AV News 182 - November 2010
Around The Clubs
RPS Northern AV Group - Houghton, Carlisle
Geoff Coe
This report has been the hardest I have had to write – simply deciding what to
leave out! In the end, I’ve left out vast amounts from the huge range of ideas
presented to us by all the speakers on the day – because if I tried to explain it
all in full, (a) I’d get a vital detail wrong and (b) I’d need most of this issue to fill
in the details.
We started the day on Saturday 10th July, with Attendee sequences – a
mixture of fascinating, thought-provoking and beautiful presentations from Les
Ayres on Durham Cathedral, Irving Butterworth on 'Imagine Earth’s voices',
Geoff Coe with a sequence based on half-timbered buildings, Andrew Nicholl
on mountain scenery, Anne Swearman on St Mary’s church, Wreay, and Helen
Soady on a wildlife park.
Our morning speaker was Peter Appleton, who looked at Animation in
PicturesToExe. Having suggested that animation is most appropriate in four
situations – titles, end credits, to make a point and for fun, Peter showed his
sequence 'The Cube' which – by showing the working of a Rubik Cube made
use of EVERY capability in PTE. Amazing!
He then took us through the very complex process of building a simple cube,
animating it in 3D by making it tumble to show its six sides and colours,
zooming and rotating it and finally rotating the whole thing about an external
axis. This process was fundamentally reliant on the use of a series of frames,
each stage was done on a frame, which was then copied onto a new frame to
which the next stage was applied.
One relatively simple – but important – point was to remind us that overenthusiastic combinations of pans (esp. in different directions) and zooms can
induce a feeling very close to motion sickness.
Our other lead speakers for the day were Howard Gregory and Suzanne
Walker ARPS and their presentation centred on handling sound in the computer
– what is the waveform in Audition telling you that you can make use of? We
heard about the need for consistent standards across different tracks when
mixing, about visible evidence in the waveform of clipping and of background
noise and of possible problems from leaving automatic gain control switched
on – to name but a few of the ideas made clear for us. The point, seen before
in these pages, was made that decent speakers should (1) cost the same as a
decent lens and (2) be bought from a sound system shop, not a computer
shop!
After tea, Howard and Suzanne demonstrated and discussed some of the
techniques and gadgets to use and to avoid! – when recording voice-overs. As
well as all this information, a particular pleasure was that we got to see two
excellent sequences: 'My Kind Of Place' and '1 IN 3.7' about the Great Orme
tramway. Another excellent day – thanks to our speakers and to Ian Jolly, the
Group Organiser.
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