AV News 227 December 2022

Chairman's Chatter

Ian Bateman FRPS, MPAGB, AV-AFIAP APAGB

As I write this, the run-up to Christmas is in full swing with festive displays in shops and Christmas adverts lling up the TV schedules. WNSoft is planning on giving us all a seasonal treat with Version 11 of PTE AV Studio, currently in the Beta testing phase.

If you’ve downloaded the Beta version, you’ll have had the chance to play with the new features such as animated text builds and displacement maps. While these are the two ‘big news’ additions, some of the more subtle tweaks, such as the ability to select the centre of a shape transition by clicking the screen, will be welcomed by many. I’ve already seen some sequences where the new text animations have been used, and they are certainly eyecatching. A note of caution though – as with any special effect, “less is more”, and it will be tempting to over-use these new ones. Not every line of text needs to y across the screen, and not every transition needs to use a displacement map! You will achieve a much greater impact by using these new effects sparingly so don’t go overboard with them!

Outside of PTE, technology to assist us in making AV shows continues to advance. Articial Intelligence has been a buzzword for ages, but recently a whole tranche of new tools have been launched. In photo editing software, new algorithms for removing noise and sharpening soft images have improved these tools dramatically, and by using AI techniques it is even possible to create completely new scenes by typing in your requirements. Not really photography as we know it and a headache for competition organisers in the years ahead.

The audio side has not been forgotten, and new AI developments have brought some new tools into play. Have you ever wanted to use the music from a song but didn’t want the lyrics? Try https://www.notta.ai/en/tools/ online-vocal-remover. This allows you to upload a song (for free, at least at the moment it is…), and the software will magically remove the singer’s voice, leaving just the music. Some songs work better than others, but well worth trying.

Adobe have also launched a new audio tool at https://podcast.adobe.com/ enhance (formerly known as Project Shasta). This allows you to upload a voice recording that may have problems such as background noise and echo, and enhance it to what they describe as “sounding as if it were recorded in a professional studio.” Again, this is free at the time of writing so well worth trying out. Click on the QR Codes below

Left QR Code for Vocal Removal

Right QR Code Adobe Audio Tool

Editor’s Welcome

Alastair Taylor ARPS DPAGB/AV

Welcome to this edition of AV News. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have pulling it together. Thanks to our various contributors. That said, you will nd a number of items written by myself (including a letter to the editor which hopefully will trigger some debate).

The theme of this edition is very much about our return to meeting in person. The National Audio Visual Championship, the Yorkshire AV Day and the joint meeting between the RPS AV Group and our new found friends in the RPS Travel Group which was titled “On the Road Again” were all physical meetings and I know that everyone who attended had a great time. I cannot stress enough the power of seeing AVs on the big screen with big sound.

At the joint meeting with the Travel Group I was particularly struck that my AV Return to Jungle Junction garnered a few laughs from the audience. I was surprised by that as I had never realised that the audience would nd it funny. Talking to Edgar Gibbs afterwards, we worked out that although we had seen it several time on Zoom, we had never seen it on the big screen and the experience, we agreed, shone a different light on the production.

Anyway, enjoy reading AV News. Keeps the articles and letters coming, and may I be the rst to wish you a successful 2023. I hope to see you in person!

The 22nd National Audio Visual Championship 2022

Malcolm Imhoff FRPS FACI(M)

The rst major live AV event since Covid locked everything down, the 22nd in 2022. Was it a success?

The National AV Championship (NAVC) is usually held every two years, but Covid put paid to the 2021 event. The organising team of three, myself, Keith Watson, and "the Boss" Alastair Taylor, were determined that the Nationals, as they are usually known, should happen again after a gap of three years of small screen, lo- sound, and variable quality presentations via Zoom. We missed the human contact and social interaction of a live event. We are all passionate about AV and we were keen to get back to theatre quality projection: Big Screen. Big Sound. Audio Visual as it was meant to be experienced.

We decided on the venue, Leeds Trinity University, which has a large comfortable auditorium, raked seats, massive screen, awesome sound, and a dedicated staff of administrators and technicians who went out of their way to help us at every stage.

After anxious moments worrying about whether we would be supported by enough people entering their work and enough people attending, we had 89 entries, from 57 AV producers, with an encouraging 26 First Time Entrants –over 10 hours of top quality audio visual sequences. This was more than we had time for, but rather than have pre-selection, which nobody likes, we managed to somehow squeeze them all in.

Then events overtook us and we heard of the death of Her Majesty The Queen, so the programme had to be altered. We inserted a lovely portrait of Her Majesty to be shown before the start of each day when we observed two minutes silence and were able to remember and reect on the enormous inuence she has had on all our lives. I also had to re-programme the Friday night show.

To view the NAVC 2022 Programme in full, click on the QR Code or visit:

https://rps.org/media/d45bxjxb/12-navc-2022programme.pdf

Pictured above (left to right): Andrew Gagg, Christine Gagg, Edgar Gibbs, Malcolm Imhoff, Alastair Taylor, Simon Hill (RPS President), Alan Tyrer, Ian Bateman, Sheila Haycox, Keith Watson, Peter Warner.

Pictured below: The Medals and Ribbons and Master of Ceremonies, Peter Warner

The NAVC Organising team and Judges

The 22nd National Audio Visual Championship 2022 continued …

The main competition took place on Saturday and Sunday, but as a "festival fringe event" on the Friday night we took "The Magical Mystery Tour" to Leeds. The "Fab Four", that is John (me), Paul (José Currant), George (Richard Brown), and Ringo (Dave Cooke), who even brought his own drum kit, entertained the audience with an evening of Beatles themed AVs. Was it a day in the life of an AV worker or a hard day's night? Yeah Yeah Yeah!

We held a rafe in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support but there were so many prizes donated that we continued the rafe into the Saturday and Sunday. The star prize was the "Beatles" cake made and donated by Dave Cooke's daughter Diane Curzey ("Di's Sugar 'n' Ice" on Facebook). To date we have raised £265 for Macmillan.

As the person responsible for receiving all the entries, cataloguing and acknowledging their receipt, viewing and proong them to make sure they play all right, and then trying to t a quart into a pint pot to compile the programme for the seven sessions over two days, it was a challenging task.

Photographs courtesy Keith Watson

The 22nd National Audio Visual Championship 2022 continued …

I tried to start each session with a strong sequence which would grab everybody's attention. Documentary and themed AVs were mixed with Photo Harmony, Music, Poetry and Song interpretation sequences. AVs on similar themes were widely separated. I made sure that if people were only attending on one of the days their sequences were shown on that day. I tried to end each session with a light-hearted or humorous AV to send people off to the breaks in a good mood. I also made sure that every session had two or three AVs which, if I had been a judge, I would have given an 'A'.

The judges (pictured below), Alan Tyrer, Sheila Haycox and Ian Bateman (Chairman), all extremely experienced and highly regarded AV producers in their own right, had a most difcult task. In a major competition like this it is right that the AVs should be judged on the day, as seen, on the big screen, with the unforgiving sound. OK the judges may have seen some of the AVs before in other competitions, but as we all know, the temptation to keep "tweaking" our productions and entering updated versions is very common, so what the authors have entered is what was judged. The judges only had one minute between each sequence to reect and make some brief notes. It is a credit to them that they came up with the list of award winners so quickly.

The winner of the Gold Medal, and the National AV Champion, was Judith Kimber from Northern Ireland, with her sequence "Poems for Girls". There is a feature on this outstanding AV later in AV News.

NAVC 2022 Results

NAVC 2022 Popular Audience Vote Results

The most important aspect for many of us was that we watched all these fabulous productions in the company of a live audience, of real people, all our AV friends, feeling and hearing their reactions and sharing in their emotions, joy, wonder, amazement, beauty, sadness and laughter. A lot of laughter.

So was it a success?

You bet! And I really hope that we will have inspired and encouraged other festival organisers to take the plunge and commit to making their competitions a real event, not a "virtual " one.

The NAVC Welcomes the RPS President

Alastair Taylor ARPS DPAGB/AV

With the RPS President Simon Hill HonFRPS living relatively close to Leeds Trinity University, the venue for the 2022 National Audio Visual Championship, we were privileged that he accepted our invitation to attend and to give up his Sunday afternoon to experience the nal session of the championship where he was able to enjoy a good representation of Audio Visual excellence.

He went on to give an address on behalf of the Royal Photography Society before helping to hand out the various awards and prizes to those winners who were attending the event.

We hope that Simon enjoyed his AV experience and found us to be a welcoming and friendly bunch. It was also great that he was able to meet the winner of our last live AV event, specically the 2018 International AV Festival and by chance, a copy of Richard Brown’s wonderful AV production, In Search of Christina was found and played for the benet of Simon as well as an appreciative audience.

This was the rst PRS event which Simon had attended since the announcement of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II just two days before the start of the NAVC. The organisers were able to nd a suitable ofcial picture as a backdrop. We have printed Simons tribute in full.

Well, this has been quite a week, to the extent that until late on Friday, I didn’t know which, if any, RPS events would be cancelled or postponed, including this one. In fact, it transpired this was the least of our problems. As President it was my sincere desire to issue a Statement on behalf of the Society and to write Letters of Condolence to our King and to our Patron. However, for some 24 hours, we didn’t know the correct title of our Patron as this was becoming something of an evolving entity.

