Everything Changes: 4K Camera, Adobe CC Suite, new production techniques.

On Thursday evening my latest film 'Stalled Spaces Renfrew' was screened before an invited audience. It's a documentary following the creative process, production and installation of a public artwork in Renfrew, part of the Stalled Spaces initiative. It was a watershed in a few ways: The first film I've shot almost entirely on 4K (anything new was shot on 4K, I had to rely on some archive, intrinsic to the nature of the film) and edited on a new computer, running a new OS and a new editing application. After 15 years of using almost exclusively Final Cut Pro (not FCPX) my Mac had a fairly terminal failure earlier this year. I was able to get it fixed and back up in order to migrate projects, rushes and support files, but the new machine I had been procrastinating about would wait no longer, and I was frankly amazed by how things have moved on in the 6 years since the last meaningful FCP upgrade... I hadn't used Premiere since old old version 6 in the late 90's, but the FCP keyboard shortcuts helped to get me up and running, and the 64bit platform accessing 32gb of RAM, displayed through a 4GB GFX card from multiple SSD drives, got me running quite fast actually. No transcoding in, no transcoding out and lightning fast renders in between. Less Judge Rinder during blue progress bars for me. Apart from changing my cameras to 4K models, and having my hand slightly forced to change editing platform (including from MacOS to Win10) I've aslo developed the way I work. Inspired I suppose by the likes of '24 hours in..' this was the first major project where I have used an interrotron type system throughout, having dabbled a little previously to find my feet. It works well. All of my subjects are talking down the lens like seasoned pro's and the feedback from other shoots working with a producer have been excellent. The audience reaction is subtle. Anecdotally, they know it is different, they think it is better, even if they aren't sure why. This specific project was fairly positive and upbeat, but the potential impact when used for more serious, personal or intimate projects should be really powerful, I've had a hint of this with some 'Brightest Star' filming for a recent event, with more to come in June. You can view the video here.