Presentation Project

I've spent more time on this project than all of the others combined, and I'm still not completely finished with it. I decided to use PowerPoint to create a video consisting of a series of still images set to music. The task has proved to be more difficult than I anticipated.

One of the first issues I've had to address for this project is that of copyright. Because the song I'm using, Everlast's What It's Like, is protected by copyright, one of the first things I tried to do was obtain permission to use the song as the background music for my video. However, after many Internet searches, telephone calls, and emails, I still have not been able to acquire this.

I decided to take an easier approach for the photographs I used and purchased the rights to them. I initially looked at several websites that contain royalty-free photographs, but didn't really find what I wanted. The photos that I ended up using for the video were primarily obtained from xxx and cost about a dollar each. The benefit to this is that the photos are high quality, easy to manipulate, and fitting for the subject matter of the video.

The song used for the video deals with several social issues including homelessness, abortion, and drug related violence. The underlying theme for both the song and my video is to 'put yourself into someone else's shoes' in order to understand the situation without passing some type of detached judgement.

At this time, the video is only complete for the first verse, which deals with homelessness. The images correspond to the words in the song and portray different aspects of the issue. During the instrumental part of the song that follows, I plan to include positive images related to the issue such as volunteer opportunities, soup kitchens, and Habitat for Humanity. I also plan on following this same format for the next two verses dealing with abortion and drug issues. I don't want to only show the problems related to the issues, but also positive ways people are addressing them in order to counteract many prevalent stereotypes.

The actual construction of the video was somewhat of a trial and error process. Since I have only used the first verse of the song for the purposes of the class project, I edited the song to the correct length using Audacity and converted it to an MP3 which was inserted into PowerPoint. Inserting the images was pretty straightforward, however, getting the timing right for the slide transitions took some playing around with and is still not perfect.

I think the portion of the video I have completed is pretty clean and has been turned in, but I am committed to the project now and plan on completing it over the summer in order to include it my portfolio.