Report on August Meeting

Our August Meeting was well attended again despite several apologies. The programme commenced with Heather Bray, Principal Dunedin Family History Group, who gave a very interesting talk accompanied by a power point slide show, depicting the changes in key areas of downtown Dunedin in the 1860’s through to the present day. Examples of Dunedin harbour side before and after reclamation work, and key areas such as the exchange, Octagon and important intersections through the last 150 years were also shown. This talk was well received by all.

Competition was ‘Up to 10 minutes own choice’. The longer competitions usually result in fewer entries but there were 4, a great response.

First Place went to Cannon Studios. ‘New Abbey’, by Gio Angelo, which was filmed in and around the small village of New Abbey in Scotland...where they were celebrating a milestone in the history of the preserved ruins of the Cistercian Abbey (founded in 1273) which is sometimes referred to as ‘Sweethearts Abbey’. Highlights of New Abbey Village also featured.

Second Place went to Dragon Films. ‘South American Highlights’ by Mike Davies  visiting and reporting on a number of towns and attractions in the southern area of South America. An excellent commentary covered these areas...and a great deal of very interesting viewing was packed into this film.

Third Place went to Nevill Smith with ‘Valley of Dreams’. This was a production of a high standard telling the story of the murals being painted on the long wall of Donaghys Works Rope walk. It contained great coverage of the painting with a number of the young participants, sponsors and volunteers being interviewed.

Fourth Place went to Wynot Films. ‘New Zealand Post’ by Andrew Wylie This was an interesting little documentary of the sorting rooms behind the scenes at the Dunedin complex....highlighting some of the machinery used in processing the high mail volumes.

All films were very good and it was a moot point which ones came where, a challenge for judging!

Peter Begg then presented the members with a multi choice Questionnaire which was his take on the workshop (session 3) for August. This contained a variety of interesting Questions centred around editing, cameras, and also some extras on news events of that day, general knowledge, weather, and mathematical challenges. This went down very well and kept the meeting very quiet while everyone pondered over the questions. It was designed to be a fun challenge and answers were given out on completion. This was a different approach, and possibly the first and only time a quiz has been held as part of our meeting!

John Armstrong then gave a report with screen demonstration on the new catalogue indexing system developed for OAMM archive material. This will make accessing sections of the archive much quicker and easier. He and Andrew Wylie have almost finished loading the HQ versions of these discs into storage drives for safer storage and back up.

The meeting closed at 9.35 pm with supper and fellowship.

Peter Begg

President

OAMM.