Author: Lee Relph

OVFM CLUB MEETING TUESDAY FEBRUARY 20th 2018

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

This week’s club meeting sees OVFM playing host to the annual inter-club Triangle Competition in which three of four clubs – OVFM, Spring Park, Shooters Hill and Epsom – enter films in a three-way contest to be judged by the fourth, with the judging role alternating each year.

 

We will be welcoming members from the other three clubs to our humble HQ in the Barnyard Room with the refreshment break being held in the more spacious Garden Room. And, in our role as hosts, we shall also be responsible for judging the films being shown and declaring the who is award with the trophies for Best Film and Best Program.

 

Whilst OVFM won best film for an entry courtesy of John Bunce, it was Spring Park who were the big winners in 2017. Who will take home the coveted Croydon Plaque and Triangle Trophy for 2018? Find out on Tuesday evening!

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY February 6th

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

ADS & TRAILERS

 

This week’s meeting gives club members the opportunity to share with us the results of their hard work in creating adverts and/or trailers for any upcoming films they may have, as per the remit outlined in this post last month.

Given the sheer scope of options available for the ads category, be it spoof, straight or for a product your own creation, we hope that your imaginations went into overdrive and look forward to seeing a varied evening of commercials we won’t want to fast forward through!

As usual we ask a little cooperation from everyone bringing a film to meeting to PLEASE REPLY TO THIS POST in the comments/reply section below, letting us know the film’s run time, media format (DVD, Blu-ray, USB/Memory stick), file format if using the latter (MP4, MKV, AVI, etc.) and picture ratio (4:3 or 16:9). This is a great help for us when planning the evening out and helping things run smoothly so if you could do us this courtesy it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading and be sure to join us for what might be the only time in which making the tea comes AFTER the ads!

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY JANUARY 23rd

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take you to
Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go
Down to Kokomo

Or Vienna, Madrid, Copenhagen, New York, Berlin, Nairobi, Paris, Stockport…

The annual OVFM tradition of kicking off the new year by revisiting the many holiday locations and climates from the year before continues into 2018.

We invite club members to dig out their footage from their holiday trips aboard – or here in Old Blighty – to share with the rest of us but please remember there is a FIVE MINUTE TIME LIMIT on your films so you’ll need to be creative in putting your clips together. If you exceed this time limit there is a chance that when you get home after the meeting your house might not be still standing. Hey, what can I say? Our chairman is a stickler for the rules…

As always we politely ask that if you are going to be bringing a film to this meeting that you PLEASE let us know by replying to this post below, lsting the format (DVD, BD, USB stick), picture ratio (16:9, 4:3) and run time.

**EDIT** – As per Andy’s request in the comments below, please DO NOT put a menu if you are bringing a DVD and instead bookend your film with a brief blank screen buffer.

Want to travel the world and not leave Petts Wood? Then be at the club meeting this Tuesday!

 

New OVFM Project – Trailers/Adverts

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

Trailers/Adverts

The first project for 2018 looks to be one of the more challenging we’ve ever set but also could prove to be one of the more rewarding as the creativity we know that is within our club members will be put to the test and on display in all its glory in producing some remarkable results under this particular double remit.

To elaborate on what is expected of you from each theme, Adverts is almost self-explanatory in that we are asking you to create your own advert/commercial! It can be for anything you like – a book, car, breakfast cereal, holiday location, music release or something you have invented yourself – there are no limits as long as they follow the basic rules of a TV advert: i.e keep them short (say 30-40 seconds), make them informative, creative and can be either serious and arty or silly and fun, especially if you are doing a spoof ad.

Trailers are naturally to promote a film, so if you have a film in the works or already completed and want to tease us about then this is the perfect opportunity to do just that. Or, if you have an idea for a film that you are unsure if it has any potential, then why not make a brief teaser trailer and let us offer our feedback to see where you can take this idea. Again, they don’t have to be that long – a minute at the most depending on how long your film is and how much you are prepared to give away.

By way of an example (and if you’ve forgive the indulgence) here is the teaser I did for MEET DEXTER:

https://vimeo.com/180420260

 

Now for the important bit – the deadline for your entries which can either one or both subjects, is the club meeting on FEBRUARY 6th, giving you just over a month to put something together.

Good luck and have fun!

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY JANUARY 9th

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

 

Happy New Year everyone!

