A NEW HOBBY
Tony Colvile
The year 2002 started badly for me. I was semi-retired and still hoping
for a contract job in a stagnating IT industry, but the prospects looked
depressingly bleak. I needed something to keep me busy and add purpose
to my life. My son Martyn suggested I should learn digital video editing
on a PC as he had some footage in his Sony camera, but had no time to
do anything with it. Then we found the RFVM website in February and
after attending several interesting club meetings I was bubbling over
with ideas for making films despite the dauntingly high standard of
competition entries.
In January we had bought the Adobe Premiere 6.0 Classroom in a Book
and I had rapidly worked through the 12 tutorials, but was lacking
a purpose. Then Martyn returned from a snowboarding holiday early
in February and we decided to produce a short video to circulate to
his colleagues on the trip. He chose some music and made numerous
ambitious suggestions on artistic improvements, which I tried to implement.
The first draft we generated appropriate for e-mailing to his colleagues
which received encouraging comments. It soon occurred to me that I
could enter this for a future club competition after suitable polishing,
so I added titling and final credits, extracted more from his 55 minutes
of footage and created a new version lasting under 4 minutes and occupying
745 Mbytes on disc - unrealistic for distribution using e-mail!
Bernard invited my wife and I to an evening at Don's Cinema which,
knowing that an outing on her imminent birthday clashed with a club
meeting, meant I could take her somewhere on Mother's Day! The cinema
was fascinating and it made a very unusual evening of entertainment.
It was also an opportunity to meet several other club members and
their partners.
The summer project gave me another challenge. I had formalised my
membership by now and Neil put me into group 3 as the editor. After
a brief discussion with Mike and Stan, the two other members of the
group, I went home cogitating the challenge. Later that night inspiration
dawned and ideas simply tumbled out of my head. Ideas which offered
ample opportunity to exploit editing techniques, and hopefully produce
an interesting episode in the life of a daily newspaper. I needed
a library book but the Wokingham library is closed on Wednesday so
I had to make do with discussing things with my family till I could
get a relevant book out on Thursday. I then had a frustrated wait
for the next Tuesday to come when I could discuss things with the
group. It also seemed sensible to maximise the footage by making two
clips, one for the project and one for the 4-minute competition. My
group colleagues fortunately accepted my ideas and added improvements.
Things have been on a roll ever since and yet this magical boost
to my lifestyle so nearly didn't happen. I initially decided to just
turn up at a club meeting. It was dark and raining, I had to navigate
a street map to find the church hall, and there were road works on
the route I chose. Inevitably I arrived late and found the meeting
already in progress with the lights out and images flickering on the
screen. The front door seemed to be locked. I decide that attracting
attention to gain entry was not the best start to joining a new club,
so I returned home and e-mailed the Chairman. Another glitch - I got
a failed delivery e-mail due to a spelling mistake. Perseverance finally
paid off when the corrected version received a welcoming reply from
Neil.
I arrived at 7:30 for the next meeting and have enjoyed every one
since. Ironically Neil apologised for the poor arrangements for the
meeting I'd failed to get into!
After the second day of shooting bits of our summer project storyboard,
Stan gave me the tape, and the next evening I returned it to him with
my first draft of editing which lasted 2 minutes. Before capturing
Stan's tape into the computer I noticed some footage in Martyn's camera,
which gave me ideas for a 1-minute video.
The Premiere evening was an obvious occasion for me to give my wife
a superb night out. It did pose the usual question of what should
she wear when she had nothing suitable. I borrowed Martyn's dinner
jacket, and fortunately a nearly new sale for Macmillan Cancer Research
at Wokingham Hospital solved her problem when we found a Laura Ashley
evening dress, which fitted - and she still worried that she was over-dressed
for the occasion! We found space on a table with Stan, Jack and John
Snow, and later Laurie joined us. I discussed the club website with
Laurie and found myself volunteering to join the committee to possibly
take over the maintenance of the website for next season. I already
maintain the website for the Reading Rowing Club where Martyn rows
so another one would help to keep me occupied. This web possibility
started another flood of creative ideas, and even more when I saw
the April newsletter, which prompted me to write this piece and to
plan another describing the making of our summer project. The penultimate
club evening was as stimulating as ever showing some international
films which won IAC awards. Afterwards I woke at 3:30am, my mind buzzing
with more exciting ideas, and I resolved to enter at least one film
for every trophy next season - quite a challenge for someone with
no camera skills.
At the AGM I was welcomed onto the committee and given the role of
Webmaster so I implemented some of my planned revisions within the
week, which were well received. For a club that has added so much
interest and enthusiasm to my life, I hope serving on the committee
and entering every competition next season will contribute
to a thriving club. My ambition is to emulate some of the success
Peter Marsh enjoyed last season.
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