RIGHT NOW: The Moment in Photographs

Goodbye Las Vegas

I’m leaving Las Vegas, talk about a trip chock-full of activities, from visiting the numerous video production gear booths at the NAB convention to taking in the nightlife, restaurants, gambling, and comedy. (Images are expandable above)

I used up every spare minute of my four day trip, somehow finding a slice of time to: sit poolside, spend time at Botero looking at an original painting of a chubby girl in circus shorts holding a tiger, watch Roseanne Barr do standup at the Laugh Factory, and eat the best meal of my trip at The Capital Grille: parmesan encrusted sole with crab and avocado salad, paired with a pineapple infused Stoli vodka martini—delicious!

Until next time Sin City.

Las Vegas: the Funny Little Town

Like gambling, Vegas is a bit hit and miss. It’s my second time in this funny little town and I’ve made a few observations: 1) People are drawn to excessive drinking in the streets, because they can 2) Alcohol is insanely expensive in Vegas, $19 for a standard glass of wine? Oh, ok. 3) 98% of women in Vegas wear short skirts and high-heel shoes they can’t walk in (see pic above)—but god bless ‘em—they try 4) Most restaurants in the city are in hotels and hotel food is generally expensive 5) There is somewhere to throw your money around every corner: gambling, shopping, entertainment, strippers, escorts etc.

So what do I love about Vegas? The weather. When the weather is good, it’s great. People are also genuinely friendly and there is plenty of entertainment and delicious gourmet food around, like the prosciutto and fig flatbread pizza from Olives. You just have to have the wherewithal to discover it.

Hello Las Vegas

I arrived in Las Vegas last night, just in time for the start of NAB 2013 (National Broadcasters Association) and their opening party at TAO nightclub. 

Vegas is as city of excess. As soon as I walked off the plane I was greeted with a row of slot machines, with a few souls occupying the seats. Leaving the classy swank of my hotel lobby, I stepped into the Venetian, where the line-up for TAO was forming beneath the brightly adorned ceiling. Starting as a private function for NAB, things got crazy as folks filled in for a glimpse of Snoop Lion (formally Dogg) who was set to perform at 9pm, but didn’t show up until after midnight. Paid female dancers in lingerie jump on the bar Coyote Ugly style and shook their thighs for everyone, while Rihanna followed by Nicki Minaj followed by… you get the picture, pumped from the DJ booth. All in all, Vegas is a town that knows how to party and NAB’s party started with a bang.

My New Portable Editing Station

I’ve designed a portable video editing solution for easy transport from my home office to a shoot, for offloading and editing footage on set.

I wanted the system to be highly portable, easy to break down, efficient and powerful. So far, I’m super happy with the results. My portable workhorse is comprised of the following components.

15” Macbook Pro with Retina
Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet
SanDisk SSD
Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter
Apple Thunderbolt cable
Apple wireless keyboard
KB Keyboard Covers for Final Cut Pro X
Sennheiser 280 Pro Monitor Headphones
Final Cut Pro X
Adobe CS6 Master Collection
Thule Macbook Pro Case
Twelve South Adjustable Stand

I’m a huge fan of the Wacom Intuos series of tablets for editing and design, as the jog dial and pen tool can be customized, and speed up the editing process considerably compared to a mouse.

For a keyboard, I purchased a Final Cut Pro X removable keyboard cover from KB Covers, in order to take the guesswork out of Final Cut keyboard shortcuts. The cover has a nice, soft rubbery feel and I like it’s removable for easily switching out.

For an external hard solution, I was searching for a portable storage solution with the fastest transfer speeds. I put together a SSD/Thunderbolt combo drive using the Seagate Thunderbolt adaptor (designed for their hard drives, but perfect for SSDs). In my tests, this drive combination offers blistering read/write speeds compared to other Thunderbolt drives on the market.

The best part of using an SSD is if I run out of hard drive space, I simply buy a new SSD—rather than having to buy an entirely new hard drive or additional bay (goodness knows I have enough of them). It’s a simple solution that’s the fastest one I’ve found.

If you have a cool portable editing solution, feel free to send me a link.

There was a moment tonight when I was literally on Ellen Degeneres’ stage, standing exactly where she hits her mark during the opening monologue of her show. Yep, I took a Warner Brothers studio tour today and saw some pretty cool TV show sets, including the sets for: Ellen, Conan, The Mentalist, The Big Bang Theory and the Central Perk coffee shop from Friends.

A major highlight for me—besides the Ellen Show—was seeing all the costumes and cars from Christopher Nolan’s batman series. Especially incredible, was seeing Heath Ledger’s Joker costume.

If you get a chance to take the tour while in Burbank, it’s fantastic and always changing.