[Bill Davis]

Record your narration as separate AIFF files for each slide. (may like WAV as well, see below for why my personal knowledge base may be out of date)

Then you import and add those audio files to the individual slides in powerpoint.

The process is described in the online docs. ‘

IIRC, you can have the audio files auto-play with the slide launch, or put a button on the screen to play the audio file. A note of caution. I don’t have any serious recent experience with PPT under Vista – but back in the Win XP days – if the audio data rate was too big, we used to have lots of problems with files crashing. That may well have been fixed long ago.

I switched to running Keynote on a Mac laptop and my blood pressure must have gone down 10 points.

Not sure if any major re-writing was done to PPT to make it more external digital content friendly, but up to about 2 years ago, I used to be able to depend on the fact that if one of my presentations was going to crash – it would happen when I hit slides with embedded audio or video.

No longer an issue in my life, thank the gods.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

This is one of those things where you think about it and you can almost SEE a future.

You walk into the museum. You pull out your cel phone. You dial the posted number. And your phone receives a set of files that work just like Visual Voicemail – allowing you to wander at your leisure and key and play back the A/V clips on your handset as you stroll the exhibits.

And a platform like the Pre or the iPhone could probably do this incredibly easily by ignoring the entire phone network, simply ingesting the content off a public Wi-Fi server at the doors.

A few more years of mobile platform development and who knows what will become everyday processes.

The mind boggles.

[Bill Davis]

Mark,

It’s not an approach as such, just a note from someone who chairs the board of directors for a local charitable foundation that raises funds for programs for people with visual disabilities.

From inside those communities, the MOST critical thing is create a program where they’re seen as PEOPLE FIRST, disabled second.

So I’d start by thinking how to keep the human faces and their human stories front and center. Whatever method you use, it will fail to the extent it takes attention from the individuals. So think about a visual approach that EMPHASIZES their common humanity.

In other words, particularly when you get to the interview stage, make sure that no matter what OTHER subjects related to their specific issues need to be covered – always start and end with images, quotes, actualities, or scenes where they’re doing the SAME things that everyone else does.

I kind of like the visual style that was popular for a while where an interview was shot with two cameras, one wide and one in CU. Then one of those shots was processed by enlarging, desaturating, tinting, or otherwise making it less present than the inset shot.

The point is that you have TWO views of the person. And if done skillfully, the wide shot can emphasize their expressions – signaling pride, joy, engagement, or whatever else is playing on their face – exactly the emphasis on the human beings involved that I’m suggesting.

In my experience, it takes more interview time to do something like this, because you really have to build rapport with each inteerviewee in order to make them feel comfortable showing you their emotions, but if you can do that, the interviews WILL be compelling. And compelling interviews negate the need for too many visual tricks.

For what it’s worth.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Like everyone else here, I’ve got no clue about how things broke down on your specific shoot. So I’m left with trying to shoehorn your story into my experiences.

And a line you posted struck a chord with me.

“he importance of shooting it artfully and really paying attention to shot composition etc was paramount.”

The reason I single this line out is that if I sat down with someone whose baseline work I didn’t know – I could see this single line of instruction hitting the brains of 5 different shooters and causing WILD swings in the results.

If my impression was that this was a solid pro – I’d expect them to take solid basics and then push a bit here and there with that instruction. HOWEVER, If I said the same thing to a guy who was SICK TO DEATH of making boring corporate videos, this same line might feel like permission to pull out the dutch head rig and go crazy.

Maybe I can illustrate my point best this way. Back in the early days of computers, I read of a focus group where they were seeing if the instruction manual on their new IBM-PC software was written clearly enough.

The first concrete instruction was “Remove the floppy diskette from the sleeve.”

So the first test subject reached in his pocket, pulled out his pen knife, cut open the plastic and removed the actual media disc from the floppy holder.

There were a LOT of surprised folks behind the one-way mirror. But why? The guy took the his instruction, interpreted it PERFECTLY WELL consistent with his individual experience – and the end result was still a square-one screwup.

So perhaps you got a guy like that. Waited all his life to use that damn dutch head – and was maybe delighted when you gave him tacit permission (at leas in his brain) to go there?

Just thinking out loud.

[Bill Davis]

To try to make this a little clearer…

What you hear on radio commercials is legally cleared because radio and TV stations purchase a “blanket broadcast license” that covers the use of music on their IN HOUSE commercials, etc.

As an outside producer, the ONLY classification of music you can be certain of using and still being LEGAL is music specifically offered as “licensed production music” and for which you PAY. This music is sometimes called “buyout music” or “needle-drop music” (both web-searchable) but whatever it’s called, it comes with a specific legal agreement specifying how and when you can use it in exchange for the fee you pay.

You really should consider ALL other music off limits. Yes, there is music that’s in the “public domain” due to falling out of copyright or other factors – but even if the COMPOSITION is legal to use, nearly any RECORDING of it is likely still protected. Plus in the area of using the music for commercials, you may need to secure specific rights to use the music possibly including “Broadcast rights” “Syncronization rights” “Mechanical rights”, or others. When you use properly licensed music, all this is taken into account.

