OVFM Spring Show 2015

Posted on January 29, 2015August 6, 2020 by Lee Relph

OVFM Spring Show 2015

The year has gone so quickly, it is hard to believe that OVFM is once again holding its annual Spring film Show!

Now the days are getting brighter, the weather (hopefully) is getting warmer and the colour is returning to the leaves on the trees, we will be to marking this occasion by sharing with everyone the best of the many films made by our club members over the past twelve months along with a few delights unearthed from our extensive archive. And the local events of 2014 will be revisited in the annual Newsreel!

As ever refreshments will be on hand as well as our raffle where great prizes can be won!

The 2015 Spring Show will take place on FRIDAY 27th March at 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 others the tickets are £5 – which includes refreshments – and are available from our secretary Freddy Beard on 01689 813616 .

A poster for the event can be downloaded (for best printing results) from HERE (right click on the image then select “Save Image As”) so please print a copy off and spread the word around your neighbourhood!

For an entertaining and sociable evening of drama, comedy, documentary, music, travelogue and more get your tickets a.s.a.p. and bring along your friends and family!

See you then!

OVFM Club Meeting Tuesday January 20th 2015

Posted on January 15, 2015November 5, 2020 by Lee Relph

Another annual tradition here at OVFM is the screening of holiday films where member share with us the highlights of their recent trips either abroad or here on our fair shores. Through their eyes we get to experience the sunny highlights and rainy lowlights from various locations around the world, allowing us to soak up the sights, sounds and splendour of these far off places (or just off the M4 if that is the case).

Just to remind everyone that there is a FIVE MINUTE time limit on your film so if you have one that runs longer you may want to do some last minute pruning.

We also ask that if you are bringing a film that you please reply to this post in the comment section below, telling us the run time, format and picture ratio of your film. This is of tremendous help to our projectionist in timing the evening should we have a healthy supply of films to show.

Thank you for your co-operation and we look forward to seeing your films on Tuesday!

OVFM Club Meeting Tuesday January 6th 2015

Posted on January 2, 2015October 16, 2020 by Lee Relph

As we welcome the New Year here at OVFM we kick off as always by taking care of some unfinished business vis-a-vis our annual Top Ten competition!

The qualifying rounds have taken place and the results can be found HERE with the ten highest scoring films from those individual rounds having now earned their spot in the final.

By now the ten finalists will have been notified and ironed out any tweaks based on the comments and feedback given ready to wow us once again on this night, en route to having their name declared the winner at the Oscars on March 17th!

Also club members are reminded that this meetings marks the deadline for the Annual Competition so please have your films and entry forms on hand to give to Brenda Wheatley. If you need an entry form you can download one HERE!

Finally another deadline is looming this week as the footage for the Newsreel is required so John Epton can begin compiling it in time for the Spring Show. So it would be appreciated if you have your footage and a short 20 second clip of you filming or performing “film related” activities ready to hand over to John on Tuesday. if you unsure of what is required then drop John a line and he’ll enlighten you.

Happy New Year to all and hope to see Tuesday!

North vs South 2014 Report

Posted on December 10, 2014July 27, 2016 by Lee Relph

2014 NORTH v SOUTH GRAND FINAL REPORT

An audience of 62 people represented by 12 different clubs turned up at Farnborough Village Hall for the 2014 North v South Grand Final.

We were especially pleased to welcome members from Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers and Lowestoft Movie Makers who made the several hours journey to be with us. Also present was Romy Van Kreiken from Holland, a familiar face at IAC events.

An entertaining programme of 25 films were shown with a good mix of genres including Drama, Documentary, Comedy, Animation and One-Minute entries.

Our judges for the Final were Peter and Mary Rouillard from Guernsey who kindly stepped in at the last minute. The standard of entries was high this year and they had a difficult task in choosing a winner.

As usual, we ran our popular Audience Vote competition where they were asked to match the judge’s decision. Although the judges were asked to put the top 10 films in order of merit we asked the audience to only match the top 3, to give them a fighting chance. Nobody managed to do that but the person who got closest to the judge’s decision was Derek Hopcroft of Tonbridge Film Makers.

There was no ‘Guess the Theme’ competition this year. Instead, there was an audience poll to find out whether entrants would prefer the North v South to remain a ‘Set Theme’ competition or to be an ‘Open Subject’ competition. This followed suggestions by some clubs that they would prefer it to change to the latter. The results will be published in due course.

