The bear facts - BMM meeting 21 August 2025

This is what it looked like at the AGM to be elected Treasurer, thanks to Artificial Intelligence

(the software, not the Treasurer)

The meeting was opened at 7.30pm by Glenn who welcomed 14 members and three guests Sandeep, Minelli and Andrew.

Upcoming events - Glenn noted the following:

• Saturday 23 August 9-11.30am - “Scripting 101” where one of twelve short stories would be turned into a script for filming at Peter W’s "Green Room" studio at Ditmas Street, Wishart. The key elements will be Action lines, Character introductions, Dialogue Parenthetical, Transitions, Helpful tools, Camera shots & angles. Storyboarding, Sets, props, costumes, Special effects, Production notes, Problem, climax, resolution.

• Saturday 30 August 2-4pm - nature shoot at Curtis Falls on Tamborine mountains (Eagle Heights) bring your mobile phone and phone gimbal if you have one to learn how to take more creative shots to create a nature video.

• Saturday 6 September 9.00-11.30am - film making roles - director, Producer, Cinematographer, sound, lighting, assistant director. It will be a hands-on experience with scripts to explore various roles. The exercise will be at Peter's "Green Room" studio, Ditmas Street, Wishart.

All the details including maps are on the “upcoming events’ page on the club website.

Life Membership - Nigel reported that life membership of the club had been offered to Stewart Gordon, and to Col and Joy Trethaway for their outstanding contribution to the club in its various iterations over many years.

The club meeting closed at 7.35 to enable the Annual General Meeting which ran until 8.09pm. The Minutes of the Annual General Meeting will be published separately.

The Club meeting resumed at 8.10pm. As there were no nominations at the AGM in writing or from the floor of the meeting for the positions of President and Vice President, Glenn (the newly minted Treasurer) assumed the role of chair for the meeting.

Film Bite Murray presented the evening’s Film Bite which revisited “The Goulburn Story”, the 45-minute documentary produced by Paul and Murray in 2020. Murray selected a section which featured a series of drone shots over and around the Goulburn area. He asked what is the purpose and benefit of drone shots? The responses included that it establishes the scene, shows the location and country, conveys scale of the environment, depth and cinematic quality, and shows a perspective rarely seen by the average person. Murray ‘strongly’ urged members to have another look at the documentary to see how effective drone vision can be in giving a different perspective and substantially add to the arsenal of visual opportunities in any production. Paul commented that the documentary had almost 10,000 views.

Smoke and Mirrors: David W presented a comprehensive update -“the Definitive Pitch” - on the project about ‘ordinary people, extraordinary futures’. He said there were at least eleven more-or-less finished screenplays collected with two to three partially finished screenplays. The most –ready-to-go screenplays are by Glenn, Freddie Lee, Neal and David. The aim is to deliver three scenarios – a Hollywood style quality, semi-professional User Generated Content (UGC e.g. Eleven Tomorrows) and hi-end YouTube on a dedicated Smoke and Mirrors channel to leverage the 3 or more proof-of-concepts to evolve to the next level. These proof-of-concept episodes would be ‘live footage, animation, non-narrative documentary which could be from 30 seconds to 15 minutes.

David gave a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation outlining the structure, specifications, production quality criteria, questions to ask before you start your production, potential for a monetary prize competition.

To give us an idea of what is possible, David showed a video called The Astounding World of the Future by Scott Dikkers.

NB The PowerPoint presentation will be emailed separately to members.

ME Peter W gave an update on his next documentary extravaganza called ME. It asks the question “What does it mean to be human?”. Peter said it was a deep desire for purpose, belonging, create expression. The series of interviews "aims to be a beautiful celebration of each person’s uniqueness, examine what is important in your life". So far, he has capture nine interviews. Peter showed some of the worked in progress, but if you want to see the preview, well, you should have been at the meeting.

Artificial Intelligence. Peter also talked about his latest obsession/plaything AI, specifically how you can easily do ‘change of face’. As an example, he used a photo of Glenn (see above) which was morphed into a man being terrifyingly chased by a bear.

Peter said getting into AI could potentially cost you a lot of money if you chose to pay for the software, but equally you can have a bit of fun with them for free.

Among the top AI programs that offer free video generation options including popular limitations and features : Alibaba Qwen; Kapwing; Runway ML; Hailuo: Vidu; Adobe Firefly; Invideo; Peter said these free tools usually have some restrictions on video duration, watermarking, or number of generations, but are great for personal, social, or experimental use. For full editing features or commercial-grade videos, you generally need a paid subscription.

The club meeting wrapped up at 9.35.

The next meeting will be on Thursday 4^th September. We will be planning the club shoot for “Grandma’s Nuts”, (and possibly working on a more suitable title), and Nigel will be doing a talk “What are B-shots". It’s a practical exercise, so please bring along your camera so you can get some hands-on experience and advice.