News Archive > December, 2008

At Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting, club member Graeme Isherwood gave a presentation on how Adobe Photoshop can be used in conjunction with movie editing software. He began by explaining the basic method of capturing and adjusting the image detail and colour so that they were suitable for transferring to movie projects. He also explained that as well as Photoshop there were other programs that could do the same tasks, some of which are free on the web.

During the second half of the evening, Graeme went on to demonstrate how images could be viewed by panning and tilting to give the impression of a camera movement over the scene. The use of Photoshop in movie making will continue later in the season with more advanced projects.

Morecambe Bay Movie Makers held their first competition of the season, this being the "Dave Sephton Trophy" which attracted twelve entries. The subject for this competition was Local Interest, and the maximum running time was limited to twelve minutes.

Taking first place was Chris Abram with a movie showing the events at Carnforth Steam Town to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the last steam train to run on the main line service. Runner up was Graeme Isherwood with a compilation of the club's events and members, filmed over many years and set to music. In third place was Chris Abram again with a documentary DVD of the area around Yealand. His movie showed the rural surroundings and looked into the old iron making industry and the Friends of the Quakers, which had its early start in the area.

All the entrants will now be eligible for a new trophy, "The Grand Prix" which awards points for places and entries in all the club's competitions during the year. The filmmaker of the year will be announced at the end of the season in April 2009.

At Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting, members watched the second part of the training DVD "Advanced Camera Techniques". The programme showed how to create the professional look to movies giving examples of camera angles and positions. The presenter described how to set up interviews and encourage the subjects to talk to camera. There were also tips on how to build inexpensive equipment to obtain underwater shots, steady cam moving sequences, plus high and low level positions.

At the end of the evening, members were able to demonstrate some of their own hand made equipment that they had used and some that was still in the development stage.