PC or Mac for Film School?

[livlight]

I’m planning on attending graduate school for production design this Fall (hopefully at Chapman). I currently have an older PC and am planning to get a new laptop before the semester starts. From what I could gather, the film industry seems to be Mac dominated, but I recently watched Chapman’s virtual tour of the campus and they mentioned they use PC in their editing rooms. Does anyone recommend one over the other, especially within the art department world?

 

[ItsMeMore]

The film industry is not Mac dominated. Just don't spend too much on a laptop. Be sure to visit a BestBuy (or the like) to try out the keyboard and touch pad to make sure you like the feel. I would go for Windows 11 with at least an i5 processor and a min of 16gb RAM, 32 if you can swing it and a 500gb solid state drive (SSD). FYI I'm using a tiny mobile PC with 16gb Ram, Windows 11 and I've edited 4k videos using Adobe Premiere. I can easily run Photoshop and Illustrator.

 

[Chris W]

The film industry is not Mac dominated.

That hasn't been my experience. Maybe twice in my 23 years of editing have I been on a job that ran Avid on Windows.

I have a MacBook Air that I love but I don't use it for editing as my work has those systems. (Which are Mac) Well technically I do use it and my Mac mini for editing but I'm just remoting in to the editing system at work. We've been remote for 4 years.

Whichever you choose should be fine as the software is all the same between the two. The only annoying part is retraining my brain for all the keyboard shortcuts with command vs cntrl.

 

[ItsMeMore]

That hasn't been my experience. Maybe twice in my 23 years of editing have I been on a job that ran Avid on Windows.

I have a MacBook Air that I love but I don't use it for editing as my work has those systems. (Which are Mac) Well technically I do use it and my Mac mini for editing but I'm just remoting in to the editing system at work. We've been remote for 4 years.

Whichever you choose should be fine as the software is all the same between the two. The only annoying part is retraining my brain for all the keyboard shortcuts with command vs cntrl.

Yeah, I believe you're correct with editing, but I'm told by my industry peeps that production/set design is largely pc-based.

 

[Chris W]

Yeah, I believe you're correct with editing, but I'm told by my industry peeps that production/set design is largely pc-based.

Hmm. That's interesting. I guess go with what you're familiar and comfortable with then.

I'm not sure it really matters as much as it used to in terms of compatibility. A PC should be more affordable as well?