There's a new SYC website currently being put together and we'd like to launch a competition for some new videos that showcase what SYC is all about.
If you are a videographer, go-pro owner or drone flyer we hope you can help us.
There's a great video on the current SYC website public home page but its over decade old. So we'd like to put something together that "advertises" what SYC is about for prospective new members.
If you think you may be able to help, please click the Read More.
Video competition rules
We would like some new short videos that "show off" the Starcross Yacht Club to potential new members (as the current website home page video by Tim Laws from 2012 does)
Here are some rules for the competition (really just guidance for what we are looking for!)
- we are looking for videos that cover the main club activities and facilities (dinghy racing, dinghy cruising, day sailing, yachting, juniors etc as well as shots of the club / location). Videos that show activities such as canoe/kayaking, the social side of activities, working parties etc would also be great
- your video should cover one or more the above areas and try to showcase to prospective club members what these activities are like at SYC
- we would also like to create a video for the new SYC home page that covers all club activities. To do this, we would like to cut and paste together an overview video from sections of many/all submitted videos. Please let us know if you would not be happy for your content to be used in this manner. To support this, please could all videos be shot in landscape rather than portrait mode
- videos should be up to about 3 minutes in length - but shorter than this is fine
- ideally footage should be in .mp4 or Apple ProRes format and shot at 1080p and 24-30 frames per second and H.264 codec. However, we will endeavour to work with any footage that is submitted!
- close ups of people should be avoided (unless permission is obtained)
- copyright material (such as copyrighted music) should not be used unless permission has been obtained for its usage on the public SYC website. Videos must be able to be compliant with Vimeo’s guides https://vimeo.com/help/guidelines
- the main prize is the kudos of having your name and video on the SYC website but the SYC Commodore has agreed to stump up some bottles of wine as nominal prizes
- you would need to be prepared to allow SYC to host the video from the club website and / or our video streaming platform of choice
- the competition closes on 1st July 2023 and the SYC website team and commodore's decision will be final. Submissions after that date for club areas without videos will, however, be very gratefully received!
If you are thinking that you may be able to take part it would help if you could optionally let me know so I can make sure you hear about any updates. Same contact details if you have any questions.
New SYC website
As mentioned in passing at the start of this article, there is a new SYC website currently being developed. It is highlighted that this is primarily a "technology update" as the software our current website uses in almost a decade old (which is like almost a hundred years old in "internet years" or so I'm told). To make sure we continue running on secure software, we must update before mid August.
So this isn't intended to be like some massive corporate website rebrand / launch of a new website. A lot of the new SYC website will look quite familiar. However,
- we are aiming to ensure that the new website is much more usable than the current site on mobiles and tablets
- while we are carrying forward your website logons, forum posts and many of the existing website articles, quite a lot of the less used parts of the current website will be quietly dropped (not least because they also run on old software that will be unsupported after August)
The aim is to put the new SYC website live around the end of June. There'll be more details published before then but if you have any specific concerns about an updated SYC website (noting the above caveats), please do get in touch.
Aidan Whiteley
Photo by TheRegisti on Unsplash