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PART I1I SHARING YOUR WORK
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picture-driven slide shows
A picture-driven slide show is a collection of images that shares a source or theme. These typically have no sound track.
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CHAPTER 5: SLIDE SHOWS
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Warning: This is the kind of slide show that has given the medium a bad reputation.
The key to making a slide show that will delight both
you and the people watching is weeding out the not-so-great shots.
Do you know the secret code word? It’s KISS: Keep It Simple and Short. Here are three more things to keep in mind:
organization and groupings: Chronological order is a proven effective structure. Thematic structures are also natural to some types of subject matter. Remember: We’re pattern seekers, and discovering clear patterns makes the viewer feel good.
visual continuity: Your audience may not have a con- scious awareness about visual tidiness, but they feel it. Make sure that every image in a slide show is cropped to eliminate messy bits around the edges and to fit with the other images. It’s distracting when a slide show jumps be- tween horizontal (landscape) and vertical (portrait) framing.
I made a ten-minute slide show for the rehearsal dinner the night be- fore my daughter, Emmy, was married. People call me a cry baby, with reason. That night I turned the tables on them with a gallery of shots from my family archive. The show was all pictures, but I did set them to music.
pictures to work with for my son-in-law, Greg (top row right). The final six images are from a series of twelve in which Emmy is looking straight into the camera. The dissolves between images took less than thirty seconds to portray a baby growing into a young woman. I used square- formatted photos on a gray background. There was a change of music and mood. The last image was repeated, but on a black background that subtly resolved the time-lapse of Emmy and signaled the end of the show.
pacing: Estimate how much time your audience is willing
to spend looking at your photos. Then subtract 10 percent. This is your maximum running time. If you are clicking through a gallery of photos, make note of how long you want to look at each slide. Three seconds seems like a short time when you’ve only got one image in front of you. Yet when you’re viewing a long series of slides, the same three seconds can feel like they’re dragging.
A title slide set the context (pevious page). I arranged my slide show in chronological order, beginning with shots taken at the hospital the morning Emmy was born (pevious page). Then I included three sequences in which I had scanned and resized some old photos and then “slid” them through the frame (this page). By cropping and resiz- ing I was able to pack in multiple pictures. The joke of Emmy’s mugging for the camera was done with quick cuts (top row, first two). I had fewer
I used Apple’s Final Cut Pro. This video-editing application is a lot like Apple’s iMovie, but it offers greater control over manipulation of still images. You can see the slide show at mediapedia.net.