Archive for slides

Tribute Video “How-To” Book Now Available

By admin on June 21, 2009

Tribute Videos are videos that celebrate a person, couple, group, or institution. They can be engagement videos, anniversary videos, memorials, retirement videos, milestone birthday videos, company histories, leadership stories, school reunion stories, award-winner portraits, and more. They are at home in the living room, rec room, boardroom or ballroom.

Tribute videos are how I got my start. (See “AVSquad” in the links.) And they remain the most satisfying of the work that we do. There is nothing like telling a people story.

A lot of people are into video these days, some as a hobby, some as a potential profession, some as part of their job duties. There is a perception that video is easy, thanks to point and shoot miniature cameras, computer editing, and thousands of tipsters on-line telling you how easy it is and selling something– usually hardware.

But hardware is only part of the problem, and hardware and editing software are covered pretty readily via training web sites, DVD lessons, and more.

No one is training people on how to tell a compelling story. How to interview, how to move pictures, how to choose music, how to pace videos, how to get a visceral reaction from an audience!

That’s where “Tribute Videos for Love & Money” comes in.

Tribute Videos for Love & Money

Tribute Videos for Love & Money

It’s an ebook that details my communications beliefs and systems. If you like samples of my work, and you want to know how and why certain creative decisions were made, this is the place to start. It concentrates on the “Tribute” people story type of video, but frankly, if you can tell that kind of story, there isn’t much you won’t be able to do as you grow your capability or career.

For more information, go to videostoryschool.com.

I hope you like it and find it valuable.

Categories : Books, Business Solutions, Techniques, The AV Biz, The Basics, tribute videos, VideoStory Team News
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How to Produce a Video on the Cheap. And, Yes, a “Good” Video.

By admin on April 8, 2009

Video is one of those rare fields that has had a total reboot. It has not been supplanted, replaced, superseded, obsoleted, or died.

It flailed for a bit, while the doctors tried to find what about the web made its parents think it was going to die.

But then Dr. House entered, and declared, “Ahah! It isn’t dying. It is being reborn!”

And it was reborn, in short pants. Younger, leaner, easier to maintain (not as fussy about it’s baby food) and requiring far fewer oil changes.

Have I mixed enough metaphors?

The new video was born of a demand caused by the Internet, and it wasn’t always called video. Sometimes it was “Powerpoints,” or “Decks”, or “Flash shows”, or “Streaming” video. But those were just designer labels.

Wrangler or Dior, it just doesn’t cost as much to make a video, if you do it right.

You will always pay for brains. The theme. The premise. The strategy. the script. (Uh, that’s what I sell, folks.)

But when you can get a high-def camera for 250 bucks, and a a damn good editing program for 100 bucks, and a powerhouse computer off-lease at some corporate slag-heap for practically free—- well now all that matters is that you know what to do with all this firepower.

My advice is go to the best video writer / director in town and yell him you know the secret handshake and get him to work on the cheap. He may just be glad to have the business.

But barring that, and assuming your ego wants to be a part of the wonderful world of video, here’s a few ways to produce a perfectly acceptable video on the cheap.

Start by making a slide show (for more on this, go to my other website, slideshowsecrets.com.) A good slideshow has compelling still images, the occasional graphic sequence, and a great soundtrack. The secret sauce is the soundtrack. There are terrific slide show programs available like ProShow Gold from Photodex for Windows and FotoMagico for the Mac that create incredible moving still image shows that sync precisely to pre-existing soundtracks that output to video and thus create, well, video. They can upload to YouTube, your own hosted site, to a DVD, flash drive, etc.

If you’d like to be working with full motion (more precisely, if you NEED to work with full motion– to show a motion process, to use interviews that MUST be on-camera) there are terrific low-rent video editing programs on both the MAC and PC sides.

For Windows, you can’t go wrong with any of the Sony Vegas family. These allow you to mix stills, motion, graphics, and create a fully sophisticiated soundtrack all within one program. We at VideoStory have used the pro version for years.

