my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Operations   » Film Handlers' Forum   » Preshow Powerpoint and Images

Author Topic: Preshow Powerpoint and Images Cody Martin Expert Film Handler Posts: 214 From: Edinburgh, IN, USA Registered: Jun 2004 posted 08-10-2005 03:53 PM                        Hello, I was wondering if anyone could post there preshow powerpoints and images. I have been asked to make one, but honestly I have no idea on where to start. Please help me. Thanks, cody  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-11-2005 03:34 PM                     We show slides for Upcoming movies: Upcoming stage shows: Trivia: And a bunch of other stuff. Generally, I don't like ads but this is tolerable because everything is produced in-house by students at the college. We hijack a few graphic arts majors through the Work Study program and put them to work for us. Further, all of our ads are for purely internal purposes... To advertise on-campus events. NOTHING from outside sources. My first advice is to ditch PowerPoint. Do it with QuickTime. It will produce a much cleaner presentation that won't bomb on you and leave you with a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH when you have an auditorium full of people. Just bite the bullet and pay that $30 for QuickTime Pro. Make all of your images into 640 X 480 JPEGS. Get some background music you like. Import the pictures as an image sequence (Under the file menu.) Cut & Paste the resulting slide show into your music track via "ADD SCALED" instead of simple "PASTE". (Under the edit menu.) Save the show as "MyShow.mov" Play the file on your computer. Set QuickTime to "Loop" the presentation. Press CMD-F (or CTL-F) to put the show into Full-screen mode. (Only available if you have QuickTime Pro.) Your show will run, unattended and virtually worry-free until it's time to start the movie. At which time you simply shut the projector off and start the show. Let the comptuer run. Once you are satisfied the movie is going the way you want it to you can go to the computer and shut it off. Don't switch it off right away because you may need to switch back to it if you have a "false start" in your movie program. My Work Study students RARELY have problems starting movies but I still like to C.Y.A. and have that slide show ready if need be. (You could even make a slide that says, "Technical trouble: Please Stand by...") That's how WE do our slides.  |  IP: Logged Dieter Depypere Master Film Handler Posts: 343 From: Deutsch-Wagram, Lower Austria, Austria Registered: May 2005 posted 08-11-2005 03:43 PM                     Our slides show interesting reginal points (such as surfing schools, hotels, restaurant). Unfortunately I cannot post any images. Those slides are projected with the slide projector attached to the lamphouse of projector #1. Sound comes from a music cassette which includes the spoken captions. Also there are slides like "Coming soon" before showing trailers or PAUSE for - guess what - pauses  |  IP: Logged Cody Martin Expert Film Handler Posts: 214 From: Edinburgh, IN, USA Registered: Jun 2004 posted 08-12-2005 08:13 AM                        Thanks for your replies. Here is how I'm currently doing it. I'm using photoshop CS2 to create 720x480 slides. I'm using widescreen ad the screen is wide and i'm hoping this will be ok. If not I'll go to a smaller size and black out the top and bottom. After I save these a high quality jpg, I am going to take them into after effects and compile them as a video of the same size. Any more ideas? Thanks, Cody  |  IP: Logged Peter Castle Expert Film Handler Posts: 220 From: Wollongong University, NSW ,Australia Registered: Oct 2003 posted 08-12-2005 08:18 AM                     We use a home-grown Macintosh program that plays quicktime movies and jpeg slides. The former allows for animated logos (made in LightWave as anamorphic 800 x 600). The slides are produced as 1067 x 600 then scaled 70% in the horizontal, so that our video projector presents these 800 x 800 images through an anamorphic lens. But we're looking at moving to a Panamedia pre-show presentation system.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-12-2005 10:27 AM                     Photoshop, GIMP, iDraw... whichever program you use, make the slides the same size and resolution as your screen. (1024*768, 640*480, 720*480 or whatever.) Convert them into a slide show with QuikTime. Then, all you have to do is double click. Little or no fooling around required. If you want to get REALLY funky, learn how to write SMIL code. Make a SMIL file that commands QuickTime to string several movies all together and play them as one. That way you can have slides, video and music play together in a continuous program that you can rearrange at will. Every week when your content changes you can rewrite the program in a few minutes. All you have to do is edit a little text file.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 08-12-2005 01:36 PM                     Why would you use JPEG? For text and straight lines, JPEG compression tends to produce unpleasant artifacts. They are much-less noticable at higher resolutions, but are still there. Why not use another format? --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-12-2005 05:53 PM                     quote: John Hawkinson JPEG compression tends to produce unpleasant artifacts. With this I agree but most of the material we get to start with is in JPEG. And, on occasion we send things to other people who seem to be able to grasp the concept of JPEG a lot quicker than they do other formats. What saves us is two things: 1) What you said, John. Pictures at high enough resolution don't show artifacts as much. 2) Blowing the picutre up to a 12 foot high image using a regular old Eiki LCD projector. Any image that's at a higher resolution than the projector can put out is just a waste. You're just not going to get a super high quality image out of one of those.  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.