On Thursday morning, the Duchess of Cambridge was our Patron but with the announcement of the demise of Her Majesty The Queen that afternoon, by the evening the BBC was reporting that the Duchess of Cambridge had become the Duchess of Cornwall. Very soon after that, it reported that her title was, in fact, the Duchess of Cambridge and Cornwall, while a little later the BBC appeared to switch ‘Cambridge’ and ‘Cornwall’ reporting that her title was actually the Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge.

I gave it an hour or two - no further changes - so I thought it would be safe for me to issue the Statement and write the Letters on behalf of the Society, which I duly did. However, in his Address to the Nation on Friday, the King announced that he was creating William, Prince of Wales, which of course now made the Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge, the Princess of Wales. Having checked this with Kensington Palace, I can conrm that our Patron is now ofcially Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales and our website and literature will be updated as soon as practically possible. The decision of whether or not to cancel events was made somewhat less difcult thanks to guidance we received from the government on Friday morning. The guidance told us that we should not feel obligated to cancel or postpone any of our events. It went on to say that we could, as a mark of respect and in keeping with the tone of National Mourning, hold a period of silence or tribute at the start of events taking place between the announcement of the death of Her Late Majesty and the morning after her State Funeral.

The NAVC Welcomes the RPS President continued ...

As a Royal society, enjoying Royal Patronage, we shall of course continue to maintain the tone of National Mourning until the morning of Tuesday 20 September.

I know you have respectfully held a tribute on each day of this event and, on behalf of the RPS, I thank you for that. Furthermore, I hope that your ‘Beatles’ themed evening on Friday, despite the sombre mood of the Nation, heralded the start of a truly marvellous weekend celebrating the very best in audio visual design and production.

This is the rst RPS event I have attended since the announcement of the demise of Her Late Majesty The Queen, so I thought I would take this opportunity to reect very briey on the historic relationship between the Crown and the Royal Photographic Society.

In the summer of 1851, the ‘Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations’ was held in London. ‘The Great Exhibition’ - as it became knownwas organised under the Presidency of HRH The Prince Albert and beneted from the astute management of Henry Cole, the designer credited with the introduction of the rst Christmas card in 1843.

The Great Exhibition became a symbol of Britain’s ‘Golden Years’, showcasing the cultural and technological achievements of the mid-Victorian era. Visited by six million people - equivalent to a third of the population of Britain at that time - exhibits included ‘Bakewell’s image telegraph’ (a precursor of the modern fax machine); the ‘Tempest Prognosticator’

(a barometer using leeches); and the modern pay toilet, with over 800,000 visitors paying one penny for the privilege and in so doing coining the expression, “Spending a penny!”

Inspired by this celebration of art and science, in the winter of 1851 a group of “gentlemen photographers” formed a committee to consider how they might establish a society devoted to promoting the art and science of photography. The following year, their exhibition enjoyed such enormous success that, on 20 January 1853, they founded the ‘Photographic Society of London’ with Sir Charles Eastlake as its rst President. Despite the founding committee being formed of “gentlemen photographers”, from its inception the Society has been open to anyone interested in photography and today, quite rightly, “an interest in photography” remains the only requirement for membership.

From these Victorian beginnings, the Society grew from strength to strength. Such was their interest in photography, Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, became the rst in a long line of Royal Patrons although it was not until 1894 that our Society became known as The ‘Royal’ Photographic Society of Great Britain despite having received Royal patronage some 40 years earlier.

From our founding in 1853, we have enjoyed a long and unbroken line of Royal Patrons which has included three queens: Queen Victoria, Queen Alexandra and Queen Elizabeth II. All were accomplished photographers with Queen Alexandra being the most celebrated royal photographer of her time. In 1952, following the death of her father, King George VI, the young Queen Elizabeth II became Patron of the Society and remained our Patron for 67 years. During that time, following a Petition made by the Society, Her Late Majesty was pleased to grant a Charter of Incorporation to the Society on 27 July 2004.

In 2019, Queen Elizabeth II passed the Patronage to the, then, Duchess of Cambridge who is an accomplished photographer and an incredibly enthusiastic supporter of the Society. Very soon, I look forward to announcing a new RPS initiative arranged with the support of Kensington Palace. I know my predecessor and AV Group member, Robert Albright, had the pleasure of meeting the Duchess in 2020; and I had that same pleasure at the opening of the RPS ‘Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors’ exhibition which opened in London late last year. Now, as The Princess of Wales, and with the inevitable expansion of her duties, we sincerely hope that Her Royal Highness will remain our Patron for many years to come

The NAVC Welcomes the RPS President continued ...

In a lighter moment, Simon reected upon The Magical Mystery Tour evening with something of a Beatles themed masterpiece. You need to read this from end to end to discover what a linguistic genius (and Beatles Fan) our President is! We were so very grateful that Simon was able to nd the RPS AV Group some time in what we know is a very busy schedule. Thank you Simon.

I’d like to conclude these few words in the spirit of the [Magical Mystery Tour] of your ‘Beatles’ themed event of Friday evening which was, by all accounts, [A Hard Day’s Night]. Into these closing remarks, I’m going to mix the titles of several Beatles songs and I’d like to see how many of them you can spot. I really hope that you don’t think this is being at all disrespectful of [Her Majesty]. OK, so there’s one, and quite topical too - no, [Wait] - there’s already been four Beatle’s songs in this one paragraph!

I hope you are keeping count.

So, to nish then in case any of you have a [Ticket to Ride] somewhere - I won’t speak for [Long, Long, Long] but [I Will] include a few words more than, simply, [Hello, Goodbye]. Now, if I begin to struggle to nd [The Word] please [Help] me, don’t let anyone say [You Can’t Do That], just [Act Naturally], [Think for Yourself] and say [Something]. OK, how many now? Are you still counting? [With a Little Help from My Friends] I’ll get through this. [Don’t Let Me Down], [I Need You] to listen out for those song titles; think to yourself, [All I’ve Got To Do] is spot the song titles - Don’t [Ask Me Why] or say to yourself [I’m So Tired], just [Let It Be].

Thank you for inviting me to say a few words ahead of presenting the awards as we approach [The End] of this 22nd National Audio Visual Championships. [Yes It Is], amazingly, the 22nd iteration of this event. I am grateful to the AV Group Treasurer, Alastair Taylor - who appears to be [Here, There and Everywhere] - for inviting me to present the awards this afternoon. He really does need to [Slow Down]; although some say he’s the [Bad Boy] of the AV Group, he’s denitely not a [Nowhere Man]. [This Boy] would denitely be the ‘go to’ guy’ [If I Needed Someone] [In My Life] - just the [Two of Us].

I would very much have liked to have come to see the AV presentations [Yesterday] although I appreciate the event started [The Night Before] but [I Want to Tell You] its been somewhat hectic for the past few days. [There’s A Place] in Bristol - I’m talking about RPS House - and [What Goes On] there … no, I mustn’t … [I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party]. Really, if you knew, you’d want to [Run For Your Life] because at the moment, we could all do with working [Eight Days a Week] just to get the new CRM System over the line. [It’s All Too Much]; far more than simply [Fixing a Hole] but [I’ve Got a Feeling] [We Can Work It Out]. [Oh Darling], I just hope we don’t sink like a [Yellow Submarine].

When you get home - and [When I Get Home] - I hope you’ll remember the [Things We Said Today] - [Every Little Thing] - and hopefully you won’t come to the conclusion that [I Should Have Known Better]. So, how many songs? [All Together Now] [Song titles shown in square brackets] Answer: 50

NAVC 2022 Champion

Judith Kimber FRPS, MPAGB

Poems for Girls

Poems for Girls’ grew from a concept built around two teenaged girls from contrasting historical eras. I wanted to show something of the differing challenges that they experienced in their lives, and I used a little anthology from the 1920s, One Hundred Poems for Girls, to draw these into focus. My location was an English Heritage property, Walnut Tree Cottage in Cambridgeshire, and working within the terms of our contract was my own personal challenge. We had just one hour to complete the whole shoot, and the sunshine that had been forecast turned to rain halfway through, leading to a lot of last-minute improvisation! The sequence relies heavily on the skills of my niece Daisy, who acted both roles, created the notebooks and drew the title slides for me.

My hope is that viewers might connect with the feelings of one or both girls, who are gments of my imagination but also representative of so many of their peers.

All Photographs courtesy Judith Kimber

NAVC 2022 Runner Up

Richard Brown FRPS FIPF FACI(M) APAGB EFIAP

Denis Thorpe: The Final Frame

Keith Brown had mentioned to me several times over the years that he was friendly with the retired Guardian photographer Denis Thorpe and what a great character and raconteur he is. I suggested to Keith that it would be good to interview him as an oral history project. I discovered one particular picture Denis had taken which I thought would be a good basis for the talk. When Denis produced lots of other related photographs and material on our visit, the idea quickly developed into an AV sequence.

NAVC 2022 Third Place

Cathy Fordham CPAGB/AV

Snail Mail

Imagine someone writing to David Hockney asking if they can paint in his style to make an AV and he says “yes”. Then imagine a sort of friendship that springs up between these two people as they write to each other via the old “snail mail” method. Well, that’s what I did, I imagined that friendship and had a lot of fun with it. It also conveniently provided a vehicle to use the song I had received in the Exmouth Music Swap. Each member in the AV group sends a piece of music or song in and then they are given one back to use in an AV. I received “Blue Red And Grey” sung by Pete Townshend of The Who. I hadn’t heard it before and loved its quirkiness. A quirky song deserved a quirky treatment and that became my aim.