On the MAC side, Try combining the iLife and iWork products to create a hell of an arsenal. iMovie 9 allows for simple, intuitive editing. By using the presentation program Keynote for graphcs and effects and outputting to Quicktime for inclusion in your video edit, you’ve just upped the quality quotient by 10. (Please, please, do not tell any professionals I told this to you.)

A lot of these secrets can be found in my new book. “Tribute Videos for Love & Money”, which explores ways talented people with limited knowledge and resources can make great videos. If you’d like a free pre-release copy, just email me at brienlee@slideshowsecrets.com and I will send you a free complete PDF of the book in exchange for your email address for my newsletter. It’s worth it. It’s free.

Categories : Uncategorized
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REVIEW: One True Media– On-Line Slide Show Builder

By admin on June 23, 2008

I was updating this blog– adding "widgets"– and noticed something called "One True Media". Enticed by the ostentatiousness  of the name, I decided to try it out.

It’s an online "slideshow" and "montage" maker. A slideshow is defined as a series of images with no sound but lots of weird backgrounds and stylesets;l a montage is a slide-sound show with effects, music, and is timed– to an extent– to the music.

I have strong opinions as to what makes a real slide-sound show, and while this isn’t quite it, it is the first on-line offering that seems to get some of the sync-sound concept. (Go to SLIDE-SOUND.COM for more of my thoughts on this.)

It begins with uploading a slew of pictures. I uploaded 100, but there is a limit. My pictures had been "webified" so many were not as good a resolution as the system prefers. (You’ll see graininess in the sample, but I think that’s the fault of low-res pictures.)

Once the pictures are uploaded, you can slip and slide them in order. Then you decide whether you’re making a slide show or montage (which is my idea of a slide show.)

For each image you can specify zoom or no zoom, zoom direction, and a transition between images. You can choose the length of time the image is on the screen, and the length of the transition. This can be wholesale for the whole batch, or one at a time.

Now, the sound part. You don’t upload music. You choose it. You choose from various decent compositions done in a variety of styles by beat, genre, or type (wedding, anniversary, business, etc.) You can choose well-known pop songs which are rerecording of hits (so that OTM only pays for the composition, not the performance. This is a premium feature– more on that later.)

Choose as many songs as you need, order them, and then pick on which slide you want that song to end. The system assumes that the next song in your playlist will start with the next slide. Repeat, and when you tell the last cut to end on the last slide, you’re done.

One True Media is free with a limited feature set- no text, no pop songs, only three songs per montage, no downloading of your montage (you can share it on their sight or embed it on yours.)

For $3.99 a month you get those extras, plus extra themes, transitions, effects, etc.

Here’s my masterpiece:


Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Plusses: Easy, fast, free, some sync to sound possible.
Minuses: No uploading of voice or music; limited timing options, must upgrade to download shows, use pop songs, access more special effects and transitions

Categories : Web Video
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So, What Do You Do for a Living?

By admin on February 21, 2008

When we started in business just out of Marquette Journalism School, our medium of choice was slides. Not that we wanted to "make slides"– it was just the most affordable way for us to tell stories. But if, when asked what we did for a living, we answered, "I’m in the slide business", we knew the misconceptions would begin. "You make charts and graphs. You give slide talks. You process slides. You copy slides. You shoot slides. Must be easy– I’ve got a camera!"

No, actually. We did more than that. We examined communications problems, designed solutions, wrote scripts, , shot slides, conducted voice interviews, recorded narration, edited the slides in two or more slide trays, selected music, directed announcers, created a soundtrack, and used  a microprocessor-controlled dissolve unit tied to an audio tape deck to create the illusion of a complete communications  solution– which viewers then mistook for movies.

Movies were expensive, slides were inexpensive, and we went through all of that rigmarole so we could afford the overhead to be in the business, so that our clients could afford what we did, and so that we could be creative– and not just be "in the slide business."

But try explaining that in an elevator– or cocktail party– pitch. We found the best offense was to show our stuff and wait for people to experience the difference.

