One of the highlights to NAB is attending the annual Final Cut Pro Users Group SuperMeet, which is where FCP users from around the world attending NAB gather for one night of celebration, drinking, and listening to some less-than-formal presentations of new products. There is also the world-famous Raffle, and this year over $100,000 worth of goodies was raffled off. Master of Ceremonies is the charming Michael Horton, head of the LA FCP Users Group, and this year his MC duties was shared by the head of the Boston FCP Users Group.
Here are members of the FCP Montreal group on stage in full courier-du-bois outfits. These guys are legendary at SuperMeets because they always win big at the raffle, and they are VERY exuberent when they win. For the last few years, they have donated specially-brewed Canadian beer to the raffle. I ran into these guys at the Sonnet booth earlier in the day, and they were at lot more excited about the products introduced this year at NAB than I was.
Sad to report, but this was the least-exciting SuperMeet I've ever been to. Terrible audio malfunctions dominated the night and forced a lot of improv on the stage as techies desperately tried to figure out what was going wrong. It was also the smallest attendence I've seen for a SuperMeet. And as a sign of the times, it is no longer called a Final Cut Supermeet, as FCP has been stricken from the name - it is now, as of this year, CMPUG Supermeet. CMPUG standing for Creative Media Professionals User Group. Congrats Apple - last year's SuperMeet you showed off FCP X, and in one year you managed to have a legendary worldwide celebration of your product, named after your product, with user groups around the world celebrating your product, completely disassociate themselves from your product. Apple, if you've lost Michael Horton, you've lost the war.
Presentations last night were from Autodesk showing the new Smoke editor/fx software; Stephen Hurlbut showing off the new 4K DSLR, the Canon 1 C; BlackMagic showing their new Cinema Camera, and their attempt at showing off the new Resolve 9 software was canned due to technical difficulties; and Adobe showing off Premiere CS 6.
Even the raffle, the world-famous scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs, do cartwheels on the stage raffle, was muted this year. Yes, there was one cartwheel, and some screaming, but there was a distinct lack of energy in the air.
The highlight of the night was a 45 minute session with Morgan Spurlock, indie-doc director. Morgan was very witty and charming and told great stories, and if it wasn't 6 a.m. as I write this, I might be able to relay some of those witty stories. He showed the trailer for his new film on ComicCon, and in keeping with the technical difficulties of the night, it played with no sound. So once Morgan realized there was going to be no sound, he started narrating the trailer, providing sound effects, sarcastic comments, music and whatever else he needed to do. It was hilarious and he got a standing ovation for it. It was great to hear Morgan tell his stories of making SuperSize Me, and other production stories (his trying to get Ambercrombie & Finch to be a sponsor in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was particularily funny), and it reminded me of what can make NAB special.
