AV News 194 - November 2013
SPF AV Day
Bill Barr SPF AV Secretary
The Scottish Photographic Federation annual AV Day saw the return of Richard
Brown as our guest speaker again, after a gap of 12 years when he came to
Stirling in 2001. Back then he struggled on and off
the trains from his home to New St. Birmingham
station, and then at Glasgow to get to Stirling,
carrying a large suitcase with very little clothes, but
lots of boxed carousels filled with slides. Why is it
that your connecting train is always at the platform
over a bridge, when you have a heavy case.
Nothing like that this time for Richard, he flew from
Birmingham to Edinburgh with a small overnight
holdall and a USB memory stick in his pocket. How
the digital age has changed things.
Richard gave constructive comments to the authors of attendee sequences,
which got our AV Day off & running. There was a good mix of subjects from the
authors, produced both in PTE and Pro-show. Our venue was a church hall so
it was appropriate to start with the sequence titled ‘An interview with God’ the
script was conveyed by on screen text, one of Richard's comments was that it
would be vastly improved with a voiceover.
We were taken to the Outer Hebrides with ‘Hebridean Weaver’ which showed
a weaver making the tweed on the looms in his croft. When produced to
standard the tweed gets the seal of approval - the Harris Tweed Orb Trade
Mark. We stayed in the north of Scotland, this time on the Isle of Hoy, with ‘The
Lonely Grave’ a sad story about a young woman who committed suicide. This is
just a few of the sequences shown, we had a total of eight, which took us nicely
to our first coffee break, after which Richard continued and spoke about the
aspects of script writing, playing some short clips of voiceovers showing the
different tone and emphasis on certain words which help to create atmosphere
in the script. Before we knew it, it was lunch time!
Jim McCormick was our second guest speaker of
the day, so Jim got the afternoon session underway.
Firstly he told us when he was a wee boy he came
across a Magic Lantern in a cupboard in his parents
house, which his dad said he didn't own, he was just
the keeper of it, so Jim got to see his first projected
slide show.
Jim started the main part of his talk by showing
‘Civita’ (pronounced Che-veeta) one of the many
good sequences he has produced over the years.
This is a village 50/60 miles from Rome visited while
on holiday, it is built on HY