| Reality Check Planning Center Help Design Your Masterpiece! |
| DOWNLOADS (Click on Links Below): - Slide Show Planning Form (Photos, Slides, etc. to video) [RC-StillsToVideoPlanningForm.pdf] - Adobe Reader 8 (program to view form documents listed above). |
| Tips and Guidelines for producing your "slide show" presentation Your presentation may have multiple elements depending on how complex your presentation is. You may want to have more than one group of pictures with a title before each group. And you may want to hear a different song for each group. (Usually, the songs you want to use dictate how you organize your photos). How do you write all of these instructions out so that your presentation is properly edited? Use R.C.'s Convenient Planning Form (CLICK TO DOWNLOAD): Take a look at Reality Check's Planning Form. You can download it HERE as an Adobe Acrobat Reader "PDF" file and then open up the file and print it out. Just in case you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download the latest version HERE. How To Fill Out the Planning Form: The form is set up so that you can specify what order you want your pieces to be seen on your presentation. Let's say your presentation has three groups of 20 pictures each (Total of 60). Each group has a title and an individual song. Your presentation also has a main title at the beginning and a closing title at the end. - First, you would number your first page on the form (top right corner). Each shaded box is a new element or group and just label them numerically. For our example, your presentation's main title would be the first "element" or piece of the video. To the right of "Type," Draw a circle around "Title". In the blank lines underneath, write out what you want the main title to say. You have decided to not have any music over this title, so in the shaded box after "Song (Audio) heard" write "none" or even "silence". - Second, basically repeat the same steps for the next shadowed box. Label it #2. This element is the title for the title for the first group of pictures. Circle "Title", and write what you want the title to say in the lines below. Here is where you also want to start your first song. Write the song name after "Song (Audio) heard". - Your next "element" or piece of the presentation ("#3") is going to be the first group of pictures. They are photos, so circle "Photos". It is a good idea to identify the group number and the amount of photos in the group in the description lines. You want to continue the song you started over the title in element #2. So you can write something like "continued from above" or "continued from element #2" next to "Song (Audio) heard". - Just keep going in the same manner you have been. After you write out the next element (picture group #2's title), you'll need another page. Print out another copy of the form and label it "Page #2" Professional Tips For Producing a Masterpiece: - Labeling Pictures: Label the backs of your pictures or slides numerically from "#1" through the number of the last picture. Please use a pen - not a pencil (although those #2's we used in school are hard to erase!). If your pictures are in groups, you can label the first picture in the first group "G1-#1" and the first picture in the second group "G2#2" or some other logical system. Also, please underline lone 6's and 9's to eliminate possible confusion. For digital pictures, just use the name of the file. - Labeling Video Clips: If you have multiple video tapes, label the tapes the same way you label photos. Then, for each clip, find out where on the tape they are. Most late-model VCR's have a "real-time" counter. (Looks like "0:00:00" - digits mean hours : minutes : seconds into the tape.) If the counter is not shown in a window on the front of the VCR, you may have to do something like pushing "display" or "info" or "status" on your remote for the time to be shown on-screen. Rewind the tape to the very beginning and reset the counter to zero ("0:00:00") The counter reset button is usually on the remote as "reset". Sometimes that button is on the VCR itself. Find the clip you want and write down the clip's time. For example, you want the clip to start at "0:33:19" and end at 0:34:53". So you would write on the Planning form "Tape 1 - Clip 1: 0:33:19 - 0:34:53 - Mixing different types of photos in one group: You can mix photos, slides and digital pictures in one group. Just circle all of them in that element/group's shaded area, and explain their order where it says "Instructions". - Mixing Video Clips with Pictures: If you want a video clip mixed in between pictures in a group, just give detailed instructions where you want that clip (example: "after picture #12" or "the instrumental part of the song"). - Picture Envelopes: Using separate labeled envelopes for your groups of pictures is usually better than using paper clips or� God forbid� rubber bands! - Music: I'm sure you are thinking by now, "How do I know how many pictures to put with a song?" The answer depends on how long the song is and how long you want your individual pictures to remain on the screen. Let's say you want to use an undetermined amount of pictures with a song that is 4 minutes and 26 seconds ("4:26"). First, convert the song into seconds. Take each minute (four of them) and multiply that by 60 (There are 60 seconds in a minute). Result: 240. Add the remaining 26 seconds of the song for a total of 266 seconds. Now you have to play with numbers. Divide that 266 with how many pictures you would like to have shown with that song. Let's say you came up with 30 pictures. Divide 266 by 30 and the result is 8.8666� seconds. That is how long each picture would have to be on the screen for. The good thing is you don't have to be exact. Don't worry. You can round up to 9. We will get it right for you when we edit it. If you are considering the same song to start with a title at the beginning, then you can just subtract 8 seconds from 266 (the length of the song) when figuring out the amount of pictures. Result: 8.6 � not that much of a difference. You will have to add some pictures if you don't want them on-screen for that long. If you can't find enough pictures we can always fade out the song. - I'm sure there's something that I forgot to mention. If you have any questions, CONTACT US! |