Video talk

Being in Canberra makes me appreciate the heat and the humidity of the Gold Coast! Thursday morning was foggy – not foggy like I once encountered on the Yorkshire Moors where visibility was so limited I couldn’t see the other side of the two lane road or even whether there was a corner ahead, but foggy like steam on spectacles! I think I had my coat on for the best part of the day – and I was indoors! (complain, complain!) Sitting still does not warm you.
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A lot of “Official” stuff was dealt with in the morning. Nothing was changed and nothing improved. I really have no idea what my official role is supposed to entail. When the issue of judges was raised and the FAMM president asked if clubs would appreciate having twelve FAMM approved judges to pick from to judge their major video competitions there was a very negative reaction. So amazed was I by this response that I swallowed my own ideas on the subject. I get a distinct impression that these club members are unwilling to accept change and jump in to stop any suggestion of change. Sigh.
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There was a fair bit of discussion about music and copyrights. It is a difficult issue and a real problem for amateur video makers who wish to show their videos to fellow club members and most likely only shown the one time, without fear of reprisal. The majority do not like the Royalty Free music that is available because they need music that dominates the sound track and Royalty Free music is not designed for that, it is for creating a mood and is usually quite short.
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Videomakers need friends who can create music. I would imagine there are composers around who would love to try their hand at creating a musical sound track for a short film. The difficulty is . .. . . to find someone!

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Two excellent speakers gave inspiring talks to us. One, a young man with lots of passion and ambition is sure to go places because he has so much confidence in his abilities and so much energy to see that it will happen. I am sure we shall hear more about Daniel Sanguineti.
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Our second speaker is a scientist with the CSIRO and he also is responsible for a short (science)film festival. As well as showing some of the incredibly crafted videos from previous competitions he talked about the sorts of things that video judges looked for. It was a valuable talk.
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Later in the evening we watched more videos that had been sent in by the Video Clubs – each club sent along the five best movies from the past two years (the convention is held biannually) and when the lights came back on the winners were announced. One video was awarded first prize but the club that won the coveted FAMM Shield was the club that acquired the most points from the scoring of all five videos.

This year the shield went to Newcastle Video Movie Makers.

AJ