everything, I should be able to put together something that makes sense here, and knowing that I didn't have to do that on location in the moment really did help sort of ease some stress. So I did see videos from other people where they filmed the whole thing, start to finish it at NAB, and they were great. So I'm not saying don't do that, I'm just saying this is how I approach this and it seemed to work really well. Because then what I did I can't remember if it was we got home like midday Tuesday, I filmed the video on Wednesday and I think it was even Tuesday night.
Speaker 1:I took the like the essentially all the raw footage that I shot in the exhibit hall and just threw it onto my timeline and tried to break it into segments. So it's like okay, here's me at the road booth, we're doing a Sennheiser thing, talking to Chris Metcalf about cable ties, like all all the different like section segments of it. I tried to put those in an order that made sense and then the things that didn't have like a person in an interview but were more just B-roll clips, try to figure out where that would go. So those little sections were like at least kind of there. And then, basically, when I recorded the video, I just had my laptop on the desk with me and was just kind of going through the footage on the laptop. So it wasn't like scripted or outlined really, but I would go through the laptop and sort of see a clip and then remember why that clip was there and what I thought was interesting, and then explain it and talk about it and then move on to the next one, next one, and that actually worked really, really well and it wasn't too difficult or time consuming to make. And then it let me, instead of focusing on, like trying to read a script or trying to get all this specific information perfectly correct, it, let me like focus on my thoughts and feelings about it, which then let me, I feel, you know, be a lot more relaxed and a lot more open in the video, which led to me being able to share a lot more than I expected to share when I pressed record making the video. So that was kind of how I put that together. I think that worked really well.
Speaker 1:I had never done a video like that before. The thing that I would do differently, though, surprisingly is I would film so much more and I kind of knew this but I sort of I thought I filmed more than I did and the video is great, but I definitely wanted to just have more. You know, not that the video needed to be longer, but more footage. Like, and it's kind of hard, you can film a bunch of shots of, like, the convention hall floor, but there's only so many giant crowd shots. So you kind of need a variety. You need big, wide shots, closeups of products, mediums, you need like every type of shot so you can cut between them and there's contrast. But you know, I think several times throughout the video I mentioned how big the conference, the convention was, but I really only had like one shot that was a wide shot that kind of showed everything. So I can only use that, you know, or parts of it, like once or twice in the video, whereas it would have been nice if maybe you know, there's I forget, like there's like four of the different convention halls that are used, maybe if into each one of those I got a big overhead, broad, wide crowd view and then I could have different ones to cut between.
Speaker 1:I brought three lenses with me on the trip. I brought the Tamron 20-40 2.8, the Zeiss 85 1.8, and my Sony 24 1.4. And I only use the Tamron the whole time, the 20 to 40, which gave me I've always loved that lens. That's been pretty much anything. I film anything that's not in my studio. That's the lens I'm using and I also do use it on B-roll quite a bit if I don't need 1.4. I love that lens. It's I think it's six or $700, which in the world of lenses, especially a 2.8 zoom, is quite affordable. If you put it on a camera like the a7 IV that has the ability to then do super 35 mode, you kind of get even more versatility out of the lens because you can you can zoom in further and it's super lightweight. It's it's like it's just such a good lens and and it's super sharp and it looks great. So that was the one I used pretty much the whole time Super fast, quiet, autofocus as well.
Speaker 1:The 24mm f1.4, I totally didn't need to bring. I brought it because it's my main lens and I thought like if I wanted to film a talking head in a hotel room or something, I could still get a nice blurry background. Totally unnecessary to do that. I wouldn't have wanted that blurry of a background anywhere on the convention hall because I wouldn't want to like isolate myself as a subject that much. So 2.8 was totally fine and the Tamron 20-40 obviously can cover the 24 millimeter focal length as well. So the Sony was redundant.
Speaker 1:The 85, I didn't use, but I wanted to. I just kind of ran out of time. My plan was, once I was done filming and I knew I was good to go was to put that lens on and then go around and get B-roll of like products almost where it's like the type of B-roll shots I normally have in my videos, try to get those at the different booths, which would have looked awesome and things would have. You know, I really think it would have been fun to do and I just kind of ran out of time and then time got away from me, I guess. So I didn't use that lens. It wasn't a waste to bring, though, because I do wish I would have done that. So I wish I would have filmed more and I do wish I would have gotten my 85 millimeter shots Otherwise. Otherwise things are pretty good. Yeah, it was fun. I would definitely go back next year and try more next year. So that's sort of like the video side of things.
Speaker 1:Now, the video again. My original intent was just to sort of tell you about some stuff that I saw, both in terms of products and maybe trends and things, and that was supposed to be it and I'm really again, I'm so happy. That's not all that the video was, because I feel like it turned into something a lot more special, and reading the comments on it has been kind of one of the best experiences of my YouTube like career ever. I can't even begin to, I can't even begin to describe them Like. I have like a folder. I'm trying to screenshot so many of the nice things people say because it's something that I don't want to just forget. I want to be able to remember and look back on. But for now, I have a list of things that I saw that were going to be a little less, you know, a little less tear-jerkery and a little more just kind of normal, and I just want to share with you some stuff I saw and some stuff I noticed at NEB. So we talked about the video.