So start your web search under “buyout music” and good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Hi Jenny,

As a voiceover guy with well over 2000 paid gigs, congratulations on discovering you have the talent to do this. It’s a LOT of fun!

Since you already have a laptop, I’d suggest you look into the Centrance MicPort Pro. It looks like a barrel style audio adaptor, but includes not only a decent mic preamp, but a workable headphone amp as well. You attach it to any dynamic or condenser mic, hook the USB cable to your laptop – and you can record directly to one of the quality free audio digitizing applications like Audacity.

Headphones work well for monitoring VOs – with the Sony MD-7506 an extremely popular choice since they’re very efficient, plus have a bump right around human voice frequencies letting you really hear your work – including off-axis issues and popped P’s, etc.

As to mic, that’s largely dependent on the tonal qualities of your voice. I actually agree that if you don’t have a recording space that is reasonably dead regarding echo and hard surfaces – the Coles Lip mic might actually be a good choice since it removes the room from the equation.

If you can’t afford that, or just want a different approach, some long-standing traditional radio/VO mics include the Shure SM7, thee Electrovoice RE-50, and the venerable Sennheiser MD 421 (all dynamics which means less expense.) If you want to spend more for really outstanding clarity and nuance, look toward studio condensers like the Audio Technica 414s or any of the Neumanns (the TLM-103 is very popular) – they’d be a long-term investment in your career and even tho expensive, they’ll hold their value remarkably well and if you ever decide to get out of the business, you’ll probably get most of your money back – even if you sell them them ebay.

Good luck. And welcome to the business!

[Bill Davis]

Duncan,

The toslink connection is OPTICAL (coded light). The speakers need an electro/mechanical input. (voltage on a physical wire)

Something has to translate the light into wire friendly voltage.

Your amplifier used to do that.

Removing the amp from the chain, you’re gonna need something that takes an optical input and then outputs a traditional speaker signal.

But check your airport. I *think* apple builds those with hybrid optical electro/mechanical jacks and it may be that a standard plug into the jack gets you a standard audio feed.

If so, your only issue is amplifying the sound. If those particular Genelecs are active (have built in amplifiers), you’re done. If not, you still need some form of amplification.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Ian,

What this has come down to is that you came here for advice, but you appear unwilling to take any of that advice.

That’s fine.

I will only mention that the whole point of asking people with hands on experience in doing something before you is to gain some benefit from their experience.

It’s clear from your tone and intention that you’re bound and determined to do this your own way and that in being argumentative about what advice is offered, you’re betting that things will work as you expect and NOT as they might have worked for the countless people who’ve been along the same path before you.

Excellent. Perhaps you’ll be that ONE guy who got a clearer understanding of all of this than everyone else and blazes a new trail.

Stop back and let us know how it all works for you.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Actually, a month ago I would have agreed that the Panasonic solution was very attractive.

However, this industry is moving INCREDIBLY fast.

Not just in camera hardware, but in workflow options.

SxS and PII are fine technologies. But the cost of media is troublesome to me. (I’ve got 400 DVCAM tapes in my tape library – (At $35-$40 each, do the math!) , and while I fully expect to continue to grow my new wall of 10 1-2 TB plus drives over the next few years with tapeless acquired footage dumps, I’m concerned about having no fixed media backups.

Then JVC 700 chose to use standard CHEAP CF cards for acquisition. That caught my attention. Usable video media for $8 available at any WALMART? Wow. Next, they announced their drag and drop FCP integration – which I saw demonstrated last week. VERY impressive, VERY productive.

So I was about to pull the trigger on a pair of the 700s when dammed if Canon didn’t announce the new Manual mode software upgrades for the D5 Mk II DSLR. Then yesterday an announcement of direct to ProRes transcoding software.

Moving from a 1/2″ or smaller sensor to a full frame 35mm sensor with progressive capture and Decades of professional level glass floating around is going to potentially change the way video looks. And the D5 costs less than HALF the next cheapest option starter lenses included. Yeah, we’ve got to go back to double system. But that’s easy with my long-established workflow.

So I’m afraid I may have purchased my last dedicated video camera. And my free time is now devoted to the 5D Mk ii Manual and trying to decide if still lens issues like bokah (specular highlight shape outside the focus field) is going to have the same effect for a picture “in motion” that it had in the still world.

Time marches on. So fast our heads spin!

YMMV.

[Bill Davis]

I remember at NAB talking with Brian Meany, the product manager for FCP and his mentioning that there are over a MILLION actual REGISTERED copies of the program in worldwide use! And that’s just ONE NLE system, so there are a LOT of people editing video out there. However, I doubt more than a tiny fraction of them list VIDEO EDITOR on their IRS declarations and get into the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers for occupations. OTOH, I’ll bet every person cutting a major TV show DOES list that as their occupation. So I think the problem here is that we all have one kind of definition of what an “editor” is – while the government statistics are about something else entirely.

FWIW.