CINE GEAR INDUSTRY
CEO and co- founder Juliane Grosso reflects on
WORDS NICOLA FOLEY three decades of Cine Gear Expo and what the future holds for the event and industry C ine Gear Expo, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in June, has a reputation as one of the most important filmmaking industry events in the calendar. Taking place on the iconic Universal Studios Lot in the heart of Hollywood, it’s become an institution; a place where filmmakers and industry professionals come together, catch up, discuss the state of the filmmaking landscape and explore the latest technologies. It’s grown and evolved hugely since its first outing in 1996, when founders Karl Kresser and Juliane Grosso, working with Otto Nemenz, set up the event to address what they saw as a gap in the market. “The Hollywood filmmaking community was sprawling, talent-rich and hungry for connection,” describes Grosso. “But there was no dedicated place where artists and technicians could come together to test and talk about the tools of their craft. “From the start, Cine Gear Expo was designed to focus on the needs of the community. The founding idea was simple: bring the best technology and the best creative minds into the same room, on a real studio lot, and let the magic happen organically. Thirty years later, that hasn’t changed one bit.” One thing that has changed is the content of the conversations on the show floor. In the early days, it was all about equipment – predominantly lights, lenses and cameras – but today it encapsulates virtual production pipelines, sustainability on-set, AI tools, colour science and crucial discussions around representation behind the camera.
DRESSED TO IMPRESS The
Universal Studios Lot venue instils the event with real Hollywood history
business over the last three decades, but the turning point that she thinks made the biggest impact was the transition from film to digital. “It fundamentally democratised access to the medium: suddenly a talented filmmaker in any city in the world could shoot on professional equipment. That changed everything about who could tell stories and how.” After that came the streaming boom, which “transformed distribution and consumption simultaneously, creating enormous demand for content while reshaping what a career in film looks like,” says Grosso. “And now AI presents the most complex set of questions the industry has ever faced – about labour, authorship and what human creativity means in the context of machine- generated imagery.” However, the current landscape also offers thrilling opportunities, she
The scale of the operation has also changed significantly. Cine Gear Expo has gone from effectively a regional gear showcase to a multi-city extravaganza, adding shows in New York and Atlanta, with the flagship LA summit attracting some 16,000 attendees from all around the world. Grosso believes the key to the event’s continued relevance and success has been its consistently filmmaker-first approach. “We have never tried to be everything to everyone,” she explains. “Attendees know that when they walk through our doors, every exhibitor, every seminar, every conversation is directly relevant to their craft and career. There’s something irreplaceable about the studio lot environment. It’s a working creative space, and that energy is contagious.” Grosso has witnessed some seismic transformations within the filmmaking
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