Cheesy slideshow

I just finished producing a slideshow to play during a wedding next week. There are other things I’d rather be doing at 2 o’clock in the morning, but I am getting paid for it so I won’t complain. Something must have happened since I left the country. These photo montages of the bride and groom from babies through engagement seem to be the latest big thing to show at weddings. Usually, it’s during the reception. But in this case, they want it projected on the wall of the church, right above and next to the altar, during the ceremony itself. Right after the mothers light the unity candle. With an appropriately cheesy song to play along with it. Hey, whatever floats your boat — you only get one chance at your first wedding.

If you’ve seen enough PowerPoint presentations, you’ve probably experienced all the potentials for error. First of all, there’s that embarassing Windows desktop just before the show begins. Then there’s the “oops, I bumped the mouse” gambit where the pointer suddenly becomes visible and we all wait for an eternity for the little arrow to disappear again. And that’s if you don’t accidentally click a button while you do it, which usually brings up the pop-up menu and more fiddling. If you’re lucky enough to get far without any mishaps, then the screensaver kicks in and all goes black. The music stops.

I see this crap coming from miles away. That’s why I’m *not* doing a Powerpoint presentation for this wedding. Instead, I’m importing the photos into Final Cut Pro and editing it like a video. Once it’s burned to DVD, all we have to do is hook up the DVD player to the projector and have someone nearby with a remote. I’ve created a completely black menu screen, so we can turn everything on before the ceremony gets underway and you don’t see a thing on the wall. If that operator can manage to press the ENTER button and set the remote down, the whole slideshow will play and revert back to the black menu when it’s finished. Clean as a whistle.

You sacrifice a little bit of resolution doing it this way, but it’s not enough to make a noticeable difference. I’m already dealing with scanned photos and digital pics in many different sizes and resolutions. And if you use a progressive scan DVD player and use the component video (instead of RCA) outputs to hook up to the projector it makes a big difference.

So I’m grateful to my friends Charles and Debra, who gave me both an excuse to buy a digital projector *and* half the money to pay for it! When you have a spare moment today, say a prayer for their happy marriage and a long life together.