Some impressive slideshow works

First of all, you can view some professional or popular slideshow works. Lots of things can be learned from these works. 

1. Slideshow: the many faces of Ayumi Hamasaki  (features: background music, pan and zoom effect, photomontage)
   
2. Eric Lafforgue's slideshow gallery  (features: photography and stunning natural transition)
   
3. Ken Burns "Civil war intro"  ( features: music and insightful narration)
   
4. Yangliping's Impression of Yunnan  (features: tension and dramatics)
   
5. Yunnan Provincial Musuem  (features: background music)
6. Kazakhstan wedding slideshow  (features: photography, sepia filter)
7. Hawaii wedding slideshow (features: photography, black/white photo, pan and zoom effect)
8. 25th anniversary tribute of Falklands conflict (features: background music)
9. 10th anniversary of the pastel journal (features: background music) 
10. Travel slideshow: People of Vietnam (perhaps the best travel/tourism slideshow that I found on the web)
11. Travel slideshow: Gold coast, Australia (an excellent travel advertisement)
12. Slideshow MV:   早春賦  (Japanese folk song)
13. Chinese wedding slideshow (features: creative transitions and animations)
14. Documentary slideshow:  History of Aryans (features: impressive illustration)
15. Documentary slideshow:  Nazi's propaganda in the1930's/40's (features: excellent background music) 
16. Propaganda slideshow:  Hymn to the Soviet Union (features: music) 
17. Music slideshow:  Please Mr. Postman (Beatles) 
18. Meditation music slideshow:  Clouds, river, zen, heart

1. Usage

People often make slideshows when being triggered or inspired by some important events. Slideshow is especially suitable for anniversary, wedding, important newstories, documentary and illustration. A lot of funny slideshow videos can be found on Youtube.

2. "Continuity",  The most important thing in slideshow designing

Similar to video editing,  "continuity" is the most important part in slideshow editing. Two consecutive pictures should always have some direct or indirect relations. Geometric similarity between two pictures can also be utilized to improve the continuity of a slideshow to make it "smooth".

A slideshow without continuity is a waste of time in most cases.  A simple gallery page is more suitable and effective in this case.

3. The Picture should always match with the music

3.1 high-level

1. Tone: The tone of pictures should always match with the mood/emotion in background music.
2. Story in photo: The story (if existed) should always match with the mood/emotion in background music.

The tone of picture is especially important as the viewers can easily find this kind of match problem in the first seconds. The viewers'  first impression can determine whether they will keep on viewing.
 
3.2 low-level

Several other important elements of picture slideshow should keep up with the pace of music.

1. animation speed
2. color
3. picture composition
4. camera angle
5. transitions
6. direction of pan and zoom
7. Narration in documentary slideshow
   

As the emotion, tension and dynamics in music change from time to time, the picture sequence should also keep up with  the emotional change of  viewers. 

It's a quite difficult problem and may requires some experience. Perhaps the best way is to learn from others' works and practice by yourself. You can browse the slideshows listed on top of this page if you are interested. 

In some cases, you need to use  photomontage (created with photoshop) instead of common digital photos to match with the background music. Surely you could also modify the music if you were a musician.


4. Video Quality

You can read this article at first if you wish to publish you slideshow video on the web.

Improvement on slideshow video quality

5. Other resources

Knowledge of song writing, lyric writing, photomontage, video editing, camera techniques will be quite helpful  to slideshow making.

Free educational resources of  song writing/lyric writing/photomontage/picture composition/video editing/camera