AV News 196 - May 2014
A C h in e s e P e rs p e c tiv e
Les Hitchcock ARPS
Like most of us AV’ers, it is hard enough to explain to anyone outside the AV
fraternity what AV is. So you can imagine the extra difficulty I had trying to
enlighten my Chinese lady-friend Natalie! So I was delighted when she agreed to
come to the 19th Great Northern Festival last December.
After taking her seat she looked through the programme and immediately
became quite alarmed at the prospect of having to sit down all day to watch 'films'
(I had problems explaining what a sequence was!!!). I sensed she was beginning
to regret coming. However, by the morning comfort break, I was delighted when
she commented on what she had seen so far, and better still had made decisions
as to her favourite sequence up to that point. This was looking good. By dinner
she was into the swing of things and was offering her opinion to the merits and
weaknesses of particular sequences.
After dinner she was ashamed to admit she had briefly fallen asleep during the
first afternoon sequence, but I was able to point out this was a common problem,
born out by a quick look around during the next sequence!! We spotted at least
four folk nodding off!! Bless 'em!
It was most pleasing when at the conclusion of the competition Natalie said
how much she had enjoyed the event, and then concentrated on filling in the
audience voting slip; but that wasn't all. Much to my amazement she went on to
remark that she would now 'love to make an AV'. Now that's an incentive for me
to get to grips with PicturesToExe if ever there was one!!
To finish I feel that I have to pass on a couple of observations from Natalie.
One was that there were very very few young people at the event, but then we
know that don't we? The second was that upon returning home she analyzed the
programme and remarked that some fourteen of the sequences delved into the
19th and 20th Century events. Where were the contemporary stories she asked,
apart from Howard Bagshaw's ‘i-Tech’? Finally I have to tell you that all three
sequences that she nominated on the 'audience vote' gained awards… and that
'The Power of Memories' by Richard Brown, was up there.
So how is that for a Great Northern Festival success from a Chinese
perspective?
1 9 th G re a t N o rth e rn F e s tiv al
Jim McCormick DPAGB
Sheila and I decided we should attend the 'Great Northern' as it was to be
Suzanne and Howard's swansong, so we booked a B&B for a couple of nights
and came along, I even entered a sequence.
The weekend got off to a great start with a presentation by Colin and Rhona
Balls, which took us to the Falkland Islands. I was most surprised that the majority
of the presentation was video, most unusual, as Colin is noted for his still
photography. The quality of the video was outstanding, especially the sequence
with the canoodling albatross. To say it was filmed on a Panasonic Lumix
camera was ]