A new Apple hot news article notes that a Mac was instrumental in building a new film showing multimedia pioneer and avant garde musician Laurie Anderson performing selections from her 2001 release, “Life on a String.” The resulting work has been so well-regarded it’s been invited to show at prestigious film events around the world.
The brainchild of Nonesuch Records executive vice president Peter Clancy and director Steven Lippman, the movie is a “music suite,” as termed by Anderson herself, built from excerpts of five songs. It was shot on Super-8 and MiniDV and assembled together on Power Mac with Final Cut Pro.
“I’m not a tech head. I’m a director,” Lippman told Apple. “To me the Mac was simply a nice tool that would enable me to realize what was inside my head.”
To put together the footage, Lippman and his team relied on a Power Mac G4/500 with a Sony Trinitron Professional 13-inch Reference Monitor, a Monsoon three-way speaker system, Sony TRV-900 digital cameras and Final Cut Pro.
Anderson herself is a big Mac user, as well. She counts 11 Macs among her collection, and said that she, too, wants to edit video herself. “I can cut stuff, find my way around, but I’m not so good yet at Final Cut,” she told Apple. “That’s something that I’m working on now.”