Speaker 1:First thing, this wasn't a specific booth, although it was a product at a booth the DJI Pocket 3, little gimbal camera, by far the most common camera I saw people using there it's like not even close Different configurations. Some people are just holding the Pocket 3 itself. A lot of people had like sort of like this I don't know, it was like a case that was also kind of like a stick sort of thing with it. I don't have it, I haven't used it, so I don't know much about it. And then a lot of people also had one of the DJI wireless mic transmitters that was separate so they were getting their audio and it was connected directly to the camera so they could have wireless audio which, from the videos I've seen that people have posted of it, look and sound fantastic.
Speaker 1:And there were a lot of people who, like that was the only camera they brought because they didn't want to do what I did and carry a huge backpack. Especially day one, I had a backpack that was just pretty much my camera gear because I was in a couple mics, because I was, you know, trying to do mostly stuff for the recap video. Day two, I was working on a mic comparison, a handheld mic comparison video, so I didn't have as much camera gear in my bag, but I had so many microphones heavy ones too, like the SM7B and the Super 55. It's like stuff no sane person should be walking around with for like 10 hours at a time. I was carrying there and I'm proud of how not sore that I was. So I don't know, I was using my Tenba Fulton backpack the whole time and that maybe it was just a really comfortable, good backpack. But anyway, there were a lot of people who didn't want to carry a bag like that, so they just used the Pocket 3. And there were a lot of people who did bring their bigger cameras and their bigger gear and they were like I just left it all in my hotel room and just brought this and I gotta say I'm kind of impressed with it. It's a pretty cool camera and it looks good. I know everyone loves it.
Speaker 1:The hesitation I have with like DJI's product timeline is I know that one's been out for like four months. So now I'm like, well, they upgrade everything constantly. So it's like the Pocket 4 coming out anytime soon because part of me wants to, you know, maybe get one. But now I'm I'm in that typical spot of feeling like no, they're gonna upgrade it soon. And it's funny because DJI had a huge booth and if you listen to this show for extensive period of time. You kind of know some of my feelings about DJI and I was able to solidify those feelings a little more on this trip After, especially after talking to a lot of other people with YouTube channels and a lot of whom have worked with DJI.
Speaker 1:I'm definitely not the only one who feels the way I feel about them as a company, but all of us kind of agreed their products are great and I think that's what makes it so frustrating is DJI products are fantastic, like some of the best in their categories, and it's weird because the company does weird marketing things a lot of the time and I don't want to say that it's necessarily shady, but it's definitely. A lot of stuff definitely borders on shady and there's no need to do it at all because your stuff is really good and you don't need to do these weird things. I don't know. I mean we could go kind of down that rabbit hole a bit, but they, they tend to do stuff. Like you know, there's a lot of vagueness about when someone is or isn't paid for a DJI video, which I know a lot of that falls on the YouTube creator, but also the way DJI structure their deals where it varies so much from person to person that there's no standardized way that they operate.
Speaker 1:Obviously, I've talked about their inclusivity, or lack thereof, in terms of creators and also just kind of catching them in sort of I don't know what you would call it, but like I have known female creators who are well respected in the camera video space who have reached out to DJI and said, you know like, hey, you know I do this, here's my channel. If you ever want to work together, I'd love to do something. And their response to them is that they don't have a big enough audience, even if they're at, you know, 20, 30, 40,000 subscribers on their channels. Oh, and it's like oh, okay, I mean, to me those sound like big channels that would be fine to work with, but sure, maybe you guys only work with 100,000 plus or something. But then you see tons of dudes get DJI products that have under 10,000 subscribers. So it's not clearly, it's not audience based, it's not view based at. You know, it's pretty obvious what's going on in those cases.
Speaker 1:With DJI, I've heard people say like, well, they're an overseas based company and culturally they're just a little different than us. It's like I know lots of overseas-based companies that don't seem to have that issue, and one of the main offices that deals with creators for DJI is based in Los Angeles, so it doesn't fly to me. That doesn't unlike their drones. That doesn't fly with me. And then there's so my first interaction I'll share. I know this isn't where we're going, but maybe you can kind of contextualize my conflicting feelings about them. My first interaction with them was in 2019. So my channel at the time was probably at about 8,000 subscribers.
Speaker 1:They reached out to me about a drone that was coming out or not a drone, sorry, a gimbal that was coming out which, like I don't, I had bought like the original Ronin-S I think that's what it was called the first like regular single handheld gimbal, and I think I made a video about that. And they reached out and said hey, we're coming out with a new version of that. We'd love to like hop on a call and talk to you about it. And I was like sure, like great. You know, I've had a DJI drone. I bought the gimbal. I'd used some of their other stuff in the past.
