Orpington Video and Film Makers
Amateur Film Makers since 1958 Based in Orpington, Kent, UK
The annual SERIAC film festival is soon upon us with this year’s event taking place on April 5th 2014 at Oast Theatre Tonbridge!
The closing date for entries is January 31st and the entry form can be downloaded from HERE!
For further information on SERIAC and other film festivals visit their website : http://www.seriac.org.uk/festivals.html
Good luck to all who enter a film!
Happy New Year everyone!
I hope you’ve all got the festive cheer and associated indulgences out of your systems as we get ready to kick off the New Year here at OVFM.
Our first order of business is to settle some unfinished business from 2013 – namely the Top Ten competition. Our first club meeting of 2014 is the long awaited final of our annual in house competition. The ten finalists have been notified via e-mail from competition officer Brenda Wheatley and should have completed the final adjustments (if needed) to their films based on the feedback from previous rounds, ready for their final screening for judgement by your peers.
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The results of this concluding round will determine the winner of the 2013 Top ten, which will be revealed at this year’s Oscars on March 4th!
Also this meeting is the closing date for entries for the Annual Competition so please make sure you don’t miss out and get your films, entry forms and £2 entry fee to Brenda. More details and links to download the entry form are found HERE
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So good luck to all the finalists and we look forward to seeing all of you on Tuesday for our first gathering of the New Year!!
Hello again!
One of the more popular and fruitful facets of our club calendar is the club project, where we set a theme and see what short films you clever folk can come up with pertaining to that theme.
To kick off 2014 we give you the topic “Silent”.
What does that mean? Do you make a silent film in the tradition of the early days of cinema? Or just a film with no dialogue, just a visual narrative? Perhaps you want to discuss the nature of silence? The answer of course is “All of the Above” so get your thinking caps on and see what inspires you.
The closing date – therefore the club night at which we shall be showing the fruits of your labours – is TUESDAY FEBRUARY 4TH 2014 which gives you just over six weeks to work your magic.
Good luck to all who enter a film and we look forward to seeing what gems you create!
What ho fellow filmmakers and I hope you are geared up for the festive season!
On that note we have received this request from Tom Carrell of RSA Films:
“Dear members of Orpington Video And Film Makers,
Ridley Scott Associates (www.rsafilms.com), and director Toby Dye are making a documentary film project celebrating the rich and varied lives of ordinary members of the Great British public aged over sixty-five.
Britain’s population is aging and yet the elder members of our communities are often the least represented in the media. This project would like to help to redress that balance by putting the wit, wisdom and wiles of those aged over sixty-five centre-stage in this exciting film. We are looking to find a range of people from every conceivable walk of life, to take part in the filming of the first stage of this project, commencing this Christmas 2013.
If you are aged over sixty-five and are interested in the opportunity to share a snapshot of your Christmas on camera, or have a friend or family member who is, we’d love to hear from you.
Contributions may be self-filmed, in the form of home movies, or filmed by our team. Also we are particularly interested if anyone has any archive footage of their past that they would like to share.If this sounds of interest please contact me at the below address and I can tell you more details about this inspiring project. If you know anyone else who might like to join us, please forward this message on.
Best wishes,
Tom Carrell
RSA Films“
This would be a great way to get OVFM’s name out there as well as the personal credit you will get if your film is used.
So, anyone interested? If so please contact Tom via the following:
Tel no: 02074323145
Thanks very much for reading and Merry Christmas Everyone!
The Grand Final of the North v South Competition took place on Sunday 24th November in the South at its usual venue of the Village Hall in Farnborough, Kent.
A 5 hour show which included all 25 films entered into the competition were shown to an appreciative audience. Several people commented after the show about the high standard of the finalists this year.
Around 75 people attended the event and we were particularly delighted to welcome Jill Lampert and Gordon Hunt of Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers and John Gibb of Nuneaton Moviemakers who all made the journey down from the Midlands.
Our judges for the Southern entries were Scarlett Mills and Khalid Nasser of the University of Sussex Film Appreciation Society and for the final judging, Garth Hope, Editor of ‘Film & Video Maker’ magazine.
Following the showing of the films, the audience were asked to fill in their voting slips. ‘On the Rails’ by Bourne End Video Makers won the audience vote although it didn’t feature in the judges top 3. Some things never change!
Audience Vote
1st On the Rails Bourne End Video Makers
2nd Revolution Chesterfield Film Makers
3rd Revolution Nuneaton Moviemakers
Official Result
1st Revolution Chesterfield Film Makers
2nd The Turning of the Screw Reading Film & Video Makers
3rd Frequency Hertz Surrey Border Movie Makers
Needless to say, nobody in the audience matched the judge’s decision but Graham Sinden of Shooters Hill Camcorder Club was closest and took the ‘Audience Vote’ prize. He obviously has the knack as he also won it last year.
Our ‘Guess the Theme’ competition was won by Gordon Hunt of Sutton Coldfield Movie Makers who correctly guessed that the theme for 2014 is………
‘IF’
Thanks to everyone who attended for their support.
Mike Coad
on behalf of Orpington Video & Film Makers
N.B – Celtx has changed a lot since this article was first posted. In 2016, they moved their operations to a cloud based service to encourage online support and collaboration, as well as being able to push their subscription services since the basic version of the software was free. However, the free version of the software is still available from external providers, with the tiny caveat of needing to run it whilst connected to the internet for the features to work.
For a beginner and the basic level we are going to be working at, what the free version provides enough to cover this. And hopefully, the software hasn’t changed *that* much that the fundamental principles outlined in these articles aren’t still relevant.
