Adding Interest To Photo Montage/Slideshow

tygrus2000 wrote on 1/9/2006, 6:56 PM
I have made a 45 minute photo montage thats pretty professional looking and I am looking for a few suggestions to add further interest.

- I have 275 photos in the montage, all painstakingly taken, color corrected and edited. The selected photos have the most diversity I could find in terms of color, texture, location etc
- I've used 90% simple crossfades for transitions because they seem to be the best, but I put in the odd blur, zoom & portals transition to add some interest. Other transitions looked cheesy.
- I have used custom pan and zoom effects on each photo to give movement to the production
- I have also titled each photo in a black bar at the bottom of the video.
- I have authored 10 songs for the production with a 15 second narration spot at the start of each.
- I have mixed the audio to both stereo and DD.
- I have created a dedicated opening to the video, a proper credit roll and also a section on the making of the video at the end.
- I haven't employed the "Kid Stays In The Picture" effect.
- I haven't employed any Particle Illusion effects.
- I haven't used any split screen techniques

What else can should I consider to add interest without taking away from the production. I've worked 5 years on this so I don't want to ruin it with anything that would take away from the base video.
thx.

Tygrus

Comments

Bob Greaves wrote on 1/9/2006, 6:58 PM
Sounds to me that the only thing missing is a deadline.
jrazz wrote on 1/9/2006, 7:01 PM
If you can post it somewhere... a picture speaks a thousand words...

j razz
tygrus2000 wrote on 1/9/2006, 7:11 PM
j razz, it was never to be a client based production. It took 5 years basically because I had to wait for home based techology to catch up to my idea first. People weren't authoring dvds at home 5 years ago. That and to take 275 quality photos and for a non-musician to make 10 songs cant be done in an afternoon. I wanted perfection so that meant it was going to time.

The production is probably too big to post anywhere, but I could make a short snippet of it.
tygrus2000 wrote on 1/9/2006, 7:12 PM
sorry j razz, that message was intended for the other poster.
boomhower wrote on 1/10/2006, 7:55 AM
One thing comes to mind w/o having watched this....

At 45 minutes it is a somewhat long slide show. That is not necessarily a bad thing but you might consider placing chapter markers in the show. If someone wanted to watch a certain portion they could skip ahead easily without having to FF etc. For example, if the slideshow is about the life of your grandfather, you could assign chapters by age ranges and significant events. Then if you want to look at the pictures from when he was in WWII, you can simply go to that chapter.

You may have already done this but thought I'd mention it just in case.

Just a thought.

Keith

edit: spelling
dand9959 wrote on 1/10/2006, 8:09 AM
275 photos in 45 minutes implies about 10 seconds per photo. W/o knowing anything about the content or nature of the project, that seems like a fairly long time to hold on each photo. Just my $0.02, offered blindly.
jetdv wrote on 1/10/2006, 8:46 AM
about 10 seconds per photo. W/o knowing anything about the content or nature of the project, that seems like a fairly long time to hold on each photo

I was creating some slide shows and had a time of 6 seconds on each. My mother said it was too fast. I upped it to 8. Still too fast for her. I upped it to 10. It was STILL too fast. Finally made her happy at around 15 seconds each! I thought they were up an unbearably long period of time by that point.

Since then, the time has varied depending on the target audience but somewhere around 10 seconds each seems to be the happy medium.
AlanC wrote on 1/10/2006, 8:50 AM
I think it depends on the target audience. If the audience is friends/family then you probably don't need to add anything else for them to find it interesting.

If it's aimed at a more general audience then I think you will struggle to maintain anybodys interest for more than a few minutes, no matter how many bells and whistles you add.

Alan
busterkeaton wrote on 1/10/2006, 8:52 AM
That's a good point. If the slide show is worth it, they will watch it again.
If a project is intended to have the audience view more than once, they don't need to assimilate all the information on a first viewing. Leave them wanting more is the old showbiz maxim.

Think of music videos. The directors want them to be seen dozens of times, so they keep their cuts very short.
TeetimeNC wrote on 1/10/2006, 9:03 AM
I also do technically rich photo montage shows. I agree with your thoughts on transition styles. Almost all of mine are cross fades.

For my pure Ken Burns style montages I've found audience attention spans go something like this:

1. The montage is of the audience's family or close friends - about 10 minutes.
2. The montage is in support of an event (i.e., wedding rehearsal dinner - showing bride/groom growing up) - about 4-8 minutes.
3. Somebody else's family photos - about 4 minutes.

These are some things I think can can be used to extend the audience's attention span in a montage:

1. Use good story telling techniques (3 act play, create tension early on so audience wants to know the outcome).
2. Interject Biography style talking head interviews or narrative (perhaps one every 2-3 minutes @ 10-15 seconds each).
3. Use comedic out-takes at the end (where appropriate to the content, of course).
4. Use something else to break the montage every minute or so. Could be as simple as a graphic introducing the next segment. For example, in a video for a wedding rehersal dinner I used turning pages from their high school annual to introduce new montage scenes.

HTH,
Jerry
tygrus2000 wrote on 1/10/2006, 2:09 PM
Thanks for all the advice. The project isn't a family or wedding basd theme, it is landscape, nature and urban photos of western canada.

Similar projects are about 45 minutes long so thats why I targeted that length.