Slides are how we made our money and made our name.

I love slides. Grew up with them, made shows with them., started a business with them, made friends with them, won awards with them.

Today, the word “slides” has a revised but logical meaning: Powerpoint slides (or Keynote, if you prefer.)

On linkedIn, there is an ongoing discussion on whether speakers should uses slides or not. Actually, the very thought is even more daunting to these “Presentation Gurus” (the name of the group): the question was really “Is there ever a time when a speaker shouldn’t use slides?”

Here’s my quick answer:

Average speaker: No. Always use slides.

Good speaker: Maybe, depending on the size of the crowd. But take advice from a pro PowerPoint person or consultant.

Great Speaker: Yes, go without slides if you can see the eyes of everyone in the room. Or….

Great Speaker: No, use slides, if you’re speaking before 500 or up. Great speakers can use slides effortlessly, have slides that are appropriate and not overwritten, probably don’t even look at them during the presentation, and in many cases have an a-v technician changing the slides for him or her.

The best speaker I ever saw– and he always used slides– was former Chairman and CEO of Walgreens Dan Jorndt.

He could hold a room of 5000 or more in the palm of his hand. No podium. He danced across the stage, in a whirlwind of positive thought. His speeches were carefully written, but delivered in a breezy style that allowed for adlibbing, which he often did– or seemed to at any rate.

But Mr. Jorndt had a secret weapon. Behind the screen, or in the booth, and– for much of his career– behind a computer, was the head of the Walgreens Meetings and Media department, David Harnish. David is an important person at Walgreens. I fear the executives still don’t know HOW important. He is the keeper of the flame, the corporate culture, and the internal audio-visual face of Walgreens. He knows video, interactive, asset management, and of course, slides. And he knows creative communications as good as any client I ever had.

A blank slate: the PowerPoint Editing Interface

Slides more recently means PowerPoint.  But David started at Walgreens literally making “real” physical slides, first primarily on an early computer graphics system using Zenographics software, later  via video on the TVL electronic presentation system, and today, on PowerPoint. Don’t get me wrong: David no longer pushes buttons; but he continues to set the standard for how slides should support speakers, not dominate them.

He knows how many words to use, what photos or graphics are necessary, and what fonts work and don’t work. He knows layout and balance, much of it which might “break the rules” of the way PowerPoint wants you to lay things out.

Whether it was multiple slide projector speaker support, or TVL electronic slide speaker support, videodisc, or PowerPoint speaker support, David and Dan Jorndt made each other look great.

Now understand, I think Dan is a great speaker without slides. But with slides? oh, my.

So, to slide or not to slide, that is the question. When you’ve got a great speaker and a great support team, the answer isn’t so black and white.

It was called sync-to-sound, and it replaced 16mm film as the medium of choice for business to business and business to consumer (point of sale) audio-visual communications.

Slide Shows were born of an economic necessity. Film was becoming increasingly expensive to produce (especially during the economic recession of the 70′s), and clients had no lower cost alternative for audio-visual messaging (there were filmstrips, but they were never a very satisfactory solution. Why is another tale for another time. In fact, go to www.avsquad.com for more background.)

From our standpoint, we couldn’t afford to make films. But we wanted to make "shows". So we tried a new technology at the time, the Kodak Carousel Slide Projector (2 of them actually), a "dissolve unit", which made one projector’s slide appear to fade into the other projector’s slide before advancing the slide tray, a two-track tape recorder and a "pulse unit", which made low 60 MHz tones that were recorded on one track of the tape when we hit the remote, thus recording when we wanted to change the slides.

On the other track of the tape was– the soundtrack.

For all of the rigmarole described above, the heart of the show was actually the soundtrack. While we couldn’t make movies, we could create a soundtrack that made our slide show sound just like a movie.

The soundtrack became the blueprint for the show. There were words, or interviews, or both. There was music– lots of it. Sound effects, to create the illusion of synchronous sound. And all of it mixed into a carefully paced beginning, middle and end.

Once the soundtrack was perfect– and this included anticipating where slide "sequences" would be, leaving music up for 10 or 20 seconds or whatever– we then took our rough slide edit, refined it against the sound track, loaded the trays and did the final "pulsing"– making the images match the music, sounds, words, etc. It was rare that we would go back and change a soundtrack. When the track felt right, we knew the show was right. We’d re-edit the pictures, add pictures, subtract pictures to match the sound.

The reason was the very limitations of the visual medium we employed. And that limitation taught us all a lot.

As audio genius and author Tony Schwartz one said, "You can close your eyes but you can’t close your ears."

We view single streams of visuals, but hear multiple streams of audio. Audio provides the emotion, information, and persuasion. Pictures provide the proof.

Eventually, more visual firepower became available, and companies like us felt we had to keep up with the technology. Heaven forbid a competitor announced they had the new TurboBlaster 2000 before we did.  It was simple marketing. In slides, we added animation stands, multiple banks of computer controlled projectors, even computer graphics. To pay for all that stuff, we were soon doing projects we didn’t like, including speaker support. We had gone a far cry from a camera and a tape deck– to me it seemed the tail was wagging the dog.

So I moved into video with a camera and a simple cuts-only edit system. Once again the soundtrack did its thing. People raved about our work. If we needed graphics, we brought our edits to a "post house" and layered fancy graphics on top. We were cost competitive and told better stories through incredible editing to the soundtrack, thanks to our low-tech slide show training and our journalistic love of storytelling.

But as video gear became more affordable, as presentation gear and software (PowerPoint) became plentiful, and as the Avids began rolling off the assembly line, the  promise of a competitive edge combining non-linear video editing, computer graphics, animation capability, and  audio sweetening beckoned. And many of my brethren were swayed by that siren call. They were competitive for a few months, then discovered the piper must be paid.  Overhead drove them into editing services, computer graphic support, cd-rom and videotape duplication and other kinds of work that had nothing to do with telling stories, and everything to do with  meeting the monthly "nut."

Today, a young person can be in the video business– turnkey capability, mind you– for between $5,000 and $10,000– maybe even less. A good camera and a software-loaded desktop editing system is all you need. The editing program of choice is sold by a consumer computer company (Apple.)  Most kids coming out of colleges or tech schools can make computer graphics that would make the NFL blush. The big production companies with large overhead are gone.

We can afford the toys.

But toys don’t tell stories. And even colleges and tech schools are more concerned these days with glitz and glamour than the hard-core, straight forward work of being intellectually creative. (Colleges have to market, too.)

But to me, communications success remains simple. Assess a problem. Design a solution. Discover a story. Tell the story in a compelling way. Move an audience to act. How much you pay for a real audience response should have nothing to do with toys and everything to do with talent.

See, the technology has NOTHING to do with moving audiences. Ask me what kind of editing system I use and I will look at you cross eyed. Obviously, you don’t have a clue the difference we can make for you, or you wouldn’t ask that question (Sony Vegas and Final Cut Pro, by the way).

My slide-show era business partner, Ric Sorgel, was an extraordinary photographer. We always laughed when we were pitching someone with a sample of our work and the first question they asked was "What kind of camera do you use?"  And yet, that’s the kind of thinking that’s prevalent today.

If I go buy an Avid and I can be like George Lucas. Right?

Our success in this business has never been about any one component or tool; it has been about the design, scripting, pacing, and persuading that today still starts with what you hear.

Toys change. But the story stays the same.

Thanks,

Brien Lee