Speaker 1:I thought they were great and we jumped on the call. The person was super nice, but what they wanted was. It was we want to send you the gimbal to review. And I was like, well, sure, but I, you know, I don't really talk about gimbals that much on my channel, but I can take a look at it every once in a while. They're kind of interesting and you know.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, my whole thing of like, well, I can't guarantee you a video. You know, here's my ethics statement, like all the stuff that I've talked about so many times. And then they said, okay, we'll send you the gimbal. We really want you to compare it to. I think it was like the Zhiyun or Zhiyun I can't ever pronounce the company, but you know what I mean the Zhiyun, whatever the equivalent gimbal is from another brand. And I was like, well, I don't have that one. And they said, okay, well, we'd like you to buy that gimbal and then we'll send you this one. I was like, so you want me to? They're not paying me. This isn't like a sponsored thing. They're sending me a gimbal.
Speaker 1:And then asked me to buy like a $400 gimbal to compare it to, which obviously I'm not going to do. I didn't need any gimbals, much less two. Now you want me to essentially spend $400 to make this video $500 maybe to make this video? No, just no. And then you know then and that's kind of a thing that they do and I get that you know a channel of that size 8,000 subscribers at the time isn't going to get the same deal as a channel of you know 400,000 subscribers.
Speaker 1:But it is sort of strange where you know, on one hand it's like well, if you buy a $400 gimbal, we'll send you a gimbal, and then the flip side to that is here. We'll just send a bunch of things to somebody and pay them but not officially sponsor the video. And it's just sort of like the payment is for like services rendered, so then the person may or may not disclose it in their video, and the payment can be well into the five figures sometimes and it's it's weird. It's weird to me and that was sort of like one of my first, one of my first incidents which is sort of like this is bizarre, like why would you ask me to spend $400 on a competitor's product that I don't need for a video? And there's been other weird little things and you know sort of anecdotal stories from other people, but it's sort of been enough where I feel like the picture and the impression I have is pretty clear, and it comes down to, though, like the products are great, it's sort of like the way the marketing is handled, at least the creator relations are handled. That is just not up my alley at all and it's frustrating because I think their products are good enough to speak for themselves. So, all that to say, everybody's using the Pocket 3. Everybody who had one really loved it and I think they got really good results with it. And I do think it's an awesome, awesome camera. That's not even a booth thing. That was just what I saw on the floor, a booth thing. So this was just perfect timing the Rode booth.
Speaker 1:I was working on a video about handheld microphones, because that's sort of an area of weakness for me, something I don't know a lot about, not just the mics themselves, but different techniques, and you know why would you use a cardioid handheld microphone versus an omnidirectional one, for example? All this kind of stuff. And so I brought a bunch of mics and some wireless systems to make a video comparing that, because I thought the convention hall floor would be a great place for that and also because it's such a it's so loud that seeing how mics perform in that environment and it's so polluted with signals that you know, using 2.4 gigahertz systems versus UHF systems, seeing what worked and what didn't, I thought would be cool and just totally by coincidence, rode announced that first day their wireless no, their Interview Pro. I can't remember Rode's product names, but it's a 2.4 gigahertz wireless microphone that pairs with basically any of their I think they call them fourth gen receivers. So stuff like the Rodecaster Pro, the Rodecaster Duo, the Wireless Pro, the Wireless Go 2, like all of that stuff, this handheld microphone, this handheld omnidirectional microphone, omnidirectional condenser mic, will pair to those directly and that was really cool. So I was able to talk to Rode about that and spend some time with Ryan from Rode and some of the other people there who I had either luckily gotten to meet earlier this year or who I've talked to many times for many years via email. So it's so cool to meet in person. They are all the nicest people in the world, by the way. They're just so great and the Interview Pro is pretty sweet. It's a cool microphone. It's surprisingly lightweight but still feels like it's nice quality.
Speaker 1:It connected really well. It performed really well. I didn't have to. I didn't have any issues. They just gave me like one of the wireless Go receivers to use and I clipped that to my camera. We paired the mic to it and that audio worked fine. You can definitely hear background noise, but it was. I filmed this on the second day when it was insanely crowded, so it's about as crowded as it could possibly be in that room and you can hear a clip from it in my recap video and there'll be another clip from it in the other video I'm working on. But it did a good job. It doesn't, like you know, totally isolate the voice or anything, but it did a really good job.
Speaker 1:It's omnidirectional and it has built in 32 bit float audio so you can just press record on it, just like a lot of the wireless transmitters do, and it can transmit and record at the same time, which a lot of UHF systems can't. So, like you know, the UHF wireless systems from, like it's sort of weird, the body packs can't and I am not 100% sure what I'm talking about here. So have, like, the Sennheiser EWDP, which is a UHF wireless system and it's wonderful. It has no recording built in at all on the body pack, on the XLR plug, if you want to plug it into the bottom of a microphone. It does have a micro SD card slot and it can just be a recorder and you can record and transmit at the same time. I have a Shure wireless system has no recording options, and I also have the Deity Theos, which is a dual transmitter UHF system that can record in the transmitters but it cannot record and transmit at the same time. So if you're recording, it's essentially you're not using the transmitter at all, which I think is sort of silly.
