FlashBus

I went to FlashBus when it came into town.  I got to listen to David Hobby and Joe McNally talk and demo some stuff.  Mr. Hobby ran through a lot of slides and discussed the various changes and such in the process of setting up a shot.  Mr. McNally ran through shots on stage while wired into the laptop rigged to the projectors.

I think I got more out of Mr. Hobby's presentation, simply because it was slower; Mr. McNally ran through his shots VERY quickly (of course, on a job, you would have to).  But all in all, I don't think it was worth the money regardless.  We weren't allowed to record audio, so I don't have the ideas behind some of the slides unless I took notes.  I did when I could, which was much more often with Mr. Hobby's, again because it was slower.  But even then, I don't necessarily know which notes go with which slide, and either my camera/card/computer is screwed or I didn't get as many pictures of the slides as I thought I did.  And those slides are not on the DVD's I ordered.

Basically, I was under the impression (not that I remember why) that it was a workshop, not a seminar.  To me, a seminar is the free one where they talk you into paying for the workshop, product, pyramid scheme, or whatever.  In this case, the seminar wasn't free and basically served to convince me I needed the DVD's.  Since I had already ordered the DVD's, it was a waste.

Now, don't get me wrong.  They aren't actually pushing the DVD's.  They do seem to be trying to teach to an extent, and maybe it is just that that is the best they can do in a one-day lecture-style "class".  And one of the things to take into consideration is that I can't remember lectures very well in the first place.  I don't learn from lectures or just reading books, I have to actually do it.  So I don't remember most of what was gone over, even from the slides and photos of the setups I took.  But if you are one of those people that can remember that stuff, or can take really good notes, maybe it will pay off.

For me, I'm more looking forward to getting the DVD's in my hand and loaded onto the laptop.  Then I'll get my kids and maybe friends as well to pose for me to practice stuff.  I'll let you know how that works out.

Update:
After getting some sleep and reading this again (I'm working night-shift this week), I think it may have come out more negative than I wanted.  I stand by the statement that the seminar was a waste of money for me.  However, I do want to emphasize that both of the guys are very good at what they do.  Both the manual stuff that David Hobby does and the TTL stuff that Joe McNally does are really useful if you can retain it in that format.  I just can't, so I await the DVD's.  As far as Mr. Hobby's portion, I think you might get most of the same info off of his blog, especially the On Assignment section, although I think the seminar gave more in-depth detail about things like what he tried that didn't work.  The DVD set is supposed to do even more of that, as it supposed to go through every test shot and setup change.  I haven't read Mr. McNally's blog, so I can't say anything about information overlap there one way or the other.