News Archive > March, 2009

At Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting, members first completed the filming of the introductions to each element of the club's latest show reel. The show reel is a way of letting other movie groups around the country see what the club and its members have made. The introductions were all filmed using the green screen technique, which allows backgrounds and the club logo to be added during editing.

The second half of the meeting was a presentation by club member Chris Abram, showing excerpts from his latest programme "Bittern Country, Our Heritage". The DVD programme shows the area around Carnforth, Arnside and Silverdale and follows its history and looks at some of the events that are part of the areas culture. He was able to explain the research of the programme, how he shot the scenes and logged the hours of material, including the humorous out takes.

Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting started with the presentation of the Merlin Trophy to club member Geoff Ducker. This trophy is given to the movie most liked by the audience at the Mersey Ten, a North West regional competition, this year held at Southport on 7th March 2009.

Club member Graeme Isherwood took up the main part of the meeting with a demonstration of the video special effects program Adobe After Effects. During his presentation he showed how moving filters could produce snow and smoke scenes, people could be drawn forward out of photographs to emphasize them and computer cameras were able to move over scenes to a give a different prospective to a location. In the limited time available he was able to demonstrate the power of the program and guide members on their way to producing the effects that they had in their imagination.

Morecambe Bay Movie Makers moved their weekly meeting to join Lunesdale Camera Club in Halton for a 50/50 interclub event. During the first half the evening, the moviemakers showed a selection of DVDs, ranging from a pot holing expedition, with an explanation of the cave structure, to musical animation and a drama monologue plus local interest movies. Following the interval of tea and chocolate biscuits, the camera club gave an A/V presentation on "Graffiti" and discussed its merits as an art form, as well as comparing the images photographed in Lancaster and London. Their second presentation demonstrated the optical illusions that can be created with black and white images and how movement can be created with a series of still photographs shown in quick succession.

At Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' weekly meeting, the Cumbria Trophy competition was held. The rules for this event are that the entrants must not have won a club competition before, the subject is open and the maximum time is 3 minutes, twenty seconds, which is the running time of an old Super 8 film.

Taking first and second place, out of fifteen entries, was Ron Wood. The winning movie showed the making of a silver finger ring, for his Granddaughter, starting with the melting of scrap silver jewellery for the casting, machining and polishing of the finished item. His second place was taken with a movie following the preparation of buildings and the rearing of chickens from young birds to regular egg laying hens.

The third place went to Derek Fox, with a movie showing the process of drilling and constructing a borehole on farmland to ultimately supply clean fresh drinking water.

Morecambe Bay Movie Makers' meeting on the 2nd March was very different. Howard Greenwood, a technician from Caldervale Systems, gave an interesting talk about what was INSIDE the video cameras that we use. Members are used to using all the controls on the outside of their cameras but very few knew how they worked inside the camera. Everything is miniaturised in modern day cameras and when he showed the members how many motors and pieces go into the construction of just the lens on the camera, they were amazed.

Howard also explained the workings of other parts and then presented a series of very useful tips on how to ensure the smooth running of the equipment. He then demonstrated why it can be very expensive to repair a video camera as so many parts are integrated together and if a fault develops in one part it usually means changing several others. Members also had the opportunity to bring along video equipment which needed repair.