N A VG M a rch M eeting at Snod’ s Edge
AV News 201- August 2015
Howard Wilson
Regular readers will know that the format of our meetings consists of a morning of members ' own sequences followed by comments / assessments and then a specialist speaker in the afternoon.
This time was no different except that members ' sequences were gathered in earlier in the month and then sent to 3 people for detailed assessment. The idea was to enable more measured and in depth comments rather than ' on the hoof ' comments given after just one showing, from either our guest speaker or others in the audience.
We saw eight pieces of work- fewer than usual- but this allowed a balance between our ' formal assessor ' s ' and the audience who then had their turn. On the whole the idea proved worthwhile. All assessors( or as someone said ' assassins ') had written notes, which they read out with the copy to member concerned.
There can be no doubt that the quality of sequences has, in general, vastly improved over the last few years and it was certainly the case at this meeting. We saw, among others, a documentary relating to the Ripon Workhouse, Lake District, Gardens of Heligan, Arctic Scenery, Gibside and the Shildon Rail Museum Gathering of six A4 Class locomotives( Mallard etc).
One sequence in particular stood out however. ' Coming Shortly- Satan in High Heels ' by Jack Gilmore. A take-off of the days of B / W cinema and the trailers for films. We saw all that could go wrong- frame slippage, double takes, blank screen, repeat of what had gone before etc etc. It was humorous, really well executed and the subject of lots of chat during the break. Jack had worked in cinema in his younger days.
At the end of the morning there was much discussion on our new format. Some said it was more daunting to enter a sequence knowing it would be pawed over, time and again( hence the fewer entries?) but the overwhelming majority thought was to do it again with a little tweeking.
The afternoon was handed over to our good friend and member, Ron Henry whose theme for the afternoon was ' Audio Visual My Way '.
Having hosted presenters from the top flight of audio visual grandees, it was a bit of a change to stage a home-grown exponent of the ' art '. Ron Henry, however, has been around the ' circuit ' since 1970 and, having made his living by staging conferences, the Chairman considered that it was a fair bet that Ron could pass on some of his vast knowledge.
Right from the start Ron insisted that audio visual was a personal expression and anything he was about to say was his own personal opinion and by no means the definitive method of AV production, merely his way of making interesting programmes.
The session began by outlining a method of producing, what Ron called, a ' Frontispiece '. A one slide AV from which a presentation of several AV ' s can be chosen by clicking on buttons. This system is frequently used by many presenters but, judging by the haste to pick up the typed instruction sheet which Ron had prepared, was of interest to our members.
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