As is the tradition here at OVFM we kick off the year by bring some business from the previous year to close – vis-a-vis the Top Ten competition! You can read the results of the individual rounds HERE whilst the final ten (or in this case eleven) films that garnered the most votes thus are up for a second evaluation, with the winner being announced at the Oscars in march, are as follows:

 

1. Hampden P1344 – Jim Morten-Robertson    54.62
2. Orpington In The 1840s  – David Laker   54.38
3. It’s A Pug’s Life – Lee Relph  53.23
4. Please – John Greengrass    52.84
5. No Thanks Not Me – Colin Jones    52.76
6. The Juggler – Reg Lancaster    52.42
7. But Is It Art? – Hugh Darrington   49.15
8. 1940’s Showreel – Barbara Darby   48.32
9. Come Fly With Me – Trevor Rogers    47.38
10. Glorious Devon  – Jane Oliver   47.23
=   New Year 2017 In London – Wally McKenna   47.23

 

Everyone on this list should have received an e-mail from competitions officer Hugh Darrington threatening violent repercussions for anyone who fails to bring their film with them to this meeting or arrange to have it brought via proxy if you can’t make it yourself, which will also result in immediate disqualification from the competition.

Also, members are reminded that this meeting is the FINAL DEADLINE for submitting their entries to the Annual Competition to Hugh. The entry forms can be downloaded HERE (this is a Members’ Only page so be sure you are logged in).

If you are entering a film, be advised that the judges have requested DVD only,  but we are requesting that those of you who are happy to have your films uploaded for display in the new special section on this site via the club’s Vimeo account to please bring your film on a USB stick or alternatively,  you can upload them to the designated folder on our FILEZILLA server. (Again, these are Members’ Only pages).

And in keeping with this, anyone who took a USB stick from Andy a few months back to supply a brief sample of your work in your preferred file format, please be sure to bring it with you to this meeting, so Andy and John can get to work on determining the most popular and accessible formats.

Good luck to everyone who has a film in the final!

OVFM and VIMEO

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?

As you should all by now be aware, the club has a Vimeo Plus account which will be used to store many of our available films online in one handy place. A selection of these films will be shared on the club website – permissions pending – by way of giving visitors a small sample of our output as a club, in the hope it inspires them to join us.

In addition to this and the video tutorials, it has been proposed that we upload our competition films to the Vimeo account to make them accessible for club members to view, since many miss out seeing them at the regular meetings through absence for a variety of reasons. The first beneficiary of this is the Annual Competition, which traditionally has featured films some club members have chosen not to screen for the rest of us, yet have submitted them for judging by an external panel.

Again this will be at the approval of the film maker themselves but it would be nice to have as complete a representation of the entries as possible. Perhaps later on we can extend this to the Top Ten or the Triple Competition Evening (Kath Jones, Mike Turner, Vic Treen) but let’s see how this goes first.

 

THE BASICS

Being a new endeavour for the club it would appear that some of you have concerns about how this works and there is even some confusion over the privacy options available in safeguarding our work. It is really quite straightforward and the best thing for all of you is that you don’t have to do anything except keep making films and allowing us to share them – David Laker and myself will take care of the rest.

First and foremost, we won’t upload any film to Vimeo without the full consent from the film maker. Secondly, the films will initially only be available to view on the OVFM website in the Members Only section. By selecting this option in the top Menu bar you will see two new additions to the sub-menu to reflect this:

 

So far we have just two Tutorial videos but we hope to expand on this in due course. In fact, watching THE FIRST ONE about Filezilla is encouraged as this file sharing system will play an integral part in transporting the videos we upload to the Vimeo account (which is another issue for another time).

On the Annual Competition Films 2017 page we hope to host as many of the films entered into this year’s competition as possible, as they make up the bulk of the winners at our annual Oscars night in March. Since we don’t get the chance to see all or many of the films on this particular evening, having them available to view online and at one’s own leisure is a positive boon.

 

HOW TO VIEW A VIDEO

There is really no magic trick involved, you simply scroll down the page until you find a film that takes your interest then click the PLAY icon in the video player window!

And to expand the picture to make it full screen, click the FULL SCREEN icon!

You can also select the video quality depending on your bandwith and broadband speeds by clicking the QUALITY icon or just leave it on “Auto” if you’re not sure or your speeds aren’t up to much.

 

PRIVACY

As already explained all videos will be embedded onto the club website on pages that are in the Members Only section thus require club members to be logged into the website via the unique passwords they have been given, either by Chris Coulson when he started the site in 2011 or by me in recent years.

