NewFangled, Technical and Timely
By Steve McGrath
Hi Macaela, thanks for having me by. Can you tell me about what Newfangled does and how did you get started?
Thanks for coming by In short, Newfangled creates branded videos that people want to watch. We provide a script to screen solution for agencies and marketing departments who need to tell a branded story in a stylish and cost effective way.
We started about 5 years ago – I had been a producer/editor for some time, and I noticed an opportunity in the Boston industry. An agency had to hit up 2 or 3 Boylston Street vendors to get a video that was really high end. It was bad for budgets, made the agency’s job more difficult…and just didn’t make sense to me. With today’s technology, why couldn’t one company create a high-end video from concept to completion? And so, Newfangled was born.
I rented a small office and hired one person, then got a bigger office, and hired three more. Today we have a big, industrial loft in Charlestown with 10 employees and we’re servicing some of the best agencies & biggest brands in Boston. We’re doing it all – from high-end shoot/edit jobs, to 3D and 2D animation. It’s a very exciting time for Newfangled.
What are some of the challenges that you encounter being a woman in this industry?
I think as a woman, people automatically assume you aren’t tech-savvy and you don’t want to get your hands dirty. The guys feel bad or impolite letting you carry heavy things. It’s rude for them to let you set up a light. If you’re struggling to learn a piece of software or to select the right lens, they’ll offer to do it for you. They don’t mean to be offensive; they are just trying to be gentlemen. That starts in film school, and so women are automatically at a disadvantage because they are discouraged from learning the nitty-gritty from day one.
Women are naturally nurturing and organized. They can easily get pushed into producing when perhaps they really wanted to be a DP, or an editor. You have to push harder to be what you really want to be as a woman. And if you want to produce, go for it – because women do make awesome producers.
Conversely, as a woman, what are some things that you feel you have an edge on over your male counterparts?
I don’t get hung up on gender, I think that people as individuals have certain strengths and weaknesses and it’s really not related to your sex.
Where do you feel the best opportunities are for women in this industry and where have you seen growth?
Someone once told me “good things come to good people who work hard.” It doesn’t matter if you are male or female – if you work hard to be a better storyteller every day, you’ll see new opportunities all the time. Don’t focus on being a woman; focus hard on your craft. If you want to be an editor, be the best damn editor you can be and don’t let anyone stand in your way. The growth and opportunity will follow.
What do you love about this industry?
It’s just a passionate industry. You can’t break in without working your butt off, so once you are here – you know everyone else paid his or her dues as well. I love going to work every day. Do I love working most weekends and nights…maybe not so much! But it’s a small price to pay for doing what you love. It often doesn’t feel like work at all. I think that is a sentiment you would hear from most people in the industry. We’re a very lucky bunch.
If you could go back in time and give yourself some wisdom that would have helped you what would it be?
When I started out 10 years ago, I didn’t realize that my most valuable asset would ultimately be my support network. Make real friendships and connections with other people who enjoy filmmaking. This isn’t to say to schmooze with everyone you meet – no one likes a salesperson. Take inspiration from other people’s work. Put a smile on your face even when you’re doing revisions at 3am. Be genuinely curious and ask questions. Give credit where credit is due. Your intern today might be your client 5 years from now.
Does Newfangled allow you to travel? How does the travel treat you? What makes New England unique?
We’re telling real life stories through a branded lens – so we go where the action is. In the past year, we’ve been to Tokyo, San Fran, London, Miami, Seattle…the list goes on. My wife, Jenna, is the Executive Producer of most of Newfangled’s projects, so for us traveling is awesome because we get to go together. We try to stay and extra day or two in the more interesting places to sightsee.
When the location is left to us, we usually choose New England. It’s beautiful, we have access to beaches, mountain ranges and historic cities all within a 100-mile radius. It’s something you can’t find most other places in the country. Plus, the people here are great and there is a ton of talent to pull from.
What new and exciting things is Newfangled up to?
We’re still young, so everything is exciting. We’ve been working on accounts like Staples, Advance Auto Parts, Lenscrafters, Dunkins…. We feel so lucky to be a part of these epic brands.
But at the end of the day, what every artist wants is a project of their own, so Newfangled has also come together as a creative engine for our own feature length documentary, Sky High. It’s the true story of Jarrett Martin, a badass skydiver and BASE jumper who can’t be stopped even by a crippling injury. We have access to incredible footage, including his first jump at 9 years old and the ground launching accident that made him a paraplegic. We followed him as he picked rebuilt his life, and even returned to BASE jumping and competing as the only paraplegic in history at the USPA Nation Skydiving Competition.
The film is completely funded by Newfangled, and a $5K donation from our friends on Kickstarter. We’ve gotten the support of amazing artists like Cloud Cult, AWOL Nation, Thievery Corporation for the soundtrack, as well as a lot of local bands and musicians. We’re at rough-cut version 1Million- we’re our own worst critics! But, the people we’ve met along the way inspire us to keep on going, and we expect to be ready for release in early 2013.
With this being the Tech Edge portion of Imagine, how about talking workflow with the readers…how are you acquiring, editing and delivering?
These days, we’re typically shooting on our Canon C300. The camera is just so versatile and the picture is beautiful. It’s small enough to travel with, but can be completely built out for larger commercial shoots. Plus, it shoots at 50MB per second so there’s no need for a bulky external recorder or to wait for huge RED raw files to transcode like we had to do in the past.
In post, we transcode to Pro-res through FCP 7, and put everything onto our fiber server, Facilis Terrablock, which was built out by HB Communications. It’s awesome because all the editors and animators can access the same files as once, and the producers can connect via Ethernet from a laptop. It wasn’t cheap, but the investment paid off because it saves so much time.
We’re all mac, and our graphics are designed and animated within the Adobe suite & Cinema 4D. For editorial, you’ll notice we’re still on FCP7. FCPX just didn’t feel professional, Avid felt clunky, and we did try out Premiere for a few months, but again it was just clunky and unreliable. We’re really hoping Apple comes to its senses on this one!
Collaboration is easy because not only are we all internally connected via the fiber server, we have comfortable edit and animation suites where clients and producers can sit together and create. This is where the real magic happens. The other option is collaboration via our online portal. Clients can make time code- specific notes right on the video, and it works on anything – laptop, iPhone, iPad, and Droid. Everyone gets access to the notes in real time, and when the video is done, it’s one click to download any format you can imagine. At the end, everything goes onto LTO-5 archival tape, so we can wake up the project 20 years from now and know the assets are protected.
Macaela, if anyone wants to reach Newfangled, how do they do so?
We have a website at Newfangledstudios.com.
Thank you again for having me by.
Thank you, Steve
All of our info is on the site.
