Flying high or 'chuting up for the best shots

16 October 2025

Glenn, Noel, Murray, Don, Neal, Val, Peter, Bala, Adam, Michael, Sandeep, Heather, Glenn, Noel, Murray, Don, Neal, Val, Peter, Bala, Adam, Michael, Sandeep, Heather, DavidW and DavidF

Guests: Helen, Nicky, Joel, Umberto, Michael, Ravali,

Apologies: Freddie-Lee, Paul

Presidents report

· The website being updated, and if you would like to gain a bit of exposure, send a picture and a brief bio and we can add your profile to the About Us. President David looks particularly fetching with his brunette bob and white ensemble.

· David’s keen on developing a social/cross media strategy across FaceBook, InstaGram and YouTube.

· Sora 2 is out but on tablets and smart phones only. It is an AI text-to-video generator that transforms your ideas into short, high-quality videos from simple text prompts. Powered by advanced text-to-video AI technology, it brings concepts to life within minutes — no cameras, sets, or editing skills required.

· A friend of David’s, Michael Richards, recently created the Indooroopilly State High School archive, and if there’s interest, one could be done for BMM.

· David then mentioned that a mutual friend of him and Glenn, Dr Vere, is involved in hosted a Reggae Festival at South Brisbane and wondering if BMM wanted to have a stall.

· Lastly, David floated the idea of BMM having a club T-shirt.

UGG Competition - 3 December 2025

The themes are

1. BMM TV commercial – 30 seconds

2. Light and Dark

Michael Stephenson – Guest Speaker

President David introduced our guest speaker, Michael Stephenson, whom he met during his recent outback journey in which he travelled 3,500 kilometres over 13 days, visited 20 towns, drank 60 cups of tea, saw about 1 billion flies, got bogged and still managed to capture 1,000 stills using his drone.

Michael is an amateur photographer dabbling in aerial photography & video. For stills, he used a Reflex camera which he set up on his ‘Aero Chute’. He has a couple of photography books he has self-published based on his trips to Outback Australia

Convinced by his family that at 80 years old that Aero Chuting was not for him, he by chance got given an airboat a.ka. hover craft for free just as he was turning his wings. He then showed us a video he had taken from onboard his airboat. Not happy about having to turn in his wings, he then decided to get into drones to take him into places the Aero Chute couldn’t where it was too dangerous or inaccessible for stills and video, where he then showed us a short but breathtaking video he had taken whilst up at Spyglass Mountain. He still learning how to edit and master sound and is showing no signs of giving up on his passion of capturing the beauty of Outback Australia.

I Remember

This short film premiered tonight and was made at Peter’s greenroom and can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKekG0lvPUw. Filmed early October, it involved 11 cast and crew – Toby, Peter, Joel, Nicky, Glenn, Bala, Grace, Jason, Bernice, Helen and Leonie.

His next project is titled “Coming out” and is being filmed on 25 October 2025 over 3 hours with 3 cast: Jessica, Mark & George and 6 crew: Peter (Director), Nicky (Assistant Director), Bala, Sandeep & Nigel (cameras) and DavidW (catering)

Tripods

Glenn gave a short demonstration on why and how to use a tripod for getting those all-important stable shots: unfold your tripod, attach the plate securely to the camera, noting that DSLR’s don’t have a guide pin, so make sure it faces forwards, slide it on and secure it, level your camera using the legs or bowl. When using the tripod, don’t grab the pan handle but use your finger tips and not your palm. Video cameras often come with LANC controllers for zoom and sometimes focus control. LANC’s for DSLR’s tend to be for still photography and remote shutter release i.e. not for video.

Smoke & Mirrors

David gave a update in his proposed 3 proof of concept approaches: 3 x POC. Live footage, CGI rotoscoping and a non-narrative documentary. He then introduced two speakers who made their pitches:

The Last Ride (Bala): In a driverless car future, an affluent man books a ‘legacy ride’ driven by a former Formula One legend. There’s an accident on the legacy ride and an

incident of the AI roadway, with Bala intending to offset the warmth of human connection against the cold emotionless experience of AI technology.

Endmakers. (Joel): Two euthanasia doctors fulfil a cancer patients dying wish by giving him artificial memories to see his late wife again via a Neural Induction Matrix device

Newsletter

Neal pitched the members to see if they wanted a PDF newsletter like BMM, QMM and BVMA used to produce in the past.

Survey results

We ran out of time so this will be presented and discussed at a future meeting