Another job for a "friend"- photo montage

[Jacob Burson]

Well, once again, I'm doing a job for a friend at a friend rate. Good thing I like what I'm doing.

This time it's another photo montage and here is the break down:
- Scan 325 pictures
- 116 digital pictures (so that's a 441 picture photo montage)
- pan and zoom almost every pic
- 11 text slides
- 1 tape to DVD conversion
- Insert 3, <2 minute video clips into the video
- 17 songs all of which must be clipped to fit

Just curious what yall would charge. I told her that she could expect that something like this would cost at least $800 in the Atlanta area. Or am I way off? This one has taken lots of free time and I'm glad it's over.

[Jason Robinson]

For mine, I charge $200 for a 7-13 minute montage. It had about 190 pictures and 5 songs but fortunately for me I only had to scan in 1/2 of the pictures. I don't like to scan in pictures, but it seems that people don't know what "high resolution" means and I get wallet size grade school photos scanned in at 72 dpi. Yeah..... that isn't going to work. Try 600dpi for something that small.

Any way, for your amount of photos (2.3 times my usual), and given that a majority had to be scanned in (pain in the but tine waste if you ask me), I would probably charge about $500-600. That would probably take 30 hours to edit so it won't come cheap. But then again, I am on the lowest end of the pay scale and living in a pretty affordable city (unlike LA) so costs vary depending on location.

Hope that helps.

Jason

[Denis Danatzko]

at least in my locale. Scan 325 photos? And edit 441? And video? And music? I guess the speed of your equipment and your prowess at editing would factor in, but if you're "real good and fast", then your time is worth that much more.

I've done a few for friends, and they were well received, but also relatively short...maybe 10 mins.

I'm presuming, and maybe wrongly so, this will be shown at some family or larger gathering.

(though, I'm relatively new to this, 4 yrs give or take, so I might be way off what it's worth).

Not to hijack, but my biggest concern would not be from the perspective of creating it, but more from showing it.

That many photos, even with video and edited music, would have to be pretty lengthy. It would also have to be extremely interesting to hold the audience's attention. People's minds start to wander and their concentration weakens after approx. 7 mins. of the same "sensory input stream." I'm confident that's one reason scenes in movies are relatively short or change tempo "on a dime"...to hold audience interest. Even at 3 sec display time per photo, that's 22 mins without the video! The music has to be captivating to hold the audience.

Is this going to be broken up into multiple presentations of approx. 7-10 mins each? If not, I wonder if folks might not pay attention to the entire show; it could turn into a stereotypical "home movie" of the 50s and 60s and, ultimately, be slightly embarrassing for your friend.

FWIW, that's my 2 cents.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Denis Danatzko

That many photos, even with video and edited music, would have to be pretty lengthy. It would also have to be extremely interesting to hold the audience's attention. People's minds start to wander and their concentration weakens after approx. 7 mins. of the same "sensory input stream." I'm confident that's one reason scenes in movies are relatively short or change tempo "on a dime"...to hold audience interest. Even at 3 sec display time per photo, that's 22 mins without the video! The music has to be captivating to hold the audience.

I completely agree. My most recent one was one of the bigger ones and it was 13 minutes. Fortunately, the bride & groom had some funny growing up pictures. But what I also do to keep the pace up is play with rotating pictures or color desaturated to B&W and then do slow reveals back into full color. Lots of those tricks are illustrated on my cut down sample. I generally don't allow one person's pictures to go any longer than 4 minutes. They each get their 4 minutes and then the "together" pictures get 4-5 minutes.

I have to use those kind of tricks to keep the presentation interesting, keep it moving fast, etc. I also count my transitions and pan/crops to make sure I'm not falling into a pattern of using a cross fade too often (or too little) and not always panning left to right, or alwas zooming out, etc.

You are right that keeping the pace up is the hardest part of a photo memory presentation.

[Jacob Burson]

Originally Posted by Denis Danatzko

If not, I wonder if folks might not pay attention to the entire show; it could turn into a stereotypical "home movie" of the 50s and 60s and, ultimately, be slightly embarrassing for your friend.

FWIW, that's my 2 cents.

I totally with you there. For all of my customers that are wanting a photo montage to show a large group, I advise that the show last no longer than 10 minutes. You can stretch it to 20 minutes if the audience is all connected with the show and it's interesting.

This show is 1 hour and 15 minutes long. Way too long, but this what she wanted. I was very clear about how long it would be and gave her the best advice I had and to cut down on the number of photos, but she really wanted me to use all of the pictures she had provided, all of the music, and the amount of time each photo would be displayed (6 seconds).

It's for a guy's 50th birthday and breaks down into 4 chapters: baby and kid photos, 20's-30's pics, 40's pics, and photos of his son's birth and toddler years.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Jacob Burson

It's for a guy's 50th birthday and breaks down into 4 chapters: baby and kid photos, 20's-30's pics, 40's pics, and photos of his son's birth and toddler years.

Wedding PHoto Memories are totally different than the 50th B-day stuff. With a 50yr old they have a lot more of life to cover! And those are great ideas to give to grandkids that are too young to kno much about their grand-dad, etc.

jason