Profusion Expo has potential

Canadian technology and broadcast production always feels a couple of steps behind the world. Profusion attempts to bring a NAB show-like presence up North. While the scale of Profusion felt a bit less than Henry’s Photo and Imaging show, we certainly are excited about a Canadian conference whose focus is on film and video.

The Good

Everyone from Made in Camera attended the event, but the highlight for me was Rodney Charters. He was the cinematographer for 24 and is a big proponent of the HDSLR movement. Rodney comes across as a really down to earth production star with a wealth of knowledge that he’s eager to share. He brought an audience member on stage to demonstrate lighting techniques. He showed how they used the Canon 5D MKII to film driving plates for 24. He also showed a clip of using handheld gyroscopic stabilizers. He’s the type of person we dream to work with.

Phillip Bloom was the headliner. One of our guys attended his workshop and picked up some good tips from the face of HDSLR.

A sales rep from Steadicam. It was fun trying on all of the Steadicam gear. We actually started putting the gear on ourselves before the sales rep told us to. Poor guy though, he had to run the floor as well as setup for a presentation at the same time.

The Constructive

The organizers put up a valiant effort for the first edition of Profusion, but here are some recommendations:

• Notify guests when the rooms and times change for speaker events. We came out of some talks not knowing where our next talk was.
• All talks went overtime or were late to start.
• Sorry to sound harsh, but the Making Money in Video talk was almost useless. I am glad it was free. It didn’t offer any useful content. It discussed silly viral videos and was filled with fake numbers and statistics.
• We didn’t attend the “Industry Gala”, but we’ve heard strong opinions about it. There were no keynote speakers as promised and the “5 star” dinner of sandwiches was not worth the $80 per head cost.

Despite these shortcomings, we look forward to next year’s event and we’re glad that the sponsors and organizers are putting in the effort.