Slideshow Assignment

This was our latest assignment in the entertainment computing module of the Games Development degree that I'm doing. We were told to make an interactive photo album (preferably on windows movie maker) with something to do with "All work no play".

Me and the group I was in, agreed that the pub is a typical place for students to hang out after a tough days studying (hopefully), and we picked a good one, we went to the ship inn, which has loads of games, all teh one's you'd expect to find in a pub, and some different more unusual ones, like "Guitar Hero" and a fooseball table. So we thought that it would be a perfect place to shoot some photo's realating to the subject matter :).

So, onto how I made the slideshow, as I mentioned, I made it in windows movie maker, it's a pretty easy program to use, I decided that the length of the switches between photo's was way to long on the default setting, so I made the switches quite a bit shorter. I also made some basic screen wipes (fades and ONE star wipe, so it didn't get overboard) . I decided that the outing followed a flow of event's, so I tried to keep them as close how it happend as possible, because I feel that it flows better that way. We also kind of used some stop frame animation techniques, but not in any major way, just one or two photo's of the same scene taken in close time to each other. We decided on taking some interesting (in my opinion) shots of us playing pool, the point of view shots from the viewpoint of the cue, and they were quite fun to take, and I liked how they turned out. I decided on the name of the slideshow from "The Shining" thought it was quite apt really, because I'd agree, if you don't take some time to relax every now and then, hopefully you won't become a axe wielding maniac, but you might get over stressed, and that's never a good thing.

My favourite scene would be the last one, maybe a little over acted considering we only had one pint each, but you have to try and tell a bit of a story I suppose. My least favourite scene is probably the guitar hero one, at least with me and Andy, neither of us really play the game, because we both play real guitar, but we enjoyed it anyway I suppose.

In conclusion, I feel we covered the subject matter pretty well, that's definately how we would (and were) relax in our time off from Uni, and I'm quite happy with how the slideshow turned out, that was the first time I've ever used Windows Movie Maker, and if I ever need to, (or get another assignment) I think I'd be able to make something that's pretty decent.