Latest club news

Great News - Filming of 'Fantastic Farnham'

The club has decided to make a film about Farnham. We hope to start filming in October but we are in the ideas generation stage at the moment. We need to collect together all the ideas of events and items of great interest. If you would like to contribute them please make contact. We see this as a project that will inevitably last just over the year as the editor will need to have available brief film of all events in Farnham over the year. Nothing is guaranteed and so the final inclusion of any clips will depend on the quality and interest of each contribution. Clearly the filming will involve many different teams, each focussing on one aspect or event. Did you know that the first car was invented in Farnham for instance! This must be included but such an item will require diligent research. Is this something you would like to do?

More great News - We have the best website!

Here is a quote from a letter recently received from the IAC: I am honoured and delighted to tell you that the website for Surrey Border Film  & Video Makers is the first winner of the competition to find the Best IAC Club Website. On behalf of the final judges (Peter Kidman, Jan Watterson and Dave Watterson) I congratulate you and all the contributors to the site. The judges met by video conference and carefully considered each entry on a shortlist of seven outstanding club websites. The winner, by unanimous vote, was … Surrey Border Film & Video Makers

Gordon submitted Tip Top and Restoration of Holy Well for which the judges had only good things to say in their written comments but these films did not form part of the show programme. Gordon believes they were possibly felt to be too personal for public viewing – no hard feelings but a point to bear in mind for the future. As 9 of the 10 one minute movies were shown perhaps that is the way forward. We do have some excellent club made films and must not forget to put these forward in the future.

The organizers did a great job and the refreshments were excellent as always. One slight niggle for me was the excessively wide separation of the left and right loud speakers relative to the screen, a point I’ve noticed at other competition events. At one time I thought a vehicle had crashed in to the side of the theatre!       GWS

Paul adds: A most surprising (and very unusual) feature for me was that the Audience Vote for the award of the Alex Dove Plate (for the favourite film of the audience) went to the same film which the Judges had picked for the Regional Shield (for the best movie in the Festival) – namely Unfounded Rumours, from Spring Park Film Makers.     PH

Congratulations to Val for coming 3rd in the North v South competition

Val Hitchman’s fantastic film 'The Trees are back' was placed 3rd in the North v South competition held in Farnborough, Kent early in February 2010. This is a very moving film of a visit to the trenches of the 1st World War. View this film on our page of some club films and I am sure you will agree this is very moving. Congratulations, especially as this is only about your third film!

Recent brainstorming event for new film ideas

The film group in the middle of a brainstorm for a new plot. N.B. this picture is a composite from round the table!
The filming for the chosen theme is shown in the pictures above.

The club wished to shoot a film for a competition called 'The Albany'. When the idea was promoted at a club meeting volunteers came forward offering their support. The theme for the competition was 'Mistaken Identity'. Above is a picture of part of that group as they met to brainstorm ideas for the plot. Surprisingly a large number of ideas were tossed around with three excellent top quality stories emerging. Eventually after a second session the group decided on the film which was eventually called 'Carbon Footprints'. This is available to view on our page showing some club films.

New articles

We added two brilliant articles to our collection. The first is a page about choosing your new tv set. This concentrates on High Definition (HD) and the latest 3D televisions coming onto the market. The second is on the making of 'My Passion' a remarkable film about a boy with learning difficulties which has won many awards.

Our 2010 Summer garden party

Surrey Border Film & Video Makers had their Summer garden party early in July. They met in the garden of one of their members who lives beside a river in a converted oast house with beautiful gardens. Plenty of good food and wine in such lovely surroundings made for a tranquil atmosphere. Some members relaxed watching trout swimming in leisurely shoals upstream, while others took to a boat to cross to an extension of the garden on the far side. A few had the energy for some croquet. All were conscious of the dramatic contrast in atmosphere compared with the intense filmmaking battle in which they had participated only two nights previously. This battle is a dramatic event in the club calendar, and is a competition between groups in the club to attempt the making of a complete film in just one evening! This year for the first time a group of amateur dramatic enthusiasts participated. Plenty of practice had been put in beforehand, but there were, nevertheless, the inevitable mishaps as members strained to complete their masterpieces before rushing to show the results to the club as a whole.

Surrey Border Success at the 37th Staines Inter-Club Competition!

On Friday 12th March, The Holdens and Suttons attended this wonderful, long-standing Annual Competition, run by the Staines Club, who are actually in the North Thames Region, but attract entries also from clubs within the South East (SERIAC) Region, including, of course Surrey Border, who had entered Val Hitchman’s The Trees are Back. The competition was very competently and amusingly judged by David Longley (of Heron Productions fame – a long serving competition officer of the SERIAC and Surrey Film Festivals, who has in his time reviewed over 600 competition entries alongside top-ranking judges) and David Moore (a professional audio practitioner for over 35 years, ending up as Head of Sound at Sky Television.)
 
Surrey Border’s The Trees are Back was one of nine entries: from Harrow The other side of Venice (a competently made documentary, exploring Venice in the early morning and late evening, away from the tourist crowds); from South Essex The Wind that blows the Barley (a gentle film with nicely varied views of a mother and two children in the barley fields, set to a specially composed song); from Orpington Consequence (a somewhat unbelievable but thought-provoking drama story, which the judges considered not helped by the script); from Shooters Hill When Duty Calls (another rather unbelievable secret service plot with somewhat wooden acting and not very good sound, which the judges – to me rather unfairly - thought should have been a one minute movie!); from Bourne End Rebellion, (a 2-part documentary about the history of a brewery, and the process of producing real ale); from Reading Sidewinder (a wonderful romp about a failed air to ground missile, rescued by two boys – with excellent acting but less believable sound – to get their own back on a river speedboat driver who had been bugging them – with superb computer animated action and a most satisfactory explosion!); from Hemel Hempstead Pargetting (a very enjoyable documentary with a real craftsman talking about his special form of art, created in relief on concrete walls – but where the quality of the live sound caused the judges to give much practical advice); and from Wanstead and Woodford Recycling (an instructive film, using one old lady trying to convince another about the need for recycling, using a script which the judges criticised on the grounds that people don’t talk to each other like that!)

