Tag: amateur film making

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 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!

OVFM Invades Otford!

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

OVFM Invades Otford!

 

OVFM treated friends, family and members of Otford Methodist Church on October 3rd to an evening of entertaining films for the ”SURPRISE”.  This was the first such event put on in the plush new church, kitted out with all the latest technology.  After a whistle stop tour of the impressive facilities including 2 fixed pan tilt and zoom cameras, and lights that could wash the stage wall in any colour you could think of, we settled back to an evening of carefully chosen films, that gave a flavour  of the different styles, genre and capabilities of our members and gave the impression that the club is truly ‘thriving’.  It was also an evening where we once more tried to drum up interest in the upcoming AUTUMN SHOW.

The films were played from a portable hard drive plugged into the church computer and the sound controlled through the sound desk.  Signals were transmitted via broadcast CAT6 cables that run beneath the floor.  This was the first time the screens had been tested ‘after dark’.  The lights remained on during the screening, but the pictures still remained vivid albeit there was colour distortion, ghosting and reflections which we failed to resolve.  Even with the Black Magic ATEM TV Studio switched off, the problems persisted.  Sorry if that tainted your enjoyment of the evening.

James Morton-Robertson made a trailer of Hampden P1344 and Barbara Darby and Jane Oliver made shorter versions of some films.  John Epton produced a film specifically for the event in which he gave a number of examples of special effects.  It is hope that we at least tickled the appetite of some of our audience for pursuing the art filmmaking.  Jane chose the films, many from the archive, which has a wealth of films within thanks to those who set it up and maintain it.  Jane imported them into her Edius software, made fine adjustments where necessary and ran them all into one time line with just enough space between for the computer operator to press the ‘space bar’ during the screening to ‘pause’ and then ‘start’ the next film.  There was an opportunity for film makers to make comments about their films, except for poor old Reg, as time was running short.

During the interval we enjoyed tea,  proper coffee and scrumptious cakes home made by Jane’s church fellowship group and a friendly bunch they proved to be.

Thanks to all of you that took the intrepid journey into the night, to a wee village yonder, without a street light to be seen to support this event. At least the contemporary stained glass window gave a welcoming light on arrival.  Many club members have said how much they enjoyed the evening and friends in the church were both delighted and amazed at the variety and quality of the films shown.  As usual there was a huge thumbs up for our ‘comedy classics’.

Keep them rolling!

 

Text – Jane Oliver

Photo – Trevor Rogers

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY OCTOBER 17th

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

Moving Part II

No, you’re not experiencing deja vu, we are seeing more films from our project MOVING but unlike last time, the films being shown in this session will be from other clubs.

If you recall the topic of MOVING was originally to be applied to the North vs South competition which, for the first time in its long history is not taking place this year. However this hasn’t stopped OVFM or other clubs from making films in case someone stepped in and took up the mantle of running the competition at the last minute, and being the nice people that we are we have invited our fellow filmmaking organisations to share their films with us.

There is a possibility that some of the filmmakers and representatives from these clubs will be present on Tuesday, so if you do happen to spot an unfamiliar face, do extend a typical OVFM welcome to them (or just do what I do and scowl at them so they leave you alone – never fails)!

Previous N vs S competitions have shown that any topic can yield a wealth of creative and unique interpretations so we look forward to what should be an interesting evening of films this coming Tuesday.

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY OCTOBER 3rd

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

SURPRISE!!!

 

Normally this post is about explaining what is going to be happening for our next club meeting but that isn’t possible this time round. Why? Because it is a surprise! And the thing about surprises is that if you know about them beforehand then it is no longer a surprise.

One thing I can reveal to you though, is that the meeting will be held at a different venue for this surprise to be delivered. It is being held in Otford, a place we all know so well through Barbara Darby’s films, which is located over there somewhere. This may be a bit of a drive for most of us but not for the Kemsing Mafia since this is their manor, so it makes a change for them to not have the long ride home.

The evening will be split into two halves, the first with our chairman-woman Jane Oliver running the show then she’ll hand over the reins to a special guest, whose identity is – you guessed it – a surprise. Rumours that it might be legendary Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman are unfounded, largely because he died in 2007, so it is more likely to be someone else.

So, get your A to Z’s out, fire up the sat navs and point them towards Otford (the exact address has been e-mailed to everyone and can be found in the latest edition of the Viewfinder) in time for next Tuesday to discover what the big surprise is. And if you aren’t satisfied with it, Jane will personally refund your petrol money!*

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Or she might tell you to get stuffed – I’m not a mind reader!

OVFM Autumn Film Show 2017

Posted on by Lee Relph

OVFM Autumn Film Show 2017

One of the most important dates in the OVFM calendar is our annual Autumn Show where we share the fruits of our labours from a year of busy filmmaking, along with some gems from our archive with the public. As the nights are getting darker and colder you’ll need something to brighten them up so why not join us for another evening of films from the very best local amatuer filmmaking talent.

 

This year’s event will take place on  FRIDAY 27th OCTOBER at 7:00 for 7.30 pm

VENUE –  Methodist Church, 19 Sevenoaks Road, Orpington BR6 9JH

DIRECTIONS – GOOGLE MAP

WEBSITE – http://www.orpingtonmethodist.org.uk/welcome.htm

 

Club members get in free but for guests and non-members the tickets are £5 – which includes refreshments – and are available by making a request via e-mail at info@ovfm.org.uk or by telephone on 01689 813616. Don’t leave it too late as they tend to get snapped up very quickly!

And of course there is our famous raffle where a selection of wonderful prizes are up for grabs provided you have that all important winning ticket!

If any OVFM club members or our external friends wish to help publicise this event please download a printable version of the poster HERE  (open the file, right click and save).

For an entertaining and sociable evening do join us on October 27th and bring along your friends and family!

OVFM CLUB MEETING – TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 19th

Posted on by Lee Relph

 

MOVING

 

This week’s club meeting sees members given the chance to share with us the fruits of their labours in interpreting the theme “Moving”. You’ve had a few months since we first announced this project to think this over and whilst it is a difficult subject to tackle for a drama piece, there should be plenty of scope for observational pieces based on transport, people, animals etc.

Hopefully some of you will have risen to this challenge and have produced something for us to enjoy, but even if you only have a rough edit of a film, or the bare bones of an idea please bring it along and maybe we can offer some input to help you complete it.

As far as this being for the North vs South competition, things aren’t looking too positive at the moment unless a last minute saviour ride in on their white horse to rescue this long running competition from the abyss, but that shouldn’t deter us from making films pertaining to the chosen topic.

If you are bringing a film PLEASE reply to this post below, listing the format (DVD, Blu-ray, USB) run time and picture ratio (16:9. 4:3). The evening runs SO much smoother if we know ahead of time how many films we have to show and how much room to leave for discussion.

Also, don’t forget to get your tickets for the Kent Film Festival (Sept 23rd) from Ian Menage and our Autumn Film Show from Freddy Beard.

Thanks for reading and we look forward to seeing your efforts on Tuesday.