Surrey Border Film & Video Makers press reports for 2010

The first 2010 club meeting of Surrey Border Film & Video Makers was cancelled due to snow and ice. However, a few days before, twelve members of the club braved the freezing weather to film an outside scene on location in Farnborough. The film is a short comedy and will be entered into The Albany Competition, an annual event which involves nine amateur film clubs in the South East region. This year the competition is organized by South Downs Video & Film Makers and will take place in West Sussex on 25th April. The club has an exciting programme for the year ahead including an evening of advice and tips on How to Make a Holiday Movie, the type your friends actually want to watch, from award winning member Gillian Gatland.

Rita Wheeler

We met for our Annual General Meeting on Friday 5th February. This was a chance for members to review the clubs year in films and plan for the future, and to thank retiring officers Josephine Jones and Fred Hawkins in typical SBFVM tradition.
Once the business of budget and other pressing issues were addressed the AGM was brought to a close. After the coffee break Gordon Sutton showed a selection of archived shorts, three 30 second adverts and three 1 minute epics were shown to members as inspiration for the upcoming competition, Creative Film Making, which takes place in April. He then showed the award winning short film Gone Fishing followed by a film he made called Steam Dream, which was shot on a Lumix TZ7 Digital still camera with video captured in HD using Motion JPEG.

Ellie Wood

SBFVM were recently given a camcorder by a local resident who admired the club’s work. Eleanor Wood, our competition secretary, presented this to Thomas Adams, one of the growing number of younger members who have recently joined the club. The younger members have already taken part in filming projects and are keeping the older members on their toes with their keenness to make films and their refreshingly different view of life.
The monthly meeting started with a screening of ‘Finding Esther’, a short film lovingly created by the Waldron Community Players who wanted to tell the true story of a local girl who mysteriously disappeared in 1927. The film was directed by a graduating film student and starred a large number of actors from their local community.
After a good round of tea and biscuits, the club listened intently to David Jackson’s talk presenting the simple improvements you can add to a film after receiving suggestions from competition judges. Many members found this talk very useful, since the club recently held a competition which left members still contemplating how to improve the previously submitted films.
The club night ended with a call for volunteers to help with two exciting local charity projects which the club has been asked to film.
Eleanor Wood

Neil Cryer

Members of Surrey Border Film & Video Makers enjoyed the competition entries for 30 Second Ads and 1 Minute Epics. The club runs this competition once every few years to give members the opportunity to be creative and to hone their editing skills. This year there were four entries for the 30 Second Ad and seven for the 1 Minute Epic. By an audience vote Gordon Sutton (pictured below) won the 30 Second Ad with his film, Take The Kids Out .

Alan Hussey (pictured right) won the 1 Minute Epic with his film Alarm. During the second half of the evening long time member Mike Sanders showed his film Brazil Gravatai River Basin Project which was made to document the multi million pound water clean up project being sponsored by Rotary. Mike flew to Brazil to record the state of the river as it is today before the clean up programme, then he will return in two years and film the same part of the river which will hopefully be much cleaner.

Rita Wheeler

David Fairhead, editor of the film 'In The Shadow Of The Moon', gave us a talk revealing many insights into the filmmaking business. While making 'In The Shadow Of The Moon' he met most of the astronauts, and he also gained access to archive material from NASA which had been shot in high definition and never previously seen by the public.

David was brought up in a family which attended a local video club rather like our own and he has been editing films for 23 years now. He says that editing is about finding the best way of telling a story. He spoke of his experiences in TV as well as in film and he explained for instance how crowd and battle scenes don't always use the number of actors as it seems.

He also laid great emphasis on the need for the 'right' music to help the portrayal of the message. David showed us numerous clips, and one very moving one was a view from a helicopter taken with the sun low in the sky, revealing a dimpled landscape caused by the shell holes from World War 1 still visible even today. David gave us many things we need to think about in our own filmmaking. Perhaps the most memorable and insightful quote that he left us with was:- "The funny thing about editing is that it's one of those jobs that when done well is almost invisible. It shouldn't intrude or dominate, it should just tell the story in the most effective and economical way possible".

Neil Cryer

At the June meeting of Surrey Border Film & Video Makers members were given some timely hints and tips about the Do’s and Don’ts of holiday film making.