Here then are the results:-

Audience Result

1^st Imbuvable Feu – Altrincham Moviemakers (North)

2^nd The Decision – Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers (South)

3^rd Moving Oleta – Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers (South)

Official Result

1^st Imbuvable Feu – Altrincham Moviemakers (North)

2^nd Moving Oleta – Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers (South)

3^rd If Only – Staines Video Makers (South)

4^th All A Bit Iffy – Tynemouth Video Group (North)

5^thThe Decision – Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers (South)

6^thMeals Would Be Provided – Nuneaton Moviemakers (South)

7^th1066 – Spring Park Film Makers (South)

8^thIf Dreams Are Nothing More Than Wishes – Chesterfield Film Makers (North)

9^thDecision Time – Coast Video Club (North)

10^thKlaatu Borada Nikto – Chesterfield Film Makers (North)

Congratulations to Altrincham Moviemakers for winning the John Wright Trophy and to Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers for winning the Harry Adams Trophy as runners-up. This being the 40^th Anniversary of the competition, brings the total number of wins to 21 for the North and 19 for the South.

May I thank all the clubs who entered and attended for their support. We hope to see you again next year when the competition will be held on Sunday 6^th December.

Mike Coad, Competition Officer, OVFM.

OVFM Rocks – Music Video Special!

Posted on December 4, 2014April 24, 2022 by Lee Relph

Those of you who were present at the recent club meeting in which films for the Vic Treen Cup (a film set to music) were screened, will recall John Epton’s music video for The Gang Split Up.

John has taken our comments and feedback onboard and we no proudly present to you the finished version! So grab your leathers, jeans, biker helmets, throw up those Devil Horns and prepare to rock out!

OVFM Club Meeting November 25th 2014

Posted on November 20, 2014July 11, 2021 by Lee Relph

This week’s meeting will be made up of a screening of films from filmmakers outside of OVFM, all of which were entries in a recent UNICA competition. To tell us more about it is our club president and film guru Reg “Bomber” Lancaster:

“We have a light hearted programme of short films that illustrate the UK’s participation in the UNICA festival the World Cup of non professional movie making.

We also have a fascinating gem of a film from Luxembourg about a young lady’s journey through Luxembourg City to attend a film show. Beautifully shot, it has little touches to jolt your cinema memories of theme music, stars and genres.

There’ll be something to make us laugh, cry and wonder. It sounds so good we can’t wait for the next meeting! See you there.”

You heard the man – see you on Tuesday!

OVFM Club Meeting November 11th 2014

Posted on November 4, 2014June 12, 2020 by Lee Relph

The nights are getting darker and colder which means another annual OVFM tradition must be around the corner and surprise surprise it is!

This week’s club meeting will see three of our long standing annual competitions – The Mike Turner Plate, The Kath Jones Cup and The Vic Treen Trophy – being contested and with the criteria for the film being largely being short side we are hoping for the usual healthy response from our club members.

A quick reminder of what is expected for each contest:

The Mike Turner Plate is open to films with a maximum running time of one minute (or 60 seconds for those of you still on dial-up) on any subject, style or genre.

The Vic Treen Trophy is a film set to music. Please consult THIS PAGE for the specifications required for this particular contest.

The Kath Jones Cup requires a comedy film of no longer than five minutes that has a definitive punchline to it; in other words a short comic sketch if you will.

Each film shown will then be scored by the club members with their top three personal favourites ranked in order of preference in their respective categories on the night with the winners to be announced at the Oscars next year.

PLEASE reply to this post below if you will be providing a film for any or all of the competitions (you are not limited to just one, you can enter all of them if you so desire), along with the running time, picture ratio (16:9 or 4:3) and media format (DVD, Mini DV, etc) as well as which competition it applies to. This is a tremendous help in planning out the time allotment of the meeting.

Good luck to all who enter their film(s)!!

OVFM Club Meeting October 28th 2014

Posted on October 23, 2014January 5, 2022 by Lee Relph

This week’s club meeting will feature a tutorial on the basics of Stop Motion Animation courtesy of our chairman Simon “Snapper” Earwicker!

Here’s Simon with a brief overview of what we can expect:

“I will regale the club with my knowledge and experience of the ever popular cinematic technique of stop motion animation.

So that’s the first five minutes taken care of, what shall we do for the rest of the evening?!

Seriously though I hope to demonstrate that stop motion animation is simple, requires only basic equipment and easy to find props and yet can be fun to do and even more fun to watch.

