AV News 177 - August 2009
North Hampshire Photographic Society
M ic k G ilb e rt
Our club has only been involved with DAVs for about 3 years. Initially we were
asked to take part in a competition with two others in a three way battle.
Assuming this to be a 'normal' 3 way digital projection battle, we were
astounded to find out about two weeks before that it was for 5 Digital Audio
Visuals, of no longer than 5 minutes and no more than one author per show on
the night. We did not have many people involved in DAVs but managed to
scrape together the necessary shows in time. We, of course, were well beaten.
This then generated into an annual battle between the three of us. Each club
to host alternately. The second meeting resulted in us winning, the third
meeting we came second. So, a mixed bag of results.
We have had DAV competitions with some other clubs and some more
arranged for next season. Initially we could not find any clubs within our
Southern Photographic Federation, willing to participate in such competitions,
so we had to ask clubs from outside our Federation to participate in the home
fixtures. Later, we did invite some clubs from within our Federation, who we
knew had members who produced DAVs. This has now prompted those clubs
to open up their programmes and members, to this form of inter-club
competition. We have managed to get just 5 of the 70 clubs within our
Federation interested. Those that now have DAV battles have found that their
members have enjoyed these evenings and even away battles have had
greater attendances. We are also getting enquiries from other clubs as to what
is involved, so the word is getting out.
The usual format is for 5 shows, no longer than 5 minutes each and usually
a different author for each show. Two club competitions have 7 shows each.
The judge will make several comments after each show and then review his
notes and mark at the end when all shows have been shown.We find that this
format fills an evening very well. The main difficulties we have is not enough
members involved in DAVs to supply sufficient different shows to take part in
all the competitions we are invited to and a lack of experienced judges in our
area to give constructive, informed advice on our shows.
This season we held our first DAV Club Championship with 7 entries. The
Judge, Ian Bigg LRPS CPAGB was new to DAVs, but was an accomplished
Slide AV worker. He was most impressed with what was presented to him.
Although he did manage to have 2 that really took his interest. The eventual
winner was Mr Mark O'Leary with "The Look". Mrs Betty Billingham was 2nd
with "Go Fly a Kite", 3rd was Mrs Wyn Voysey with "Along the Shore"
This coming season we will be hosting a Critique evening plus a beginners
night. The critique night, on the 2nd October, we hope will enable members to
fine tune their sequences and on the 4th December the beginners night, we
hope to help along those who are new to DAVs. A second Critique night is
planned for the 12th February 2010.
If there are any clubs in the Southern Federation who would like to take
part in Battles or just to go along and see what happens then contact
secretary@nhphoto-soc.org or see http://www.nhphoto-soc.org/ Eds
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