Grandma's nuts and a few good ideas to chew on.

At our meeting on Thursday 18 September 2025 President David welcomed two new members. Bala and Sandeep have shown strong interest in film making and are already very active members.

David also welcomed members Nigel, Glenn, Michael, Adam, Paul, Neil, Val, Heather, Peter, Freddie, Leonie and guest Vere.

As this was David’s first club meeting since being elected President he gave a presentation on his views for the direction of the club. David said he had been having discussions with life-member Neil about the past, present and future of the club which began in 1937 and at its peak had more than 200 members. He said we need to look at how we evolve BMM into the future, and the key is projects because they bring people together. Focusing on membership, he made the point that there was little difference between ‘hobbyists’ and ‘professionals’. There are a lot of ‘professionals’ who make a lot of money making rubbish and a lot of ‘hobbyists’ who make masterpieces. He said age was not a barrier, and after living in Japan for a number of years, he described as “Australia’s shameful ageist attitudes”. He said club membership was about quality not quantity. It would be nice to have membership that more closely reflected Australia’s cultural makeup, especially as Australia is one of the most multi-cultural countries on the planet. David also urged members to be more on top of the film industry trends, be more pro-active ‘influencers’ than re-active to what other people are doing. David said he was also keen to attract budgeted projects which could bring in money to fund high quality club projects. Looking to the future, he said he would like to work towards BMM one day having its own permanent studio.

David said he sensed we are doing too many things, our energies are scattered a little bit and we need to integrate quality over quantity. We have so many projects going on – our energies and timing are scattered a little bit and we need to integrate a little bit more. He also suggested we need to strategically harness the talents, skills of members and expand our network of associates. We have all these people here who have skills and talents that we don’t really know about. We could have a few words about each of us.

Returning to his theme that ‘projects are the key’, David said have Peter’s ME project, Glenn’s Quiet Achievers project and Smoke and Mirrors project that we can sink our teeth into. He would like to see a greater integration of projects such as integrating the UGG projects into the ME or Quiet Achievers projects so that we have more quality than quantity.

Glenn suggested we could also integrate the opportunities such as the skills and technical sessions to flow out of and into the projects, so that there is a synergy between them rather than being completely stand alone.

What a way to go. Peter showed a recently short shot movie called What a way to go which came out of a script writing session. An ageing father (Peter W) discusses with his son (Bala) how he would like his funeral. Sandeep directed the movie and Michael managed the sound and lighting. It was a very entertaining well produced look at how and where we want our after-life to begin.

Film Bite – Table read.  Glenn introduced the subject of ‘table read’, where the cast and crew get together literally around a table to read the script and get a feel for the production. He showed a clip of th

e table read for the Breaking Bad episode Blood Money. It was incredible watching how deeply involved and emotional the actors became just sitting around a table reading from the script. It literally brought them to tears. Following the film bite, Glenn set up a table read for his upcoming movie Too Easy with members invited read from various scenes in the script which focuses on a break-in and armed robbery of a house by four teenagers. It shows how valuable the process is to get cast and crew into the atmosphere of the movie.

Rapping with Roman. Peter wrapped up the first session of the meeting with a segment from one of his ME project interviews with Roman, a ‘freestyle rapper’. Peter challenged Roman to make up a rap with just the word cue “Believe’. Literally within seconds he came up with a rap which demonstrated his talents as well as Peter’s in securing very thought-provoking talent.

At the break, we celebrated Freddie Lee’s birthday with not one, but three renditions of Happy Birthday – one for Freddie Lee, one for the video version, and Adam and Heather delivered a third version in French. Talent galore. Cake and celebratory drinks followed.

Just Desserts After the break, Nigel set up the kitchen to shoot the movie “Just Desserts” where a long suffering mother (Val in her first starring role) was driven to frustration by her phone=addicted totally distracted son (Glenn). The script has been sent out to members, but you will have to wait for the video version at a meeting in the near future. Nigel directed the epic, Neal and Sandeep were on cameras and Freddie did his usual magic with lighting.

The meeting wrapped up around 9.40pm.

Our next meeting is on Thursday 2 October. Keep a watch on our website for all the details.