The NAB 2011 show was April 11-14 in Ye Ol’ Vegas. It’s the biggest annual US-based show for broadcast artists and their vendors. If you’ve been paying attention lately to digital media news, people have been posting their videos and photos and opinions. For instance, Studio Daily’s blogger Scott Simon did a great South Hall round-up and Stu Maschwitz, our Magic Bullet Creative Director, covered Apple’s big FCP X announcement in his ProLost blog.

Aside from seeing new technology, I asked people at Red Giant what they love about NAB. (This potentially sounds like a Coca-Cola commercial, but bear with me.) Here are post-NAB thoughts and Red Giant booth photos from some of my favorite coworkers. Interestingly, our photos all seem to be taken with iPhones. Guess everyone was completely taken with the launch of our two new mobile apps, Movie Looks and Noir, and forgot to grab those DSLRs. Oops.

Left to right, Aharon Rabinowitz, Harry Frank, Andrew Cheyne, John Kerr and Micah Sharp:

From Aharon Rabinowitz, our Director of Community and All Bets Are off boy wonder, shown first from left, “The reason I go out is to meet the people who use our products. By putting faces to the amazing work I see on-line every day, It recharges my love for what I do.”

A big Red Giant shout-out goes to Harry Frank, our inhouse motion designer of Gray Machine fame, shown second from left. Harry came to NAB four days after he had a baby — well, you know what I mean — so he is this year’s Trade Show Rockstar. Look for his adorable new son in Red Giant promos to come.

From Andrew Little, Red Giant Cofounder and enabler of the booth, “This was the busiest and most  energized NAB in 5 years. My head is still spinning. It’s still the best place to meet potential partners, generate some new product buzz, meet our customers, and have fun.”

Andrew being interviewed by… someone important:

From Beth Manning, our Sales Manager and booth coordinator extraordinaire, “NAB is always an exciting week for Red Giant. It’s a great opportunity to show our new technologies. We get to see old friends and customers as well as meet folks new to Red Giant. Folks come to our booth with praises, ideas and complaints and we like to hear them all!”

And for me, Debbie Rich, our tech writer and today’s blogger, NAB is an annual creative pilgrimage, kind of like going to Burning Man. I make my way to the desert, see a lot of cool art and technology, meet up with people I really like but only see once a year, have some drinks, and stand around figuring out what party to go to next. It’s awesome. See you next year!

Beth with Simon Walker, our QuickTip Guru and booth, ummm, babe:

In case you didn’t hear, this little thing called the NAB 2011 show happened last week in Las Vegas. The event was full of great product announcements, friendly faces and alotta industry buzz. All three combined into our favorite part of the show, which was learning that Red Giant won two awards for our Colorista family of tools.

Studio Daily’s Scott Simmons did a lively roundup of the Winners and Losers at NAB. Guess which category our new color corrector, Magic Bullet Colorista Free, is in! Scott wrote, “Winners: Color Grading… The free version was a popular concept: Red Giant Software introduced Colorista Free, a CDL-compliant plug-in for basic primaries only.” Read the list of Scott’s Studio Daily winners here.

DV Magazine gave their prestigious Black Diamond Award to Magic Bullet Colorista II, the full-featured version of Colorista Free. The award “…recognize[s] outstanding achievement in the advancement of the art and science of video technology… A select panel of engineers, editors, and production and post professionals joined the magazine staff to judge the Best of Show awards for DV.” Read the list of DV’s Black Diamond winners here.

In this Episode of Red Giant TV, Apple Certified Master Trainer, Simon Walker, shows you how to quickly create animated motion graphics backgrounds and text treatments in Final Cut Pro – with NO KEYFRAMES!

Watch the episode HERE.

Our awesome iPhone app, Plastic Bullet, has been updated with a bunch of cool new features, and we want to see what you can do with it. Tweet a photo that uses Plastic Bullet, and you could win an iPad or other prizes. This contest ends on September 7th, at 11:59PM PST. Winners will be announced within a few days of that.

Enter the contest here: http://redgiantsoftware.com/social/plastic-bullet-ipad/

This contest is only open to residents of the United States. Only ONE ENTRY per user.

Get Plastic Bullet HERE.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we recently had the Red Giant company meeting. After the meetings broke on Wednesday, and people started getting back to the usual day-to-day, Harry Frank and I decided we would film a tour of the Red Giant offices in Portland.

iPod/iPad Friendly Version on Vimeo.

OK – it’s not The Godfather, but it’s not Bio-Dome either. Sad to say that we had a really great interview with Debbie Rich, one of our newest team members, but as it turns out, we actually hit the record button twice (stopping the recording right away). Consequently, from the time the interview is over (when we hit the record button again) until the next one, we have about 20 minutes of video of Harry’s feet along with audio of the RG team describing our favorite scenes from “Desperate Housewives” in detail (this is mandatory viewing at RG – and there is a test, or we don’t get paid).

Oh, and BTW – we used Harry Frank’s Looping Backgrounds for Trapcode Suite for all of the lower thirds. Harry didn’t want me to print that, but I must not have heard him when he said it.

Next time write your own blog entry, buddy.

Hey folks – On June 25, I gave a presentation at After Effects New York on Particular 2.0 – not yet released. You can watch that 40 minute presentation on new features + some cool Particular tips here:

http://vimeo.com/5477391

Enjoy!