Before long, two characters were evolving via the use of two different styles of handwriting and the “envelopes” they used. David Hockney’s envelopes had the pattern of his cap as the background and the female had oral linen. He was based in Bridlington, Yorkshire (as he had been in real life). She resided in

South Gloucestershire. I was aiming for difference between Northerners and Southerners. He had seagulls as background noise as he “wrote” and she had blackbirds.

Music next: Playing in the background of his letters were ukulele and brass bands of the north and for her, classical music and opera. I wanted this to be fun so make no apologies for stereotyping.

Then there were the stamps, the “his” and “hers” ones that were an indication of where they lived. He had seaside related images, she, owers. Let’s not mention the stamp from across the channel though, ( lest it spark an international incident). Old brooches were used for all of the stamps. Some I already had, others were sourced on Ebay or in charity shops.

I found myself looking at Hockney’s paintings of Sledmere, The Wolds, Garrowby Hill etc, all places near to where I lived my teenage years so school memories of that time crept into the AV. Gradually a story was evolving. However, I still did not have a placement for the song from the music swap and no real ending

Sometimes you are handed something out of the blue that is too good to believe and that happened to me the day I found a photo online of David wearing a stylish coat and scarf. I have always loved the way he dresses and sat wondering why someone hadn’t asked him to adjust the scarf before the photo was taken but here’s the thing I was in my kitchen and my tea towels are red and white just like his scarf. That photo was begging to be used and who was I to refuse? Gradually an idea formulated for the end of the AV.

And the song from the music swap? I put it near the end.

I preceded it with the sound of a champagne cork popping (such a joyous and celebratory noise). That in turn is followed by my music swap song. It’s jolly and I tted it to images of his work. My favourites are the images of rain hitting water and the way he depicts the ripples…….. Oh, and the reections on water.

So there you have it: The idea(s) behind, and the making of “ Snail Mail ”.

NAVC Best First Time Entry

Tim Harvey Itinerant Magpie

The origins of this sequence go back around 20 years when I rst came up with the anagram (Olaf Pirol/April Fool) and produced some of the artworks used in the sequence. However, it wasn’t until the lockdown of early 2021 that I started to map out a life story for Pirol, inspired by the lives of many 20th century artists. I wanted to create a vaguely plausible story, with ction tied into real events, including those in the lives of Picasso, Dali and Kandinsky whose art inspires much of the sequence. One of my favourite authors is Robert Harris, whose books are interwoven with real events in history, and I also love the spoof BBC y on the wall documentaries on the life of musician Brian Pern, so I drew on them when I was putting the sequence together.

As well as having fun creating (and naming) the artworks, one of the joys of producing the sequence was in expanding my Photoshop skills: adding Pirol’s paintings to real art galleries, the Taschen book on his life to a display.

I photographed in Waterstones, the spy books that he wrote when his father cut off his allowance and the fake newspaper front page (the ‘Daily Newt’…). For those interested in ‘Easter eggs’ there are also a few of those scattered around.

Pirol is ultimately a tragic character, his life a series of disasters (many of his own making), striving to be original but always ending up several years behind the trends in the art world. Ironically, in that respect my sequence is merely following in the tradition of many of the TV comedy greats!

The RPS Great Yorkshire AV Day

Sunday 6 November 2022

It was great to be back at the Leeds Trinity University, for the RPS Great Yorkshire AV Day, a place which the AV Group loves on account of its huge screen and great sound system. It was the usual format of members AV sequences for review in the morning and a key note speaker in the afternoon.

Tim Harvey reports ...

Above: Bryan Stubbs and Tony Collinson in action.

Left: Leeds Trinity University makes the point that it “loves” us being there

Right: A big thumbs up from the audience. It was great to be back together doing what we all love to do. Live AV with a big screen and big sound.

Images courtesy Howard Bagshaw and Alastair Taylor

As we know, you can wait an age for a bus and then two turn up at once. The same seems to be in play when it comes to AV events here in Leeds. Hot on the heels of the National AV Championship back in September was the return (after a gap of three years due to ’you know what’) of the Great Yorkshire AV Day. As always it was held at the wonderful Leeds Trinity University campus, organised by the usual team of Bryan Stubbs (complete with distinctive designer jacket), Tony Collinson and Keith Scott.

Despite ongoing concerns over trailing cables, and a short feedback glitch with the microphone during the afternoon session, the event went off very smoothly, with the audience of 60 or so enjoying a full day of high-quality AV. The morning session, hosted by master of the stopwatch Keith Scott, provided everyone with a chance to share sequences and get feedback. Due to time constraints a couple of submitted sequences had to be omitted, (Bryan promised they would be top of list for the next event) but this still left time for 13 AVs to be viewed, and due to Keith’s timekeeping, this was completed three minutes early (something that rarely happens with buses!)

The sequences transported us far and wide, from Lincoln and Teesdale in the UK, to Bhutan, Denmark, Egypt, Italy, Poland and Zanzibar. We had two very different illustrated songs, alongside the adventures of George the Knight, the Venice Biennale art exhibition and an entirely ctional art heist.

We learnt of Steampunks and drifting sands, why the castles on Lake Garda are all on one side of the lake, how Abu Simbel got its name, and the birthplace of Freddie Mercury.

The RPS Great Yorkshire AV Day continued

After Betty and Barbara’s magnicent buffet lunch, the afternoon session was allocated to Keith Leedham (who had originally been booked for April 2020) and provided him with an opportunity to share a wide variety of AVs with an appreciative audience.

Keith is a master of the soundtrack, which in many instances comes before the images, and his sequences demonstrated a wide range of techniques.

Key amongst these is nding a voice – often not Keith’s, with several sequences using more than one to great effect – alongside a mixture of appropriate music and sound effects. He showed us several collaborative AVs while others used bespoke or existing poetry and in the case of To The Editor a script that came from the internet.

The combination of the soundtrack and images created a wonderful chilling atmosphere in both The Inn on the Pass and The Assignment, really bringing out their supernatural themes. Keith’s most successful competition entry, the powerful For the Sake of Example told the tragic tale of those solders executed at dawn for desertion, while another moving story from Norfolk Island (1000 miles from New Zealand) covered prisoners executed for mutiny, such as 21 year old William McGullock.

Closer to home, we were treated to A Birthday Gift in the form of a humorous visit to Bluewater shopping centre that contained some wonderful candid photography, while To The Editor cleverly illustrated a comic tale of unrequited love.

Keith’s natural history photography came to the fore in both versions of his Waiting Game sequence, illustrating the forward planning, patience and ingenuity required to put together an AV of this nature; the caveat being that even the best laid plans can come to naught if the nest fails to attract any tenants.

The presentation ended with a beautiful tribute to Keith’s wife Marilyn, who sadly died last year, showcasing her singing against a series of portraits taken by Keith.

Bryan ended the afternoon with the hope that there will be two more AV Days in 2023, but he would welcome some feedback on the format and suggestions for content.

On the Road Again with the RPS Travel and AV Groups

What a great new venture when the RPS Travel and AV Groups came together for a joint event on Saturday 15th of October! It is evident that AV workers have much to learn from travel photographers and vice versa. We hope we can keep this productive relationship alive. Several members of the AV Group attended the event. Laura Morgan LRPS from the Travel Group shares her impressions of the weekend.

Iceland, India, Romania, London and Jerusalem, sadly not my 2023 travel itinerary, rather the visually exciting destinations we were introduced to at the Travel Group’s “On the Road Again” weekend at Aston Conference Centre in Birmingham. The committee chose an excellent venue; the programme was varied and interesting and the speakers inspiring.

Dr Peter Walmsley, member of the Travel Group and an RPS trustee, lived and worked in Delhi for two years and took full advantage, visiting and photographing over 40 different locations across the country. A sense of place is important in Travel Photography as Janey Devine made clear in her session about preparing for A and F panels and Peter certainly illustrated this. Images of people at home, work and following religious practice and explorations of diverse landscapes gave us a real sense of the India he encountered. Using local xers to facilitate his interactions he met people from all walks of life. He also explained his personal attitude to risk taking in the eld and how how he approaches people when photographing them.

How to display and share our travel photography in new ways is a challenge and Alastair Taylor of the RPS AV Group gave us insight into how we could combine still images with music, narration and video to create different experiences for the viewer. Ranging from Photo Harmony (pairing images with appropriate music) to more complex documentaries he demonstrated how our images could be made even more exciting. He showed many examples and “Dark Tourism” was a particularly affecting piece. Alastair will be running online workshops about the skills and techniques required and encouraged travel group members to get involved.

We saw images from two recent group trips to Iceland, some stunning landscapes were created by the members and there were also images of the groups in action as well as photographs of the the people they met. The presentation showed how much fun Travel Group trips are and we heard how supportive everyone is of each other. Two are planned for next year one is to Vietnam and one to Provence. I believe they are selling fast!

I’m planning to work on an A panel so advice from Janey Devine (who is on the Travel Distinctions Panel) about the process and recent changes thereto was very useful. She made clear the challenge of moving from L to A and then the even bigger step up to F. Examples of successful A panels from Kath Phillips and Justin Cliffe were on display and they each described how they’d approached the task, both highlighting how useful - if not essentialattending assessments and seeking one-to-one reviews are in nalising a panel. Their personal experiences of creating a Statement of Intent and how it might evolve over time was echoed by Janey in her talk. I liked too how they all emphasised that while there is a dened process and specic criteria to follow, photographers should remain true to themselves.

