AV News 195 - February 2014
Around The Clubs
Are your Members Disappearing?
Wilmslow Guild AV Group
Do you ever wish that you could bring new members into your AV group? That's
exactly what Wilmslow attempted and hopefully have succeeded!
The Lancashire & Cheshire Photographic Union recently did a survey of
members' interests and views on a number of topics. Surprisingly, more
members than ever had expressed to having an interest in AV. Yet, like many
AV organisations, WGAVG had found that membership numbers were falling.
So, why aren't these would-be AV workers coming? On Friday 4th October we
arranged a free ‘Open Night’, including light refreshments (thanks to the
kindness of Carole Bagshaw & Pat Mansell) and circulated details and
background information on the Group to all the local photographic societies
where we believed there to be one or two members with some interest in AV.
The room was packed, a wonderful atmosphere was evident and present
were 18 newcomers, all enthusiastic, all asking sensible questions. The Group
Chairman, Howard Gregory, welcomed them all and explained the basics. We
started the evening with a ‘non’ sequence, then ran the same images again, this
time with a storyline and clever dissolves. We showed, and discussed, several
sequences that had been chosen to illustrate various aspects of AV, and two
brave visitors showed their work. One was by a lady who had recently completed
an Arts degree and her’s was video. The other was by a lady who showed how
graves become neglected with time. She had used suitable music and was very
willing to hear how it could be made to flow more easily. Many positive
comments were made.
During the interval, whilst sitting and enjoying the tea and cakes, much
information changed hands. At the end of the evening we invited everyone to
take part in a little club exercise - a bit of fun really - make a short sequence
using set pictures. Several club members had supplied 5 images each, so we
ended up with about 80 disparate images on all sorts of subjects. We were
allowed to crop, adjust, clone, merge or transform the images to produce a
storyline and add whatever music/narration we wanted.
Several visitors took away the pictures on memory sticks and some returned
on January 10th when twelve very different and imaginative sequences were
shown. The evening was extremely succesful and showed just how creative
people can be. As Howard said at the start of the meeting “If I was going to make
a sequence I certainly wouldn’t start with these images!” The evening proved
that it is not just the images that make a good sequence but the imagination of
the author!
It remains to be seen if these exercises translate into additional permanent
members, but we hope this has given some ideas that other groups may wish to
try. Has anybody else got ideas on how we might attract all those closet AV’ers
into mainstream AV?
For more information about the Wilmslow Guild AV Group, go to our website
at www.wilmslowguildav.org.uk
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