2020-2021 NEWSLETTER

30/06/2021 Sadly only 8 members attended the meeting with Jan and Dave Watterson for the Best of the Year club competition for the Bounes Cup. The judges were extremely impressed with the quality of the six entries, so much so that they couldn't agree on a single winner so decided on a joint winner. Summary stills are available. They started the show with a short film with German dialogue which Jan translated key parts into English. The links for all the films were put into the chat window so attendees could view the YouTube/Vimeo films in best quality but which gave some a few minor technical glitches with switching back to the meeting.

Oli announced the winner of the Stan Olman award to Jim for his Rip Van Wrinkly and also the results of the Comedy competition.
The meeting ended after a short film which was also foreign but with no dialogue about a little girl wanting a brother.

16/06/2021 17 attendees at the Berkshire Film Office talk by Lilly Hudson who illustrated her presentation with some clips showing the work done by the office. She handled several questions and finished at 9pm.

02/06/2021 Oli rattled through the various reports for the AGM. Sadly only 7 attendees were present. With no subs this season, the finances were down about 10% of reserves. He was happy to be re-elected as chair and as no-one else wanted it, he accepted the position as caretaker chair. He thanked the people who had continued to support the zoom meetings and hoped that meetings at the church hall would be possible in September for the new season. He proposed meetings every fortnight spread over an extended time period with a subscription of just £35. Discussion produced a suggestion of perhaps some Zoom meetings in between some of the church hall meetings for some guest speakers.
There were 3 entries for the animation challenge which were screened and voting put Brian's Berkley Square puppets third, newcomer Robin's Harley Davidson Blender images second with Rob's Stickman first. Discussion of the three films raised a question about animation in each one. The meeting closed early.

19/05/2021 14 attendees for the fiction competition with 4 entries. Each film was screened and discussed and then the results were announced.

05/05/2021 Leon hosted the online session with 14 attendees. David Crute gave an interesting description of various high end steadicams and the way to use them. He screened several short clips to illustrate what can be achieved by a good steadicam operator. The talk was so absorbing that there was no comfort break at 9pm, and questions took the meeting past 10pm.

21/04/2021Ten attendees for the two competitions which had six entries in all. Charles was the only entry for the novice competition with a film taken of various London landmarks on his Birthday Treat. Five entries for the 1-minute Caversham Cup competition which were all screened and discussed afterwards before Oli announced the results. The meeting closed at 9pm.

07/04/2021 Six entries for the editing challenge were screened and voted on. All participants agreed that they had learnt something new from the exercise. 11 attendees at the meeting which closed after discussing each film and the editing techniques employed.

28/03/2021 The Staines interclub competition meeting was hald on Friday 26 March. Potters Bar Club film Avoiding the Bombs won. RFVM entry The National Puppetry Archive was not placed. Bourne End film Rookie was 2nd and Colchester film Vandalwatch was 3rd. Seven clubs participated. Judges comments have been received.

24/03/2021 About 14 attendees at Van Bui's Talk. She started with how she got interested in film making in Vietnam, discussed current work and finished with feelings for the future. One of her films was a short called I once dreamed I was a Peacock. See below. She handled a few questions at the end and the meeting finshed early.

10/03/2021 Initially it was thought it was going to be a short meeting with only 3 entries for the competitions but some late entries meant that there were 2 for the holiday competition and 4 for the documentary competition. 12 attendees watched the films snd voted by chat messages to Oli who finally announced the results. There was then some discussion about each film, some had been made during lockdown. Some Holiday summary stills are available and some for the documentary competition

24/02/2021 Oliver Laurenson-Gore discussed his career as a Unit and Location Manager to the online meeting with 13 participants. He screened several trailers of films he had been involved in and mentioned the Berkshire Film Office. As a location manager he gave an example of a bus stop location he needed and an artificial intelligent website was given an image of one which then displayed a selection of images of possible locations, which he thought was the future of location finding. He had also been involved in an episode of TV Escape to the Country and found the clients their dream property. With work being difficult during the pandemic he became a COVID Supervisor which he found very challenging, The number of questions he was asked at the end reflected the audience interest in his talk.