Recently Gillian Gatland has won several awards for holiday films and she explained how she began. She used to take well framed still photos, so when she bought a camcorder she used the same principle, just because it is a moving picture it does not mean you move the camera all around the scene, it means you frame the picture, and people and things move within it. Keep the camera steady, keep it level, don’t wonder all over the place and don’t zoom, zoom, zoom.

After a holiday most of us have several hours of footage and this is where editing comes in. However interesting you think your five hours of film is, it will benefit by being cut down to minutes, ten is good. Tell a story, often about one particular aspect of the holiday.

By using examples of her own work Gillian showed how sometimes dialogue is good, for others, titles are sufficient, all with the right sort of music.

FILM CLUB NEIGHBOURS
In August, members of Surrey Border Film & Video Makers welcomed local club Basingstoke Video Film Makers who came with a complete evening programme featuring a selection of their films.

Chairman Doug Mathie presented the event which began with Festival Promo a film highlighting some of the pop groups from the recent Worldbeat Festival held in Basingstoke. Also on the programme was Popham Airshow a film where they experimented with various interview techniques.

The first half of the evening ended with the amazing Nymph to Dragonfly patiently filmed by Derek Phillips who, overnight, captured on film the astonishing transformation when the larvae (nymph) turns into a dragonfly.

After the coffee break as well as the excellent SatNavAd, which was the winner of our Inter Club Competition last year, we saw several commissioned films featuring different sorts of dance. A lively question and answer session completed the evening.

Rita Wheeler

In September, Surrey Border Film & Video Makers (SBFVM) welcomed Terence Patrick of Circle 8, a film making club based in Guildford. Originally Terence was going to present Father, Son and Auntie BEEB, 70 years of one family's connection to the BBC, however with the pressure of work that comes with being Deputy Mayor of Guildford only the first part of the programme was ready. Members sat entranced as the working life of Reg Patrick unfolded on the screen. Reg began his journey with the BBC as a Battery Boy before the Second World War, became a specialist in sound recording and graduated to Assistant Head of the Recording Department before moving on to the World Service. When he started work the entertainment medium was radio and the audience were taken back to when television was first broadcast. The general opinion at that time was "it would never catch on." The archive footage courtesy of the BBC was supplemented by footage collected by Reg Patrick. After the coffee break several films from Circle 8 were shown. "The Lady in White" gave a clever warning about the cancerous effects of sunburn. The animated film "Day Away" won the IAC (The Film & Video Institute) Trophy for Animation at BIAFF (British International Amateur Film Festival) 2010.

The annual Invitation Inter Club Competition, hosted by Surrey Border Film & Video Makers took place on Friday 1st October. The four clubs competing were Basingstoke, who won the trophy last year, Chichester, Ealing and Orpington. The four competition films were judged by Gordon Sutton, an award winning filmmaker and Treasurer of the club and Mike Sanders, Competition Officer, who runs his own video production company.

One of the rules of the competition is that the films cannot be longer than twenty minutes. Everyone was impressed with the high standard of the content of the films. Coincidentally all four entries had a military theme. It was a tough decision but the two judges were in agreement that the winner of the Inter Club Competition Trophy was the Ealing Video & Film Makers Club with their poignant film “Fallen Leaves” about the family of a soldier killed on military duty. The other rule is that the club that wins the trophy is expected to return the following year with a different film. We look forward to welcoming Ealing again next year.

After the coffee break three non-competition films were shown. Members enjoyed “Grand Cayman Dive” from Basingstoke, “On Top of the World” from Chichester and “Clappers” from Orpington an amusing short film which played around with language.

Members of Surrey Border Film & Video Makers met on Friday 5th November for the Chairman’s Evening. Before the start of the film show Rita Wheeler, current Chairman, presented a cheque to Dick Hibberd made out to his favourite charity, Basingstoke and Alton Cardiac Rehab, as a gesture of thanks from the club for his generosity in letting the club use his studio for filming and training sessions.

The programme for the evening was a varied selection of films from members which included a holiday film, the Kempton Steam Museum which was filmed on a club outing, a taster for off-roading, as well as a record of the Great River Boat Race among others. After the coffee break we had Welcome, a short film about racism and a longer film about the making of a promotional filmTo help keep the entertainment light, short dramas that had been made for film competitions were shown in between.

The meeting was cancelled because of heavy snow.