Speaker 1:In the case of of then why are you spending the money for a UHF system if you're just going to use it as separate audio recorders, like you're kind of wasting hundreds of dollars at that point you could just get a couple of Zoom F2s and be good to go, and I think the reason for that is I think there's a patent thing. It's the same thing that happened for a long time GoPros. If you were using the GoPro app to monitor the camera and you pressed record, the app would blank out and you couldn't monitor while recording. Which people are very mad at GoPro about and thinking that was like the most ridiculous thing in the world and it is, but it was. It had something to do with a patent of like recording and transmitting at the same time. There was something there and it's only recently with the GoPro 12, whenever that was released. At that time they were able to like I don't know if the patent expired or they bought it or something changed, but now you can press record on the GoPro app and still see what you're recording while it's recording.
Speaker 1:I think it's a similar issue here with the UHF body pack transmitters. So if you have the, the pack that goes on your body that you normally plug like a lavalier microphone into those can transmit or they can record, but they can't do both at the same time. Not because it's not technically possible, but I think it's a legal thing. But the XLR it comes to UHF like. You shouldn't really need the recording feature anyway, because if that's something you're relying on, the signal should never drop out to the point where that becomes a problem with UHF. So you kind of don't really need it and then it just adds more to your workflow. And UHF a lot is used in live scenarios as well, where you can't edit. There's not going to be any editing, it's either live broadcast, live stream, whatever. So you need transmission directly.
Speaker 1:2.4 gigahertz, much more prone to interference, although, like I said, the wireless sorry the interview go didn't have any interference issues on the show floor, at least close up. I didn't make Ryan do a test, but a couple other people were doing kind of like similar interviews with him and they had him walk like really far away and if he got, you know, 20, 30 feet away in that crowded space or lost line of sight, then it would drop out and do things like that. But if we were, you know, five or six feet away from the camera just talking direct line of sight, there was absolutely no issues and those kinds of systems that are more affordable and prone to interference. Having that backup recording does give you a lot of peace of mind, even if you never need to use it. So I think that system is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:The only thing I don't like about it is something I've already talked about, which is it has a built-in battery. It has a great battery. It's a high quality battery that should last for a long time and gives you I forget what the predicted battery life is, but plenty of battery life and it's just simple USB charging or you can get a charging dock for it, but over time, which road batteries are good batteries and should typically last, I don't know at least four to five years before you really start noticing the battery life decreasing a lot. Then it's done. And it's not just the little transmitter like in the wireless goes and stuff, it's the whole microphone. This whole really nice omnidirectional condenser microphone is now done because the battery can't be replaced and that's. You know, I made a whole video about that.
Speaker 1:That's the trend with all pretty much every 2.4 gigahertz system. That is the trend and that's unfortunate because you know it's nice to to buy something like that. I know it's not the most expensive thing in the world, but I think that mic is 250 bucks. A lot of the wireless systems are 100 to 300, maybe $350. You know it's nice to be able to use those for a long period of time and unfortunately that's just sort of for one reason or another they don't have replaceable batteries and even if it's not like a battery that you just pop open and replace like a AA, even if there's a little bit of minor tinkering, like you have to undo a screw and take a thing off and you know, order a replacement battery from them or whatever, I would be fine with that. You have to do that every four years. That's cool, but then your microphone you get to keep and use instead of it becoming a waste. So that's the only criticism I have, which, as more and more of these things come out and this problem continues to be a problem. It just is a problem, I don't know how else to describe it and I wish that something would be done with that, because this kind of goes into the next thing I'm talking about, which is Shure.
Speaker 1:Shure does have 2.4 gigahertz systems which I wanted to try but didn't get a chance, just because I haven't seen theirs. And what I like about theirs is it's small. And there was also a company I think it was Boya yeah which is one of the more budget audio companies. They have their little, you know, wireless 2.4 gigahertz system, but they had a four transmitter system which I've never seen. I've seen the two transmitter ones. I've never seen a four transmitter system, which is pretty cool Four transmitters to one receiver receiver, kind of nuts.
Speaker 1:But um, we met some people at the shore booth because I had my wireless sm7b rig, which was. I didn't think it would garner the attention that it did, but I had that um bunch of people from shore came up, which one I had talked to via email and like video calls a few times before over the years, but not much. I haven't really done much with shore other than buy their products over the years, um, but not much. I haven't really done much with Shure other than buy their products over the years. But that's what happened. So she came over and one of their engineers came over and they spent so much time with us just because they were interested in what we're using.
Speaker 1:And then I was telling him about the 2.4 UHF thing, they saw I was using the Sennheiser and then they made sure to let me know that I should be using the Shure transmitter. I had gotten the Sennheiser EWDP before NAB, specifically for NAB, and I love it. I had never used a Shure before. And so they were like well, here, try one of ours. And so they gave me to borrow the SLX-D3. I had to look it up because I don't know Shure product names as well as the Sennheiser ones that I've been using for a long time the SLX-D3 XLR transmitter along with the SLX-D5 receiver, and then they kind of explained the difference and so we got to use that and see how it performed, which was great.
