AV News 201- August 2015
The commentaries, when used, were generally good. They were well written with enough but not too much information. I did note one commentary did vary from the 1st person to the 3rd person occasionally. Personally, unless done extremely well, I feel a purely objective commentary normally works better. However, the standard of delivery varied considerably. Although it is a lot quicker just to record one ' s own voice, would it not be better to ask a professional actor. Often actors will be only too pleased to have their voice on a presentation. Run a quick advert on www. Mandy. com and you may be surprised at the response.
To make a documentary AV without commentary can be more difficult as you need to tell a story just with visuals. Many used captions. Generally, I felt these were overused. If you have to do too much reading, you can miss the actual image.
I come from a Television / Film background. I feel that certain of the AV productions would be more successful made as films. I guess it is something to do with movement. With almost all still cameras able to record video, it might be worth choosing this option occasionally. One presentation which I feel was crying out to be a video was ' The Watercress Line ' about the steam railway line of the same name. Overall there seemed to very little video included in entries. As this was an award for photographic merit, the judging panel often commented on the quality of the photography. On some occasions, they were not entirely complimentary. For instance, I loved ' Jigsaw Mountain ' but the panel were not so happy with the photography. Yes I guess it was a little weak but did the overall production work?
10 CPAGB and 4 DPAGB audio visuals were entered. The overall pass rate in both CPAGB and DPAGB was 50 %. From my viewpoint, this was about right. All in all, I think the PAGB have got it right when assessing AVs. With some seamless projection from Ian Bateman, it was a great day out, finishing at 5pm. A similar event has already been announced for next year. I hear that there are already a number of entries.
Alan Colegrave FACI Harrow Camera Club / Amersham Photographic Society
Well we might as well blow our own trumpet!!
Leo Rich in his‘ Awards for Photographic Merit’ report to the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain AGM included the following:
‘ The Awards team, building on the work by Standards Officer Tony Riley, have worked hard to be able to offer another AV Adjudication more truly reflecting that our Awards are for Photographic Merit. When we finally launched, the response was extremely poor and it was only when our friends Jill K. Bunting and John Smith, Joint Editors of the RPS AV News Magazine, kindly included an article, that spaces filled in three days with a comforting waiting list from those who were not quite quick enough.’
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