10-15 Minute Powerpoint Presentation

[Bowdii]

I need to do a Christmas presentation to show the History of our company. My boss wants all pictures, no sound. How many pictures do you think I need to fill that amount of time?

Thanks for any help!

[stuntdubl]

Not sure how many pictures you would need to fill that time, but I definitely agree with the ALL pictures technique. There are WAY to many bad powerpoint presentations with endless bulletpoints. PP offers a unique ability to be able to visually punctuate a speech, and it has been severely abused by the corporate world which has teathered it to a life of mind numbing sameness. :)

[vkaryl]

How many seconds are you going to want to display a pic? Divide 750 seconds (the median - 12.5 minutes) by that number of seconds, and that will give you how many photos you need....

[Edit: ACK! But that's only if you do the "flick flick flick" straight slideshow thing. If you use fancy dissolves etc. your seconds per photo would need some tweaking....]

[Bowdii]

Thanks for the replys!

vkaryl - I was thinking the same thing. I guess I was curious if there was some kind of standard. But I guess not.

Thanks again!

[vkaryl]

Oh - one other thing you need to factor in is whether this presentation will be done BEFORE the open bar, or after it's been open a while. You can't bother with fancy dissolves and 5 second displays if the group is already drinking.

[Bowdii]

vkaryl - Good Point;))

[Durham_e]

For a start 10-15 Minutes is far to long for a sit down and look presentation. Would be OK running in the background of an occassion.

From experience of 15 years video TVC director/producer.
3 minutes is just about the limit of company "indulgence" viewers can take.

Firstly get yourself a good strong music track.
"Up were we belong" springs to mind.(guarantee hit with clients - one off showing don't worry about copyright so long as no one walks away with a copy.)
Cut or dissolve pics to sound track cut on beats etc. One every so many seconds ain't exactly out of Hollywood.

Good luck and the timing suggested earlier is excellent advice.

[Jon_King]

>>3 minutes is just about the limit of company "indulgence" viewers can take.

You won't believe how long 10 minutes of video is. Durham is right, start to put it together, maybe a minute of images fading into one another and you will see what we mean - we hold most presentations like this to 3-5 min.

[jsavvy293]

Hi Bowdi, For the past few years I have been "asked" to put together a number of these presentations. We generally stick to about 3.3 minutes, 3 sec an image and about 98 images. If you HAVE to go for 10-15 minutes, I would choose very energizing music and do it in Flash

[Bowdii]

jsavvy293 - Thanks alot for the advice!

I have never done a presenation in Flash, is it tough to learn? Powerpoint is as easy as it comes. so on a level of 1 to 10, where does flash rank for "How fast you pick it up" 1 being powerpoint;)

[Jon_King]

I put PP at 1 and Flash at 8.

[jsavvy293]

Hey Bowdii,
I agree with Jon_King on the ratings. There is another product called Swish that is supposedly easier to use than Flash - though i've never tried it. If your not looking to do anything really spectacular, get a copy of flash and run through their tutorial, you should be able to pick up enough to get started.

caio