Speaker 1:And this was pretty cool because I apparently they said these ones or ones similar to these are like what they use at the Super Bowl, and I didn't notice right away. The build quality was significantly better than my Sennheiser one, which I love, the Sennheiser one, I have no complaints about that but it was like, oh wow, this feels better and the XLR part has, like this really cool locking, quick release system so you can swap it out between mics really fast. I think if you're somebody like me and you're just using one, you just need one transmitter and one receiver. It doesn't really matter if you're using the Sennheiser or the Shure they're both great, but one receiver. It doesn't really matter if you're using the sennheiser, the shore they're both great, but the shore if you're using a lot of them at once.
Speaker 1:It's kind of cool because they were showing us how you can take the receiver and essentially like, assign and pair different transmitters and receivers from one receiver. So say you're using like five transmitters, you can assign all their frequencies and everything and even control them from one receiver, even if they all they can't all actually use that receiver. So you're not pairing five transmitters with one receiver. They would all need their own receiver, but you can like essentially control and assign them. So if you're trying to assign frequencies or change something, you don't need to walk physically walk over to each receiver. You can kind of just like don't need to walk physically walk over to each receiver, you can kind of just like do it all from one spot. You can even monitor them from one receiver. So if you want to hear like, oh, what is you know camera two way over there, what does that sound like? Or something you can do that, which is pretty darn cool.
Speaker 1:And the this is the first shore wireless system I had used and I did notice the build quality is really good. It's like really heavy duty metal build quality. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because both the Sennheiser and the Shure wireless systems and I think you know the Sony pretty much every UHF wireless system I think works this way. A lot of them can take AA batteries. So they just have a door that pops open, throw in two AA batteries and you're good to go, and you know that's easy and you can get rechargeable AA batteries. So they don't have that two-point. No UHF system has the built-in non-replaceable battery. Most of them can run off of AA batteries. A lot of them also, then can have their own proprietary rechargeable batteries which have a higher capacity. So then you can just get you know the batteries for that and put them in the Shure and the Sennheiser both work that way and the Shure I actually don't know if my Sennheiser can do this, but the Shure can also be run off of a USB power bank. So there's three different ways to power it, all of which are easy to replace. You have small batteries that can be easily replaced, so your wireless system keeps going and going.
Speaker 1:And I know this because when I was teaching our wireless systems that we used because this is what was available also like 10 years ago to 2021, were the Sennheiser G3s and G4s. Those are the main ones that I use for everything, and the only reason I ever even upgraded to the G4s was just when I main ones that I use for everything, and the only reason I ever even upgraded to the G4s was just when I started needing to order more wireless systems. They didn't make the G3 anymore, but all of the G3s. Maybe we even had G2s. I think we did have some G2s, 3s and 4s. None of them ever stopped working. The only reason I got new ones was because we needed more, not because there was a problem with any of them, because they just work on frequencies.
Speaker 1:There are weird things that happen where certain frequencies, because of weird legal issues and things, become unavailable. But those sort of catastrophic incidents aside, in terms of just actually functioning, never had a problem with any of them. The newer ones just have, you know, some new features, some new nice quality of life things, or might be more appropriate for more specific use cases. But the fact is, you could buy, you know, a UHF wireless system in 2012,. You could buy, you know, a UHF wireless system in 2012, and you could bring it to NAB 2024,. That's going to work just fine If you none of the 2.4 gigahertz systems have been around long enough to be, you know, 12 years old at this point. But if you do have one that's 12 years old in a number of years, chances are you're not going to be able to use it at NAB, you know, be able to use it at NAB, you know, 2031 or whatever, because the battery will be dead and non-replaceable and that sucks and a cool thing.
Speaker 1:I really have to thank Shure because I think I was geeking out about their transmitter so hard that then they were like, oh, just hang on to it. And I was like, okay, so. So then they gave me that, which there was a funny thing. They gave me that, which is cool, and I did not expect it and it's kind of it's funny because I got home and I was like putting everything away and there's even stickers on the back that say like Shore Events, and I think it has an inventory tag on it. They didn't like give me, you know, a retail box or anything. It was literally the ones they were using at the booth. They were like here, just take this, which. Now, that makes it a really cool souvenir that I really like.
Speaker 1:But it was funny because one thing that's really cool about the Sennheiser XLR adapter that the Shure doesn't have is it has a 3.5 millimeter microphone input. So, even though it doesn't necessarily make sense to use that for a lavalier microphone, if you need to you can. If you only bought the system that has the XLR plug, you can use that for a lavalier microphone. If you need to, you can. If you only bought the system that has the XLR plug, you can use that for a lavalier thing too, almost like a body pack, and then also plug it into an XLR mic. So that's some pretty cool versatility.
Speaker 1:Bronson from Audio Hotline brought me a microphone. I cannot wait to share this microphone in the dynamic review. But it is the like $9 mini mic from Amazon. I'm sure you've seen these because they're all over like social media. It looks like a little SM58, but it's like the size of a lavalier microphone, which is hilarious. They're usually like eight or nine dollars and sound surprisingly fantastic. Like for eight or $9, you can't complain, no matter what, but like it worked really well.
