A posted valentine

[LumenLux]

Soon to be on Beechbrook.com, but available directly here, is a little personal valentine for downloading.

The sequence includes 2 1/2 minutes of photos and 10 minutes of varied music. The presentation of the photos repeats with modest modifications intended to partner with the music through "seasonal" life-moods. (And to point out once again, how the musical tone is almost always very important as to how we experience the photos.)

[brian65photo]

I enjoyed the show very much and agree with you entirely how important the choice of music is. The first section made the most impact on me and on replaying the whole show a few times I realised that the music accompanying the first section was the most in keeping with the subject of the photos and promoted the most relaxed viewing. Whilst I noticed that the music was playing, it seemed almost "invisible" in the background and enabled me to concentrate on the images and yet it was a very important part of the "whole" in setting the atmosphere for the sequence.

Thanks to you and all of the other helpful PTE'rs out there I am beginning to learn what makes a successful slideshow.

Brian

PS - What was the music you used in the first section?

[LumenLux]

Thanks Brian for your observations.

The first music piece is A River Runs Through It from the movie of the same name. The composer is Mark Isham.

I'm thinking further about your preference for the first of the four songs used. I think your personal analysis of "why" makes sense. But you have awakened another thought or question. Let me explain. The "Valentine" was originally a "Congratulations" greeting that I had made a couple of weeks earlier with the same photos. In the congratulations presentation I employed yet different music. My wife first viewed the congratulations presentation and then immediately viewed the Valentine. She then concluded that she preferred the music used in the congratulations version. Now with that, and your preference for the first piece used in Valentine, I am wondering whether there is possibly viewer bias toward the first music heard with a particular set of photos. Of course I think that would only be if the first music seems reasonably fitting to the photo content. What do you think?

If you, or anyone else is interested, here is the link to the original congratulations PTE so you can hear that music and see what you think. Congratulations. And if you are curious, you can take a look at another related experiment. The very short "experiment" is available for download as Untitled so as to not bias any evaluation of the content.

If you weren't around when originally posted, ThisMorning2.zip is another way that I have experimented with the use of alternate music tracks for a single photo sequence.

[brian65photo]

LumenLux

Thanks. I have watched “Congratulations” and enjoyed it as well and I called my wife to watch it too. Afterwards I showed her “Valentine”, and whilst we both felt that the first sequence of “Valentine” was still the most relaxing viewing , we appreciate the differences that your chosen music has to each of the sections, especially the song to the couple celebrating their anniversary in “Congratulations”. We felt that in the first sequence in “Valentine” the music stayed in the background and we paid most attention to the images, whereas in “Congratulations” we felt that we were mainly listening to the song, which obviously would have been most pleasing to the anniversary couple. So we have concluded that it is not the fact of hearing the first piece of music first but that that particular piece suits the images the best. Perhaps this isn’t the same for everyone.

As a newcomer to AV I have watched many of the slideshows in this forum and others and am beginning to conclude that, for me at least, landscape sequences seem most enjoyable when accompanied by tranquil music, because landscape images are generally tranquil themselves. However, there is one slideshow that stands out as having had the most emotional impact upon me so far and that was “The Purton Hulks” by Morturn, which I am sure you will have seen also. I watched that one just after my wife and I had visited the site with a Narrowboat Club in which we are members and the memory of the hulks was still fresh in our minds. The plaintive tune and the superb images worked very well and had me feeling emotionally full. But this may have been because we had an emotional link with the subject. So perhaps that is an important factor also.

Brian