Jim Reed

I find that life is often driven by events that inspire an action, and that they usually occur when you least expect them. And so it’s been with my journey into film-making.

I’ve been editing video from the mid-1990’s using VHS with Hi-8 tapes, then moving onto Mini-DV, and in early 2000’s acquired my first PC based editing suite. My son worked for Sony and he gave me a copy of their new Vegas Editing Software for me to test.

I mainly created wedding videos for family and friends, often using their footage, but later wanted to move on to making my own recording. In 2016 I bought my first ‘modern’ camera, a 4k Sony AX-53, high speed with built in Gimbal. I joined the club in July 2017 after randomly seeing a feature in a local newspaper .

These few examples represent my video interests: Documentary, Satire and making Tutorials.

Making a Difference

Shortly after I joined, Peter Frost motivated me to submit a video that ‘documents an event’. I had taken my grandchildren to the ‘Hawk conservancy’ to record birds in flight with my 100p camera, and made a 50p video documentary. Sadly, the club equipment at that time couldn’t cope with the frame rate, and the video stuttered whilst the audio wouldn’t play properly.

This event proved to be quite pivotal to my video making and inspired four actions:

Firstly was to research the history of cinema and TV to understand why we still use the archaic standard of 25 frames per second.

Secondly, was to research the difference between Analogue and Digital sound recording levels, which made a big impact to its sound, and improved my audio awareness.

Thirdly was to revisit the video, improve its narration, causing me to buy a proper microphone!

And fourthly was to find a video club that could actually play my 50p video!

I joined Reading Film and Video Makers in September that year, but it seems that SBMM had also been inspired and by December they had fixed the playback problem.

I re-edited the video from an original length of about 12 minutes down to 6 minutes, and recorded a new narration. The video won Best documentary in Reading and also their Best Creative of the year prize 2017. It was also shown at several regional festivals, and the next year, 2018, it won four awards in the Surrey Border Members Competition;

Best Camera Work; Best Use of Sound; Best Documentary and Best Overall Film

The next two videos are documentaries made in the area around Southend, Essex.

My sister-in-law Ann, who lived in WestCliff on Sea had been unwell, so between 2017 and 2018 we spend at lot of time in the Southend area.

The first of the videos features the Southend pier, and was filmed in three sessions – once when it was so windy I had to be careful not to lose the camera, next when it was sunny but bitterly cold, and finally on a very hot sunny day on a bank holiday!

On The Edge

Oh! Cockle

The second video was inspired by Ann herself who suggested I made a recording about the cockle sheds in Leigh-on-Sea.

I did record several interviews for the video, but couldn’t use the footage.

In one case, the chap fixing the netting couldn’t complete a sentence without saying the ef’ing EU or the ef’ing Government!

The fourth in this series is my Rip Van Wrinkly Video, which showcases my love of special effects, and particularly my sense of humour.

It wasn’t actually entered into any of the SBMM club competitions, but won 1st place at Bristol BFVS Club Competition, as well as Best Creative at Reading.

It also provoked a lot of interest about its creation, and particulaarly how I had managed to both age and de-age myself without makeup!