I’ve got a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and
I’m in a state that can only be described as ‘self-pity drunk’- the place where shame and depression culminates in one big 'Fuck you' from life, to me. Cheers mate. It’s 2014, and
post production on 16mm isn’t going too well- I’m absolutely convinced that
I’ve done such a terrible job cutting Where No Vultures Fly, that I’ll
never be asked to edit anything again, so I jump on board immediately when
Marli pitches me her 3rd year idea- a natural history documentary,
called The Great Forest.
Jump forward 7 months to December, and Marli has already
started shooting her documentary- a film that hasn’t even been pitched or
approved, but hey, apparently Marli is an organised kid (who knew?). I pick up
the footage and take it home- 330GB of camera test footage, shot on the Red
Epic. Transferring the files onto my computer is where everything went south,
and I realized that the term ‘post-production’ is quite misleading. It turns
out that with an average data rate of 88MB/s (that’s no typo on the capital ‘B’
by the way), I’ve got a choice to make- either succumb to setting up a mattress
underneath a desk on campus, or say goodbye to my struggling and archaic
computer, and build something new, from the ground up. Allegedly building your
own PC is like Lego for adults, and considering that it will also serve as an
investment for the future, I make the decision to take the plunge. Amidst my
overwhelming excitement of having a workstation that can execute actions even
faster than I can think them, A sudden realization smacks me right in the face-
my knowledge of computers doesn’t expand far beyond knowing what RAM stands
for, and even then, I couldn’t tell you what it actually does. So the next
hurdle I reluctantly face is to embrace my inner nerd, and hit Youtube hard.
Weeks later, my data allowance feels like it should be
capped out by now, after watching every video I can find relating to RAM,
graphics cards, cooling systems, RAID storage, CPU, SSD’s… To be honest I’m not
even sure what I learned, all of those videos are just a blur of some guy
explaining things with ease, and consequently resulting in myself feeling
stupid for not being able to keep up.
Luckily, I’ve got some friends who can help me out in the
process (thanks goes here for Sam and Bobby). So I take everything I’ve learned
from my research, run it by my mates who are in the know about this sort of
thing, and then go get a quote at the computer store. A few tweaks to what I
had initially planned, and I walk out of there with a piece of paper that says
I should come back with $2000 (excluding the raid storage, extra Ram, and
second monitor- that came later).
The result-
Quad core i7 processor- four cores is better than one I
guess? In hindsight it would have been wise to fork out an extra couple of
hundred on a better processor, but this is by means a wimpy effort.
256GB SSD- For the operating system and all of the editing
software- I need something fast, and a HDD just won’t cut it.
6TB HDD- Maybe this was a little overkill- but it does serve
as a decently sized internal storage solution- all footage that isn’t currently
being used in a project can just live here for a while. Plus it turns out I have a ludicrous amount of raw images that need somewhere to live.
2TB RAID 0 array (added later)- apparently it’s technically not RAID,
because neither drive is redundant. But both drives are 7200RPM, working
together in unison, like Ben and Jerry. I just have to cross my fingers that
these drives don’t meet the untimely fate of the ice-cream moguls.
4GB GPU- at a guess, 50% of the footage from The Great
Forest will require some sort of effect- reframing or punching in,
stabilization, flipping horizontally, etc. the GPU will take a lot of weight
off of the CPU during these actions.
16GB of RAM (an extra 16 was added with the RAID array 2
months later)- because… 32 is better than 16 right?
Second monitor (32 inch)- I swear I'm not overcompensating for something, I just think editing on a single monitor is far to condensed.
It’s now May, and I’m ready to edit. I’m unsure if the whole
endeavor could be seen as an indulgence, I guess I could have survived the
year editing from uni- but putting aside the whole idea of this being an
investment for the future; I can’t possibly fathom spending every night in the
late lab, rotting away under florescent lights. And this way, I get to name a
PC. Ladies and gents, I’d like you all to meet Latoya.
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