Cinegear Expo 2008
 

A great event in Los Angeles for those interest in the high-end toys of the business. Your chance to see the state-of-the-art gear and mingle with the biggest names in the industry. The event is not quite as intimate as it once was, but still much more manageable and focused than NAB. Expect to see quite a lot of the indie filmmaking manufacturers there also.

Free registration until June 14th. Expo is the 20th and 21st on the backlot of Universal Studios.

www.cinegearexpo.com

Too HOT!
 

Holly Cow. I went to Cine Gear expo on Friday at 11am. It was so BLAZING HOT outside that i had to leave after an hour. Some kind of insane heat wave in LA.
I must have lost 5 pounds of sweat. They made a big mistake having that outside. Even some of the equipment was failing. The guy at IKAN monitors was like, this was in the sun and i think it got too hot and stopped working.
Anyway, I feel bad for the exhibitors out there. All that stuff i always wanted to try out but i was too miserable to want to play with it.
So this was the first Cine Gear expo where there was the risk of dying of heat stroke.
Next year, inside please.

It was also the WORST run Cine Gear expo ever. Clueless security! No tram stop directions or signs. On leaving,we boarded a tram whose driver swore he hit all the stops and parking lots, but 45 minutes later ended up back at the Expo site. Only after a number of angry passengers confronted him, did he call for directions on how we could get back to our cars. That was an uphill walk (in 103 degree heat) to another unmarked tram stop, where a bus finally showed up.
Several exhibitors I spoke to indicated they wouldn't be back next year if the Expo was at Universal. These events can do a lot for the industry, but this one clearly needs new management.
Ken

Sorry you guys had a difficult time--I too had my run-ins with various security guards here and there but overall I thought it went pretty smoothly on that end. Certainly the check-in was better co-ordinated than last year's show.

Not much could be done with the heat--it was a tough one, although I lasted from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, even though I felt a touch of heat exhaustion coming over a few times! i don't think anyone could have predicted the weather being as bad as it was.

One thing I will say was that I saw an AWFUL lot of RED cameras there, seemed like every other booth had one in one configuration or another.

Sorry I missed it this year, would have been great to see you Charles plus everybody else from DV Info Net. For those who didn't make it that are wondering what this show is like, here's my CineGear 2006 PhotoBlog (the heat that year was tolerable to me, but then I'm from Central Texas, where we're used to triple digits plus humidity).

I had an extremely pleasant experience. Dalsa was showing off their Evolutions and Phantoms were everywhere, everything hooked up to high quality monitors or projections. If it exists, it was there and tricked out. The panel with Batman's DP was excellent. I learned more in two days of mingling, browsing, and hands-on-trying than I have in two years of forum trolling.

The heat was actually welcome as it exposed the equipment to real-world conditions. By day two, you could tell what wouldn't handle a real assignment; it had been covered in tin foil or hidden under shade. Dollies, jibs, and cameras that were still out in the blazing sun, those you could count on.

Absolutely fantastic!