I am a little out of sequence again, but I have jumped ahead to this exercise as it fits with some work that I have been playing around with recently in connection with Assignment 1. When I completed that assignment my primary mode of presentation was simply a sequence of still images. I did though speculate about the possibility of transforming then into a slideshow, not realising at the time that this is something that we would be coming to later. At the time I was not at all sure how I would be able to achieve this, but I have subsequently worked out how to do it, without special software. I do now have the latest version of Lightroom, and I see that there is a slideshow function within it. I have yet to master it so for the time being I have used the very simple function within iPhoto on my Mac, converting the resulting files into .m4v and .mov to enable them to play on any platform.
As I speculated when working on Assignment 1, in order for a slideshow of this sequence to work well, with a good transition from image to image, I have had to do a bit more editing of the final set I put together at the time. I have had to flip a couple of the images to make sure that there is greater consistency in the direction in which the clouds eventually clear. I have also added a couple of extra images, that did not form part of the original set, to make the dissolve smoother. Ideally, I would have liked to add a couple more but unfortunately there are not enough suitable images amongst the experimental shots to make this possible.
Initially I was not sure about using an audio track, not least because there is not much choice within iPhoto. I have though now had a look at the Free Music Archive website and found a track that is suitable – a manipulated field recording of temple bells and singing bowls, which are appropriate to the Buddhist ideas that underpin the work I made. For the sake of comparison, I have uploaded to my new Vimeo account (apart from this exercise I am not sure how much I am going to use this!) two versions, one with, and one without, sound. My feeling at this stage though is that the version with sound works better. Visually I am also quite pleased with this: the sense of transition that I was looking for in this work is much stronger with the slideshow than a simple sequence of still images.
Apart from the work on the soundtrack, I had essentially finished the editing of the slideshow before I read any of this part of the course material. To that extent I have not been influenced by any of the suggested examples, nor indeed much helped by them. Most of the cited links appear to be bad so I could not access the recommended materials in any event. Some I could not look at properly as I have a problem with running Flashplayer on my computer (why, is a mystery, as it is brand new and running the latest version of Mac OS, but Flashplayer will simply not load and run). A couple of the photo-stories in Foto8 were interesting but not particularly helpful: they are dealing with the use of slideshows in a documentary setting, without a particular narrative, whereas my work for Assignment 1 was predicated on specific start and end points, with a progression between them. In any event I have my doubts about the suitability of slideshows for such documentary work. I think it works with Chris Leslie’s piece where the still images stand in for video. The soundtrack also gives it a sense of structure and progression. For some of the work on Foto8 though it felt more like a mechanical means of moving from one image to the next, doing away with the need to press the “next” button that did not really add a sense of storytelling, at least in a linear sense. I would much rather have moved through the images at my own pace, lingering, going back where necessary.
At the moment I do not envisage that any form of slideshow would be suitable for the work that I have in mind for Assignment 5.
http://foto8.com/new/online/photo-stories
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