Benjamin Bunch
1.) What is your name and where in the WWW (Whole Wide World) do you live?
Ben: Benjamin Bunch. I currently live and attend university (UCSC) in Santa Cruz, CA.
2.) What do you do for a living, what pays the bills? And what is the thing you do when you are not doing the thing that pays the bills?
Ben: First and foremost I’m a student (studying film), however I do make some money doing freelance videography and video editing. I am also in charge of post-production for an on campus film production club (The Film Production Coalition). From time-to-time I’ve held more fixed jobs on campus, primarily in Mac IT as it relates to various forms of creative production.
3.) How much of what you do, personally or professionally gets done at the work space featured?
Ben: I do most of my video editing (personal or professional) at my desk. I will occasionally end up working in an on-campus lab or edit-suite, usually for collaborative work, but I prefer to edit at my own desk, in my room. For some reason whenever I have to do writing, research, photo editing, or general web surfing I end up on my bed on one of my laptops…for these tasks I actually end up being more productive sitting or lying on my bed than sitting a my desk.
4.) Typically, what time of the day do you normally find yourself at this desk, and for how long? Night owl, early bird?
Ben: I’m pretty much at my desk all hours of the day…usually at night (sometimes late) and during the day. In the morning I prefer to ease into the day and get some work done from bed. Again, a lot of people can’t function this way, but I can and do.
5.) How much of what gets done at your desk is for work, how much is it to scratch your own creative itch?
Ben: A lot of it is to scratch my own creative itch. The freelance work I do is pretty sporadic so usually I am working on my own films or film work for class or FPC (the Film Production Coalition.) I also spend a lot of time trying to learn new software and new techniques to build up my creative arsenal. I also play a bit at my desk; my computer has more than a few games installed on it and there is also an Xbox 360 connected to my center monitor.
6.) What are the essentials that can be found on your desk more times than not? How about those items just out of reach or out of sight? If it’s not on top of your desk what are the things you most often grab out of a top draw or cabinet?
Ben: My Apple Magic Trackpad is great because I work with multiple machines and often have very limited desk space. Having two mice within reach of my right hand is kind of awkward and takes up a lot of space, but having the Magic Trackpad there and being able to put it wherever I want is really nice. Sometimes it doesn’t stay on my desk and goes with me in my bag, or lives in other parts of the room, but usually it’s on my desk.
Just out of sight I have tons of storage, essential for video work. I don’t like storing my storage (yeah, that phrase just happened) on my desk because it can quickly become a mess of cords, and I have my drives organized such that I rarely need more than one or two at a time. I store them, along with a lot of my other equipment such as camera gear, in the open-dresser across the room.
7.) What beverage/food/snack can one usually find at your desk, and why?
Ben: Hmmm…I don’t really eat at my desk, though I usually have a bottle of water (I reuse the bottle so don’t get on my case) within reach. Sometimes I’ll have some fruit or something while sitting at the desk, but usually don’t try to eat while working.
8.) Do you have any reasoning or anecdotes that lend some insight into why your desk is setup the way it is, or the thinking behind certain item(s)? How about the things around your desks? Decoration, wall art, figurines, statues, etc? Any particular reason behind those?
Ben: I have some really neat little nicknacks above my desk. I have my Serenity Zippo; I don’t smoke but I really appreciate the the design of the Zippo lighter, the shiny metal, the fusion of form and function, and of course, the click it makes when it opens. Plus I’m a huge fan of Firefly/Serenity so the logo on there is cool. I also have a dead cobra in a jar of some kind of alcohol (which is apparently drinkable but then you’d be left with a rotting cobra in an air-filled jar) which was given to me as a gift from a friend who went to Vietnam. She keeps trying to steal it back from me though. I also have a Rubber Duck that I bought from some charity or another…I kind of think the design is a little racist though.
My walls have some cool posters on them, just some movies and games I like, a small collection of Star Trek “Ships of the Line” calendars, some Apple “Think Different” posters (and my original iMac poster), and some really cool retro-themed travel posters showing some locations from the TV show Firefly.
9.) How much of what you do, or aspire to do, influences your desk setup, tangibly and intangibly.
Ben: The three monitor setup is completely influenced by the work I do. With video work you always want (at least) two screens, one for your software, and one dedicated to video playback. My desk is a two machine setup, with the iMac, PC tower, and Xbox sharing the middle monitor (depending on which I am using,) and with the iMac and the PC each getting their own second screen (the iMac screen and the small ikan production monitor, respectively) for video playback or just general work.
Sometimes I will bring one of my laptops to work on, usually it sits to the right of the main monitor, replacing the ikan monitor, and gets patched into the main monitor…again, keeping the two screen per computer paradigm.
10.) Are you a Mac or are you a PC? What machine(s) are setup and used at your desk? If you are a little bit of both tell us why. How about any other tech gear that can be found at your desk or in your home?