Speaker 1:So anyway, we left the Shore booth. That little mini mic was the next one I needed to do and I just had my XLR plug and I thought, oh shoot, I need to put the Sennheiser plug back in because then I can plug this mic into it. And then we went to get some lunch and we were in like the little like cafeteria food court thing and we were walking over to the like the table to eat and Heather had found a table for us and it just so happened to be near one of the shore representatives who was just eating her lunch there and we could hang out and talk, but it was. This was literally like an hour after they had given me this amazing XLR system and I was like, oh, thank you. And then I was walking over to her with my Sennheiser system back on, which I just felt would be insulting. So we were like walking over and I I very quickly because I had my camera clipped to my shoulder strap of my backpack, my FX three, with the Sennheiser receiver on top I very quickly like we're just going to set this on the ground and like put this totally out of sight. Not that it not that it really matters. But I really didn't want to come off as ungrateful, like oh, we just went out of our way to give this guy a freaking thing and he just immediately like doesn't care about it, which is absolutely not the case. And I still love my Sennheisers as well. They're they're all so good and everybody at the Sennheiser booth was awesome, like the Sennheiser booth was so much fun to go to because they were just so excited. I don't think they released anything new. I don't think Shure released anything new either, but they were just like excited about all their stuff, which is almost better because it's like you don't have to sell this new product. You can just show us everything and be super excited about it.
Speaker 1:And now I'm pretty happy because I bought the EWDP last year because I wanted a UHF system and I love it, and then Deity, a couple months back, sent the Theo. So when that came out, I was like, okay, cool, at some point I want to make a video about UHF systems and I thought it will be good to not just have one, especially modern ones. Like you know, I've used the Sennheiser's G3s or whatever. You can't buy those anymore. They especially modern ones. Like I. You know, I've used the Sennheiser's G3s or whatever. You can't buy those anymore. They don't make them. So I was like, okay, I want modern systems. Having more than one to talk about would be good. And now I have three because of the Shure, which is great. So I'd love to be able to make a video talking not just about UHF. But also, okay, what is the difference between the things? Like when you go Shore, sennheiser, theos, the systems I have, I feel are all pretty comparable to each other.
Speaker 1:And speaking of Deity, that was one of the more bizarre encounters I had. So we went to the Deity booth at the end of the last day and Deity has been. They're a very supportive company of creators and they're also owned by Aperture, which the Aperture booth the lighting booth was ridiculous, like all of the lighting booths I said this in my video looked really good because you have a company that just makes beautiful, so they're all beautifully lit, plus production lights on stands doing cool things. You know, cool RGB, color temperatures, projectors, all that stuff. You can do really cool stuff with lighting. So the booths just by default, tend to look a little cooler than the other booths just because lights look cool when they're and make things look pretty.
Speaker 1:But Aputure, they released a 20 by 20 light mat, so you know, like an LED mat. That's sort of like a flexible light. Those are things that are becoming more and more popular lately and 20 by 20 is pretty good, right, like you know, full RGB, full everything. The thing was it wasn't 20 by 20 inches, it's 20 by 20 feet and I didn't realize it was a single light until I realized the entire top of their booth was just this light that was like hanging over everything, this one single light mat. That's full RGB and it was just cycling through all this stuff and it was unreal. It made you feel like like honey, I shrunk the kids like you, got shrunk down and now you were at like a normal size video light just hanging above you. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:It was just so cool and I really wondered, like I genuinely didn't know, because it had sort of like a softbox around it which looked the same as like the 20 inch by 20 inch matte panel lights. When you put a little softbox around them and I kind of wonder, like if you add a diffuser or an egg crate to it, if there is just a bunch of Velcro all around that, like what is it? 24 to 80 feet of Velcro running around this and you have to like Velcro this giant diffuser in somehow? I just think that'd be funny. I don't know if that's how it works and that's probably not how it works, but it seemed funny to me. So anyway, the reason I bring that up is because Aperture owns Deity. Aperture booth in the middle of everything Just phenomenal, you can't miss it. It's so cool Deity booth way off in the corner of a different room with, like not near Sennheiser or Rode or Boya or Neuer or any of the other like creator-ish companies which Deity seems to be very focused on creators.
Speaker 1:They're way off in some other corner, which is crazy, and we went to the end of the day, so I think they were a little bit tired. The people I've talked to at Deity, especially Steve, have always been so enthusiastic and just so excited about everything. You see him on their YouTube channel. Well, come to find out. Steve NAB was his. He's leaving the company, so that was his like last day there, so we didn't get to see him. I didn't see anyone else.
