By Lilian Webb, AIPF, ARPS, IPF National Audio Visual Co-Ordinator
The above was held for the first time via Zoom on Saturday, 16th October 2021. The event was not held last year, due to Covid. We were delighted to have had Alastair Taylor, ARPS, CPAGB/AV as our judge. Alastair has judged many competitions – both national and international and is a prize-winning author. The sequences were sent to him in advance and as usual, he made very constructive comments on each of the national entries in person on the day.
There were 18 sequences from 5 different clubs – Celbridge, Malahide, Bangor & North Down, Shannon & Offshoot in four categories. The winners were:-
Jane McIlroy from Bangor & North Down, who won the Novice section and the Best First Time Entrant. Diarmuid O’Donnchadha from Malahide won the Intermediate Section and Celbridge Camera Club the Club Section. In the Advanced Section, Honourable Mention Ribbons were won by Sheamus O’Donoghue from Shannon, Rita Nolan from Celbridge & Brendan O’Sullivan also from Celbridge, who also won the Best Photography Trophy. Michael Linehan from Celbridge won the Best Humour Trophy. Brendan won a Bronze Medal for another sequence and Liam Haines from Offshoot won a Silver Medal and also the Best Script Trophy. The winner of the Advanced Section and the Overall Winner of the Kieran O’Loughlin Memorial Trophy & the Best Sound Production Trophy, 2 Gold Medals and a Bronze Medal for the audience vote was Judith Kimber from Bangor & North Down.
There were 27 entries in the Open Photo Harmony competition with entrants from Ireland, north and south, England, Slovakia, Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand & Australia. There were Honourable Mention Ribbons for Marcel Batist, Netherlands, Derrick Holliday & Alan Tyrer both from England. There were two runners-up Silver Medals in the Best Irish Entries going to Brendan O’Sullivan & Raymond Hughes, with Mark Allen winning the Gold Medal. Malcolm Imhoff from England & John Hodgson from Australia were the runners up in the overall competition, again gaining Silver Medals with the overall winner being Andrew Gagg from England, winning Gold. The audience vote Bronze Medal went to Alan Tyrer.
On average there were 49 households tuning into each sequence and over the course of the day, there were 79 attendees from four continents – Australia, Africa, Europe & America – and working on Asia and Antarctica for the next time!
Not only did Alastair give excellent constructive comments on each of the National
entries and a general comment on the Photo Harmony section but he showed several of his sequences – “Devotion”, “Ghost Town”, “Preservation Divine”, “That Picture”, “In the Footsteps of the San”, “A Mother’s Son” & “Beyond the Wall”. He also explained the rationale behind the making of each, which was much appreciated. Many of those in Ireland would not have had the opportunity of seeing his sequences before. In fact, Jeff Morris from South Africa emailed me to say that he is pinching this aspect for his “Yes” competition – showing some of the judge’s work!
After the presentation of prizes, it was good to have the President of the IPF, John Butler, FIPF at his first Audio Visual Festival to say a few words before Brendan O’Sullivan, who opened the championships also brought the championships to a close.
I have been the IPF AV Group Secretary/Treasurer since 1998 and the IPF AV Co-Ordinator for about 15 years. When the committee met to organise the IPF AV Championships in those days, we had to put slides in magazines, test them that the pictures on the entry forms matched the first 5 and last image and played with the cassette. Of course, on the day, the authors had to play the sequences themselves pressing all the right buttons at the right time .. and in the early days manually! Now your sequence flies over the internet by WeTransfer!
I want to acknowledge the amount of work that Alan Lyons did in setting up the online entries, the audience vote, receiving and showing the sequences and sending them to Alastair. Also, Liam Haines & Maria O’Reilly who acted as Co-Hosts and Margaret Finlay as M.C. It was a very long day with the committee in place from 9 a.m., and still there just before 9 p.m! This is the first time it was held as a 1 day event. We really missed the camaraderie and the gala dinner but it was good to chat with many from around the world. I never thought as a Webb that I would be in touch with so many on the world wide web.
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