Early attempt-needs help

[Raymond Bradley]

Running time: Sixteen minutes

This is my first posting here and is a plea for help. The show is too long but I don’t know how to shorten it without starting over. I hope some of you experts can find the time and patients to deal with it. I am working on my lousy photography.

How do I:
• Stop the horses, water gurgle and thunder when the last slide ends?
• Stop the music when the horses, thunder and water is running?
• Get my family interested in looking at it?
• Eliminate the black lines at the edges of most pictures?

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... alb=131912

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

OK, first off, welcome to our funny farm !!

First thing to change is the classic that we have ALL done - it
is NOT a personal challenge to use all of the available transitions
in one show -- it tends to drive people nuts !!

As far as the photography goes, it is fine and you have nothing to
be sorry for there. I would add a few more captions to identify the
segments -- the train trip (is that the Grand Canyon Railway?), the
canyon pictures etc. The comments about 1 mile down and 3 back
up are good (although I think it is more like 1 down and 10 up )

The black bars at the top/bottom of the pictures are because the
picture when full width is not the right height for the screen - the
cameras do not have the same aspect ratio as the normal TV (4:3).
The solution, usually is to zoom in a bit which gives you the full
height, but you do lose some on the edges - there are other things,
but that is the easiest.

As far as the galloping horses going on and on and on and on ..
if you select the horse sound track and in the sound mode, click
the "edit fades and timing" button, you can adjust when it ends
and how it fades out (quick or slow).

For the transitions and timing, you are going to have trouble holding
their attention with that slow pace - I would cut the slide time at
least in half and use a quicker transition - often 2 seconds or so
per slide with maybe 1/2 second for the transition. For most of
the transitions, just the A/B crossfade works well. Check out this
short show at Digital Juice that has some good comments about
using transitions (you need quicktime player to view it)

http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/segmen ... sp?sid=167

I think that if you speed it up and cut out most of the different transitions,
you will find your family is more interested in watching it (especially when
you add some humorous captions to things that were funny - always gets
a laugh out of the kids).

Hope that helps -- it has a lot of potential and using just a couple of
transitions and speeding it up a ways should really help get the
family interested.

mikey

[Jerry Cole Profile Private message]

Welcome Raymond,

Fear not! ... Mikey's advise is sound (pun intended).

A personal observation:
You have several segments to the show, but sometimes they tend to blur into one another. You might consider approaching each segment as a separate chapter. Thats' a good place to use another consistent transition in addition to the A/B crossfades. But as Mikey said, lots of different transitions drives people nuts .... not that some of us are there already!

Figure out the story you want to tell and the slide selection gets easier.

In small doses, a few captions can help .... but take it from one who srews this up alot, give ample time for people to read the caption before changing slides. Alcain, on this site, had a good suggestion for me ...."Slowly read the caption outloud".

One thought regarding the "Black Edges", one thing you might consider doing before deciding how much to zoom the photos (if you do) is to check out the result in the 16:9 (widescreen format) before finaizing your show. I have started using that format since that's the format for the newer tv's .

I am new to the forum as well, and have found everyone to be very genuine in providing assistance. They will provide advise, but "To your own self be true".

Jerry

[alcain Profile Private messageWebsite]

Raymond,

Opening screen is nice.
Opening sequence is confusing??? You say Leslies Graduation, then we see everything but...
I see way too many transitions.
Photography is pretty darned good - but could use some PP to bring them to life.
The scenic landscape shots will bore most viewers - we can see those anywhere, anytime. What makes a show special is to include special elements (such as people). Captions would help...
Do not overuse the effect, but in scenic landscapes, sometimes a slow zoom to a point of interest adds drama.
I was not really crazy about the soundtrack. Maybe something the kids would like better - more upbeat/contemporary.
Most of the images need the midtones corrected - must be the camera program - open them in photoshop, open the levels dialog, adjust the middle slider to brighten up the midtones. Finally, add a bit of contrast.
I can see immediately why the family doesn't want to view this show again - there are no surprises. They have "been there - done that". They probably say, "Dad, we've ALREADY seen all of that". Add some fun stuff (and take some fun photos that they don't know about).
I must say, the photos made me want to go there...
I think you just tried too hard to put every photograph you had in the show, do some serious cuts.
Ending lacked thought - music ended - still slides playing, etc...
I think this can be made into a fine show. Just listen to what all of the critiques say and make some adjustments.

Blessings, ~al

————————
Notice: This review / comment / critique of your show is strictly my own personal opinion. I may visualize this show one way, and someone else will see it entirely differently. My comments and suggestions are only thoughts of how I might have done it differently, and are by no means, a statement of dislike for your work. You have a reason for doing the show the way you did, and I do respect and honor that. Please take my comments and suggestions with a grain of salt. If I have made a suggestion that you can use, then my review will be of some value. If I have made a suggestion that you do not agree with, then please just disregard this review. My only intent in reviewing shows on this user group is to provide users with another view / insight / and opinion. That’s what user groups are for. Please do not take this review personally, we are professionals and as such, are above petty bickering. Thank you for taking the time to read this review, and I thank you for sharing your work with all of us.
AB Cain

[Raymond Bradley]

Many thanks to Mikey, Jerry, Alcain and all the others who have watched without comment. I will attempt to make all of the suggested changes but it will take this slow learner some time. Will the old show be replaced if the new version is uploaded with the same file name? Raymond

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

No, when you upload it, it puts it in your album right next to the old
one. You can delete the old one or leave it. You then grab the
link to the new version (make something different in the title so
you know which is which ) then you can post that. What I
really wish Photodex would do with their upload utility would be
to instead of just saying "upload was successful", say
"upload successful, the link to the uploaded show is " and the
url of the new show. Would make life easier for those of us
that have to then go login, find the show, copy the url then
paste it back into a message.

mikey

[Raymond Bradley]

Running time now about 10 minutes.

Boy am I glad you guys are back. I wondered (Briefly) if my first attempt had driven you out of business. I think this is better but still not great. "HEP" me please.

Just ran the uploaded version and spotted three flaws.
One picture needs to be cropped more.
The second lizard-pretend he ate something that created gas.

Raymond

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... alb=132054

[Raymond Bradley]

Three-How do I create a less abrupt ending.

Raymond

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Much better !!

As you said, that certainly was an abrupt ending !!
There are a couple of things you can do there - put in a 2 second
black slide at the end or whatever you want and do a 2 second fade or
one of the curtain transitions etc. For the music, you can "trim end and fades"
or whatever that button is and fade it out over 5 seconds or so (also adjust
where the end it)

I think (my opinion) that the transitions are too slow for the style of
music -- seems like they are set at about 1.5 seconds -- I think I would
try more like 1/3 to 1/2 second and see how that looked -- it needs to
have more of a "snap" when it changes to match the style of music - the
slide duration is OK although you could experiment with a bit shorter and
see how it flows (my wife and I always fight over this -- I want them longer
to look at, she wants them faster to "move along" -- we compromise - I
agree with her )

One picture that would have been great (you could still create it with photoshop
or whatever) would be where the boy was running to go down the trail then
you showed him running back the other way -- what would have really looked
good was a picture of him crawling back the other way really dragging

Only other thing that bothered me was the transition into the next segments - going
to the black behind the heart cutout sort of left me feeling "shut out" for lack of
a better term. What actually works fairly well (hmmm -- I see you are using gold,
have to rephrase this a bit - I was going to use keyframes ) is to use two slides
of the first scene for the next segment -- turn the contrast down on the first one by
about 50% and overlay your captions on there, then crossfade to the second that
looks normal (the lower contrast makes it easier to read the text). The heart was
fine, it was just the black behind it as it grew that was sort of "in your face" (or at
least that was the way I felt).

Anyway, much better, see what you think of my comments and ask your audience
what they think -- they are the ones that will be watching it.

mikey

[Jerry Cole Profile Private message]

[quote="Raymond Bradley"]Running time now about 10 minutes.

Boy am I glad you guys are back. I wondered (Briefly) if my first attempt had driven you out of business. ]

Raymond,
No chance! You have a great attitude ... and the new version is much improved. I believe most everyone on this board is genuine in their critiques and advise.

Just don't let it overwhelm you. Al and Mikey gave you a whole bunch to think about. so I'm just offering some other sites that you might want to use for future shows, even if not now.

The first is one that Mikey introduced me to, and it features a tutorial on transitions. Although specifically for video production, I think that a lot applies.

http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/segmen ... sp?sid=167

The second is a site that I have found to be handy ... its a free download of a program that creates frames for your pics. Its very easy, and effective if you are looking for that type of effect. Its called "FrameFun".

http://www.hochstrasser.org/wiki/pmwiki ... i.FrameFun

Keep after it! you'll find your answers.

Jerry

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

One comment I should add here after reading my post -- your
choice of the heart for a major transition point was fine (not
what I would have chosen, but it was fine) - it was the black
behind it that as it zoomed in that bothered me -- that was where
I was suggesting replacing the black with a low contrast
version of the next section picture with the captions on it.

mikey

[Raymond Bradley]

TUTORIAL WEB SITES

www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/segment_detail.asp?sid=167

www.hochstrasser.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?pa ... i.FrameFun

Thanks Mikey and Jerry.

• Re the ending: My “synapsesâ€