I’ll have some stop motion animations to show and I’ll be attempting to make a very short example during the space of the evening…fingers crossed!
So come armed with a small prop and you might find it starring in the film. “

So if you’ve any ambitions of being the next Ray Harryhausen or Nick Park then be sure to pop along to the meeting next Tuesday evening for what promises to be an interesting and educational session!

Free Film Making Coaching Sessions

Posted on October 15, 2014January 5, 2022 by Lee Relph

Free Coaching Sessions

OVFM will be running FREE Coaching Sessions in the New Year to show you how to get the most of your film material. This offer is not limited to those using a camcorder but also includes anyone filming on an SLR camera or smart phone. It also includes anyone who takes only still pictures but would like to know how they can put these together into a short ‘film’ by adding pan & zoom effects and adding music. These sessions are completely free and without any obligation.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

Why are we offering these free sessions?

Most families probably only have a couple of faded photographs of grandparents or perhaps great grandparents and these will be passed to the next generation as family heirlooms. Our hope is that in years to come what is being filmed today will be regarded as similar family heirlooms by future generations.

You can’t fail to notice the boom in people using their smart phones or SLR cameras to film moving images nowadays, in addition to those using camcorders. Sometimes they are filming an important family event such as a wedding, sometimes it’s children or grandchildren, sometimes it’s a holiday scene or maybe it’s just something that has caught their eye. Some of those moving images should also become family heirlooms but too often they are deleted after a couple of viewings, in part because when watched the quality is disappointing.

Our members enjoy film making but do get frustrated when they see films that could have been so much better if a little more care had been taken with how the material was filmed and how it was edited. In the club we give feedback on members’ films to help them improve, and with these free sessions we are keen to pass on what we have learnt to the wider public.

We also want to show people who only take still pictures how they can put the images together using effects such as pan and zoom and adding music to create short ‘films’.

For the club we hope that when people meet us through these sessions, and see what the club has to offer, some will decide to join OVFM. However there is absolutely no obligation to join.

How can the sessions help you?

We can help you if you are not completely happy with the material you have filmed or what you do with it after filming. For example:

If what you filmed doesn’t look as good as you had hoped when you play it back.
If you don’t know how to edit out the parts you don’t want and move clips around to turn it into a memorable film that is worth preserving.
If you only take still pictures but would like to know how to arrange them in a show with pan and zoom effects and added music
If you want advice on cameras, software or any of the special effects you can create in your films.
If you don’t know how best to produce and store films for the long-term or how to convert old 8mm or 16mm films or VHS tape.

What will the sessions cover?

We will finalise the content when we have heard what people want to have covered. We will cover topics such as:

how to plan what you will film,

how to build a story with your film,

how to film without excessive camera movement, which spoils many films,

how to edit your film to cut out the unwanted parts and move clips around,

how to make a film from still pictures

how to store your film for longer-term viewing.

When and where will they be held?

Fortnightly from 8 to 10 on alternative Tuesday evenings in the New Year at our club meeting room in St. Augustine’s Church Hall in Southborough Lane, Bromley Common. Precise dates and further details will be provided when we know how many are likely to attend.

If you are interested in taking part or have any further queries please email us at info@ovfm.org.uk

OVFM Club Meeting September 16th 2014

Posted on September 10, 2014April 24, 2022 by Lee Relph

Time flies when you’re having fun but the annual Top Ten competition waits for no man (or woman – and it’s position on children and animals has yet to be made clear) judging by the fact we’ve hit the fourth round already.

In the last round we had a healthy six entries (the results of which are HERE). Will this number be topped in round four? Only one way to find out!

Selected to enter films for this round are:

Nick Kasper

Andy & Marian Watson

Mo & Peter Lodge

Sam Brown

Jim Morton Robertson

Hugh Darrington

Harold & Maisie Trill

Simon Earwicker

Lee Relph

Barbara Walker

As ever if you can’t make your designated round be sure to either reply to this post below saying so or let Brenda know ahead of time – conversely if you DO have a film ready early, please bring it along as chances are it will be welcomed for screening time permitting. This is also applicable to new members and recent joinees who wish to share their work with us or throw their hat in the ring.

And if you are bringing a film this week then PLEASE reply to this post in the comments/reply section below, letting us know the film’s run time, format (DVD, Mini DV) and picture ratio (4:3 or 16:9). This is a great help for us when planning the evening out and if you could accommodate us on this it is greatly appreciated.

Good luck to everyone who enters a film.