In other words, you DO NOT need to do anything new or different to view these videos, just ensure you are logged into the site as normal, just as if you were accessing the address directory or the Viewfinder archive. It’s that simple.

 

VIMEO PASSWORD PROTECTION

However, there might be an occasion when somebody outside of the club (due to copyright permissions on certain amterial, etc) wants to limit the viewing of the video to just us in OVFM, or maybe a club member wants to enter their video for an external competition like BIAFF, SERIAC, etc. or wants to share it with family and trusted friends but doesn’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry seeing their work, only these select few people. We can help with this.

On Vimeo, David and I have the ability to assign an additional password exclusively to a specific video in order to keep it hidden from unwanted eyes. Once the link to the video has been shared or embedded on another site (see below), only people with the password can view the film.

A film that is password protected will have the following display in the video player window:

 

To view the film, one will have to enter the password supplied by David or myself on request in the white space provided on the player screen. No password, no video – it’s that simple – but it is very unlikely that you’ll encounter this on our site unless requested by the film maker.

 

EMBEDDING RESTRICTIONS

If you don’t want your film to be embedded (i.e – linked directly to or publicly featured on) another site we can restrict the permissions for this by nominating only the OVFM website for this function to be enabled for. A film which we have applied this limitation to will display the following message to anyone trying to view it:

You’ll notice that the message in the player window directs the viewer to watch the clip on Vimeo. Because of the privacy restrictions we have on our videos this part of the message won’t appear on video on this site and potential viewers will NOT have the option seek the video out on Vimeo.

But, if you are happy to share you video on another site (like the IAC/BIAFF site), please let David or myself know and we can alter this permission to accommodate that, whilst keeping the other privacy settings like password protection intact. In addition to these measure, sharing and download permissions have also been restricted on Vimeo so your videos are completely safe from being shared without our say so.

Just to reiterate, this will likely be a rare occurrence where club members will require the second password to view a film, but hopefully by this time in the calendar year, most of the films will already be familiar to you so you won’t need to see them again.

Once competition season is over, we can go back to limiting the access to the films exclusively to the OVFM website, unless expressly requested by the film maker to keep the passwords in place or if they wish to share them externally again.

Remember, this WILL NOT affect regular access to films shared on the OVFM site.

 

I hope that has cleared up any confusion about this new venture of ours and that you will all now feel more confident and willing in supporting us in this and making it work to the club’s benefit.

Thanks for reading!

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY DECEMBER 19TH – CHRISTMAS SOCIAL

Posted on by Lee Relph

Oh little club in Orpington

You’ve had a busy year

Now it’s time to let off steam

And revel in festive cheer!

 

Amazingly it has been a whole year since the last Christmas social – doesn’t time fly when you’re getting older? A lot has happened since then, from the club welcoming our first female Chairman in Jane Oliver to the progressive move of adopting files on USB sticks for screening films, with a healthy output behind the camera, especially in the latter half of the year.

But before that we put 2017 away in the filing cabinet of history, there is the small matter of this year’s Christmas Social, which, as ever, will be held at our usual venue but in the GARDEN ROOM. Hopefully we should be able to access the room via its own doors but if not, be prepared to take the long way round through the usual hall first –  you’ll find out soon enough on the night!

It wouldn’t be a social without food and this year we are indebted to Peggy and the handful of volunteers (hopefully you’ve filled in the form that went round) for providing the festive nosh! Entertainment will be courtesy of Brenda Wheatley who will bring a game/quiz, while yours truly will be bringing one of my never-popular movie quizzes to ruin your evening, so don’t forget to bring a pen with you.

Since this is Jane’s first social as Chairman she’ll no doubt want to put her own stamp on the proceedings but given she often has a quirky and esoteric approach to her films, we can only wonder if she has something rather wonderful to pull out of the hat for our amusement. I do have it on authority however that her celebrated snake dance is not on the menu, nor will Basil Doody and his Death Metal band Pancreatic Rust be giving us a tune or two either.

The only way to find out what is going down is to be at the Christmas Social this Tuesday evening!

P.S. – Festive attire is optional but clothing in general is mandatory (that means you, Andy!)

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY NOVEMBER 28TH

Posted on by Lee Relph

comp_16

 

As we cannonball towards the end of the year there is just time to fit in one last round of annual club competition films in three separate categories that pay tribute to past club members.