Hello Folks
Further to the recent Celtx demo I gave at the club meeting on the 12th of November, I figured that since there was a lot of information to impart at half an hour wasn’t long enough – plus my awkward presentation skills probably made it seem like a load of garbled nonsense – it would be more helpful to add a blow-by-blow guide to getting started with Celtx here on this site, for people to refer to whenever the need arises.
As before I will be concentrating to the absolute basics as there is a lot to take in and a lot of the functions available in Celtx probably won’t be used by many of us anyway.
First off you need to download Celtx – for free – from this website celtx.en.softonic.com/
DOWNLOADING CELTX
On the front page you’ll see this download button:
Once the file has downloaded, run the .exe file and Celtx will be installed on your PC.
GETTING STARTED
When you open Celtx you will see this front page with the various script options available to you:
Obviously we will be using the “Film” template but if you ever fancy ago at writing a radio or TV show or a stage play the option is there for you. There are also demo versions of each of the options for you to peruse to see how Celtx works and what it can do for you.
Once you’ve opened the new document you need to set the format so got to “Script” in the toolbar and select “Format Options”:
The best option is to select “A4” for paper size (as the US setting doesn’t print correctly) and you can select to have “one”, “both” or “none” of the scene numbers and dialogue numbers displayed. “Pagination” simply adds a dotted line at the bottom of every page of the script page to show you when writing where the page ends, This again is a personal option:
Now, to save time – assuming you already have your story and characters all ready worked out, you can “add” all your characters to the catalogue at the start of the process for convenience sake.
To do this go to the “Project Library” box on the left hand side of the screen and select “Add Item”:
Then select “Character” from this list and simply enter the name of the character(s):
You can do this other items as well at this point if you so wish or you can add them as you go along.
Now, you are ready to begin writing your script which we will look at in the next instalment of this guide. Click HERE for that.
Until then, thanks for reading!
Once again we give you the OVFM club members the opportunity to look back on the fifty years of films in the club archive and relive some of those moments from yesteryear. With such a time span of material to behold there is a wealth of footage not been seen by many club members (especially us newbies) while others will simply want to reminisce about former club members and their films, which will assuredly bring back fond memories of them and of making the films with them.
In order to have a programme for this evening we need YOUR input so please take a look at the archive (found in the Member’s Only Section, top right in the menu bar above – make sure you are logged in first) and select the films YOU want to see on Tuesday and please e-mail your choices to David Laker – otherwise it is going to be a VERY short club meeting !
Thanks and see you there!
Hasn’t time flown by? It seems like only a year ago we were making this very same announcement about the impending Annual Competition! Yes folks it is that time again where we hand over the masterpieces we’ve slaved over this year to a panel of outsiders who will view and judge them en route to the Oscars in March 2014!
Last year’s competition – the complete list of winners can be found HERE – was dominated by Colin Jones who won five awards although it was Barbara “Cakes” Darby who claimed the Best film prize. Can they do it again this year or will someone else step up to be bathed in glory?
Below you will find links to the entry forms which you can download and print off and bring to any of the future club meetings while the closing date is January 7th 2014.
As always the entrance fee is £2.00 per person but you can enter as many films as you like. All monies are non-refundable as we have to bribe the judges somehow.
To download the Entry form as an MS Word document click HERE
To download the Entry form as a PDF document click HERE
Good luck to every who enters and remember closing date for your entry forms is TUESDAY JANUARY 7th 2014!
Over the past couple of years our entries for the annual North vs South competition, as well as the Coaching Evenings, has seen an emergence of club members starting to write their own scripts, which is encouraging as our drama/comedy output is somewhat dwarfed in relation to holiday, documentary and sundry films that don’t rely on a scripted structure.
However – there is always a “however” – it is evident that some extra guidance is needed on the actual mechanics of scriptwriting and more importantly the formatting of the scripts to make them better looking and easier for others to understand and follow. This latter facet may not seem important on the surface but trust me, it is.
Therefore we bring you this evening dedicated to exploring the world of scriptwriting further, looking at structure, characters, dialogue, description and direction notes and answering any questions you may have. And to make matters worse, your’s truly (yes me – the world’s worst public orator) will attempt to bring you a live demonstration of the wondrous (and free) script writing tool Celtx (which I have promoted elsewhere on this site) which hopefully will enlighten you to the benefits of using this tool over MS Word and encourage you all (well, some of you) to give it ago and produce a professional looking script for your future productions.
Hope to see you all there (or not, so I don’t have to embarrass myself in front everyone)!
Just two days before you all don your scariest costumes and go disturbing your neighbours by begging for sweets in the fashion influenced by an age old American tradition (who else could create something so annoying?) in celebration of All Hallow’s Eve, there is the small matter of the next OVFM club meeting which takes in not one, not two but THREE of our long standing annual competitions – The Mike Turner Plate, The Kath Jones Cup and The Vic Treen Trophy
A quick reminder of what is expected for each one:
The Mike Turner Plate is open to films with a maximum running time of one minute (or 60 seconds for those of you watching in black and white) on any subject, style or genre. Exceed this time limit and we’ll send the lads round to have a quiet word with you!
The Vic Treen Trophy is a film set to music although we hope you’ll be a bit more creative with the timing and editing of the music to match the beats or the tempo of the soundtrack, rather than just slapping a bit of Slayer or Jay-Z over footage of your holiday in Syria.
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. And make it funny. if you can’t just film someone falling over – that always seems to get a laugh.
Each film shown will then be scored by the club members with their top three personal favourites (should the number of films exceed this total) 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 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 films this year. Here’s to a potentially fun and bopping evening!!