The Photo Montage A photo montage is a collection of photographs arranged to tell some aspect of a life story. The photo montage is a celebration of life, whether it celebrates a birthday or anniversary, relives a family vacation, or evokes memories of a loved one gone. Photographs that have languished for years in old scrapbooks and albums can be shared with family members far and near when placed onto a DVD. Although often consisting entirely of still pictures, there are no rules regarding what a photo montage should be, and many we have helped create at VideOccasions have contained a mixture of still photos, slides and video material. Photo montages are usually accompanied by music, and may have narration added too. Creating Your Photo Montage How it's done What you need to do to prepare your pictures Scanning Costs FAQs

Steps in Creating a Photo Montage

[There's a lot to read here, but it will save you time, money and aggravation if you read it all.]

There are five steps in creating a photo montage.

• Photographs and slides are scanned into our computer, or brought in from your CDs of family photos. Video materials are brought in from your old family films and from your Betamax, VHS, 8mm, Hi8, miniDV and DVCAM tapes, as well as from DVDs.
• Photos are digitally repaired and enhanced if necessary. Smudges, scratches and tears are removed and repaired if possible. Unless instructed otherwise by you we will remove the date/time imprint from your photos. And there might be changes you want as well. You might decide, for example, that the rustic picture on the left would look better if the telephone wires and pole were removed.
• Transitions are created between each image and, if aesthetically appropriate, movement on the image will be added.
• Titles, captions and music are added.
• After review by you, the finished project is output to DVD or tape.

Preparations for creating your Photo Montage

Perhaps most importantly, talk to VideOccasions' staff at 425-641-4811 or email us before you jump into your project. We can help from the start to make this an enjoyable and rewarding experience for you.

There are five parts to the process: (1) determining who your audience will be; (2) sorting and preparing your pictures and slides for delivery to VideOccasions; (3) creating titles and captions; (4) selecting music to accompany the pictures; and (5) selecting a picture and creating text to be printed on the face of the completed DVD.

1. Begin by answering this basic question: "Who will my audience be?"

   Your answer will determine length and content. Your family may be happy to sit through 45 minutes of pictures of Dad; guests at his company retirement party will probably get restless after 10 minutes.

   Pictures typically remain on screen for 5 seconds. That's 12 photos for each finished minute. So a 10 minute piece will contain about 120 photos. A 45 minute piece would contain about 540. That's a lot to look at!

   Pictures that evoke strong memories in you may have little or no meaning to others. Choosing with care makes the difference between an o.k. photo montage and a great one.

2. Sort your pictures and slides:
   • So they tell a visual story, like "Our trip to Yellowstone," or "Mother and Dad: Childhood, Courtship and the Early Years."
   • or Chronologically;
   • or by Subject matter.

   Weed out pictures that don't contribute to the story.

   Weed out pictures that are redundant. Six pictures of Baby Charlie, age 1, sleeping in almost the same position in his crib won't do much to advance your story. One excellent picture tells it all: Charlie was cute sleeping in his crib!

   Number each picture and slide so that if you drop them, or get the story sequence confused while working with them, you can re-order them quickly. Use a pencil and write lightly on the back. Don't, under any circumstances, use a ballpoint or felt tipped pen: the ink can bleed through or offset and ruin your pictures.

   Put your slides into slide trays, in the correct order.

3. Decide what the center of interest is for each picture, and make notes if changes seem appropriate.

   	For example: your picture shows a huge rough-textured wall, with two people on the walkway. Does this photograph tell a story about An interestingly textured wall? or two men enjoying a sunny day? If it's about the wall and textures, you'll probably want us to frame the entire picture when we transfer it to video, so make a note of that.
   But if it's about the two men, you'll want to make a note to zoom in for a close-up, cutting out most of the wall..

   The choices here are yours to make. We can often make poorly composed photographs look like works of art, and sometimes even hide damaged portions of a picture. You're the Producer, though. Much of what you're paying for is VideOccasions' artistic experience and judgement, but ultimately it's your project and only you can make decisions about what's to be included in the piece.

4. Write down your titles and captions. You'll tend to be much more creative at home than while you're editing with us, and titles and captions will help you focus on the way the photo montage story will unfold.

5. Select the music that will accompany your photo montage. You can use music from tapes and CD's, even records. We have a library of royalty free music at VideOccasions that you can listen to, but we recommend you bring your own.

6. Finally, decide how you're going to deliver the photos and slides to VideOccasions. Many of our clients put all their pictures, albums and slides into a box and bring it to us and we scan them into our editing computers.

   Others, however, save money by scanning their photos themselves and bringing us a CD with image files.

   Very Important If You Scan Your Photos and Slides 1.Scan your pictures -- photos and slides -- at a fairly high resolution. We recommend a scanner setter of 300dpi and 48 bit color. A 4x6 photo scanned at this setting will produce a digital image with a resolution of about 1215x1786, with a file size of about 170-180kb. This resolution will give us an opportunity to crop (zoom in on) your picture if necessary and to create movement within the photo without loss of image quality. If your video is to be in HD, use a setting of 600dpi. 2. Scan your photos carefully. Square them up on the scanner. Don't leave white edges around the pictures. Scanned images that we have to correct cost you money! 3. Put the scanned photos onto a CD as .jpg files. As you save each image number the files like this: 0001ourbaby.jpg, 0002billy.jpg, etc. Do not number them 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc. The leading zeros will ensure that when we transfer the pictures to our computer they'll be in the order in which you want them used in the photo montage. 4. Select a label picture. Give some thought to what you'd like printed on the front of your DVD. We can print an appropriate picture and text directly onto the disc. Remember: You're working with a round object that has a hole in the center, so find a couple of pictures that lend themselves to this format. Let us know the image number you've chosen.

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   Call VideOccasions to make an appointment, when you have everything ready. We'll have you bring all your materials to us so we can get them into our computer.

   We'll call you once we've completed a "rough cut" and have you come in to review the project and make any changes you feel necessary. We'll reserve an editing room for you, where one of our staff will be on hand to help you make this a project everyone in the family will long remember.

   Finally, we'll create a DVD or tape of the finished work. Plan to make copies of your finished project at VideOccasions, so each member of the family, no matter where they are, can share these memories with a professionally created, beautifully illustrated DVD.

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   Costs

   Because of the highly individual nature of each photo montage it isn't possible to give a firm cost for a project. The amount of image enhancement, movement on and between pictures and the unique requirements of matching pictures to music will affect the cost of each project.

   To help you estimate costs, however, the following guidelines are given:

   Editing is billed at $75 per hour.

   • A Photo Montage of about 10 minutes in length, containing approximately 120 pictures, with music, titles and captions, will typically take about four and a half to six hours to produce, at a cost of $350 to $500 -- between $2.90 and $4.15 per picture, an average of $3.50 per picture -- plus the cost of the DVD master and copies.

   • In projects larger than120 pictures (about 10 minutes playing time,) estimate approximately $3.50 per picture additionally. This cost is for capture to the computer, image enhancement, adding movement on and between pictures and matching the additional pictures to the music you provide.

   • The addition of video clips and voice-over to a project will further increase the cost.

   Remember: These are only estimates! Many projects cost less; some cost more.