Do you include powerpoint presentations?

[Dave Partington]

I hate these kinds of presentations during speeches, but I'll try to work with them where possible.

To avoid the strobing I'll either take a still or do a frame grab and use that instead of using video of the screen, then I'll do a picture-in-picture so you can still see the person speaking, or more likely the B+G or audience reactions. Fade the PIP as needed and bring is back when they change slides.

The worst I had was the father did 40 mins followed by the sister of the bride almost 35 mins then the groom had a really short speech followed by the best men (x2) with another 40 mins between them. OMG that was painful to watch on the day with lots of the audience bored to tears. I edited that one at 2x and 4x speed! Arrgghh!

[Noa Put]

These powerpoints always remind me of business meetings, the only thing that is missing are stats. I never understood why this is done as it bores people. I once had a workcolleague from the bride who projected ALL the letters from the alphabet one by one on a screen and for each letter he had a word describing the bride with a short explanation, they had about 250 guests and where the 4th in row to do something like this, at that point guests where talking to eachother and the speaker was difficult to understand, I wished he would finally get the clue and just let the party start.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Dealing with PowerPoint presentations is common for us guys that do mostly corporate work. Basically, in the corporate world, success comes from delivering the paying client what he (she) wants. As much or as little. Ask the paying client what they want. That's how I decide what to include.

As to how to do it: for the corporate stuff, I have the presenter export the slides as jpegs. I have a cheap videocamera, GoPro will work, with onboard audio (for scratch audio only) video record the projection screen during the presentation and then drop in the actual jpegs to replace what was on the screen in post, synched with the regular camera(s) and audio. Again, filming the screen is only for synching the jpegs. And, no, I wouldn't bother to photograph the screen. I'm too busy video recording the presenter. The original slides are the best.

If you want more detail, let me know. I usually set up two cameras on the speaker, one of which also catches the audience. The GoPro or cheap camcorder recording the screen is the third camera. It's output is just to synch the slides to the video of the presenter.

Business section here probably has some threads, as well as business and corporate sections on the COW.

Never have had to incorporate PowerPoint into the relatively few weddings I've done.

Yeah, PowerPoint presentations can be boring. So can videos.

[Peter Riding]

I wouldn't bother to photograph the screen.

That makes sense for business video where you want the best technical quality you can achieve. But for weddings where its much more about the ambience and emotion the original jpegs as used by the author can be very sterile. When I shoot the screen I don't just crop to the borders of the screen but prefer to include a little of the surroundings as well to give more of a feel for the context. And I shoot stills of the screen so that the writing which often accompanies some slides comes out clear.

I would prefer that if clients really really really must have these shows that they keep them short :- )

Pete