On the second Saturday morning, we groggily
boarded a 7:53am train to Amsterdam. Thank goodness I was able to sleep
on that four-hour train ride, otherwise Amsterdam and I would have had a
grumpy introduction. Interesting fact: when you travel by train through
many parts of Europe, there is practically no passport control.
Anywhere. Coming from highly security concious USA, it was a little
sketched out. I mean- I’m not best friends with TSA, but I understand their purpose and importance. Here. Nada, nein,
nichts. So unusual.Other than the whole security aspect of no passport
control it also means I’m racking up zero stamps in my passport. Not
cool. What else are all those blank pages for? I’m going to start
drawing my own in – just need to find some Crayolas first.
Our class was venturing to Amsterdam to attend the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC). Even on the train ride there, I didn’t fully know what we were getting ourselves into. IBC sent me twenty emails a day, but my annoyance at spam mail overpowered my desire to read the emails. Once I arrived at the conference though, I realized that reading those emails probably would have been helpful and more than fascinating. To put it plainly, IBC is a playground for film kids. Overflowing with cameras, post production software, lighting kits, camera cranes, storage solutions, sound technology, and too many goodies to count! Considering the only other conference I’ve been to was for scrapbooking, (yes, that happened) this one by far took the cake.
Just outside IBC, we met our cinematography professor for the first time, Thor I mean Jens. He had already been walking around the conference earlier in the day and recommended some stalls and areas for us to check out. Once we stepped inside the convention center, they set us loose. I went to the camera hall first, with Sam and Caro. We aren’t the most skilled and knowledgable camera students but our eyes still went goo-goo at the Arri’s Alexi and we became kids at a candy store trying on steadicams. As much fun as we were having learning about different cameras and exploring different stalls, no one could trump Will’s expression in the camera hall. When we ran into him, his smile could barely contain his joy. It was Christmas morning and Santa left more than just the presents Will asked for, he left his reindeer, sleigh, and the whole North Pole. I’ve never seen such a sparkle in Will’s eyes. Guess that’s what happens when you give an aspiring cinematographer a hall full of the best cameras around.
After exploring the camera hall, we moved on toward the post production and it was my turn to light up. Walking down the steps, I could already tell we walked into a boy’s club, but I didn’t care. One woman handing us a booklet even commented how glad she was to see women in the post production hall. The first stall we walked up to was Quantel’s Pablo Rio, which is an editing consul for color correction and finishing. As soon as we walked up, we put on 3D glasses and watched a reel of the films they had worked on including “Avatar”, “The Social Network”, and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. After watching the presentation, we began speaking to the Pablo Rio expert who was telling us that the latest innovation with Pablo Rio is that one can now purchase just a software version, which makes it much more accessible for schools and smaller productions. We told the man we were film students from LMU studying abroad, and in response he posed “Playa del Ray” as a question. Complete coincidence! We were half way around the world and found a man who is from Playa del Ray, plays tennis on LMU’s courts, and is close with a SFTV professor. What are the odds? ... Apparently pretty favorable because we found two other people at IBC who had an LMU connection. LMU can feel very small sometimes, but then again so can the world.
After drooling over the Pablo Rio, we explored more of post and made our way to AVID, which my laptop is desperately missing. Unfortunately we didn’t get to spend much time in the post production hall because the convention was closing for the day, but just being there a little made me all happy inside. IBC far exceeded my expectations, I only wish I could have spent more time exploring it because I could have stayed at some stalls for days. I’m so glad AIB took us there, I never would have had the opportunity to go on my own. IBC brought Christmas to Amsterdam- not a bad weekend trip in my book.
Written by: Sarah Bush
