Make a slideshow? I have no idea how, I don’t even know where to start.

I call my little brother. He has the “multimedia savvy”, he did a hi-tech animation show when he was at university and would be the best reference. The first thing he says to me when I ask if I should use Powerpoint is, “… this is not the 90s LAH* ……..”. OK, not Powerpoint, so what then ….. ? He says to try Flash. I am like, “NO, not Flash !!! I tried flash a few years ago but gave up”.

I want something I can learn in 30 seconds.

I wish I was back in my university classroom letting my professor spoon-feed me. Those were the easy years, just sit back and let the prof do the hard work and by the end of the day you are an expert.

I call Russell. Russell directs me to Pedja. OK, now I’ve got something that I can click.

I am excited, but have no content, no pictures. The assignment which has inspired all this effort is next week and means a seven day wait. Ouuh … I don’t think I can wait that long. I make some dummy pictures.

I’m on a high, I can do it now.

Hah … forgotten something ….. the audio. I am OK with the “eyes” part, I can take pictures (I have to otherwise I cannot pay my bills), but I have neglected the ears bit. I have never dealt with microphones. The next day, I buy an audio recorder. It was not too expensive though… and to my surprise, here I am with the one piece of equipment I never expected to carry in my camera bag!!

OK so my computer screen is filled with something that makes me feel like Mr. Spielberg; I have pictures, I have audio.

I don’t want my FotoShow to look like a TV program, I want it to emphasise ”photo”.  I decide against voice over or narration - audio should not dominate the images - pictures first!.

 Eventually I have my very first FotoShow - click http://www.bazuki.com/FotoShow/2008/ELEC TION2008/ but make sure the speaker is on though…

It was fun, even though it took a long time and I lost sleep over it. The technical part is easy, but making decision on how to put it all together takes a lot of time. The software is not that straight forward so working out how to ”trick” it into doing what you want takes a bit of extra time. The software does not animate but I want animation and that is what needed a ‘tweak’ . 

Now I  think should be able to make a production of a FotoShow in less than an hour.

So, should I learn Macromedia Flash? I think I would rather spend my time taking pictures and then that voice recorder still looks alien to me.

* notes : “LAH” is an expression used by Malaysians at the end of a sentence to stress a point.