News Archive > April, 2007

At Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting, there were a record nineteen entries for the Annual Open competition. This year's judge, Granada TV set designer Alan Davis, assisted by Brighid Webster, had a total of 3¼ hours of movies to view, with movies ranging in length from 3 to 17 minutes and featuring subjects shot in New Zealand, Africa, Europe, USA and the local area.

The overall winner and Open class winner was Peter Parker, with a movie showing the work of a special police constable. Second in the Open class was Chris Abram, with a journey of lifetime through cowboy country in Colorado and in third place was Graeme Isherwood, with a local-interest movie describing the outdoor murals that can be found in the Poulton area of Morecambe.

Dave Weatherley won the Documentary and Holiday class, with his movie showing the work and training of the Kendal Mountain Rescue Team. Second place went to Chris Abram for a DVD of the 2007 Maritime Festival at Glasson Dock and equal third places went to Ron Wood for his two entries, one of which featured Ron making a wooden rocking horse and the second traced the rebuild of Lancaster Market after the destructive fire.

The award for best soundtrack went to Chris Abram for a DVD in which he relived his dream of a cowboy adventure in Colorado.

At Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting, members held their annual planning and technical topics night. Members and the committee suggested ideas for next year's programme based on some of the technical questions raised and listed suggestions of movie projects that might be attempted. In the second half of the meeting, the final arrangements for next week's competition were made. This was followed by the first showing of the club's DVD, featuring players from the Lancaster Footlights Group acting out a spoof comedy quiz show, which had been filmed earlier in the year.

See a selection of stills from Chris Abrams' DVD "The Lune Valley - Our Heritage", along with Chris' description of the background behind the project and the methods used in its production, in the Members' Projects section.

Morecambe Bay Movie Makers welcomed Nick Gladdon (archivist for the North West Film Archive in Manchester) to their weekly meeting. Nick began his presentation by describing how movies are collected, preserved and catalogued so that they can used as a historical record of people and events in the North West, including Merseyside, Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria. To demonstrate the types of movies preserved, he showed DVD copies of events and customs in Lancashire dating back to the early 1900s, mostly shot in black and white.

The second part of the evening was taken up by showing movies from more local areas including Lancaster, Morecambe, Blackpool and Grange-over-Sands. Nick thanked club members for donating some of their recent projects about events in Morecambe, saying that these films were a valuable record for future generations. He hoped that club members would continue to submit their own movies to the archive and to take advantage of the copying service provided when donations are made.