BMM club meeting 2 July 2026

President David opened the meeting at 7.35pm and welcomed 23 members and guests, with apologies from Glenn and Grace.

David advised that the Annual General Meeting MAY be held on 20 August, but that could change as it is hoped there will be a cinema screening of Quiet Achievers on that date. David announced he had decided to step down from the presidency at the end of his term, so we will be looking for a new club president. Members were reminded that membership fees for 2026/27 were due at the end of June. Only financial members are entitled to stand for committee positions and vote at the AGM.

David said he had shot a night time sequence with Michael Stephenson on Sony FX30 which he said was great for night time shooting with “beautiful colours”.

Alone – Behind the Scenes David showed Alone BTS – how the show (Season 3) is filmed. Yes, they did all their own shooting, not to mention carrying in all of the camera, lighting and audio gear, and then shot “hours and hours” of footage, much of it just talking to the camera in a sort of ‘confessional’ way.

Special effects library: If you ever wanted special effects for your green screen productions, there is a product call Big Films where you can buy a 1.5TB library of 1,600 unique environments for your green screen. David described it as ideal for anyone looking at producing special effects. .

Final home coming Grace was planning to show a short film called Final Home Coming. It’s shot mostly in black and white and is silent. Unfortunately, Grace was not available to talk about the movie, but she provided a link and we were able to see the film. Hopefully, when she is feeling better she will be able to fill us in on the details.

Peter and Luke talked about “five films we should see in our lifetime”, five films that have shaped their lives, shooting style and stories that play out sub-consciously. For Peter, one such film was Dead Poets Society which was relevant because of his career as a teacher. Peter said it was not only about the film, but how it changed a person’s life emotionionally. Peter said the first film he remembers seeing was Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” for which Chaplain wrote, directed and edited and composed the music.

UGG competition – There were three films under the category of “60 second films” – two from Peter and one from Bala .

Peter’s first movie called Beenie Boo, about the making of a woolen beenie. He directed and shot the movie, as well as words for a song but used AI to put it to music. Peter said it was also about using prime lenses – 35mm and 50mm prime lenses – in the shoot.

His second film was Luminous, about the Lantern festival, a multicultural festival at South Bank.

The third entry was Bala’s film “The Mask”, a confronting movie he shot at South Bank with a cast and crew of 20 which exposes people who show hatred and think they have the freedom in social media to can talk about anything, but how hypcrtical they are in their public space and private space.

And the high coveted UGG trophy went to Bala.

Peter mentioned that his film ME is now on his youtube channel.

IMAX film There’s been a lot of talk and excitement in the film industry about the return of IMAX films with Christopher Nolan’s movie “The Odyssey” which was 18 years in the making. IMAX is actually a large film format. We saw a discussion by Hollywood film maker Dylan Hoang discussing the development of the format and cameras. He said you can fit about eight frames of a 35mm film into a single frame of IMAX which he describes as a “huge, immersive image”. Unfortunatey there are no IMAX theatres in Brisbane, the only location in Australia where you can see this film in genuine IMAX format is at IMAX Melbourne.

Frank and Grandpa – deceased Gareth Macready talked about his screenplay Frank and Grandpa – deceased  which won best concept for short movie in 2025. He is hoping to turn it into a 28 minute film which he described as a combination of horror and comedy, like Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy.

West End Film Festival. Freddie talked about the recent West End Film Festival which featured more than 60 films. He described it as “great experience watching phenomenal film makers”. One of his favourite films was The Brutal Alchemy of Water. He was particularly impressed with the “creative speed dating” event, in which film makers had one minute to sell themselves to another film maker.

Quiet Achievers trailer We watched the trailer for Glenn’s project Quiet Achievers – seven stories by five directors. The films have now been finished and compiled. Glenn is hoping to show the completed project at a special screening on 20 August. Stay tuned for details of confirmation of the date and theatre.

Race Around Brisbane Paul talked about BMM members taking part in our own version of Race Around the World, the series currently being screened on ABC (and on iView if you haven’t caught seen the five episodes that have already gone to air). The idea would be that our local ‘contestants’ would have a location around Greater Brisbane selected from a hat and be invited to make a film of their own choosing, running about four minutes. The only rules are that you have to produce, shoot and edit the film yourself.

Tech Talk – Nigel gave a tech talk on multicam editing using vision from a scene of Sally Elliot’s upcoming movie Because of the War. Nigel showed how the scene of a girl walking down reacting to seeing her boyfriend, an American soldier, passing by in a bus. This was an exercise in multicam editing with the scene being shot from four angles.

And that's a wrap for the evening, we were heading home to our nice warm beds by 9.30.

Our next meeting is Thursday 16 July starting at 7.30pm. Keep an eye on the front page of the club’s website site https://www.bmm.org.au/ for all the details.