What I learned from producing the Collision Conference.

For my first post I am not going to bore you with my history – if you want to know more about me you can check out my Linked In profile for yourself. Instead, I am going to talk about what I took away from running (and attending) the collision conference.

As one of the two people directly responsible for creating/producing the conference I got a lot of behind-the-scenes information and as the Master of Ceremonies I may be the only person who attended all of the seminars at the conference. Going in I didn’t really expect to learn much but the problem with “radical change” is that you never really know what to expect.

There is a small but dedicated selection of Manufacturers and Service Providers who are ahead of the game and who think that photo-cine is going to be a huge game changer.

In the weeks leading up to the conference I was scrambling to find companies that wanted to be involved with us. I had intentionally limited the number of vendor tables available because I didn’t want to get caught with a 1/2 full conference-hall so when there was only 1 table left I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on to other issues. But the phone just didn’t stop ringing! Vendor after vendor found out about us from the marketing we had been doing and called looking for tables. We turned away almost as many as we signed up and there were even more calls after the conference ended. There is a small group of people who serve the photo, video and cinema industries that are ON FIRE for this topic. I remember when that happened in the photo industry, at the start of the Digital Revolution, and I think you all know how big that turned out to be

The people who are “in” on this are all really passionate about the topic – they use words like “game-changing” and “revolution”

Were you at the conference? Did you hear Shane Hurlbut’s keynote address? That guy’s excitement was palpable and the things that he said about how the 5D is going to change the way films are made almost bordered on religion. You really should watch the whole thing (it will be up on this site soon) and check out Shane’s blog too.

At one point during the cocktail party that was held for the speakers Rodney Charters, Shane Hurlbut, Liam Finn and Vincent Laforet were all sitting together talking about putting 30 thousand dollar lensed on the 5D – a $3000 camera! This went on for about half and hour and they were
all enthralled. I’ve never seen industry professionals engaged with that level of passion about anything (except maybe a paycheck:-) – Oh wait, I have seen it once before. I do remember this same level of ecstasy coming out of the mouths of the “true believers” when the Digital Revolution got started… (is this starting to sound familiar?)

There is an opportunity for photographers in all of this but it’s not going to be easy to find…

Even though the conference started as a Photographer’s event it quickly became apparent to us that the cinematographers were pretty excited about photo-cine too. A lot of the speakers had more to say about making movies than about the impending push for photographers to deliver video content as part of a still photo job. It was almost possible to forget that a career as a still photographer is probably not a good long-term plan right now.

I was getting a little depressed as I saw all the great movies that were being created with STILL CAMERAS – how on earth are still photographers going to compete against experienced motion-image professionals if the job is to provide video/cinema content? Then I saw Alexx Henry speak and I realized that there is an opportunity for still photographers that is being created. It is NOT (IMHO) about photographers learning to shoot video (though that is certainly an option – particularly if you are a wedding photographer). I believe that the new opportunities that will benefit photographers – or at least that small percentage of the photo community that embraces the new technology – are going to come in new media.

Alexx showed the audience some “Living One-Sheets” – movie posters that come to life. These are NOT just movie trailers with type treatment over top of them. I think that they require the creation of a whole new artistic sensibility, one that can most powerfully be served by photographers because they are used to thinking about the impact of a single image. Alexx has even coined a new phrase for the hybridization of stills and motion – “Living Art” which he talks about on his blog.

ASIDE…

I’ve going to have more to say on new media opportunities for photographers – keep your eyes open for my post on the Gap jeans web-site to see another example of imagery that I don’t think would have been conceived by a movie maker for more…

This is Game Changing and we’re just getting started.

Everyone that I talked to at the conference, and since, falls into one of two categories. The “ostriches” (like the head of APA national who told us that the conference was not in any way relevant to their membership) and the “converted”. I seem to talk mostly to the converted (since I seem to have unwittingly become one of the leaders of the movement) and every one of them sees this as the begging of something big. I’ve heard the convergence between still and motion called a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and “something that comes along every hundred years”. It doesn’t matter if you work on block-buster movies or if you (try) to make a living taking photographs – your world just changed (and maybe you didn’t’ even notice).

I (and the whole crew at Photo Cine) invite you to be a part of the revolution. Let’s figure this out together so that we can all avoid becoming (in the words of Michael Britt) roadkill on the convergence highway.