...could use some creative advice...

ClipMan wrote on 4/16/2004, 5:59 AM
...doing training video...restricted to stills and narration...lots of narration and text....using track motion on stills and nifty transitions but these are great for 1 to 2 minutes segments but most segments are 8 to 10 minutes long and the stills are limited ...got music too...need to keep viewer interested all the way through with "stuff" happening on the screen...ran out of ideas...any suggestions would be VERY much appreciated...

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/16/2004, 6:04 AM
If all you have is stills there isn't much you can do. It IS a training video after all. To give it some "attention grabbin power" you'd probely need to shoot some video. I remember my dad worked on a pizza hut training video once. IT was a spoof of star wars (doh wars). Kept peoples attention for the 5 minutes they were susposed to watch it.

I've also seen training videos done as comedys (funny bad things happening to people who don't follow the rules).

You could always use photoshop & "cut" some people out of the stills and do some crude animation with them. That could keep peoples attention. :)
Spot|DSE wrote on 4/16/2004, 6:12 AM
Have you considered doing "the kid stays in the picture" type of editing/effect?
Or, cutting into the same picture more slowly, but where you might have one slow pan into the image, do jump cuts instead?
What about colored cutaway masks to focus attention?
Laying one still over top of itself at different pan/crop/zoom levels?
reidwriter wrote on 4/16/2004, 9:20 AM
I just did a 5min training vid for work, a lead in for a meeting.
I shot it as a film noir spoof.
It worked very well cause everyone was ready to be bored and it shook them up. The rest of the meeting was standard powerpoint drivel, but the opener really put them on their toes. And I led into that with a 45sec still project.

If all you have is stills, try to keep them moving.
Will they allow you to put other stills in there. There is a ton of B-movie stuff out there that you can incorporate the will be funny and keep the interest up.
Figure out what the audience is expecting, and turn that around to your benefit.

Just saw up on the sundance media site there is a file to help pull of the multiple image mosaic look thing ala the HP commercials, it may worth a look,
ClipMan wrote on 4/16/2004, 2:02 PM
...thanks for all the suggestions ... some good ones in there....