The standard of work required for a successful F panel was evident in Paul Hassell’s images of his visits to rural Romania. I’ve travelled there and could see how well he connected with the villagers and families he met and was lucky to win in the rafe one of his landscapes from the trips. Whereas panels may take many visits and even years to develop, Paul was there only twice and like Peter explained how useful having a local guide is.

The popular “Bring a Print” competition displayed a diverse range of subjects and places and the standard was, as always, very high. Judy Ford’s superb winning image of a Romanian woman was a beautifully observed environmental portrait with a touch of humour and a deserved winner.

We had plenty time to socialise and took full advantage of sharing stories and ideas at the bar and over dinner. I met some new friends and had a really wonderful weekend. I won’t say much about Sunday’s photo-walks as they will be covered elsewhere but I was genuinely inspired and excited by Stewart Walls’ ideas. His Ginko Walk involving thoughtful engagement with the environment and subject matter before making an image and then pairing it with a piece of Haiku is something I have taken away and will put into practice.

Many thanks to Kath and the team for a really well organised and entertaining weekend.

Which is better?

Early Bird or Tail -End Charlie ...

Back in the 1980s it became a bit of a standing joke that Norman Veale, who enjoyed great success in festivals at that time, always seemed to have his entry shown in the last session of any event. So much so that some people started referring to it as the “Norman Veale session”. Later on, when this trend was less noticeable, the joke was that the quality of Norman’s work was obviously in decline because he could no longer get into his own session! There was a certain amount of friendly banter about people wanting their entry to be shown as late as possible because they thought it gave them a better chance of winning a prize.

In fact, there is a good basis in psychological research to suggest that having your sequence shown later in the programme is an advantage. The phenomenon known as recency bias indicates that things experienced towards the end of a series tend to be remembered more favourably afterwards.

For years I’ve been threatening to compile an analysis to see whether there really is any evidence of recency bias in major AV competitions. Lockdown boredom nally prompted me to do it. Looking through past programmes for the two major RPS festivals I charted in which session the winning sequence had been shown.

In the 24 International AV Festivals held, the top sequence was shown during the nal session nine times. Including, appropriately enough, Norman’s own winner in 1984. This is a considerably better performance than pure chance would give. Interestingly, on two occasions the winner was the very last sequence to be shown. By contrast, only two winning entries have ever emerged from the rst session, in 1976 and 1990. So on that evidence you might think that perhaps the Norman Veale effect is real.

But before you start lobbying the organisers to get your entry placed later in the programme, let’s look at the same results from the National AV Championships. In the 22 events held, the top sequence has come from the last session only twice, in 1983 and 2013. Whereas four of the winners have been shown in session one.

Of course, all of this is just a bit of fun. For one thing, particularly in the Nationals, the nal session has sometimes had fewer sequences than the others, which would have to be taken into account in a proper statistical analysis. Also, there’s an underlying assumption that the positioning of the sequences is random, which of course it isn’t. Working out the running order for a festival is a notoriously tricky undertaking. It’s possible that the organisers will have a tendency, consciously or otherwise, to place what they perceive as the lower or higher quality entries in certain positions in the programme and there’s no way of knowing what those biases might be. Even then there’s no guarantee that the jury’s view of which are the better sequences will be the same.

As it happens, my own RPS International winner in 2018 was shown in the second session out of seven. So perhaps I won’t worry too much in future if I open my programme at an event and see that I’m on early!

Pictured Left: Richard holds the refurbished board showing winners of the International Audio Visual Festival.

Below: Richard’s Wilkinson Cameras Pro Master Kit won at the 2022 NAVC

An interview with Jenny Gee

LRPS DPAGB/AV and Malcolm

Gee ARPS DPAGB/AV

Just like so many other teenagers growing up in the early 1960s, we both ‘inherited’ simple B&W lm cameras from our fathers, and took ‘snaps’ of friends and family. One of Malcolm’s neighbours lent him some back copies of the Amateur Photographer magazine, and a more serious interest in photography was sparked.

East Anglian Audio Visual Adventures

Malcolm bought an Olympus PenS 35mm half-frame camera, and took it with him when he went on a student exchange to Wageningen University in The Netherlands, to document the trip.

We still have the camera, but sadly the Agfa slides have discoloured beyond retrieval.

How did you get involved in AV. What was your rst experience and what was it that attracted you?

Our paths crossed in the mid 1960s, when Malcolm got a job in the same laboratory as Jenny. Working conditions were cramped, and Jenny offered to share her desk with him. Over lunch times, Malcolm showed her the images from his Dutch trip, and friendship developed and we started to go out together. He booked tickets for a Kodak Road Show in Reading Town Hall, hosted by Alfred Gregory, the mountaineer and lead photographer on the successful conquest of Mount Everest in 1953. This early Kodak audio-visual presentation featured two manually operated and synchronised Aldis 1000 slide projectors, and hi- quality stereo sound.

Needless to say both of us were impressed and inspired, and thought how great it would be to try and emulate what we had seen using our own images. Our friendship, as we discovered common interests, blossomed into romance, so when Malcolm moved to Cambridge, Jenny joined him for weekends, staying in a spare attic bedroom in his digs, and exploring and photographing the city together. On one rather special Saturday we got engaged. Eighteen months later, the Cambridge laboratory was relocated to Norwich, we were married, and Jenny got a job there too.

Our sequence, Cambridge Remembered, made over forty-ve years later using scans of the original half-frame slides, tells the story!

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

Our photography has always been focussed on AV production, and although we had very little spare time during our working lives, we jotted down ideas for potential sequences and continually added to our ever-expanding library of slides. In the late 1970s, we started to attend the Audio Visual Show, held annually at the Wembley Conference Centre. All the professional producers were present, companies like Sarner Audio Visual, Kodak and Hasselblad. The sequences we saw there made a lasting impression on us, and reinforced our determination to get seriously into AV production as soon as time allowed.

Government cut backs in the late 1980s resulted in the group in which Malcolm worked being shut down, and he was made redundant. He decided to do a two year full time OND course in Design Photography, and subsequently set up his own small business, mainly doing tourism, stock photography and working for building rms recording progress at their sites, both on the ground and from the air. Jenny meanwhile continued at the Institute of Food Research, and we both retired in the mid 2000s. However, with parents becoming more and more dependent on us, spare time was still at a premium until several years later, when they had sadly passed on. Even now, there are never enough hours in a day, but digital AV production has certainly eased things considerably, and our Kodak Carousel projectors, Tandberg 3-track tape recorder and Imatronic dissolve unit have been consigned to a cupboard.

Do you think that living where you do, on the edge of the country as it were, this inuences your working?

Norfolk has been our home for over half a century, and living just north west of Norwich, we’re very fortunate in having some beautiful and varied scenery, like the Broads National Park and the North Norfolk Coast, on our doorstep. The hours we’ve spent exploring the area and it’s traditions have provided the stories behind several of our sequences, and there are still more to tell! We got to know Eric, the marsh man, well over many years, resulting in our AV Eric all about his very traditional way of life in the northern Norfolk Broads. Delving more into the history of How Hill, where he worked, led to a recent sequence about the largest thatched roofed house in the area (A Breath of Fresh Air), and an opportunity to sail in a Norfolk Wherry led to another (The Old Fashioned Way).

This part of the country was also home to large numbers of British and American servicemen in WW2, and is dotted with remnants of airelds. Nowadays only a few active air bases remain, but up until twenty years ago summer air shows were quite common, and our love of aviation took us to many to photograph the spectacular displays. The Red Arrows often graced these shows and we took every opportunity to gather images with a sequence in mind. Tickets to a ‘Families Day’ at RAF Coltishall in May 1979 provided a perfect opportunity to get the ground shots and sound recordings we needed and Vintage Reds was the result.

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

Using every opportunity, outbound and return holiday ights, often from Norwich Airport, have provided some interesting aerial views to incorporate into our sequences (see AV News Issue 223). However, for Shifting Shores we had more specic ideas in mind, and a friend put us in touch with a pilot who kindly took us up for a ight in a suitable aircraft, looking down on the North Norfolk Coast. This required a lot of planning to get perfect shooting conditions, but after eight unsuccessful attempts, everything was in our favour, and we achieved what we wanted.

With our nearest AV Group down in Essex, we don’t have many other AV workers close by. However, some years ago, we were fortunate to meet and get to know Brian Harvey, who lives nearby. We’ve become good friends and often meet to have a cuppa and a chat, and show each other our latest productions. Both Brian and our friends down in Essex have been most helpful guiding us through the transition to digital production, and we’ve valued the very constructive criticism from Linda and Edgar Gibbs over the years. The late Howard Gregory was also a fountain of knowledge on sound matters, and we still have and use one of his microphone pre-ampliers. It’s said that ‘experience is the sum total of all your mistakes’, and particularly in the early days we made some terrible mistakes!

How would you describe your own style of AV making?

Documenting our experiences has always been our objective, trying to put some soul into what we produce, and communicate this to others with a personal touch. It can take the form of a straight documentary or a photo harmony sequence. For example, over the past twenty years we’ve spent a lot of time in the Swiss Bernese Oberland, in all seasons. At a very early stage we decided to produce a sequence about this small region in the spring; a project that took many years to complete given the ckleness of the mountain weather! We love this part of the world, and overall our experiences have so far generated two documentaries (In the Oberland and A Dream in White) and two photo harmonies (Alpine Seasons and Mountain Magic). We much enjoy travelling, and are always on the look out for possible sequences when visiting other European countries. We usually take a reasonably comprehensive photographic kit with us, now digital Olympus, and with all the planning and research holidays are more like expeditions! Unfortunately this is something that has sadly been on the back burner for a couple of years due to the pandemic. However, with a library of eight ling cabinet drawers, full of hanging wallets containing 35mm and 6x6cm colour slides, covering a wide variety of subjects, we have quite a comprehensive and historic collection to dip into!

