The Digital Steenbeck
The history of cinema as an art is the history of cinema as a technology. For every technological advancement, every evolution in the tools of both building and experiencing cinema there is profound change in the art cinema presents.
Among the myriad of changes - from the the fluid-head tripod to the steadicam, from chemical film stock to digital binary - the step from the edit-table to the edit-computer is one of the most profound.This change didn't just make things faster or easily undone with an CTRL-Z but, more significantly, changed the expectations of what the editor could do, changed the mindset of the editor's process and, fundamentally altered the job description of Editors themselves.
In setting up a new edit suite at the
International Film School Sydney we have implemented a physical manifestation of this evolution. Or new edit bay (geared for real-time uncompressed HD online editing, effects, compositing and colour-grading as well as working with RAW footage from the RED camera) features an 8-core MacPro, terabytes of RAID storage, and AJA video card and SDI interface and a pair of 28inch HD lCD monitors.
And all this lovely digital hardware goodness is mounted upon a custom modified Steenbeck editing table. Old-school meets New school.
The Steenbeck had spent several years gathering dust in a corner of the school until we struck upon the master stroke of mounting a glass top over the sprockets and turning the whole thing into a table. So, as you sit and cut with all the glories of the digital age, you can peer through the glass and reflect upon the olden days.... A unique editing experience that taps into the IFSS philosophy - Never be Boring when you can be Fascinating....
And here's what an un-modified one looked like:
Posted at 06:13PM Mar 23, 2009
by Mike Jones in technology |
