Dan's Vietnam Tour

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

Hi everyone,

After 36 years I finally decided it was time to convert all my old Vietnam 35mm combat flying tour slides into digital images before they were totally destroyed from mold and dust, etc.

I had to use the expertise of a friend who does professional level digital photo processing to restore the image quality because many of my old slides had really deteriorated badly over the years and spent the last 5 months working on this 199 slide show which lasts just a bit over 24 minutes.

Please Let me know what you think of my show and if anyone needs their old slides processed like I did, just PM me and I'll be glad to forward my photo processor friend's contact information

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... 6335&alb=0

Warm regards,

Pilot Dan

[becky_calif Profile Private message]

I don't think you posted the correct link to your show.

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

Sorry . . . this is my very 1st try at posting a show.

I have updated the viewing link above which I believe will work fine now

Dan

[becky_calif Profile Private message]

Was totally amazing! Although I was in college at that time, it was like rewatching the news back then. Your effects were awesome..the helicopters and planes and such. You turned photos into realistic videos. The subject matter and how you presented it all was incredible. Having let you know that I that this was outstanding, there are two things that stick in my mind that I found distracting. I wanted you to zoom up to the movie sceen in the beginning so I could see more details of those videos. I thought maybe you choose to have those videos smaller might have been that they became pixilated if they weren't shown at a distance. I thought you could have chosen different font to compliment the movie more. I watched it all and probably will watch it again --amazing job.
Becky

[AMD Profile Private message]

Dan,

I watched your entire show and thoroughly enjoyed it. It loaded immediately for me--no buffering at all.

The only negative I had was that the video portions at the beginning continued perhaps a bit long--I kept thinking I would see no stills--but I did and WOW!

I thought you had some wonderful special effects. Often it took a moment for me to realize that some of your effects weren't video but, rather, keyframe involvement. I thought your music fit perfectly. I can't imagine all the hours you have put into this show. I am sure you relived many moments while making it. It made me really think about those times and years of my own life, and I appreciated seeing that part of the world through your camera's lense and your captions.

Thank you for sharing the show and giving such good info with the captions. While I really liked your ending slide with the still and the waves lapping onto the beach in the background, I would have loved to see the show end with your homecoming!

Congratulations on your show and a belated thanks for your sacrifice serving in Viet Nam!

Ann

[Raymond Bradley]

Dan I normally would not start a show this long especially when there are more important things waiting. But I did and stayed to the end and am now writing this and the more “important things” are still waiting.

I hope you have sent links to those who shared this experience with you including the USO troop and the Miss America and her entourage.

Raymond

[pianopipeman Profile Private message]

Perfect - everything came together beautifully !
Thanks for sharing
Ken

[iristocrat]

Dan...Thanks for the excellent show, it brought back a flood of memories as I watched it...I was in Saigon from 70-71, U.S. Army, military intelligence. Your show was well planned and I enjoyed every single part of it. It loaded right away for me. You now have me wondering about my slides from that time.

Larry

[mikemullett Profile Private message]

. . . this is my very 1st try at posting a show.

Dan

...and was a great show it was Dan - full of interest from start to finsh. Watched from beginning to end with no feeling of "lets move on". Great cut outs of the aircraft flying so naturally integrated into the slide that it was like watching a video, and loved the closing slide of the surf.

Congratulations

Mike

[debngar Profile Private message]

Wow Dan,

I enjoyed your show very much! I'm not sure exactly if that's the best way to describe it since the subject surrounds wartime. I don't like war. But what I think I really mean is that it was a fine display of your personal experiences during the Viet Nam war time. You obviously spent many many hours thoughtfully putting this together from the opening display of video at the beginning, to the the use of cut-outs, to the music and the strong final end of the production.

It was a lot of work, but I'll bet you feel it was worth it and a labor of love of sorts at that.

I graduated from H.S. in 1971. The music selections were really good, from the music of that generation to the more current 90's hit "From A Distance". I recognized Don McLean's voice, but wasn't familiar with that piece at the end. You made me want to look up some of his stuff and consider purchasing it.

I long for former days when most men were not afraid to be a man, felt it was an honor to serve our country, took pride in our freedoms and democracy instead of this communistic/socialistic nanny-government nonsense direction we're being shoved into which is obviously not working and instead rapidly destroying the foundation and many good things of our country.

The whole show was worth watching without skipping through, else I might have missed some of the interesting sites and effects you put into it. One of my favorite images was the white Buddha statue brought into clear view from the blur. I also especially enjoyed some of the colorful market scenes.

The only thing I can think of that I might do differently is to have a play all button and also split up the show into a few separate shows so the viewer has the option to go straight to certain segment of the show to pick up from where they left off if they can't sit through the whole thing from lack of time. Since we now have the progress slider, it's not as hard to do that I suppose. But if viewed online, sometimes using the slider causes Presenter to crash my browser so I try not to mess with it that if possible.