We really enjoy watching good documentaries on TV; it’s taught us a lot about structure, content and pacing, as well as suitable background music at the right level. Some dramas, particularly those produced by other European countries aired on BBC4 and Channel 4 and subtitled, have very innovative introductions, which are both beautiful and intriguing to watch. You nd yourself thinking that’s a novel idea, and asking how did they do that?

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

As a "duo" who does what when it comes to AV making?

Initially we both had Olympus 35mm half-frame cameras, to economise on lm and processing costs! However, we soon found we were taking very similar shots, and in the mid-70s we decided to consolidate into a single Olympus 35mm full frame outt (the original OM-1 System), which is all still fully functional nearly 50 years later! In the days of lm, manual focus and exposure, when shooting for our Red Arrows sequence, teamwork was a distinct advantage. To capture the synchro-pair aircraft crossing, we made a remote electrical shutter release, so that Malcolm could pan the camera on a single aircraft with Jenny anticipating ‘the cross over’, and releasing the shutter at the critical moment! When photographing less mobile targets, the use of a tripod let both of us view potential images, and discuss the framing before releasing the shutter. Now, digital photography allows us to take shots, instantly check them on the rear camera screen, and re-take them if necessary. Image stabilisation and ability to crop means that the tripod comes out less frequently today, but it can be very useful at times.

Malcolm scans lm transparencies, using a Nikon scanner, and does the processing of RAW digital image les. The rest of the post-processing is done together. With an excellent quality scanner and using Topaz software, we’ve found it perfectly possible to integrate both lm and digital images into a sequence.

Our experiences at the Audio Visual Shows in London in the 1970s, led us to appreciate the importance of a very good sound soundtrack, especially as regards the choice of music and its power to create a mood. This is something that we have striven to achieve from the outset. Music is very much a part of our lives, and there’s always something playing when we’re at home, either on the radio or the hi-. We have very broad and similar tastes in music and, over sixty-four years, have built up an extensive library of about 1000 recordings, on LPs, CDs and on tapes and minidiscs. This provides us with a wealth of clips for soundtracks, and we are still adding to it! For instance, the soundtrack of our sequence Lifeline has 23 clips from 7 different musical sources, including less well known parts of a Bond movie score by John Barry, and some early electronic music by Delia Derbyshire, recorded from a radio broadcast of a BBC Promenade concert.

Script writing is initiated by Jenny, and generally goes through many, many iterations to rene it, and make it both easy to deliver and to listen to, before we are both satised. Our bedroom, at the back of the house, is converted into a mini studio to record the commentary, with Jenny at the microphone and Malcolm operating the equipment. It’s done in clips and constantly reviewed and repeated, until we are happy with the results. We prefer to record our own sound effects wherever possible, and this generally involves both of us; Jenny holding and aiming the microphone connected by a long cable to the recorder, operated by Malcolm. It can be quite challenging in order to get levels correct and avoid capturing extraneous sounds, but adds to the fun and satisfaction we get from doing it. As with the images, we’ve been gathering sound effects for sequences over many years. Being very aware of the importance of good quality sound, we initially invested in a Sony Professional Walkman stereo cassette tape recorder, and more recently graduated to a Sony PCM-M10 digital recorder.

Jenny prepares and edits the soundtrack in Adobe Audition software, combining the music clips and commentary, and adding sound effects where appropriate, to enhance the overall mood and atmosphere. This is then imported into PTE AV Studio with the images, to produce the nal sequence that blends all the elements together. Throughout the process, we are always bouncing ideas off one another as work proceeds, so from start to nish AV production is very much a joint effort.

All pictures in this article, except that on page 30, courtesy Jenny and Malcolm

Pictured left: Jenny’s Audio Visual Work Station

Gee .

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

Do you ever disagree?

Married for over 50 years we have always enjoyed doing everything together, and are very fortunate in sharing many interests. We’ve never had any problems as regards reaching a consensus on what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps the fact that we met one another through our jobs in the same scientic research group helps. That was the beginning of an enduring partnership.

Of your own AV productions, which ones are you proud of and why?

Our rst real success came with Cambridge Remembered, a personal experience very close to our hearts. It won us a Silver medal at the 2013 Great Northern Festival. The images, all shot on a 35mm half-frame camera in the late 1960s are a testimony to the quality of Kodak’s Kodachrome and Ektachrome lms and the lens on the Olympus Pen camera. Years later, a chance conversation in the car, on the way home from a weekend away, triggered the idea for a sequence using our library of slides from that period, and by the end of the journey we had a title and a basic structure for the AV!

‘Eric’, is another sequence that has done quite well, and means a lot to us.

More recently, we are very proud of Lifeline, all about the importance of the role of the Hurtigruten (express) ferry service along the northern Norwegian coast in winter. To date it’s been our most successful sequence, gaining us an award in 11 out of the 14 competitions in which it’s been entered, including a PAGB Bronze Medal, 2 Silver Medals and a FIAP Gold Medal.

Funnily enough, it really only happened by chance. A local travel company sent us an invitation in the post, to hear more about the Hurtigruten over afternoon tea in a Norwich store, it resulted in us making the trip to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary! We ew directly from Norwich to Tromso in the Arctic Circle in March 2018, to make the return journey on the MS ‘Nordlys’ to the North Cape and back. The idea of a sequence became immediately apparent, and we quickly gathered information after boarding the ship, and carefully planned pretty much every waking moment of the voyage to maximise opportunities for photography. It was extremely cold (minus 19C in Kirkenes at midday), and we couldn’t spend more than about 10-15 minutes out on deck at a time, before having to go inside and quickly warm up! We’re very glad we worked hard to document it so thoroughly. It turned out to be a unique and memorable experience, and others seem to enjoy sharing it with us through the power of AV.

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

What do you want to see in a great AV production?

To our minds a great AV production has rst and foremost really good original, creative and relevant photography. The accompanying soundtrack should be balanced, with appropriate music and/or sound effects at the right level, to complement the images. Smooth ow is very important, as is conveying a message to the viewer. Strong story telling can be entirely visual, or through an added commentary, but the latter needs to be delivered in a conversational style to engage the viewer. In a nutshell, all the elements should blend harmoniously, with attention to detail throughout, enhancing the overall experience.

Who is inspiring you at the moment? Of the current AV workers, who do you particularly like?

We have certainly learnt an awful lot from viewing other people’s productions. We’ve particularly enjoyed Graham Sergeant’s probing and gritty documentaries on social issues. A few years ago we got to know him quite well chatting over dinner, and his recent death is a sad loss to the AV community. Early on we were intrigued by some of the transitions Colin Balls managed to achieve, and we have always been very impressed by Keith Leedham’s work, especially the very slow creative dissolves and subtle soundtracks. Martin Fry has also made some beautiful documentaries and photo harmonies, which we’ve admired. Very recently, Derrick Holliday has produced a couple of memorable sequences in Reconciliation, all about Coventry Cathedral, and Playtime with it’s exquisite images of horses.

Since becoming much more involved in the AV scene over the past fourteen years, we’ve tried to participate in as many AV events as possible. We have learnt such a lot, and have made so many friends here in the UK and abroad, something that we value greatly especially living in an area of the country where AV workers are few and far between.

Pictured Left: Malcolm and Jenny performing at the RPS Yorkshire AV Day in 2016. Image courtesy John Smith.

Dear Editor,

Congratulations on producing another superb AV News - it just seems to get better and better. Mensa Printers are doing a great job also.

I have only read three articles : your excellent interview with Keith Leedham, so many things I didn't know and a very interesting read and it has prompted me to phone him soon.

Richard’s Brown's Lore. It is great to revive it. Richard always writes an interesting thought provoking article.

And nally thank you for APT 22 and for contacting Carla and Francesca. I knew it would be an interesting story and I love the cover and centre spread. The AV really moved me and I could identify with the story after losing Kate.

Have a good summer and see you at The Nationals.

Thank you. Keith

Pictured Below: Keith Brown nds his inner Beatle at the 2022 NAVC

The Letters Page continued ...

Dear Editor,

Is the editor allowed to send a letter to the editor? Well he has and it is up to the editor to either accept or decline the contribution.

The point of my letter concerns AV competitions and whether the AV community should revisit the nature of these.

As the chair of the recent National Audio Visual Championship, there was more than one entrant who had to be pressed to make an entry because simply “they didn't feel they were good enough”. I understand their sentiment and in the past have thought the same. You have to have a chance of some success don’t you?

There are plenty of competitions, (club, regional, national and international) which we can enter and they are a great way of showcasing a very broad range of AV productions. However I am beginning to wonder if the rules of some of these competitions are now stiing opportunities.

I have always been a fan of regional competitions such as those held by a number of the PAGB Federations. These are a great way and a real benet is that the judge will usually provide feedback which is invaluable if you are just starting out. These events seem to attract AV workers who do not enter the more high prole competitions, championship and festivals. That said, if you are in a region where there is an especially strong AV worker, you might not walk away with the silverware but at least you are in with a chance of some sort of judges mention and some feedback.

Are AV Competitions t for purpose?

