AV News 187 - February 2012
A Visitor’s View of the Yorkshire AV Day
Alan Pritchard
Colin Balls, a good friend for several years, invited me along to this meeting
although I'm not actively involved in AV. Around 60 people attended and I was
impressed by the friendliness shown to myself and also to another friend, Tony
Bramham, who was to feature in Colin's afternoon presentation.
The morning session was taken up with a number of short sequences - each
of which the members were invited to criticise. This they did - but in a purely
constructive manner - and none of the presenters showed any resentment at the
comments made; on the contrary several said they would willingly take on board
the point(s) made. I found this to be particularly encouraging for the future of AV
and long may this continue. I'm not qualified to comment on any of the sequences
technically nor would this be the place to make such comments. However, I
thoroughly enjoyed what I saw and offer my thanks to everyone no matter what
part you played in the session.
After lunch in the Museum restaurant Colin gave an excellent presentation on
the making of his award-winning sequence about Tony Bramham, an extremely
talented aviation and military artist from Southport. Having sat with Colin in his
studio when he was working on this sequence (and the ensuing book) I had some
idea of what had gone into it but my eyes were opened even more when he got
into full flow. To say the members were enthralled by the amount of preliminary
work both on images and sound prior to the final programme being put together
is something of an understatement. Only after having explained how it was made
did Colin show the full sequence in its final form earning plenty of applause from
members seeing it for the first time and also those who, like me, had seen it before.
Following a break Colin introduced Tony Bramham to the members and Tony
explained more about the way he sets about his painting and drawing. Together
they then explained more about the making of the sequence and interacted with
the audience to produce a lively question and answer session which everyone
enjoyed. I, though, have a question: Are there any limits to these two men's
talents in their respective fields? I don