Bravo and thank you for your service!

[VidQueen Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi Dan,

I have to admit, I don't watch too many shows that are posted....but I had to watch this one. You did a wonderful job! I particularly loved the helicopter flying across the stills of the landscapes. One constructive comment, if I may....I really wanted to see the footage at the beginning full screen. Most of the screen was the theater seating, with just a little bit of footage.

I've read some of the other posts saying where they were during this time period....I feel like a "youngin" here, but I was born in 1972. My Dad served in Germany from 1965 to 1967 as a psycologist (think Dr. Sidney Freedman from M*A*SH*).

Thank you for your service to our country. I have watched several home comings over the past 6 or 7 years and all of them have reflected a hero's welcome; no matter what our opinion of the war was. I am happy to say that I think we learned some lessons from the previous generations.

Thank you for sharing,
Jennifer

[imabeatlelover Profile Private message]

Dan....I have no critiques for your slide show because the subject alone brought back so many memories and stirred up so many emotions that I watched through tears in my eyes and had to keep wiping the tears off my cheeks. I am a military brat, my Father served in the Army in Korea and then was in the Air Force when he did his stint in Nam in 1967-68. If memory serves me right he was stationed at Tuy Hoa. He had only been home for a few months after serving a term in Thailand and he was off to Viet Nam. I was in high school at the time and remembering friends my family and I knew that did come home, never to be the same people we had known before they left, and the ones that didn't come home. The news every night with the daily body count and myself, I was torn between 2 worlds.....my military upbringing, my undying Patriotism and love for the USA and the other side......with all my friends, being a "Flower Child" as it were, but still loving, admiring and forever grateful to the soldiers who were risking, and too often sacrificing, it all, for our freedom. As the famous quote says....It was the best of times .... it was the worst of times. I was about 15 or 16 and while in Viet Nam my Dad had fallen in love with two little orphan twins, a boy and a girl, and my parents had done everything in their power to try to adopt the 2 babies and bring them home to live with us and be in our family. We were turned down because my Mother was 10 years older than my Father and had health problems with severe asthma at times. They said she was too old....and not healthy enough. My parents were heartbroken. Well.....my Mother just turned 87 and she can run circles around me! Although my Dad passed away in 1988 at the age of 55, I know we could have given those 2 little babies a wonderful life and my Mother and I still talk often about them and wonder what ever happened to our little "Katie and Kevin." I personally want to thank you for your service and let you know how much I appreciate everything you did. You looked so young and so handsome in uniform! The music brought me right back to those times and I can't believe how wonderful the photos are and how well they survived! My nephew is in Special Forces (he works on Chinooks) and is on a mission as I write this, so the military part of our family has gone on to new generations. Thank God you made it back safe.......Thank You!

Pat

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

Wow . . . I don't know what I can say to everyone who has responded so far . . . I think I am blushing

After spending 5 months and literally hundreds of hours working on this project, I wasn't exactly sure if my Vietnam tour show would appeal to anyone else but me. I am very happy to know that it has. I really wanted to create a show which would utilize the pictures I took in Vietnam in the best way possible as well as to tell the story in an interesting and entertaining manner.

The video at the beginning of the show was retrieved from the Internet and isn't very high quality so this is the reason I elected to have it play on the movie screen from a distance as if you are sitting in the audience rather than zooming in up close. The helicopters in this movie video are from the same 1st Cav unit that I served with and this is the reason I chose to use it.

I used yellow colored captions after experimenting with different colors and font styles and found that the yellow color was the easiest for me to see and read. I didn't have any captions at all to begin with, but I soon realized that I needed to use captions to provide the viewer with more information to be better able to understand the images they were looking at.

By far the hardest part of creating my Vietnam Tour slide show was finding the correct music and sound effects. I spent days and days listening to music and experimenting with sound effects and slide show timing to get just the right "feel". They say that if you listen long enough and hard enough . . . your pictures will "talk" to you and tell you when everything is just right and . . . this is exactly what happened (BIG SMILE).

Once again, I thank you for watching and thank you all for your "feedback" and support. I am now a little more confident that my Vietnam Tour slide show is ready to share with everyone

Pilot Dan

[VidQueen Profile Private messageWebsite]

The video at the beginning of the show was retrieved from the Internet and isn't very high quality so this is the reason I elected to have it play on the movie screen from a distance as if you are sitting in the audience rather than zooming in up close.

Pilot Dan

Ah...then I retract my earlier statement. You made the right creative decision there!

jennifer

[Funtolearn Profile Private message]

What can I add...What a fantastic job you have done!
Muriel