Our move to more on-line meetings of AV Groups has not helped either. If a club with a signicant on-line membership is permitted to enter a regional competition (because they are located in the region), this means that an entrant from absolutely anywhere n the world can enter. If that is permitted within the rules, then ne, but does it mean that the more regional AV workers are more likely to stand back from entering the competition? Does it serve the AV community poorly if these opportunities are lost? I think so.

I know that in club photography, there are moves to make it a rule that the competition entrant must live in the region and regularly attend the club and that seems fair to me. Just imagine if a successful national photographer, joined a range of camera clubs just to score wins. However, our much smaller AV community has to operate beyond regions if it is to succeed so for me, all of this presents a real dilemma.

In my own case, I choose to exercise a bit of self control when it comes to entering competitions but that is jut the way I am I suppose.

Is there another way forward? I am not suggesting leagues (as in sport) although in some way we do operate a system where someone can enter as a novice or rst time entrant and the Great Northern “New Horizons” is an excellent initiative in this respect. Do we need Novice, Intermediate and Advanced sections and if so how would we make that work? Challenging!

I rather like the idea of themed competitions. The South African events around water, air, light, emotion glass, etc. have been a great success and really challenge AV workers to think up something new and different. The 321 is another excellent concept. Perhaps within the bigger competitions we could have more sub themes such as the interpretation of a song, humour, documentary, travel, nature, etc. I think this is more achievable although it does put extra pressure on the judges and organisers but it is more encouraging, for example for someone who does a great job of interpreting a song but would not necessarily do well overall (although they might)

During the lockdown of 2020, I ran a Beatles themed competition, completely on-line, which was very well received so perhaps themed events have a future and quite frankly, if the winner is from Timbuktu, that is absolutely ne.

So in my view, we are at a crossroads when it comes to competitions and I feel we must do more to make them accessible for all with more opportunities to gain feedback and enjoy success.

I hope that my letter sparks some feedback and comment from AV friends around the world. Please write your letters to the editor of AV News

Best wishes, Alastair

Martin Fry ’s Surprise 50 Year Celebration at CCC

Richard McCleery - Chair of Cheltenham Camera Club

Martin Fry, well known in AV circles, furthered an early interest in photography by joining Cheltenham Camera Club (CCC) as a schoolboy in 1972. In 2022 he was due to reach a 50-year anniversary at Cheltenham. As arguably one of our most active, successful and awarded members in our club’s 157-year history, we felt it appropriate to nd a good way to celebrate Martin’s time at CCC.

Martin’s 50th fell on ‘my watch’ as current CCC Chair. Having known Martin for 30 years I decided it might be entertaining to arrange a ‘surprise’ presentation, based on a ”This is Your Life” concept. The idea wasn’t original but had played successfully at CCC, 15 years earlier, when celebrating Godfrey Outram’s 50 years. That too was a surprise event, then timed for the ‘Chairman’s night surprise’ talk.

Aware that Martin might expect something in 2022, we kept all discussion and plans to an absolute minimum. Knowing Martin was well networked in CCC and the AV World, meant a challenge to maintain secrecy during the planning stage. Nothing was documented for the rst few months with only a few aware of my plans.

Amusingly, Wendy Outram later advised me that Martin said he “thought we had forgotten about his anniversary”, having heard no mention of any 50th.

CCC’s new season opening night of 8th September was chosen for the 50th surprise. Our ‘rst night’ is when CCC traditionally run the Cheltenham International Salon of Photography (CISP) AV premier. This showcases and celebrates photography from around the World. I chose that date thinking that Martin would never suspect our real intentions. Also, for the prior 9 years Martin had compiled the AV show for CISP. Out 10th CISP AV show coincidently fell to me to produce in 2022. I felt it likely that Martin would attend but was conscious that a celebration party without the surprise guest wouldn’t work well. We later had to take extra steps to ensure Martin attended, but that’s another story.

Ian Bateman, with his agreement, was scheduled in our new season programme to talk at CCC on September 15th. This was a decoy since we planned to announce a switch of CISP’s AV show to the 15th, once the CISP AV show had morphed into a surprise celebration for Matin Fry. On Thursday September 8th at 7:30pm I introduced and started the CISP show, which ran OK through the intro and moved into the 1st section (Travel), before ‘breaking down’ 2 minutes into the evening. After a brief ‘technical x’ we restarted near the end of the intro when the ‘celebration’ suddenly switched into a celebration of Martin and his 50 years at CCC.

Martin Fry ’ s Surprise 50 Year Celebration at CCC continued ...

Previously, having elicited the full (and essential) support of Jane Fry, Martin’s wife of 31 years, I then called Edgar Gibbs, as a mutual friend, for help and advice. Apart from connecting me with many others, Edgar as Chair of The RPS AV Group Committee also helpfully arranged for an RPS AV Committee tribute to Martin. So, Ian Bateman, Alastair Taylor, Peter Warner, Andrew Gagg and Sheila Haycox joined Edgar in recording a short (via Zoom) video congratulating Martin on his 50 years with CCC. I was able to show this just after revealing our real intention of the 8th.

Martin, who had been sitting quietly at the back of our hall, probably thought at this stage that we were nearly done and would soon get back to the CISP AV show. He was invited to come to the front, presumably thinking we might present him with a certicate or similar. But no, he was very much surprised, yet again, when several of his friends walked in from a side room to join the party and share his special night. Some were friends from 40 years back and included his long-term musician friend and collaborator, Johnny Coppin. His AV friends, known to readers of AV News, included Robert Albright, Ian Bateman, Linda and Edgar Gibbs and Sheila Haycox. Others would probably have ‘dropped in’ too but deterred by the time and distance as they were travelling to the National AV Championships in Leeds the following morning.

Several CCC club members and other friends spoke about Martin live and shared recollections and anecdotes. From the AV World we heard stories from Ian Bateman, Edgar and Linda Gibbs. Johnny Coppin played and sang live. Richard Brown and Keith Brown contributed via pre recorded videos as did another 4 friends unable to attend on the night. The Holy Brook sequence by Martin was also shown and we projected a number of his awardwinning pictures, before closing the formal presentations.

Many attendees signed a custom designed card celebrating Martin as our own ‘Cotswold Lad’. We nished, chatting socially over cake, nibbles, prosecco, and other refreshments (for those driving). All in all, an excellent and special night, especially for Martin. My thanks go to the many people involved who contributed and helped in some way to make the evening a success.

There is a video on Vimeo covering the evening for anyone interested. Click on the QR Code or visit:

https://vimeo.com/753919786/500fd0602a

Dictionary Day, Powder Monkey Pub and a Feathered Friend!

Lilian Webb AIPF, ARPS.

The Irish Photographic Federation’s 39th National Audio-Visual Championships & 8th International Audio Visual Competition took place on Sunday, 16th October, 2022 via Zoom. It was judged by Sheila Haycox, ARPS, MPAGB/AV, EFIAP and Ian Bateman, FRPS, MPAGB, AV-AFIAP, APAGB. Though there was a big decrease in the number of entries, especially in the national section and the numbers attending were slightly down, it was great to see attendees from the USA, South Africa, Italy, Scotland, England & Wales and from Antrim to Shannon. The sequences were judged in advance and Ian & Sheila alternately gave very helpful comments on the national entries.

In the International Competition, Francesca Gernetti, AV-AFI & Carla Fiorina won the bronze medal for APT22 Alan Tyrer, ARPS, FPAGB/AV won the silver medal with Bomber and the overall winner of the gold medal, with In Search of Christina was Richard Brown, FRPS, FIPF, FACI(M), EFIAP, APAGB, which also won the Audience Vote.

In the National Section, the Overall winner and winner of the Advanced Section and the Kieran O’Loughlin Memorial Trophy was Liam Haines, LIPF for A Tribute to Jack Again the audience agreed with the judges. Brendan O’Sullivan, AIPF won the Best Sound Production Trophy for The Man who Gave a Voice to Silence, Jane McIlroy, CPAGB-AV won the Best Photography Trophy for Flower of Scotland. Celbridge Camera Club won the Best Script Trophy for One of Ireland’s Greatest.

Following the showing of all the sequences and prior to the announcement of the winners, Ian and Sheila treated us to the showing of their sequences. It was very appropriate that Sheila showed Dictionary Man as it was National Dictionary Day! Sheila also showed three other sequences including They Stole a Mountain. Ian showed a short sequence on enhancing speech for voice recordings, The Final Cut, which was originally produced in slides with 1 roll of 36 frames (and I remember many sequences that I made with 1 roll of slide lm!) of a Pink Floyd Concert and updated and digitalised. His nal sequence was The Moor, The Monkey & The Wall Street Crash, which was made after his move down south around Dartmoor & Exmoor.

To return to the title, 16th October was also National Dictionary Day, The Powder Monkey Pub was the only place that had Wi when needed per Ian‘s sequence - and I had no Wi for the almost 10 hours on Zoom - depending on a dongle! And the Feathered Friend .. well, I may claim to be the rst AV Co-ordinator who had a wee bird attending - on the shoulder of Peter Thomas, all the way from South Africa! Brings a tweet to a whole new level!

I now bow out after almost 24 years as IPF AV Committee Secretary/ Treasurer! Maybe I’ll take up bird watching!

In My View — A Judge’s Perspective

Episode 2

Andrew N Gagg FRPS

So now, how about the way you put the pictures together? One thing to bear in mind is to keep your pictures to the same ratio – 16:9 or 3:2are perhaps the commonest. Unless you have a very good reason for including a picture which doesn’t t your chosen screen format, don’t do it! It is very distracting to be bombarded with pictures of different shapes and sizes – we want to appreciate the content of the pictures, not a higgledy piggledy assortment of frames. If your pictures don’t t, crop them, or nd alternatives. Please don’t use a frameline or surround unless there is a valid reason for doing so.

