AV News 187 - February 2012
North Wales and Wirral AV Group
Andy Polakowski
Capel Curig is famous for being possibly the wettest place in Britain; but why is
that? Simply, it’s because there’s a weather station there; if there was no
weather station nobody would know as it’s not noticeably any wetter than
anywhere else. In the same vein, if the North Wales and Wirral AV Group didn’t
regularly meet there it wouldn’t have the reputation it is gaining as a 'centre of
excellence' for AV, as it is also home for the IAC Peter Coles International AV
Competition (formerly the Geoffrey Round) in March each year.
The meeting on 6th November was no exception and welcomed visitors Kate
and Keith Brown from Derbyshire, starting as usual with a showing of Members’
Sequences, a collection of a dozen or so 'works-in-progress' and 'first outings':
'Fire' by Jill K. Bunting, 'Race for Life' by Steve Aspinall, 'The Big Freeze' by
Penny Osbourne, 'Cathedral in the Hills' by George Frost, 'Off to War' by Joan
Reece, 'Llandudno' by Ted Reece and 'Bodnant' by Tony Griffiths followed by
discussions on the effectiveness of the sequences.
In addition George showed an advert he had produced for his company
including a video of an animated ant and Debbie Hickmott also included video
footage in her 'All Things Bright & Beautiful', it becoming apparent in the
subsequent discussions that this was a subject that would be featured in the
afternoon’s session on PicturesToExe version 7.
A couple of sequences previously produced as analogue AVs (slides and
tape) were shown in digitised form: Peter Wylde’s 'Quarter to Three' and Andy
Polakowski’s 'Facing the Dream' followed by the authors’ accounts of the various
issues that arose in the soundtracks and the images. Peter’s main problem was
dealing with slides that had degenerated (Barfen film!), needing considerable
work on the scanned images. Andy’s images were produced using a full frame
dSLR and Bowens Illumitran (with Contrast Control Unit) but were a mixture of
horizontals and verticals, an issue eventually resolved by making them all
square.
Readers will be well aware that the three hottest topics in the AV world at the
moment are: the inclusion of video in sequences, the use of third-party images
and pre-selection for competitions. This last topic was the subject of an articulate
and informed pre-lunch discussion based on the problems that had arisen at the
National AV Competition in September with the adoption of a pre-selection
process, a subject aired elsewhere in this issue. Suffice to say that whatever the
method chosen, some entrants are going to be disappointed, but the feeling of
the discussion was that there is a vast difference between disappointment and
discouragement and a better solution needs to be found.
In the afternoon Jill K. Bunting gave a complete rundown of PTE 7.0, pointing
out the new features as well as those that had changed or moved (often the most
frustrating part of updates for many users, eg, Create is now Publish), video
being the main feature. Putting aside the principle of including video clips, much
of the discussion concerned the artistry of the technique; subtlety would be a key
to success, perhaps an apparently still image but then with some unexpected
movement in it, or the use of a frame or mask around the video clip as long as
there was some relevance to the subject of the sequence.
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