This is the opening title for Basil The Great Mouse Detective. We watched it this evening and looking at this opening reminded me how good movies are at getting us instantly into a mood and a frame of mind. Which then made me realise how bad most of us are at doing that with powerpoint/keynote. There don't tend to be many establishing shots in presentations, not many visuals designed to get us into the right emotional/mental territory.
(Don't worry it was only a fleeting thought, I'm not that obsessive about presenting, I then got on with enjoying the movie, which is definitely up there at the top of the Disney second division.)
But then, afterwards, I dug out a couple of other DVDs and looked at how they established themselves.
This is the very first shot, Series One, Episode One, of The Wire. Flashing blue lights reflecting in blood on the street. That says it all right there.
This is the first frame of THX1138. Fractured. Abstract. Close.
That's Les Bicyclettes de Belsize. You get it all from that combination of text and visual. Perfect. (Les Bicyclettes is out in the UK at the moment coupled with The London Nobody Knows, they're both brilliant and both barking mad in very different ways.)
We should pay as much attention as movie makers. We get people in a darkened room, we point them at a big illuminated screen and then we show them something horrible like "Whither Synergistic Frameworks? - A Presentation To VeryBigCo By ConsultrGroup.' Seems like we should aim for a stronger start.
And a better End. How many presentations have we all done which peter our into a '... well that's it. Thanks'. What you need is...
good point. although, i must say that keynote is better at 'setting the scene' than powerpoint will ever be.
Posted by: stephanie | April 14, 2008 at 09:08 PM
And those looking for "The End" stills: here's a Flickr group:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/[email protected]/
Posted by: Christian | April 15, 2008 at 02:38 PM