AV News 196 - May 2014
C h e rry F e stiv a l A V W o rk sh o p , S o u th A fric a
Sue Jewell FPSSA
On Friday 15th November, God answered the Free State's prayers and the rain
pelted down in buckets. Not put off or our spirits dampened, we answered Jeff
Morris's call to an AV weekend in Ladybrand, on Kilmarnock farm. Len Cousins
opened his home to eager AV Makers from as far away as Cape Town and
Gauteng, not to forget the Free Staters themselves. Len, his wife Liezel and
daughter displayed hospitality beyond that of a five star hotel. After supper we
were hustled off to view a variety of Audio Visuals, and given ideas and the
groundwork for our planned visit to a cherry farm the next morning. Then, off to
bed, well fed, excited and filled with joy at the new friends we had made.
We were given a full description of cherry farming, from planting the seed to
the final packaging of the picked cherries by the farmer, Gerrit Higgo. In no time
at all there were cameras clicking away (personally I think I ate more cherries
from the tree than I took photos) The constant drizzle soon found us in the
packing rooms where we followed the cherries from the picker's crate and the
sorting tables, to the packaging and boxing of the cherries. By this stage, the
clicking of our cameras had become more competitive, as Jeff quietly reminded
us that these images were going to have to make up our AVs.
Exhausted, damp and with muddy shoes we arrived back to a wonderful lunch,
which lifted our spirit's once again. After lunch we were again 'herded' by Jeff into
the AV room to download, sort our images and begin to put our cherry AVs
together. During 'breaks', we viewed and constructively criticised some of our
group's Audio Visuals that had already been sent to salons/won medals
internationally, etc. We also took photographs of models with cherries that we
could include in our cherry Audio Visuals. It was during informal chat time before
supper that AV Makers - South Africa
was formed as a new name for Pretoria
AV Club. Brief minutes of a Special
General Meeting were taken to ratify the
decision. We felt the name better
represented the geographic spread of
club members.
On Sunday morning we met once
again to complete and screen our cherry
sequences. Some participants had burnt the midnight oil the previous evening to
polish their work. Jeff had given demo copies of PicturesToExe to those who
wanted to try the package. To keep perspective, Juan Venter gave an excellent
overview of Proshow Producer and there are likely to be some copies of that sold
in the near future. To d X