Ben: I guess I sort of answered this question already above. I am a Mac “guy” through and through, but yes, I do use PCs as well. I have an iMac at my desk, and a self-built PC tower (Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate) under my desk. I also have a MacBook and an HP Netbook. I won’t specifically state what OS the netbook is running but lets just say it isn’t Windows…you can probably figure it out.
As for other tech around my room: I have a large amount of external storage (primarily Mac formatted,) which is a necessity for video work. I have my iPhone 2G which I use on T-Mobile, and an iPod touch (1st gen 16gb) that I use mainly for music because it holds more than the 8GB iPhone. I have both because I got the Touch years before I ended up with the iPhone, but I do use both. You can also find a large amount of still/video camera gear. I shoot stills on both digital and film, and shoot video and stills on my Panasonic GH1 (modified with improved video firmware from a russian hacker.) In my room you can also find an Xbox 360, and a Tivo DVR (with dual tuners) connected to a relatively good-sized Sony CRT TV.
11.) What’s the one piece of gear you could not live without?
Ben: Probably my Panasonic Lumix GH1 hybrid camera. I use it to shoot all of my projects and a lot of my stills, and I really would have a hard time doing my work without it.
12.) What piece of gear cannot be found on your desk, but you wish it could be?
Ben: I would like a large RAID enclosure (or two) so I could have all my external storage under or on top of my desk so it could be easily accessible, without much cord and cable management or organizational hell…but it wouldn’t make my life better enough to justify the money at this point, so I’m sticking with individual enclosures.
I could also use a new Mac, all of mine are getting up there in age, which is part of the reason I added a PC tower. I am hoping to upgrade to a new MacBook Pro sometime in the near future.
I also would love a Panasonic Lumix GH2…which is why I’ve preordered one! It will be on my desk sooner or later.
13.) Software; what do you use more often than not. What helps you get the job done? And what do you not use, but hope one day to incorporate in your workflow?
Ben: For my video editing work I use Final Cut Studio 3 exclusively. I also do a lot of video compositing in other work in Adobe After Effects CS5, and Adobe Photoshop CS5. I use Aperture to organize and edit my photos. I also use Maya 2011 for CGI and compositing work, along with Logic Studio for sound work.
14.) If you could change one thing about your desk, or the room it is currently in, what would that be?
Ben: I’d love new carpet, and you know, the stuff I listed in #12. I know a lot of people wish for a workspace separate from their bedroom, but I actually like it like this. Some more lighting would be nice, possibly overhead. Right now I just have a large window and a standing lamp. I would also like more electrical outlets.
15.) Workspace Breakdown;
Think of as many things as possible that comprise the setup of your office or workspace, anything from the paint color on the walls to the floor mat your chair rolls on, and list them out. Who makes your desk, how about the cabinet next to your desk, your lamp, the overhead light fixture? Anything and everything you can see in the pictures shown, give as much color and background on these items as time and memory permits.
Ben:
- IKEA Desk
- IKEA Dresser
- IKEA lamp
- IKEA chair
- 20” Intel iMac 2ghz CoreDuo 2GB RAM Radeon x1600m (2006)
- 13” MacBook 2.16ghz Core2Duo 2GB RAM (2007)
- HP Mini 110 Netbook with 32 GB SSD
- Custom PC tower (AMD Athlon 4-core 2.6Ghz processor, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD 5770 1Ghz 1GB GPU.)
- 24” 1080p Samsung HDMI/DVI/VGA monitor with speakers
- 8” ikan V8000 HDMI production monitor (stand is a Delkin devices car-mount designed for a camera.)
- A whole lot of HDD storage, something like 8TB external, plus the internal drives in the computers. Primarily 3.5” drives but I have a couple portable bus-powered 2.5” drives as well.
- Apple Pro Keyboards (metal model and older plastic model.)
- Razer Death Adder (Mac edition)
- Apple Magic Trackpad
- Lower end (but nice) Sennheiser headphones
- Panasonic Lumix GH1 (hacked) hybrid video/stills camera
- 2 x Nikon FM2n 35mm still cameras
- Olympus PEN FT 35mm half-frame still camera
- Various lenses, accessories, and adaptors. I have adaptors for all my lenses so they’ll work on my GH1.
- Various audio accessories as well.
- iPhone 2G (first gen), T-Mobile.
- iPod Touch (first gen)
- Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth headset
- Sony CRT TV
- Tivo Series 2 Dual Tuner DVR
- Linksys wireless router
- A lot of misc. cables, mainly firewire, USB, and A/V
- Posters and other nicknacks
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If you would like to learn more about Ben Bunch, his workspace, or his work, you can find him at the sites listed below;
If you have any questions or comments about this, or any other featured setup, or you would like to have your own setup featured here on SetupsandSpaces.com feel free to email me at FValletutti@me.com.
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