The Little Monstah and her Friends

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lady jane

The Little Monstah and her Friends

Postby lady jane » Thu Aug 16, 2007 5:39 pm

This is one of my first shows with Pro Show Gold. I would like any c&c, is it even good? Is there any way to make it better?

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... 9215&alb=0

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Postby Jerry Cole » Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:23 pm

Welcome to the Lion's ...er ...uh ...PSG forum!

All joking aside, this is a nice little show and very well done for your first show posting. You have avoided most the evil deeds and my comments are personal preference.

I think it would be less distracting from the pictures and the story you are telling to minimize the number of transitions that you use. Simple A/B fades can do wonders (but again, that is personal preference) for the majority of the slides. I like a few purposeful "other" transitions to try to emphasize a particular slide or series. Maybe ponder why you used a certain transition where you did.

One other thing you might think about .... again, not a "deal breaker" ... but on those landscape slides that have a black band at top and bottom...if you zoom in to fill the frame. That eliminates the black bands.

All in all, still a very nice story, photos are good and music choice is very appropriate.

Isn't this more fun than a photo album?

Thanks for posting,
Jerry
San Diego Guy
PSG, PSP, PSE8 & Nikon D80 user
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." Mark Twain

lady jane

The little monstah and her friends

Postby lady jane » Thu Aug 16, 2007 11:21 pm

Thank you for the c&c! Glad to hear I am on the right track and not boring everybody. I didn't even think about cropping the photo to eliminate the black bands, nice tip. The photos were not actually "chosen" they were a set that the grandma sent to the family. I just make a slide show because the great-grandpa is incapable of looking at the pix on the web. This way he can see them. Looking at the pictures, they are the most boring. But to put them in a slide show (and also to make up a story with text) you are very correct, it sure beats an album.

Actually, I like using more transitions than the ab fade. I think this holds the interest of an audience much better. Certainly not all the transitions, there are many in PSG that I would never use. No doubt as I gain more experience with PSG I will resist the showy stuff, but the main thing for me I don't want a slide show to be boring. I just hope I (and the grandma) won't regret this fancy stuff in 20 years :)

I also want to be sure the placement of the text is not causing any problems. I put it in an area of large solid color where the words can be seen. So the text hops all over. Hope this won't interfere with proper esthetics of a slide show.

Thanks again for your critique. What transitions would you take out or change to the ab fade? I'm willing to listen lol.
Jane

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Re: The little monstah and her friends

Postby Jerry Cole » Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:28 am

lady jane wrote:Thanks again for your critique. What transitions would you take out or change to the ab fade? I'm willing to listen lol.
Jane


Jane,
I named the A/B fade as only an example .... other transitions work well also. My point was that with a different transition practically every slide, I was distracted somewhat away from the pics and your story, and my focus started drifting to the transitions instead.

I kinda look at transitions like punctuation. If every sentence has an exclamation point, it loses its effectiveness.
Again, personal opinion, but I don't think there are any transitions that I will never use. I think all of them have their place and time.

I know your family will love the show since it is personal and that will keep their focus on the pics. You know your audience, and I do not. That is the ultimate test.

Keep up the good work!
Jerry
San Diego Guy
PSG, PSP, PSE8 & Nikon D80 user
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." Mark Twain

lady jane

The Little Monstah and her Friends

Postby lady jane » Fri Aug 17, 2007 12:16 pm

Thanks for the critique about transitions. I feel like the transitions in a slide show are similar to very tight editing in a movie. I read some years back where one movie was criticized because there were too many cuts, so it was obvious it was made for TV. An actual movie theatre release wouldn't have that many.

Your opinion reminds me of that Mexican movie, can't think of the title but it was done literally on a shoestring. The producers mother prepared the meals for the cast. This movie had extremely tight editing, when I first saw some scenes, my first reaction was Wow. But then after seeins several more scenes, I was waiting to see how the next edit would turn out. The movie won several awards, and it certainly was innovative, but now I don't know that it was that great.

Then too, your statement reminds me in that scene in Star Wars where they were fighting off the Tie fighters and Han Solo tells Luke "don't get cocky" and you know it was a difficult edit to do smoothly. That is, the viewers attention is on the edit rather than the scene.

I don't want my slide shows to be like that, but with very common pictures such as these, it very well could end up very boring without more transitions. There has to be a good middle somewhere here, all I have to do is to find it :)

Oh I feel some of the PSG transitions are absolutely horrible. Most of them with "2" really interfere with the picture that you want to see. The heart is a wonderful exception and is how I end all my shows. But a lot of the other transitions are just not attractive at all. I wish there were other transitions on the web that we could download for PSG.

Well you have certainly given me something to think about. Can you (and others too) give us beginners some guidelines about using transitions? I like the fact that PSG has the automatic insert random transitions in a new show, then I usually go in and change the more unpleasant ones. I have read that possibly start with only 4 different transitions. But where would you put them? Probably have the ab fade, then if I use 4 more then how far apart would they go? That is, how do I do this so attention won't be drawn to the transitions rather than the pictures.
Jane

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Postby gpsmikey » Fri Aug 17, 2007 12:23 pm

Jane, if you have quicktime on your system take a look at this quick
little show from Digital Juice on transitions -- what they say there is
very applicable here (if you are watching for the transitions instead of
the show, you have too many different ones) ...

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

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

lady jane

The Little Monstah and her Friends

Postby lady jane » Fri Aug 17, 2007 3:42 pm

Finally I was able to get to the end of the punctuation show. Curse you, dial-up! It makes sense, and has some very good points to keep in mind. I will say tho, you cannot compare a slide show, with a movie, with a book. They each are unique. With each of the three at their optimum, a book tells a story that you see in your minds eye. A movie is great or horrible because of the editing. A slide show will be boring - or not - by its transitions and pan/zoom.

But I now am aware of the "Han Solo effect" (the obvious edit in the Tie fighter scene). It just screamed Edit, edit didn't this turn out great? And so I will watch for this in my slide shows, and try to tone things down.
Thanks,
Jane

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