Newbie Needs Advice For Creating A Yearly Family Slideshow.

[jenpas]

I would like to compile a DVD containing my favorite photos and video clips of 2007. I am looking for advice on how to go about doing this without making it too long and/or boring. A friend advised me into breaking it up into 4 sections that are 10 minutes each. I don't want to make it too long but at the same time I have an entire year of memories to include. Looking at all my photos and movies until this point, I have approximately 2 hours worth of "raw" video based on a 3 second display with a 3 second transition.

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

It's going to be painful but the only way to do it is to vastly reduce the number of pictures you use in any one show. But there's nothing magic about 4 shows. I'd make a DVD with a bunch of short ones where each show focused on an event during the year or maybe on a person if there's something special for that individual. Then you can pick and choose what to look at by who's watching and what they might care about.

There's also nothing magic about 10 minutes for length but certainly if you go much longer, it will likely then appeal to fewer people because it can be hard to hold the crowd's interest for much longer. The exception is a show where they, the audience, are in it. Then at least my family will sit still for a bit longer--at least the first time through.

No matter what you do, the first step (and it's a hard one) is to cull the pictures down to the absolute minimum to tell the story in that show. Someone once wrote, "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." Slideshows are like that, too. It's harder to create a short one than a long one, but short isn't an end of itself—it's a means to the end of telling your story well—you've eliminated all the extraneous stuff and the distractions. It's natural to want the audience to see all the wonderful pictures you took, but no matter how fantastic the picture, if it isn't needed to tell the story in that show, then it doesn't belong in that show (maybe make another show where it does belong). Likewise, no matter how good they are, it's rare that two, similar pictures are better than one in telling a telling a single story point.

A tool I like to use when in the culling process is Pixort: http://www.pixort.com/
It helps me go through the pictures, rate them and sort them out so I can then see which ones I think are the best--remember tho' best means that they tell the story.

Hope that will at least help you get to thinking about how to do it!

Dick

[BethS]

I recently did a show for a friend of mine. He asked that it be not longer than 7 minutes yet gave me over 100 pictures that he wanted done with special movement and transitions. In order to "shorten" the show I made a number of picture collaages in my photo editor that I then saved as one image to import into the show. Yes, you can put more than one picture on a slide in PSG but I wanted to use some special framing around the pictures so I worked in an outside editor.

Maybe this will help you use lots of pictures with less slides.

Beth

[Jerry Cole Profile Private message]

Hello Jenpas,
Welcome to the Forum. Some of the best advice I received from this forum was to keep the story that I wanted to tell in mind and then use the slides, audio and transitions to tell that story. I think if you have a story in mind, the task of choosing pictures gets a lot easier. Without knowing where you are going it is difficult to know how to get there.

I recently completed a show that spanned a 50 year history and kept the show to 30 minutes. That was a very long show, but 50 years is a long time. I had several hundred photos, slides, documents, blueprints, etc. to start with. I began with a story board to help me stay on track and used segments that transitioned, one to the next. You do need to prioritize or the show gets fat in a hurry.

On the technical side, its best not to try to use the full arsenal of transitions and movement that PSG offers. Especially during the initial phases of show development. I recommend starting with simple, consistent A/B fades to begin. Then you can use the other features as needed by the story you want to tell. Overuse of the Gee-Whiz features may look cool at first, but they quickly become annoying if overused.

Much like a string of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they begin to detract from the story. All of the above aside, the best advice is "just do it" and have fun creating.

Again, welcome ... looking forward to seeing your continuing posts.
Jerry

[hanesian]

The "onliest" person likely to watch a 2 hour (or so) recap of your year will be you! So if that's your target audience, have a blast!

Otherwise do yourself a favor and take the 'less is better, storytelling' approach suggested by the others. Chapters might help as well.

Good luck!