Using your smartphone to make a short film - a hands-on course at Bell House

A total mixture of people showed up on Saturday 24th February at Bell House, ranging in age from 20 to 65, to learn how to make films on the small camera in their pockets – which also doubles up as a mobile phone.  Some brought iPhones and others had android phones, but Cassius Rayner's course works for all these devices; particularly impressive considering there are over 200 different android phones on the market.  In just over 5 hours we learnt about light, focus, tracking and editing, and, best of all, we ended up making our own short film.  In a rather circular process, the film I made with my two team-mates was a film about a teddy arriving at Bell House to go on a film course.

The professional film-makers on the course were planning to make all sorts of short films - for charities, for businesses, and for interviews. Not everyone was a professional, and come came just for the sheer fun of doing something creative.  Cassius explained that making a good film is all about a compelling story, told in a way that's eye-catching and easy to follow, so when we were making our films, we focused on creating an interesting story. After shooting, we used a variety of different editing apps to create our finished product.

The course was also full of tips and demonstrations of useful kit, from sliders to splitters, and microphones to tripods.  None of the smartphone add-ons are absolutely necessary, but it was surprising to see the range that's available. It was great to learn how affordable and cost-effective all the equipment is, and it really did make a difference to the quality of the filming.

Whether you are serious about making short films or just want to have fun, this is the course for you - in a month's time Cassius will be running the same smartphone filmmaking course again. It costs £65, and in my opinion, is worth every penny.  The course on Saturday was sold out, and this one will be too very shortly! Sign up now before the tickets go! - http://www.mobilefilmmaking.com/workshops .  And if you work for a charity, then there is a specific course running on 27th April, teaching charity sector employees how to best use their smartphone to maximise filming for their charity in the age of social media: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/smartphone-filming-for-your-charity-tickets-43828741947

Bell House - the first front-on photograph in a very long time....

Benjamin Rice, photographic artist, believes that last Saturday was the first time that the whole of the street facing, front elevation of Bell House has been photographed straight on. This may seem unbelievable, but having been built in 1767, the Georgian house has spent much of its life in the pre-photography era. In more recent years, it was shrouded in vegetation, so a photograph from this angle has not been possible - until now.  There are many archive images of the house from the back and from the side, such as the Country Life photo from 1962, dug out by the Bell House historian, Sharon O'Connor, but none showing the structure without horticultural interference.

Benjamin at work

Benjamin, saw that the clearance of the rhododendron has allowed Bell House to wake up, like Sleeping Beauty, and he offered to take a professional picture of the magnificent facade.  For this project, he used a three-metre high tripod and a camera with a whizzy (and presumably a fiercely expensive) lens. It was a beautifully clear day, and Benjamin had worked out that the sun would be "kissing the front" at about midday.  Some of the ground floor window frames have recently been renovated, the front door freshly painted, the shutters bolted back and finally the distracting 21st century modes of transport were removed, so by the time he was all set, the house was looking its majestic best.

Benjamin will be exhibiting at Bell House for the Dulwich Festival as part of the Artists Open House weekends - 12th/13th May and 19th/20th May 2018.  He will be displaying a series of very large, but micro-detailed ‘photographic art’ capturing nature’s reclamation of aging dry-stone walls. His wife Pip, a basket weaver, will also be showing her work, some of which have been created from foraged plant material sourced from Bell House’s garden.  

Fragment of an envelope

A fragment of an envelope: how much could it tell you about where it was found or who it belonged to?

Andrew McLynn, chief craftsman, is renovating the Bell House windows using traditional techniques to restore them to their original splendour. While taking apart one of the box sashes, Andrew found part of an envelope stuffed inside the window frame, probably by someone repairing the window who needed to fill the gap and picked up some nearby wastepaper.

Printed on it are the words:

needs you…
Now with
extra pages
and only 85p!
If undelivered, please return to
Games Workshop
27/29 Sunbeam Road, London NW10 6JP

(characters in italics are our interpolations due to letters being missing or illegible)

We can see that the envelope was posted by Games Workshop and it would almost certainly have carried their in-house magazine, White Dwarf, which at the time covered fantasy and science fiction role-playing games, in particular ‘Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’ (referred to as AD&D on the magazine cover below). White Dwarf increased its cover price to 85p in April 1984 so our envelope would have been sent out after that as it refers to the cover price being ‘only 85p’.

The envelope is addressed to A. Creed. He was a pupil at Dulwich College from 1984 to 1988. Boys at boarding at school would of course have their mail sent to their school address and it’s not surprising that one of them would want to read a magazine such as this one. Was Creed delighted to read his magazine on the day it arrived, or did he squirrel it away to enjoy at the weekend when he had more time? Perhaps he passed it around Bell House after he had read it, so that boys not lucky enough to have a subscription might also enjoy reading about the latest games.

We love finding fragments of history like this, and are very lucky to have our historian, Sharon O'Connor, around to investigate everything we find! Sharon has done SO much research on Bell House, and its residents, that we have two local history talks coming up based on her work. Events at Bell House have been selling out, so make sure you book soon before these tickets go!