Our new Edit Suite – Old School meets New School

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 i na  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 Facinating….

And here’s what an un-modified one looked like: