2009-2010 NEWSLETTER

05/05/2010 The AGM business took longer than anticipated so there was only time to watch and discuss one film from Italy. The committee were duly re-elected and Laurie was prepared to do another year as chairman.

28/04/2010 The guest speaker was unavailable so members practiced judging 4 films from Tynemouth showreel following on from the judging session from last week. The audience was split into 3 largish panels and they all agreed on the first two best films with a variation on the last two. Each panel gave constructive comments on all the films. They then watched and discussed a film made in Australia which was far more thought provoking.

21/04/2010 Members and several guests including a potential new young lady member were entertained by Michael's talk about judging film competitions. The audience was randomly split into 7 panels of 3 and placed the first 3 from 5 films shown. The panels then discussed the films and decided on a joint placing. The results were analysed and discussed with hilarity - each film had been given first place by someone, but the various panel's choices had a clear winner with little to choose between the rest. Linda helped with processing the statistics. Jan and Dave Watterson had travelled from Bath to attend the talk, and two members of the Staines club also joined us.

17/04/2010 Members and guests enjoyed an excellent meal and film show at the Reading Golf Club where the trophies were presented. Congratulations to all the winners. A photo gallery is available. Francis did a sterling job coordinating arrangements with the golf club staff and stepping into Laurie's role because he and Brian were grounded in Israel due to the Iceland volcanic dust cloud. Neil presented the trophies.

14/04/2010 Phil has written a lighthearted piece about the Making Of Sidewinder for the IAC website. Roger handled the meeting in Laurie's absence. Tana gave an interesting if not off-putting description of how painstaking animation can be - in particular animating the mouth movements for speech. She illustrated her talk with various films she has made in her garage.

07/04/2010 Congratulations to Phil, Geoff, Ian and Val. Phil's entries in the BIAFF 2010 festival gained him 5 stars for Sidewinder and 4 stars for Venice while Geoff's Love Basildon Park gained a diamond awarded which is world class. Ian's Between Ourselves got 3 stars, as did his Visitors and La Roue de Paris and Val's The Trees are Back got 4 stars. Geoff and Phil each also won sponsors awards. Weymouth club vice-president visited us with their showreel. Gordon presented Phil with the Penny Cup for winning their interclub competition. A variety of films were shown including a silent B&W film made 50 years ago, various wild life, stone masonry and a railway foot-bridge replacement.

31/03/2010 Six entries for the Open competition produced a varied selection of films and a final nomination for the Stan Olman award from gurus Brian and Neil. Summary stills are available. Phil was presented with a certificate and judges comments from the Staines competition. The meeting closed with two films Summer Sunday and Uncle from an International competition.

24/03/2010 Stewart gave a thorough demonstration of the versatile Aurora home entertainment system for playing BluRay discs, DVDs, photo slide shows, films from TV channels and music from radio stations. The Never Miss TV facilities were impressive. Though it may not have suited all members, it was useful for them to be aware of the current trends in technology.

17/03/2010 Laurie opened the meeting with details of the variants of the proposed new club logo which can be animated at the start of a club film with some music. He also announced that Sidewinder came 2nd in the Staines interclub competition, with Val's film winning (for Surrey Borders). James then gave a presentation of Final Cut Pro editing system on a Mac, and Roger demonstrated Windows Movie Maker, and showed the results of some films which had been created using it. The other Roger coped well with the projection system in the absence of our usual projectionists. The meeting closed with a cartoon.

10/03/2010 Once again members welcomed Don back for another interesting master class on various editing techniques. Karen was presented with a script writing book and Phil's Sidewinder film was announced as winner of the Penny Cup competition at Weymouth.

03/03/2010 Three entries for the fiction competition included one from our newest lady member. Simon and Laurie were the Stan Olman gurus and judged no new film merited a nomination. Summary stills are available. Members then watched some fiction films for an International competition which were very thought provoking.

24/02/2010 Ian gave an excellent presentation about how music can enhance a film to create mood and atmosphere, illustrating his ideas with clips from pre 1950 films. He mixed music from various films with the visuals from different films with good effect. The audience were asked to compare one clip with three different pieces of music, and watched a school trip visual montage set to a musical friendship theme. The evening was closed with a cartoon.

20/02/2010 Ten members and guests attended a tour of the BBC TV Centre on Saturday and were shown round various rooms including Studio 1, a dressing room and finished with John reading some news and Bernard and Karen playing Name that Tune. An interesting and pleasant trip in sunshine.

16/02/2010 Geoff described his painful experience of moving to high end HD equipment. Then Laurie and Brian demonstrated how similar quality images can be obtained with far less expensive HD cameras.
On Thursday Francis introduced the films for the church fund-raising show which was enjoyed by the audience in the small hall. The refreshments in the interval were excellent.

10/02/2010 Karen gave a very interesting presentation on script writing - the first meeting for this subject for members. She described her experience of competitions and the recommended formats for scripts with log lines and tag lines etc. and illustrated a story with a film with no dialogue. Members were then asked to criticise the first 10 minutes of a 2000 club film The Girl Who Wasn't There.

03/02/2010 There were 9 films for the documentary competition and Brian and Simon did the Stan Olman judging and critique. They deemed Geoff's film worthy of a nomination for its technical excellence, and the audience also voted it best. Summary stills are available.

27/01/2010 A good attendance of members enjoyed an excellent presentation from Richard Bull who illustrated his interesting talk with various underwater clips from Amazon Abyss, Waterworld and Pacific Abyss. He related various very humorous anecdotes and the evening was considered a tremendous scoop for the club.

23/01/2010 Members and guests enjoyed an excellent annual dinner at the Reading Golf Club. Ian provided music and John joined him with some songs supported by Laurie.

20/01/2010 Members were given a demonstration of the Magix editing system which was regarded as being a good value package. In a brief gathering of committee members the Gear competition was rescheduled and a retrospective Stan Olman nomination was awarded for technical excellence of the Sidewinder film.

11/01/2010 Happy New Year to all members and their families. Not a good start to the year - due to the snow in the church car park and a forecast of more heavy snow it has been decided that tomorrow's meeting is CANCELLED and the competition will be rearranged.

16/12/2009 Members enjoyed seasonal food by courtesy of the committee and also saw the two summer project films - summary stills are available. Ian then entertained with a film musical quiz - won by Karen. An 'odd angles' quiz was won by Brian. The meeting closed with a cartoon.

09/12/2009 There were a surprising 11 entries for the holiday competition so the screening of summer project films is deferred to next week. Summary stills are available. Neil and Geoff were the Stan Olman gurus and judged none of the entries worthy of a nomination. It was announced that Steve was starting a years job in Bahrain - we wish him every success and look forward to lots more of his films on his return. Laurie mentioned that he had been approached by the Forbury Hotel to try and interest members in their luxury cinema. Bob Upham's recent death is reported.

02/12/2009 Laurie and Brian discussed some of their corporate work for the printing industry, some of the principles apply to any filming project. They illustrated a few ups and downs of the work and demonstrated what can be done to salvage some 'downs'. Two groups then discussed how they would plan a club promo film - something which the committee think the club needs. It was agreed to screen the summer project films after the holiday competition films in anticipation of a small entry.

25/11/2009 Don gave members a nostalgic reminder of how film making used to be with some of his Best Ten competition winning films. Several films covering the redevlopment of Reading station, Caversham water carnival, clowns, steam railway and a moroccan holiday were screened using his film projector. It was nice to welcome a past club secretary as a visitor.

18/11/2009 Members had the edit and DVD authoring capabilities of Casablanca demonstrated using HD clips by Michael Dyson. He handled questions as they arose from the audience about half of which use the system. 21st Feb is the date for a visit to the BBC TV Centre at 1.30pm. Interested persons should put their names down.

11/11/2009 Members made the most of the opportunity to hear about other peoples experiences and opinions to their technical questions. Geoff, Brian, Roger and Laurie formed the panel who fielded the questions but evryone joined in the discussions, including a potential new member.

04/11/2009 Members had a very thought provoking evening with Phil showing several films he had judged as part of the recent NERIAC competition with Dave and Jan Watterson. Each film was discussed and conclusions compared with the judges comments. As one of Ian's films helped win the Gateway trophy, he was invited to hold it for the year - see below. The new hall carpet looked very smart - visible below.

28/10/2009 Eleven members of the Oxford Video Society joined us to show a variety of their films. Subjects included autumn, the Chinese terracotta army, animated spaceships and dinosaurs at Blenheim, Cornish seascapes, Woodstock flowers and steam engines, the Waverley paddlesteamer, local art, a visit to Antartica and a fun film about the Kidlington rissole. Useful discussion followed about merits of HD cameras and BluRay. The refreshments were much appreciated. The 1-min summary stills are now available.

23/10/2009 Several members enjoyed seeing the films as Reading successfully retained the Gateway trophy at the triangular competition hosted by Bourne End. The results were:

CATEGORY	CLUB	MOVIE TITLE	BOURNE END	READING	STAINES	TOTAL
STORYLINE	STAINES	Eye in the Sky (7mins)		3	2	5
	READING	Fusion Power (9mins)	3		3	6
	BOURNE END	I Miss Maria (6mins)	2	2		4
DOCUMENTARY	READING	Stonetown (8Mins)	3		2	5
	BOURNE END	Keeping the Flame Alive (4mins)	2	3		5
	STAINES	That's the Way To Do It (14mins)		3	2	5
OPEN	BOURNE END	Cabbages and Peas(4mins)	3	2		5
	STAINES	From St Petersburg To Moscow(15mins)		2	2	4
	READING	Visitors (5mins)	3		3	6

	STAINES	READING	BOURNE END
STORYLINE	5	6	4
DOCUMENTARY	5	5	5
OPEN	4	6	5
TOTALS	14	17	14
JUDGES		Laurie Joyce Brian Hibbitt

Laurie accepted the trophy - see below:

21/10/2009 A very encouraging eleven entries for the 1-minute competition but only one for the Burke trophy. Neil and Phil were the Stan Olman gurus and judged no entry meritted a nomination. Phil was presented with the Teign Shield which the club won at their interclub competition- see photos below showing the Teign Film-Makers Club competition secretary with judges and Laurie presenting it to Phil last night. Roger also received a Very Highly Commmended certificate for Bad Day at the Office from the Guernsey International festival. Geoff had a similar certificate and Phil two Special Commendations.

Below Alan and Ian receive their mini shields for the evening's events.

14/10/2009 Roger gave an interesting presentation of two types of green screen, illustrated with clips showing usage. He also discussed various software systems for adjusting/removing problems in the composite images. Both screens were demonstrated with some live background images behind a 'model'. Time did not allow any members to practice with the technoloy. Finally Steve's film from last week was successfully projected.

07/10/2009 A good selection of six entries for the 1st competition of the season. Technical problems prevented screening one film which finally had to be viewed on a laptop but it didn't stop it coming 3rd! Brian and Phil were the Stan Olman judges and deemed one film was worthy of a nomination. Summary stills are available. Laurie reintroduced the tradition of presenting a mini shield to the winner on the night - see photo below. Some other member's films were also screened with a cartoon to finish.

30/09/2009 Phil talked about the difficulties of capturing good audio and the problems of trying to correct poor sound by post processing. He illustrated it using various clips. It was nice to welcome a prospective new lady member and an ex-member in the audience. Various recorders and microphones were discussed and the meeting closed with a cartoon.

23/09/2009 The journalistic challenge was accepted with much enthusiasm and 5 teams screened their results after tea. Even HD results were successfully projected. Bernard's scripted film was judged worthy winner of the wine prize. There were so many cameramen having fun, a scarcity of actors/helpers affected some teams. The evening ended with a showing of the 2005 Clayfield Copse DVD.
The earlier Real Time talks were attended by a small exclusive audience allowing interaction with the speakers.

16/09/2009 The opening night was well attended with some new faces and some old ones from past members and there was time to socialise over wine and nibbles. Laurie said a few words about each committee member. Geoff explained the capabilities of the new equipment which was then used to show the quality achieved with various media climaxing with an HD film on BluRay about the making of Wild China. Even the final cartoon looked good.

26/08/2009 At the recent committee meeting the new season's programme was finalised.

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