Offering club members a chance to test their creativity under such differing criteria is not as easy as it seems, making this one of the unique and interesting challenges thrown at us. As ever, the three prizes up for grabs are:

 

Kath Jones Cup – A joke film with a punchline no longer than 5 minutes in length.

Mike Turner Plate – A film on any subject or style no longer than 60 seconds in length.

Vic Treen Trophy – A film set to music

 

The rules for each of these can be found HERE which we ask you to adhere to, otherwise the subject matter of your film is entirely in your hands, and you can enter a film for one, two or all three categories.

Last year saw 11 entries submitted which is pretty impressive given the dearth of entries in 2015 so anticipation is high for another healthy turn out this year.

Now the bit everyone seems to ignore –  if you are bringing a film this week it would be very much appreciated if you could PLEASE REPLY TO THIS POST in the comments/reply section below, letting us know the film’s run time, format (DVD, Blu-ray, USB Stick) and picture ratio (4:3 or 16:9). This is a great help for us when planning the evening out and helping things run smoothly so affording us this courtesy will help get you into Santa’s good books just in time Christmas.

Also, members are asked to submit their entries to the Annual Competition to Hugh at this meeting. The entry forms can be downloaded HERE (this is a Members’ Only page so be sure you are logged in).

Speaking of Hugh, we are hoping to receive an update on the status of his moustache that he is growing for Movember to raise money for charity.

Thanks for reading and good luck to all who enter a film/films.

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY NOVEMBER 14th

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

Our first meeting for November sees us once again putting our own activities on hold as we let an outsider host the evening instead. Taking the floor on this occasion are the husband and wife  team of Rita (FACI) and Pip Hayes (not-FACI).

 

Pip (left) and Rita (non-left)

 

Rita should be well known to many of you as the current chair of SERIAC, and hubby Pip is a small nest of tables. Rita is also the guvnor at rival club Sh**ters H*ll where Pip is coincidentally Competition’s Officer. They have a son, also involved in filmmaking, who lives in St Albans which is of little use to us since the meeting will be in Petts Wood, but I digress.

 

The evening will comprise of films from Pip and Rita’s (Pita’s?) extensive catalogue of comedies and dramas made in conjunction with the SERIAC Council (think Freemasons with snazzier aprons). Some of the films being screened have been requested by OVFM members Reg “Bomber” Lancaster and Colin “Colin” Jones, so we know who to blame for that.

 

Since Rita is a member of IAC aristocracy we will need to roll out the red carpet, break out the best paper cups and buy two packets of biscuits to mark the occasion. Genuflecting is optional, especially since most of you probably won’t be able to get back up again, and direct eye contact is only permitted via written permission given ahead of time.

 

That is all to come this Tuesday so make sure to be there for what I am told will be an enjoyable evening for everyone or else!

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY OCTOBER 31st

Posted on by Lee Relph

JIGSAW / CURRENT

 

It’s two for the price of one this week at OVFM as we share the results of our hard work in response to TWO themed projects!

The first is “Jigsaw” which was first announced back in April and hopefully you availed yourself of the two sets of jumbled up clips provided by Ian Menage, reassembled them and created a short film with your own narrative and storyline.

You had the option of trying one or both of the challenges, which were segment taken from two classic comedy shorts – “The Dare Devil” from 1923 starring Ben Turpin, in which he plays a hapless stuntman given a chance to shine by an equally hapless director; and a (spits) colourised version of “Busy Bodies”, a Laurel & Hardy talkie from 1933, in which Stan and Ollie play two accident prone carpenters.

Because of the likelihood of repetition this project will incur, we ask that you let us know by replying to this post below which of the two clips you will be bringing to the meeting (if you indeed are) – either “Ben Turpin” or “Laurel & Hardy” – so we can best allocate the screening time and try to avoid showing the same film over and over. If you fail to inform us, there might be strong chance your film may NOT be shown at all.

The second project is “Current”, ironically the more recently announced of the two. This one should provide a more varied set of contributions but again, PLEASE be sure to let us if you have a film for this project as again, too many films on the evening will leave some not being shown, and your efforts will have gone to waste.

Remember to include the following vital information in your reply:  the film’s run time, format (DVD, Blu-ray, USB stick) and picture ratio (4:3 or 16:9).

Join us on Tuesday for what looks to be a fun filled and creative evening!