I have never seen so many self employed camera men and women without work. Some of the biggest DOPs in the game are virtually unemployed due to COVID-19.
Work is drying up everywhere as are trade shows. NAB 2020 due in April has already been cancelled with a possible re schedule later this year.
Interestingly Cinema 5D have just announced a Virtual Trade Show (VTS) in place of NAB, a great idea.
Johnnie Behiri (Cinema 5D) “Hey Philip, as always, good to hear from you again! Well, NAB felt they had to cancel the biggest show in our industry WITHOUT giving the manufacturers and us the audience an alternative, so we’ve decided to “take faith in our hands” and cater for the industry with a proper plan. We will create A LOT of original “virtual show” content (Actual interviews with manufacturers) and some remote ones, plus, have a little studio where we can host people and talk about new (exciting) up coming products and analyse trends. (If things will get even tougher, it will be Nino and I talking, but of course we will be happy to have as many as possible guests). Also, as companies will stream live some announcements, we will share those too. In any case, we didn’t want lo leave the field only for them as it could become a “marketing gig”, so we are trying to put some sense into it all together! Thank you and warm greetings from Tokyo.”
This week’s work has been worst with cancellations literally at the last second – hopefully there won’t carnage here like some other countries have suffered so far. I’d be happy with that outcome.
I appreciate the team at Cinema 5D for doing this. Gear is expensive and there is much choice available in many categories and so reviews and especially the interviews conducted at various stands at trade shows can reveal a lot of valuable information!
I would like to second your HDWarrior’s proposal for plugin creators to help us all out during this time. Well, by helping us they’d be likely helping themselves too.
Finally, let me add that appreciation not only goes to Cinema 5D, but to HDWarrior and all those professionals who spare a lot of their time to put their experience to good use and share their viewpoints on equipment. Especially, I have found HDWarrior’s (amongst others) write-ups of how they conducted a shoot very useful. Helps me to see how I can use existing equipment instead of eating up profits buying equipment that takes up even more limited storage space! Thank you all.
HDW : Thank you Andrew that’s much appreciated.