3@M's or How to 'wow' with Keynote

[Macnoviz]

I'm really excited about this. I have been given the chance to work on a project, mainly handling the projection.

I will be able to use a digital cinema projector, and I have a carte blanche for extra things I may need (cables, various DVI-adapters, stock images, etc.).

My main goal is to make Keynote shine. I want people to be stunned when they see the presentation, and ask how the hell they did that in Powerpoint.

The event is a circular 30-minute program, and it fits within the "Night of the open churches" project in Bruges. I am working on the youth segment, in a very modern church (Apple store-like interior, modern art, interactive elements, and of course a huge screen with digital projector)

The presentation will mainly consist of text (poetry, stories) and lyrics being shown, with background images, and some movies.

Some questions:

-what will I need for showing a 1920x1080 keynote? (cable-wise) I am using my macbook.

-How do I best animate a narrated text, considering it will be a poetic translation of bible text?

-How would you take a sentence and then emphasis one word of it, fading out the rest of the text, and making the word larger. (I am using keynote from iWork 06)

-What transitions would be subtle enough for the evening yet enough to make people see it's not a standard powerpoint job?

-Any other tips on how to make this presentation perfect?

 

[Pittsax]

I think you're walking a fine line here. I don't know about anyone else, but I hate presentations that show off just for the sake of showing off. Whatever your personal feelings are about Keynote, your main goal should be to clearly present whatever you are presenting, not to make it look flashy. Too much in the way of animations/transitions will become very annoying to most people in the audience, and they'll probably be more likely to wonder why you didn't just do things simply instead of trying (too hard) to wow the audience.

That said, I have a few suggestions (caveat: I'm working with Keynote '08, so I apologize if I suggest anything that's not in '06):

I usually just use the wipe animation for making text appear, so that it appears left to right as when it's being read. I don't recommend using any of the flying or zooming or spinning animations because they're just too darn distracting.

If you're having narrated text, you could probably get away with the page-flip transition between slides. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent. Don't have random slide changes.

For emphasis on certain words, is the one word really the only important take-away message? If so, you can grey out the remaining text. If the emphasis is important, but you need the rest of the text to get any meaning from it, then find a way of making the emphasized word stand out while keeping the rest of the text easy to read as well.

 

[Sky Blue]

-Any other tips on how to make this presentation perfect?

buy '08

 

[Macnoviz]

I think you're walking a fine line here. I don't know about anyone else, but I hate presentations that show off just for the sake of showing off. Whatever your personal feelings are about Keynote, your main goal should be to clearly present whatever you are presenting, not to make it look flashy. Too much in the way of animations/transitions will become very annoying to most people in the audience, and they'll probably be more likely to wonder why you didn't just do things simply instead of trying (too hard) to wow the audience.

That said, I have a few suggestions (caveat: I'm working with Keynote '08, so I apologize if I suggest anything that's not in '06):

I usually just use the wipe animation for making text appear, so that it appears left to right as when it's being read. I don't recommend using any of the flying or zooming or spinning animations because they're just too darn distracting.

If you're having narrated text, you could probably get away with the page-flip transition between slides. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent. Don't have random slide changes.

For emphasis on certain words, is the one word really the only important take-away message? If so, you can grey out the remaining text. If the emphasis is important, but you need the rest of the text to get any meaning from it, then find a way of making the emphasized word stand out while keeping the rest of the text easy to read as well.

Yes of course, I probably made my question a bit too misleading.

I have done several other of these types of presenation, and I know how not to overdo it. That's why I won't be using the reflection transition for texts for example, although it is one of the better looking ones.

The main goal is to keep it minimalistic, but sometimes and animation can help to make a presentation more understandable. For instance, when I made a quiz, I used the cube transition for going from question to question (same level), the door opening transition for going from title to questions (level down) and reflection to signify a new part. That didn't just look cool, it also helped creating some "depth" in the presentation.
My question is how I can do the same thing, combining functionality with eyecandy for this sort of thing.

As for the rest: I tried the page-flip transition, but I think it might be better to let the text flow in a more gradual manner, instead of having chunck A, page flip, chunk B, page flip, etc. Plus, for lyrics, page flip takes too long