While on the topic of picture sizes, it’s pointless to include picture les that are much bigger than the current projector formats – for 16:9 that will be 1920 x 1080 px. Anything bigger simply gives the graphics system extra unnecessary work, and can affect the smooth running of the sequence. The only exception to this is an image that you intend to zoom or pan, when it will need to be big enough to remain un-pixelated at its largest magnication.

Transitions are valuable tools, but don’t be tempted by all the elaborate ones that are available unless you have a justiable reason for using something more that a cross fade (called a ‘dissolve’ in Pictures To Exe). Like all the other ‘don’ts’ I am offering, the result will be that you distract the viewers attention from the story and your lovely images. A series of bird pictures for instance (I have actually seen this in a recent competition) will not benet from spinning around and jigging all over the screen! We want to see the pictures, especially if they are good ones!

Next, vary the duration of your transitions. Don’t just set the transition length at three seconds in PTE Project Options and leave it like that – make them t the music, or the narrative. If you don’t your viewers will settle into that soporically regular rhythm, and you’ll lose their attention.

It seems it is relatively rare for AV makers to use a cut – a real cinematic cut –i.e. a transition of zero length. (A ‘Quick Transition’ in PTE.) It could be used more often. Given a fast-paced sequence – music with a snappy beat for instance – hook the rhythm of the pictures up to it – ‘cut to the beat’. The same thing can apply to a quick-re narrative. That’s not difcult now. In the current version of PicturesToExe for instance, you can actually see the trace of the soundtrack immediately beneath the pictures in the timeline, so that you can t your chosen transitions to it pretty precisely.

The accompanying illustrations are taken from Alan and Bev Tyrer’s Nameless, the story of a sad little Victorian headstone to an unnamed new-born child. It represents a ne example of what judges will seek, and as such it won First Prize at this year’s MidPhot competition, as well as the Audience Vote, and also the Award for Excellence, a new MidPhot award aimed especially at fostering the skills of writing and delivering narration.

In My View – A Judge’ s Perspective continued ...

Like everything in AV making (as indeed in any creative pursuit) every aspect of the work should be the result of a decision. Sometimes, with experience, this might not be a conscious one – it can become instinctive, but if questioned one should be able to provide a reason for every element of the work.

This certainly applies to the use of pans and zooms. We are all accustomed to such moves – they equate to camera movement in cinema or television and they are part of the visual language of the medium. As in the cinema, there must always be a valid reason for them – never arbitrary. A zoom is intended to draw our attention to some aspect of what we see at the start of the scene. “Look at this – this is important” we are saying. Sadly, less commonly used is the opposite effect – the ‘zoom out’. This also draws our attention to something – but in this case the wider context of a subject we’ve been shown in close-up. Sometimes this can contain an element of surprise – perhaps we don’t expect to see this in these particular surroundings – “Look, this lily is growing on a garbage heap”!

Similarly a pan must have a real reason for its use. It should start on a wellcomposed and interesting framing, and progress to a nal shot which is equally considered. Sometimes, though not always we may want to hold the initial framing still, as well as nishing on a still frame. Following a pan in one direction by another pan in the opposite direction is not a good idea – it equates to the amateurish practice of ‘hose-piping’ a video camera, and can be positively vertigo-inducing!

Two pans of similar speed and in the same direction gently cross fade, one into the other can be very effective. Done more rapidly this can, as in the movies, be used to convey a change of location – known as a ‘whip-pan’.

A transition that I have seen used recently in competition entries, though not as frequently as one might wish is the ‘fade through black’ wherein we have a point in the transition when the screen is completely black, or possibly even white. This is again part of the language of cinema (which we all understand, albeit unconsciously), and usually denotes the passage of time.

Having touched on the idea of images which appear to move, we can consider the possibility of images that actually do move – the introduction of video into an AV. Because it has only relatively recently become a possibility, it seems that many AV workers are still coming to terms with it, and it does indeed require some thought and judgement. It is somewhat unnerving, and therefore another unwanted distraction from the narrative ow, to see an image suddenly spring into life. As an example I recall an excellent still shot of a bird, which in the next image was galvanised into life – startling and very distracting!

One approach worth considering is that a piece of video should be prefaced (and succeeded) by pictures that in themselves appear to have movement –those pans and zooms are a possibility. Another is the ow of matching still images transitioned imperceptibly into each other, giving a sense of movement. (It’s possible given controlled conditions to shoot a series of identical images where only the lighting is altered. When run smoothly together the lighting appears to move.)

In My View – A Judge’ s Perspective continued ...

The one thing that should be avoided at all costs is the sudden cessation of movement in a video shot. It must be long enough to continue moving until it leaves the screen. It’s a simple enough matter to shorten the duration of the slide it’s on.

I cannot nish without some reference to the genre known as Photo Harmony. Essentially this is a series of pictures harmoniously combined with a piece of music to produce a pleasing effect. Opinions are divided as to exactly what qualies as Photo Harmony, and what is just ‘pictures and music’, or indeed ‘Interpretation of a Song’ – which is a specic and separate category in some events. There are various denitions offered, none of which are adequate in my view – all are vague and capable of differing (mis-)interpretations. Photo Harmony is nonetheless capable of great subtlety and beauty.

However there seems to me to be something of a fallacy perpetuated here –Photo Harmony is sometimes promoted as a way of making a start in AV, because it only requires the selection of a piece of music and suitable pictures. Many of those of my acquaintance, including my fellow judges, agree that it is far harder to do this well than to make a piece that has some kind of development, a narrative, or a progressing theme which in some way takes you ‘from A to B’ in contrast to the essentially somewhat static nature of true Photo Harmony. I certainly wouldn’t contest this. But the effort to make the ‘great leap’ of recording a voice-over and adding sound effects is merely a technical challenge – not inconsiderable in its way, but an exciting one, and one worth rising to and, some might claim, less difcult than the creative challenge of making a really ne Photo Harmony. A topic for endless debate!

My nal piece of advice is simple. Polish and rene your work. “It will do.” will not do. Play your sequence over and over again. You will pass a kind of pain threshold where you are sick of hearing the music, fed up with seeing the pictures. Maybe leave it alone for a while, then come back to it afresh, but be alert for anything you can see that could be improved, and carry it out. Let no detail escape you!

So there are some of my personal views from the judge’s chair as to what will win you a coveted Gold Medal. I hope you will nd them of some value.

Bonne Chance with your next entry!

Recording Your Own Voice

Alastair Taylor ARPS DPAGB/AV

Recording your own voice is an aspect of AV production which some people enjoy and others avoid at all costs. For me it all comes down to the message you wish to convey and the extent to which you feel that a “third party” voice will deliver the tone and message you wish to convey.

A few AV producers are buying in the voice of a professional from services such as www.verr.com where there is a myriad of freelance voiceover experts who will bring whatever tone, dialect or mood you desire. It all comes at a cost but well worth a try.

Across the AV community, there are many talented voices and it is great to hear them. More and more we are hearing the female voice being used for AV voice overs and for me, the voices of Jenny Gee, Bev Tyrer and Lavinia Hardwick, Pat Mansell and Linda Gibbs are all excellent. From time to time we hear a familiar voice pop up on a soundtrack with Ron Davies occasionally making a guest appearance. It is always great to hear Ron’s wonderful Welsh accent which adds such colour to AV productions (and especially those based in that part of the world).

Similarly, who will forget the voice of that great Northern Irish character, the Reverend Doctor Gordon Gray, whose voice over on Raymond Hughes AV To What End is, in my view, just superb.

Anyone who knows me, will know that my AV productions are often from the heart. Beyond the Wall shares my feelings on prisons and punishment. That Picture is a personal reection of the Taj Mahal and more recently, For Peace and Democracy is all about apartheid and the role of Nelson Mandela in its demise. For me, only I can tell the story in the way I want it to come over with all of the emotion and messaging I wish to portray.

As if you didn't know it already (and I suspect many of you have already thought it) but the truth is out, I do like the sound of my own voice! You heard it here!

Sound Hunters continued ...

In the rest of this article, I will share some of my thoughts and approaches to recording a sound track.

Owning the Microphone

I remember hearing a radio programme on the way in which presenters deal with the microphone. Disc Jockey Noel Edmonds who was the host of the Breakfast Show often stood up or at least leant into the microphone in an early morning and purposeful manner. By the same token (Whispering) Bob Harris looked after a late evening slot and was more of a “leaning back in the arm chair type of guy” (Smoking a cigarette at the same time one assumes). Apparently trafc reports will often read out the trafc news whilst stood up and apparently in an animated way with arms waving (not surprising given the state of the UK roads!).

For me this is about owning the microphone and to that end, the way you “attack” it will impact upon the feel of the recording. I always record whilst stood up and in my mind, try to do it as if I am addressing a live audience with all of the body movement and mannerisms I might adopt if addressing a crowd in a lecture theatre.

My distance from the microphone is also important. Watch a singer and you will see how they work the microphone, sometimes close to their lips, and then moving it away as the song fades out. Next time you watch a music programme from the sixties, Tom Jones perhaps, just see how he handles the microphone. It is part of the art.

