SBMM Website – Start Here
Welcome to the brand new Surrey Border Movie Makers Website.
We are naturally slightly biased, but we think the wait has been worth it!
PLEASE NOTE:
“Although the website is now live, there are still plenty more things to add. These changes will take place over time, but it’s felt that it is now sufficiently completed to take off the wraps and get going. I’m sure that in the near term a few errors or omissions will become apparent, and we’ll do our best to address those in real-time.”
“If you have any comments or suggestions please use the contact form to let us know.”
Jim Reed Web Designer
A Brief Introduction
The prime objective of the website experience was that it should be highly intuitive and visual, making it incredibly easy to navigate, and be driven mainly by images – meaning that clicking an image (or button) becomes the best way to navigate and explore information.
The website content objective was to create a lasting archive of the Surrey Border Movie Makers club activities, and also provide an educational experience;
For example:
The Annual Members Club Competitions;
The Documentary Competitions;
The Group videos such as Film In an Evening (FIAE)
The Challenge Events, such as the ‘Christmas Challenge’ and the ‘Film on a Phone’ Challenge;
The Club made videos, such as ‘Up Up and Away;
The SBMM’s monthly magazine ‘Border Post’ which has been produced since 1993;
And lastly club members have been invited to submit video content for their own pages, showcasing their work over the years, and in many cases explaining more about both themselves and the making of their videos.
All of these are archived and available to see and review with the simple click of a mouse.
Note that each of the images above also contain one or more different coloured ‘Category’ tabs. Clicking on any of these will return the user to the home page of that particular Category, displaying all the other pages with that same tab.
This makes navigation much easier, and enables cross-searching between the different sections.
Not only will the website contain this archive material, but it is intended to be an education resource, providing access to many movie making hints, tips and tutorials.
This will be facilitated using the newly created (and evolving) Surrey Border ‘Brain’.
The SBMM Brain is a web based tool enabling searching and access to many third party links, once again via intuitive click links.
All of which should make the new Surrey Border Website ideal for researching everything about the club, and accessing tutorials and more in an exceptionally easy and fun way.
How to use the SBMM Website
The Tabs across the top are fairly self explanatory and give a clear indication of the structure;
Home will always return to the ‘landing page’ (as will clicking the header logo) and Home contains the latest updates together with club information; such as our latest programme of events, how to find us, and how to contact us. Clicking on any of the images will open up more information.
Most of the images will also contain one or more coloured tags – for example ‘Challenges’, ‘Xmas’, or ‘FIAE (film in an evening)’ and clicking any of these will present a screen of all similar tagged content, making research even easier.
Club News contains a recent archive of club messages or press releases.
Competitions will show all pages from the past club competitions and challenges. The drop down tab also contains several competition sub categories:
Members Competition is usually held in December and there are ten awards available to members decided by external judges. These events are currently archived back to 2016
Documentary Competition also contains historical entries for the event that usually takes place in September. Members vote to decide the winners. These are also archived from several years ago.
FIAE (Film in an evening) up to four groups compete to create a video for this time based competition. These are often made in July. Over the years some exceptions films have been produced, and these are captured.
Challenges Throughout the year several different challenges are presented to members. These have included making a montage, creating a Christmas based movie, and editing using supplied footage.
Interclub competitions. SBMM has a long history of hosting and providing judging for interclub competitions.
Border Post has been published since 1993, and currently the monthly editions from 2014 are archived in this section. Each edition is easily accessible to either be read on-line, or downloaded for reading or printing later. Simply click the relevant months image to open Border Post in a new window.
Videos makes it easy to view specific videos. Clicking on ‘Video’ will present all pages tagged with ‘Video’.
The Members Video section showcases videos made by individuals who have provided their own page and contains a short biography. Some of the videos will have been shown at a club competition or challenge, and some might have either been shown at other times in the club or maybe are previously unseen.
Group Video (FIAE) showcase the videos made by the four groups of makers, Oddbods, Pioneers, Weyfarers, and Klondikes over the years.
Club Videos showcases videos made by the club.
Resources links to the SBMM ‘Brain’, which provides quick access to a wide selection of incredibly useful information for the video maker from around the web.
Contact is exactly what it says – a contact form to reach the Surrey Border Movie Makers team. Please use it for any comments, questions or website feedback.
About us describes who we are, where we are and what we do.
A sub category, Programme for 2023 contains the latest club activity for the year.
Other Tips for using the SBMM website
Clicking a video will open in a ‘pop-out’ window. Play is automatic on Windows PCs. Other devices might require clicking the ‘Play’ button.
To close either click the ‘x’ in the top right hand corner, or press the ‘ESC’ key.
Clicking on an Image can produce a variety of results;
In some cases a larger image will ‘pop-out’ and it can be closed in the same way as a video – by clicking the ‘x’ or pressing ‘ESC’
In other cases the image might open a new window containing more information – typically from Border Post.
There are two methods used for displaying Border Posts (BP);
After clicking an image, such as the one on the left, a new window will open displaying the Border Post as a standard PDF file.
In this example any links (Blue Buttons) clicked from within the Border Post will open on the same page – clicking the back arrow will return to Border Post.
An alternative means of displaying Border Post is using a ‘Pop-out’. This presentation is far more like a ‘book’ or ‘magazine’, and might be more comfortable for some users to read. However, because of it’s structure it’s possible that loading these pages might be a little slower.
Clicking on each page will open the next or previous one, or clicking the arrows on the left and right will have the same effect.
The controls for zooming (and more) are at the bottom of the page, or mouse wheel can be used to enlarge the page instead.
Closing the ‘pop-out’ can be done by clicking the ‘x’ in the top right corner, or pressing ‘ESC’.
Clicking on Text frequently has no action, but in other cases the text might animate or change colour, and open up another page, such as this example. The action will be indicated by the text itself, or by advice given on that particular page.
Clicking the words ‘Read More Here’ will expose more text. Clicking ‘Read Less’ will close that section.
Clicking on a ‘Button’ will open more information. For example, the competition page might contain an animated button below a video with words such as ‘Visit Jim’s Page’ which will open Jim’s Video page. The same video on Jim’s page will contain an animated button referring to the competition or event and clicking will open that particular page.
Again these actions will be clearly indicated either by the text, or by advice on that particular page.
Other Navigational Aids
Clicking the orange chevron on the lower right corner will return to the top of the current page.
The last link on the page will return to the category section as indicated by the text. On this page the last link returns to the SBMM Home page
The Search button has been removed because it produces unpredictable results. It might be re-instated in the future.
Surrey Border Movie Makers hope you enjoy using and exploring the website!
We welcome any comments or suggestion via the contact form.
Jim Reed
SBMM Webmanager