Speaker 1:I knew there was basically like a couple of people just sort of sitting on a couch and then one guy who I can only describe as like vaguely confused, working the booth, and Bronson and I walked up and Deity had two new microphones they had announced it was the S-Mic 3. I forget what they're called, but it's the S-Mic 3, the third version of it, and there's a long one and a short one. And they were sort of sitting there and we're like, whoa, you guys announced new microphones. We didn't know this. And he was like, oh, yeah. And we're like, oh, are you know? Are these coming out? And he's like, well, these are still kind of prototypes, they're not available yet.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, okay, you know what's different about them? Did they sound any different? He was like no, oh, okay. And he's like they are fully waterproof. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like waterproof mics make sense. And he was like, oh, I didn't, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:And then Bronson asked like oh, can I try one? You know cause Bronson has camera. It was like, oh, can I plug one in and try it? He's like can I try one? And the guy was like no, these are prototypes. Like we need them. And he's like no, I don't mean, can I have it? Like, can I try it? And I was like, oh, yeah, whatever, that was sort of the. It was like the experience we had at like the shore booth or the sennheiser booth or the road booth, where people are giving you so much of their time because they can't stop talking about the thing that they made and they're so excited about it. Deity was like the polar opposite and I've never had someone who was sort of unsure about why a product exists, not really explain it all and then just wander away, was our experience. There wasn't anyone else at the booth. It wasn't like let me go talk to these other people. It was weird, I don't know, it was the end of a day. I'm sure it was a very long day.
Speaker 1:A couple of other cool things we saw Kupo, k-u-p-o. I made my video a couple weeks ago about my camera rig where I used a couple Kupo adapters. They had a booth which is like it wasn't a huge booth or anything, but it was cool because they had all of their adapters. They're like for sale, so if you needed something you could just buy their adapters. And Kupo has a good reputation. But what I didn't realize because I had literally been browsing their website before NAB trying to put together some like adapters I needed when it comes to grip gear, lighting, camera stuff, tripod stuff, if you need to adapt anything. If you've ever wondered like can I connect this to this, or is there a mount that will let me connect two of these things to this thing or whatever Anything like that they have it and it's super well built and probably pretty affordable. So all I wanted to do was just bring up like. Sometimes those things seem it's not like the most exciting thing you think of when you think of something like nab, but they let you do whatever you have an idea of like. I wonder if I could do blank with blank, that's probably going to be the thing that enables you to do it. So, um, kupo, I just want to remind you, like, go to kupo's website. Kupo and, you know, check out adapters. They have a lot of stuff on Amazon and B&H as well, but, um, their website has, like their full catalog so you can, you can order directly from there or you can find what you want and then order it from your site of choice.
Speaker 1:Uh, we did see this thing. It was, um, from a company called Cine. They said it was a $6.5 million truck and it wasn't just a broadcast production truck, but their goal with it was to get I forget how they put it like essentially, you could run your cameras into it, which of course, they have the highest end cameras in the world, cameras and lenses going in there and like full 4k plus quality but then also being like color corrected and color graded and audio being processed. So the the output. Their goal was that the output looked almost indistinguishable from like a finished, you know, film or movie product project. So you could do that with a live event, and they walked us through the whole way that that happens, from how things are ingested and how things are processed. And the truck was so, so insane. I have footage of it in some of my videos. I just thought, as someone who used to teach broadcasts and I always thought this stuff was cool, I just thought it was pretty phenomenal. I don't have $6.5 million to spend on a giant truck, but it was really neat and the inside, which is just so massive, is like totally modular, so you can divide it up, break it up, move desks around, change things around, depending on what type of show you're doing or what kind of crew is working, and I just I don't know. That was just fun. There's nothing else there, nothing else to that, other than fun.
Speaker 1:The last thing that I want to highlight that I probably won't get to talk about in a video is YOLO, yolo Live YOLO Box. They had a booth surprisingly they were kind of like tucked away in the corner which I felt like a lot of what they do is so relevant to what was happening this year at NAB that they should have had like a better location. But I've talked about the YOLO Box before. I have the YOLO Box Ultra, which I want to make a video about, but it can do so much. It honestly feels overwhelming to try to like explain everything it can do, and that's why I haven't done it in a while. And this is a great thing for customers. But it's hard when you review things. They update stuff so often. It's hard to figure everything out, digest it, make a video about it, because there's going to be an update like instantly, that makes your video out of date. So that's why I haven't talked about the Ultra. But it's great and I've known the people who work at YoloBox for I guess four years now.
Speaker 1:I think 2020 was when we met. I think that may be when they started the company and they're great. They're genuinely passionate people. Again, it's an overseas company, like. They specifically want to seek out diverse creators to help with their stuff. They have, you know, men and women working on their team at all levels. So it's like I don't know you can't really use that excuse other companies, but they were just. It was really fun to see what they did and they do a thing.