Clearing the Gills

Making a voice over with a heavy cold is perhaps not the best idea (Although Howard Bagshaw did this with Kelpies and look at the result.) The rst time I heard it I was left wondering what he had done to get the sound). My voice is always best rst thing although a good nose blow and clearing of the chest is a good start. Apparently milk make you develop phlegm, so avoid that. Another tip is to suck a mint humbug which helps clear the gills nicely.

Don’t underestimate the value of “liquorice” avoured Nipits. It is not often that you come across something that actually does what it says on the tin!

Apparently they are a favourite of the DJ Chris Evans.

Go for it and record in one take

Occasionally you will hear an AV voice over which changes in tone or pace mid way. It is obvious that the recording is made up of different recordings, perhaps paused midway or with a change of setting or microphone use.

I always record in one take. I keep the recorder going with the same settings. The end result will have coughs, throat clearing, various false starts where I have read the sentence a second, third or fourth time. If a car drives by, or some other noise creeps into the background, I will record the sentence again. There might even be the odd profanity!!

The image below shows a typical recording before I have edited it. What you see is “warts and all”. Within my sound editor (I use Adobe Audition), I will remove the additional material.

This is a section extracted from a longer recording but it is clear that there is some work to do to sort it out. For example, at the start there was some rustling of paper as I started to read the script. The point marked A was a clearing of the throat. I do nd that shortly after I start talking, I will need to do this (too much information I know!). There is a slight pause at point B where a car drove by. Immediately following that I started to read a sentence but had to cough at the end of it. This is marked as point C. If you can read the wave line, you will see that I immediately say it again as shown at Point D. There will be various points similar to these throughout the recording so all will need to be edited at a later stage.

Next time: Sorting out the mess ...

DaVinci Resolve Sound Recording and Editing

Keith Scott FRPS DPAGB AV -AFIAP

In the previous issue of AV News (August 2022) we provided an overview of DaVinci Resolve Video Editor and specically DaVinci Resolve Studio 17. Typically, after writing that article and providing it to our Editor, but before the magazine was delivered, the creators Blackmagic Design introduced an updated version entitled DaVinci Resolve Studio 18. This later version added some useful functions of particular interest to those working in groups, or perhaps to those people working remotely on a joint project, where access to the same project and working les over the internet can be of great benet. Whilst such features may be very useful to those lm makers producing large blockbuster movies and employing very many people, it will probably be less important to our AV fraternity who usually (but not always) tend to work as individuals. Therefore, if you already have version 17 there’s no real need to upgrade. In the previous issue I stated the cost of the software package as £225.00. Whilst this was accurate, I should have stated £225 plus VAT. The current price at time of writing for the new version of Resolve Studio 18 is £255 plus VAT, £306 (if VAT rate doesn’t change). This still compares favourably with the cost of other professional video editors. However, there is still the free version of DaVinci Resolve that will more than sufce for most AV workers’ and videographers’ needs.

The advantage of both the free and paid versions is that they are quite comprehensive. They allow video editing, colour grading, sound recording, sound editing, and include special visual and sound effects all in one package. Obviously, the paid version does contain the most functions. In this issue we’ll look at recording and editing sound using the tools under the “Fairlight” section. Although called Fairlight this section has nothing to do with light, it’s where all sound recording, editing, and sound mixing take place.

The Fairlight Audio Core engine allows for simultaneous playback of up to 1,000 audio tracks without any additional hardware, so the average audiovisual worker who generally uses just a few tracks for voiceovers, background music, special sound effects etc., is never going to run out of track space.

This huge track count is intended for major studio lm producers where a separate audio track would be reserved for each individual actor’s voice, and for each piece of music and sound effect, allowing editing of every single piece of sound.

Sound les can be inserted into the Fairlight editor directly from the “Media Browser” or imported using the “Import” command in the “File” menu. Sound can also be recorded from a microphone into the Fairlight editor, usually via a digital interface with mic pre -amp. When recording directly onto a track, perhaps a voiceover for example, the track needs to be armed in readiness for recording, this can be done by clicking the “R” button directly on the track, or on the audio track number within the “Mixer panel”. Also, the system needs informing which input source to use i.e., which source the microphone signal is coming from and which bus to output the recorded signal to.

These simple choices can be selected at the click of a mouse within the “Mixer panel”. Anyone who has previously used sound editing and mixing programs such as Adobe Audition, Avid Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Steinberg Cubase, or any similar professional software will recognise and be comfortable with this process, because they all follow a similar pattern. As an aside, from a personal point of view I rarely record audio directly into any computer because computers have fans which usually create unwanted low level background noise. I much prefer to record into a silent digital recorder which is made specically for this purpose, then transfer the .wav les to a computer program for editing.

DaVinci Resolve: Sound Recording and Editing continued ...

The layout of the workspace in DaVinci Resolve Studio can be as complex or as simple as you wish to make it. Various control and information panels may be opened or closed as needed. Below is an example of a full screen view of the Fairlight page which includes Media Browser, Track list, Video Output, Track Meters, and the Track Timeline showing three separate audio tracks.

When editing sound tracks it’s preferable to simplify and enlarge just the track workspace including “Master Meters” by closing everything that’s not necessary, this makes it easier to make ne adjustments to amplitude levels and clip spacing. Below is the same soundtrack view simplied.

Audio tracks may be reduced in size or enlarged both vertically and horizontally as required. This makes it easier to view any selected track or clip that you wish to edit. Selected clips are always highlighted therefore it’s easy to see instantly which clip is ready for editing.

“Ducking” is a term used when the amplitude of a sound, usually music is lowered just before a section of voiceover, then raised back to its previous level just after the section of voiceover has nished. This allows the sound of the voice to cut clearly through the mix. Ducking should start several seconds before the voice and end several seconds after. When done correctly, slowly, and smoothly this ducking should be almost unnoticeable to an audience and can benet the overall soundtrack. However, when done too quickly and too dramatically it can also ruin an otherwise good soundtrack. Frequently at AV group gatherings ducking becomes very noticeable and highly annoying. It’s usually better to keep the background music at a lower level overall and avoid ducking wherever possible, but if you must use this technique then it’s very easy to accomplish in DaVinci Resolve. it is achieved in similar fashion to other sound editing software by moving editing points up and down.

To add amplitude editing points to a track, place the cursor at the place where the point is required on the Levels line. If using a Mac hold down Option key and left click mouse. If using a Windows computer hold down Alt key and click the left mouse button. To adjust these points select them and drag up or down with the mouse.

DaVinci Resolve: Sound Recording and Editing continued ...

It’s easy to forget that this software is intended for creating and editing video because the sound editing facilities are so extensive. Most AV workers will almost certainly already have dedicated sound editing software, many have “Audacity” which is a great piece of free software, and others may have “Cool Edit Pro” or later versions which became “Adobe Audition”. However, this software is for those people who are utilising video within their AVs, and who need to edit their video and audio without resorting to external software.

As you may expect there are plenty of special audio effects that may be applied to your soundtracks. Regardless of which workspace you have open the “Effects Panel” can be obtained by clicking “Workspace” on the top main menu, then click “Show Panel in Workspace”, then click “Effects”. The “Fairlight FX Panel” will appear on your workspace. Just like most other panels this can be re-sized to suit your requirements, simply by grabbing and dragging the sides. It could show a single line of effects, two, three, or four, depending on how wide you drag the sides. “Fairlight FX” Panel has twentyfour built in sound effect headings shown here in the top part of this panel. It will also include any VST effects that it detects if they’re installed on your system from other sound editing software. In the above illustration it includes fourteen VST’s at the bottom of the panel detected from an installation of RX8 Audio Editor. VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology. They are usually in the form of plug-ins and are available from many different audio software companies. They usually consist of electronic instruments, synthesisers, compressors, equalisers etc, and work with DAWS (Digital Audio Workstations).

The application of sound effects to your soundtracks in DaVinci Studio is very simple to achieve, simply open the Fairlight FX panel as described previously and choose the sound effect you wish to apply. Click and drag the effect to the clip or clips you want to edit, whereupon a control panel specic to each effect will automatically appear. If you want to add an effect to a single clip just select the single clip rst, if you want to add the same effect to multiple clips click and drag your cursor over all the clips to select them, then drag the effect and drop over the selected clips. In this example an effects control panel entitled “Vocal Channel” has been applied to a voiceover track. It is a very useful tool for the enhancement of voice recordings. This effect includes a “High Pass” Filter at the left side, an “Equaliser” at centre to control low, medium and high frequencies, and on the right side a “Compressor” to effectively lower the loudest parts of the audio recording to prevent clipping, whilst maintaining or applying “Gain” to the lower levels. Using a compressor appropriately can reduce (compress) the dynamic range of a recording that has very high peaks and troughs and can boost the quieter parts and allow the recording to be further amplied or normalised to a useful level. As with most audio effects subtlety is usually better than severity, don’t overdo any audio effects, your aim is to take a good sound recording and make it brilliant, not to damage it.

The instruction manual for DaVinci Studio is not exactly bedtime reading, it consists of over 3600 pages in a 150MB pdf le, some of which is quite technical and heavy going. However, DaVinci do produce several excellent and easy to follow tuition videos covering all sections of this software. If you have the software installed the videos are available free by clicking “Help” on the “Main Menu”, then click on “DaVinci Resolve Training”. After they’ve opened you can save these videos to your system for future reference.

Publication Information

AV News is published three times a year by the AV Group of the Royal Photographic Society. It is distributed free to Group members and is available to others for an Annual Subscription of £22 in the UK, £25 in Europe and £27 elsewhere – contact Alastair Taylor at avtreasurer@rps.org

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