Yes, it’s that time of year again as we creep ever closer to the Spooky Season!

And like most other years (barring 2019), there will be a Newforge Studios Halloween film. We shot on location at the Walkhampton Inn last sunday which, whilst a great location, brought a raft of other challenges. Working between guests having breakfast and staff getting set up for lunch adding an additional stress level to a baseline stressful experience. I had to cut some shots and modify others, but we got enough to get it together. The film is currently sitting as a rough draft pending some audio trickery and colour matching/grading.

Being in the film also adds a level of challenge as there’s nobody behind the camera to check focus, lighting, or sound levels. It was a tricky balance to strike though as I was afraid if we left it any later, we’d miss the opportunity to film at the pub and the project would be kiboshed.

This time I left the Blackmagic at home (it really needs someone dedicated to operating it), and instead opted for the Panasonic GX7 and Canon 5D Mk3. External sound wasn’t happening without a sound guy either so I stuck to onboard with the Rode Videomic which usually produces decent results. Monitoring the levels from the native 5D Mk3 software was challenging though, resulting in some unfortunate clipping that I’ve got to clean up.

Challenges aside, I’m excited to get stuck into a proper video project. It has been a while. My computer is less excited, however. It has been struggling with the new features in Adobe Premiere Pro and after four and a half years, it might be time for an upgrade. It never coped particularly well for games (although I hadn’t intended that to be the main use). Enter, a new contender.

Alienware Aurora R16

When I mention Alienware, you’re probably conjuring up images of high end gaming PCs with outrageous design elements. Would you also think of Dell? Alienware has been a subsidiary of Dell since 2006, although they have apparently retained control over design and marketing. The most recent flagship desktop has taken a step back towards a more traditional case design. More refined, and simplified. I’ve opted for an Intel Core i9, 64 GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, and Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090. It’s overkill but I’m hoping it lasts for many years to come, and for the first time in many years, I’ll be able to max out games that aren’t a couple of decades old. My primary aim is to be able to work with 4K video files without waiting an age to render. I’ll be pairing it with a 34 inch Alienware ultrawide monitor to replace the iiyama monitor I am currently using.