With an office in New Jersey now, I find myself answering the question once more. And in a market where we’re not all that well known, save for a few pre-existing clients, I feel like I’m just out of school again (although I don’t look it.)

What do we do for a living? We do video. "Oh, you shoot video? Do commercials? Use Final Cut? Yeah, that’s easy…I’ve got a camera and Final Cut…."

These days, everyone does video, just as years ago, everyone typed. But that didn’t mean they could write. Everyone had word processing and PageMaker– that didn’t make them designers. And now, everyone has a camera, iMovie, or Premiere Elements, and that’s all you need….. right?

Well… we don’t sell video. We sell ideas. Concepts. Content. Crafted in the art of video, and distributed via DVD, web, YouTube, videoconference, sales meeting, whatever.

We know words, pictures, sounds, music, and the way to mix them to elicit a response. We have success stories, track records, awards, and a modicum of financial success.  We have no secrets, and we will gladly train you or your staff in what we do and how we do it.

But the process is not simple– not as simple as "doing video."

It’s just that it’s so easy to say…..

Categories : The AV Biz
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Snowed in with Mitch Miller and the Symphony Womens’ League

By admin on April 11, 2007

According to the National Weather Service’s list of "Worst Snow Storms in the State of Wisconsin", the seasonal latest of the big storms (storm number 10, in fact) happened on April 8, 1973, when "Madison had nearly 13 inches while Milwaukee measured a foot of heavy wet snow. Wind gusts above 50 mph.  Many roads, including the interstates, were closed for two days."

This has always been my Benchmark for snow that is just too darn late in the season.

Dsc03057
Looking out my window now, and checking the date, I see that once again, we are past my benchmark, and it is snowing, and I remember back to that 1973 storm…

It was 9am the day of the storm and my business partner Ric and I were putting the finishing touches on a two-projector dissolve slide show we had produced for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. It had been reviewed and approved with a few changes the day before by the Symphony’s P.R. Director Andy Moquin. Those few changes kept us up all night re-laying out the slides, making a few subtle changes to the soundtrack (remember, this was all on audio tape), and reprogramming (or repulsing as we called it then) the show.

There was a deadline– 10am that day. Because that’s when we had to drive the gear and the show over to the Schlitz Clubhouse on Port Washington Rd. to unveil the show to the Symphony Women’s League at their annual fundraiser.

Fueled by Tostitos and Tab Soda, we made it. It was a clear day, no traffic, no problem.

There were a few speeches, an address by famed "Sing-Along" conductor Mitch Miller, who at the time was apparently a roving drive-by cheerleader for Symphony Fundraising campaigns, and finally– hours later– our show ran. It was a big success.

By this time we were pretty goofy from lack of sleep.

We commiserated, had our free cookies, packed up, headed out the back door, and then noticed the door wouldn’t open.

Two feet of snow.

Well, let me tell you– the small talk runs thin pretty quick when you are sleep deprived, 23 years old, and surrounded by the august members of the Women’s Symphony League. There were daughters of Beer Barons, descendants of heavy duty transformer companies, foundries, leather tanning companies, you name it.

They got tired of telling us how wonderful we were, and we got tired of hearing it (okay, not really, but the conversation slowed quickly. They just didn’t really know what to make of us. They kept asking us where our fathers were, assuming we couldn’t possibly be old enough to do what we were doing.)

Finally, being that we were in the Schlitz Clubhouse, a Beer baron descendant saw fit to break open the industrial sized cooler in the kitchen. Yes, we drank Schlitz.

Conversation loosened (mostly a blur) and suddenly, it was two hours later and a path had been plowed. We made our way to Ric’s Chevy Blazer and set off to our small office to unpack and call it a week.

Mitch Miller was none too happy, however. He was due in St. Paul at 4pm and that wasn’t happening. No cell phones. No iPods. No laptops. No PDAs. Just Mitch and the ladies.

And he didn’t drink.

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