Motion via Placement in ProShow

Since the advent of ProShow version 4, we’ve been buried in slide styles, but some of the older ways of doing things not only still work, but they continue to be admirable.

Once upon a time, we not only used zoom, pan, and rotation to create motion; we used placement, too. In its simplest form, you’d have one slide with the photo on the left and the next slide with the photo on the right. With a cut in between the two slides, and if you ran the slides, a photo would pop into view on the left and then pop off as the photo on the right popped into view. Not a single special effect was used, and yet there was motion.

This idea is still valid, and it can extend itself to any number of slides. For instance, one might have photo 1 at top left, photo 2 at top center, 3 at top right, 4 at middle right, and so on until a complete circling of the screen is accomplished. Running the slides causes the perception of motion where absolutely none exists. And guess what? This was the original idea that launched the invention of film.

What Does It Say?

It’s always a good idea to choose slide styles that suit the photo. If we don’t pay attention to what’s happening, we can easily create atrocities such as slicing up our mother, sending half the photo with half our mother off the screen to the right and the other half of our mother to the left. What’s this saying? Nothing we want to think about. That same slide style might work, however, if we have a photo with two people standing on either side of the split. Unlikely, but possible.

You can’t go wrong if you always ask yourself what a special effect is really saying.