At the end of the evening, the judges awarded 3rd place to Hemel Hempstead’s Pargetting; 2nd place to Reading’s Sidewinder; and the Challenge Salver to Val Hitchman’s The Trees are Back, despite commenting constructively that “the commentary could have been a little more authoritative” – “there could have been some sound effects to join it all together” – “they were slightly confused by the use of both scratchy sepia and black and white sequences” – one judge thought that “there were an awful lot of statistics” - but the other judge disagreed with that – but they both agreed that “it seemed to stop very suddenly after the wreaths – they weren’t really prepared for that!” Nevertheless, it was a very worthy winner – and well done Val, on behalf of Surrey Border! Gordon suspected that had the judges not been sitting at the back of the hall then they would have appreciated the considerable use of subtle war time sound effects in the background.

As the winning film it will be presented again at the prestige Staines Cine & Video Society Annual Movie Show at Laleham Village Hall, Broadway, Laleham TW18 1AT, starting at 8 pm on Friday 30th April, in front of the Mayor and other Civic Dignitaries – when the Salver will be presented again (after having “Surrey Border 2010” engraved upon it – the seventh time in the last 20 years!) Everyone welcome;

Lessons learned from our Albany Filming: In The Hot Seat

At the time of writing, our competition entry is still in the post-production phase – but the shooting was accomplished on three shooting days, which were hard work, but good fun – especially thanks to the very professional Am Dram cast which Val recruited for us. As Producer, I would like to record my sincere thanks to everybody who took part – Cast, Shooting Crew, and Editors – but also to suggest some lessons that I think we learned on the job, and should apply to future projects:
1) The use of Am Dram actors, capable of memorising and reproducing exactly their words and actions (as modified sometimes by the Director) in successive shoots from different camera angles, gave the Director and Editors a whole new freedom of action, which has never, in my experience, been possible with the average Film Club member pressed into service in front of the cameras!
2) As I should have realised, but didn’t sufficiently, actual experimentation and planning of the camera angles on site, before the shoot, is absolutely essential, if cast and crew are not to be kept hanging about whilst the Director and Cameraman try to work it out on the hoof. Our failure to do this, and record it in some sort of storyboard which can communicate these planning decisions to the crew, led directly to the need for three shooting days, instead of the planned two. BUT:
3) It is absolutely no use anybody else but the Director developing this storyboard, if the Director is going to ignore it completely on the day – that just leads to confusion all round, and is probably worse than not having a storyboard at all!
4) I think that, for our amateur productions at least, there is tremendous value in the Editor(s) being involved with the storyboarding, and being present during the filming. Would anybody else involved like to comment on, or add to suggested lessons learned?

Training session for projectionists

The latest training session for four prospective projectionists for club meetings took place on Monday 25th January in Dick Hibberd's film studio. It started with a Power Point presentation accompanied by 6 pages of detailed notes and diagrams. A practical session of wiring everything up was then followed by practice in techniques for projection and how to cope with various formats of tape and disk. The next stage will be for learner projectionists to operate in a real situation accompanied by someone with experience.

How to convert cine to video

A page on this website holds the outcomes of this project which was originally to produce an instructional video. It has since been decided that this web page is complete and gives ideal instructions for anyone wishing to convert film to video.

Filming of 'Trapped'

Details of  the plotcan't be released but it is fairly obvious from the photographs below that some rather incompetent robbers were involved! This was the club entry for the North v South competition. Unfortunately it didn't win.

Major $130 million budget blockbuster filmed close to the club!!!!

Kevin Durand and Alan Doyle were part of the cast of Ridley Scott’s latest film about Robin Hood and his merry men written by Brian Helgeland. The film stars Russell Crowe in the lead role. One wonders what new twist is possible for such a well known story. Cate Blanchett plays Maid Marian. Durand plays Friar Tuck, Scott Grimes plays Will Scarlet and Alan Doyle plays a roving minstrel.

When I walked the set half way through the village scene below had been built and the castle well under way. The castle was built from a massive box of scaffolding which had large stone effect panels suspended on the outside. The small gap between each panel was then filled. The whole lot painted with a very effective stone finish. A second coat of paint was then painstakingly applied to give an extremely realistic aged effect.

The whole area was closed for the actual filming which took place in dribs and drabs over a period of many weeks. I spent some time during one of the attack scenes on the castle standing between the castle and the very extensive artists preparation/refreshment area and had some interesting conversations with actors walking back and forth. The area was patrolled by an army of assistants and security on quad bikes. I had a couple of my grandchildren with me and was able to persuade the security person for that area that we could keep quiet and not interfere!

I can now see why these films always seem to have the village/township ravaged by fire as part of the script. The contact they have to sign to use sites like this include a clause saying that the whole area must be returned to its original condition. Clearly a fire is a good way of starting this clearing process! In this case as soon as the filming was complete the remains of the village were bulldozed flat and the castle dismantled. There is now nothing left to give any indication that anything has ever happened there.

Poor Mike - up the Amazon!

Read about the near catastrophe when Mike Sanders went on a filming trip to Brazil. He was there to make a film to help raise funds to clean up the river basin of the Gravatai river but disaster struck as his boat filled with crew and equipment overturned!