Setting the Mood

File Under: Musical Considerations

Recently, I have tasked myself to create slideshows of my 2 big recent photo events, the 4th of July, and Chicago. I'll see if I can get the slideshows online, without having to pay oooodles of money. Google Video looks very intruiging. I downloaded their app, but haven't experimented with it yet.

Anywho, I'm starting on the Chicago trip first. And with a slideshow, my mindset is that this is the "ultimate platform" to showcase most of the photo's taken. In my album, I pick the "cream of the crop"/the pictures that best tell "the story". But with a slideshow, I can show ALOT, and if the music is right, it makes everything more enjoyable.

One consideration when choosing the music is the TIME of the slideshow. Once I've chosen the photo's, timed everything just so, the slideshow has a determined length of time. I then go in to Windows Media Player, and arrange all songs by the length of the track. I begin to look around, and see what I can find.

But it's tricky with music. See, if the slideshow is 5:42, I can find a track that is exactly 5:42, but the music fades out at 5:30, but the show is still going! So I need to look around in a general 20, 25-second radius, seeing what fits, what doesn't fit, ecetera.

And once you've got the time, and you have the music infront of you, then you have to find a peice of music that'll WORK. For Part 1 of this slideshow, I can do the overly dramatic, the tenseful and suspenseful, Mr. Bojangles, Three Dog Night, and a whole bunch of other music.

And when you try to combine 2 tracks to get the desired amount of time (add a 1:30 and a 4:30 track for your 6-minute slideshow), it gets pretty confusing, especially when trying to figure out the second half. You just transplant your problem in that case!

I'm showing pictures of buildings. Most were taken from inside a bus, but they're still "worthy" enough to warrent a part of the slideshow. For pictures of the city, the energetic pounding sounds of Bond don't do me any good - it's TOO energetic. Opera Babes don't help... Especially when it becomes uber-dramatic when there's a picture of a wide empty street.

I tried one peice that ended very fun-like, but the first half was very tense, very dramatic. The "bad guy walks in" part of the track happened EXACTLY when I showed the first picture of a building. That's not the type of association you want to establish right away.

Ironically, one of the tracks that *could* maybe work is "The Night Chicago Died". Also, there are tracks that could maybe work, but I hope to use later on in the Chicago Slideshow Project. And I would MUCH rather use some of those tracks later on than immediately.

I think I may be close to settling on a peice for my 3:32 slideshow. (well, part of a slideshow) But each track gives the show such a different feel. And you want to start off on a great peice too. You need a good "hook", as it were.

One possibility is to open up with the main theme from Sky Captain and the World of Tommorow, then play the Peter Gunn Theme. Another has me doing the Jeeves & Wooster theme song, then pairing up with another track. I have about 5 different posibilities right now. I just wished one of them would *click*.