Slide show nowadays is a staples of any wedding reception. Someone from the bridal party or from the family puts together a show based on the snapshots of the bride and the groom in their childhoods, and then some more of them dating.
I often hear requests to include the slide show into the final video. If you have to shoot it, there are few basic rules:
- Before the show is up on the screen, ask the projectionist to bring white on the screen, it could be clear light through the lens of the slide projection, or a blank page of any document or browser if the show is played off the computer. Do your white balance.
- Switch to manual focus. I never use auto focus, but many people do, so for the slide show I recommend to use MF.
- Unlikely you’ll be able to set dead center against the screen. Therefore the screen won’t be a rectangle from your camera point of view. You have a dilemma - either to include full and skewed screen in the shot, or crop it - I always prefer the latter.
But more fundamentally - do you need to shoot it? Seems to be obvious - why not if the customers want it? Here is why not in my opinion:
- Slide show eats time of your final video. If you follow the couple for entire day, you may have a hard time squeezing the slide show in your final project.
- Quality. You are judged by the quality of your videos. If the images in the slide show are out of focus, improperly exposed and have unbalanced colours, that may cast unwanted shadows on your skills.
- It is easier to provide the couple with the double- or quadruple-disk case with some slots empty so they could place the slide show CD along with your DVD as a “bonus” disk, rather then to deal with the wrong colours, skewed picture and bad sound track altogether.