10/02/2021 Harry Binstead discussed aspects of the filming of his film Closed Doors which some of the 17 attendees had watched beforehand, He then outlined relationships of the various film crew to the Director and handled the questions from the audience.

27/01/2021 14 attendees joined the meeting to watch the 8 entries for the 4-min competition. Considering all the films were made during lockdown, this was a very good set of films. The audience made comments on each film and then the film maker explained haw the films were made. Two of the attendees were new to the club. Voting was done.by chat messages to Oli. Summary stills are available.

13/01/2021 15 attendees joined the meeting to listen to various tips and techniques, including animation and colour grading. Anne described her edits on footage captured in a greenscreen practical. Oli described how he managed to animate a bouncing kangaroo using a formular; Charles covered an animation of a boat to pass under a bridge; Brian described how he covered a window in captured footage of a conference with distracting people moving behind the window; Leon demonstrated colour grading of footage shot in sunshine to look like evening. Anne then described filming under lockdown rules and editing to combine separate clips into a composite and Oli described similar editing for his Winnie the Pooh film.

23/12/2020 14 Attendees participated in the Christmas quiz which Oli, David Salisbury and Leon had devised with various categories - Film/TV, Geography, History, Film music, General knowledge and some interesting variants involving combinations from images and definitions. Everyone recorded their own scores and sent them to Oli to aggregate them into totals. Isabel emerged the eventual winner of the fun process.

09/12/2020 Leon screened his latest film using a live stream in YouTube and then discussed various incidents experienced in the making of the film, There were 18 participants at the Zoom meeting plus one for displaying some slides.

25/11/2020 A very interesting talk via zoom from Dave Thorp about his career and useful tips for creating filmic images at little expense. He illustrated his talk with a several clips. There were 22 attendees including three Dave Gregorys! Oli recorded the meeting.

11/11/2020 Luke and Sam described the events they experienced while making Criminal Audition with lots of stills displayed and finally a short trailer they had made. They handled questions at the end. There were 19 attendees,

28/10/2020 Six Films were screened to 14 attendees for the summer project club competition the rules of which were relaxed because of Covid restrictions to allow solo made films to be entered. Brian and Karen gave a critique for each one and decided no Stan Olman nomination was merited. They did nominate one for the Comedy competition. Summary Stills are available.

24/10/2020 Staines hosted the Gateway competition using Zoom using a format whereby attendees clicked on YouTube links in the chat window to view the films and then returned to the zoom meeting. There were about 19 attendees. The judges went into breakout rooms to confer and decide the ranking of the other two clubs' films for each category. Reading were declared the winner.

14/10/2020 Twenty members attended the very interesting talk by Adrian. He displayed lots of still images of his filming activities in some exotic locations and included a few clips of some of the films he was involved with.There were a few questions in the comfort break and at the end of his presentation.

03/10/2020 Tony and Pete attended the online meeting run by Surrey Borders - an Interclub competition with 6 clubs. Jim Reed was one of the two judges and gave very good comments on the films.

30/09/2020 The first official meeting of the new season, which had 5 entries for the March competition which was cancelled/postponed because of the COVID-19 situation. The films were screened using Zoom from YouTube and voting was done using private chat to Leon who did the analysis and finally announced the result. Summary stills are available. Sophie and Charles Elsden did a simple critique on the films. The club film Reverend Bill was then screened and there was some discussion after the meeting as to why it had not been included in the competition.

16/09/2020 Our first test meeting of the new season using Zoom which was a screening of films for a short "Bad Idea" challenge which had to have an umbrella as a prop. Four entries were screened, which were critiqued by Andy and Oli and a few words from the various film makers. Voting was via a chat or email to Leon with the results being announced at the end. The online meeting opened 30 minutes before the competition screening to allow general chat. A final count of 20 participants joined the meeting which was regarded as a success for a first event in this format. It would have been useful if the list of film titles usually displayed in the hall had been available so the records usually stored on the web site will not be available immediately and the archiving of the top three may not happen for a while.