Thoughts about NAB day one

Gadgets. There's lots of them. For film and tv makers the endless rollout of cool gadgets to use to tell the story just doesn't end. And it's getting very competitive. At the Steadicam booth, a young woman is demonstrating a combination Steadicam / crane boom. Someone asks her how long she could carry it on her body. "Twenty minutes", she says. Watching her put the rig through its paces, I couldn't help thinking about the way that attention span and this strange rig were linked. We're now so used to shots that move endlessly, cuts that are a second or two or less, all constantly shifting our attention. At the Canon booth, a short demo film made with the 4K 1D starts with two characters talking in a hospital hallway. Every second or two the view changes. A close up to an over the shoulder, a low angle side view, a top view, a closer two shot, an extra close up of each, etc. At NAB my gaze is constantly being diverted with shot making devices, cages, sleds, mini cameras, high speed cameras, Swedish retro cameras, stereo rigs, tiny microphones, 2k, 4k, 8k, every focal length of high speed prime lens, ridiculous zoom lenses, cranes, remote pan tilt heads, an amphibious rolling tirecam, a Segway Steadicam. Every item adds a slight edge in the range of shots that you can create. Are we bowing to some kind of demigod here, a technological demon that is sucking the life out of stories. Are we reaching a level of contrivance where the manipulation of the image outweighs the story within the frame? And are the makers of all this gadgetry kidding us? As the dancing girls hit the concrete stage, and the features of the 'new' products are revealed, so we're lured into believing that all of this is good.