Speaker 1:They just released something called the Alpha Cam, which is sort of funny because sony has, like, the alpha line of camera. So I don't know if that's. I don't know if that's a thing to, if it's going to be an issue or not, but the alpha cam is a micro four-thirds webcam, basically an interchangeable micro four-thirds webcam, and it's pretty interesting because basically what they wanted to do with it I think the price I forget what he said. Oh, they didn't have an official price yet but they're trying to make it only a little more expensive than, like, the highest end webcam. So if you look at, like the Logitech Brio or something where you have like these $400 webcams, this is a micro four-thirds sensor with interchangeable lenses. So micro four-thirds lenses work on there, full 4K, everything, but also really fast autofocus, which I never really used. Micro four-thirds but something I understand is autofocus was always a bit of a trouble, and so I think the way the camera looks, there's a lens and then below it is sort of this protrusion that sticks out and I think it's a LiDAR sensor, but it has a really fast autofocus, like they were showing us. You know how fast it is, so it does have autofocus means you could get a fast lens, shallow depth of field and have really fast autofocus.
Speaker 1:And really what they're trying to do with it is for the person who wants, like the mirrorless camera, look, the shallow depth of field, the image quality, but does not want to spend any time learning how to use a mirrorless camera or set up a mirrorless camera. They're essentially making a webcam the body of the camera doesn't have. It's not something you could take off and go take pictures with or make videos with, Like it is just a webcam. But it's for the person who wants to plug that into their computer via USB and never think about it again and get that mirrorless video level of quality, which I think is actually kind of a big deal, because that's what webcams have been promising. Every time there's a new webcam that comes out and it's never true, because it can't be true, like based on the laws of physics and reality it's not a thing that can be true. But they've kind of found a cool way to do that and I'm very excited to see where that goes. And it's kind of cool too because it sort of makes that they have sort of a whole ecosystem. Now you could buy a couple of YoloBox cameras with the YoloBox and you have sort of this integrated ecosystem. I don't know, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 1:And oh, then of course there was the Blackmagic booth, which I think everybody talks about because they were the title sponsor and it was crazy. The thing about the Blackmagic booth that I wanted to point out which is very cool, is I was in there looking around and I didn't get to talk to him because I was too starstruck, because these, these are the people I get starstruck by. Right behind me, I suddenly heard this Australian voice and I looked and it was Grant from not from B&H, from Blackmagic, who is their founder, and he's the one you know whenever you watch videos of product releases or whatever. He's always the one there. He's been there, you know from the beginning. It's his company and he's just on the floor like any other representative, talking to people about their products with the same excitement as anyone else, which he probably doesn't need to be.
Speaker 1:Most other companies, unless it was a small company, didn't have their founder there, much less the title sponsor, and it wasn't like okay, watch out, everybody here comes. The founder for 10 minutes of like face time with the normies is like no, he's just hanging out at the booth all day, every day, like nerding out with people. The same thing goes with like not the founder of Nanlite, but one of the US, like his name's Barry. I forget his exact title, but he's one of the main US like coordinators for Nanlite. He's one of the people I've talked to over the years to try to help me out with lights and stuff and figure things out about my lights. I really wanted to talk to him and say hi but I literally couldn't because every single time I saw him, every single time I walked by the Nanlite booth, he was so deep in like enthusiastic conversation with someone I just couldn't interrupt him.
Speaker 1:And that's cool, like the fact that people are that into what they do is pretty phenomenal, and that's you know. I'm only sharing a handful of things with you that I sort of saw, found interesting, memorable right now, but that you could take this and extrapolate it to you know so many different products and companies and people. And then there's the whole interpersonal side of it, where it's not even about the brand or the company but the relationships between you and the people working the event and the people attending the event, and that's a whole magical thing. So if you didn't, if you didn't watch my video about that, definitely do that, because I feel like I more effectively shared my thoughts about that over there and I definitely also I should probably should have done this at the beginning of the podcast, but also again want to thank B&H for covering the travel costs for Heather and I to go to NAB, because that really did help a lot Hotel food flight even.
Speaker 1:You know, boarding our dogs for a couple of nights which is that's always a big one like leaving pets. We don't have family that lives locally to us, so going out of town for multiple nights is always a little tricky. We're always pretty anxious. There's a great place that we board our dogs at pretty regularly, but it's also not cheap, you know, and you know obviously your pets are worth taking care of, but it's like, it's almost like you're paying for a second hotel stay wherever you go, and you know those bills add up very quickly. So it becomes easy when you think of doing something, like, oh, I'm gonna do this, and then you start adding up the price and you're like or I could do nothing and not have to spend all that money on it, you know. So when B&H shows up and like, hey, we'll just eliminate that stress for you by covering those costs, it really makes a difference and it made the whole thing possible for us. So thank you, b&h, for doing that, for enabling us and for the support. That was absolutely fantastic. So that pretty much wraps it up.
Speaker 1:If you have any thoughts or anything, of course you can share them, as always, tom, at enthusiasmprojectcom, or go to hi, my name is tomcom and leave a voice message for the podcast. We've got three episodes remaining this season. One of them might include a bit of a surprise, so we'll see. We'll see about that, and that pretty much wraps it up. So thanks so much for listening to me. If I saw you at NAB or got to talk to you there, thank you for spending your time with me talking to me. If I didn't get to talk to you or we didn't get to talk long enough, I apologize and maybe we can next year, because that'd be really fun. In the meantime, I hope you have a safe, happy, healthy, fun rest of your day and your week and I'll see you next time.
