One of the questions i get asked from time to time is how time consuming it is to produce audioslideshows and what it all needs to produce them. People start asking me about Final Cut, Photoshop, complex audioediting. And for sure for a big audioslideshow, especially when you combine it with video and so on as well, it needs some time to edit it as the editing process is going through different layers of editing. The question is way more, is it possible to create audioslideshows that are visually compelling, tell a clear story (also without a narrator, what would make editing even faster) and are produced in a short amount of time.

When the audioslideshows want to get a place beside video on the news websites and step out of the ‘only’ bigger storylines producing photofilms, we need to think about that. So what do we need? We need a set of pictures, audio with both ambient sound and an interview. That is mainly it. For the editing we can use some easy available tools like the widespread Lightroom or if you want to make it even more easy and cheesy do the colorgrading in iMovie or what you use for editing the final film. The audiotracks can be edited quite fast in programs like Audacity and here we go. What are the advantages of this scenario? First, no big investment if you are new to audioslideshows as the programs are free or preinstalled on most computers (putting aside Lightroom or Photoshop, what at least most photographers use). Second, especially iMovie is the perfect program for editing audioslideshows as you seldom need all the fancy features of Final Cut and the likes, but iMovie also allows you very fast editing with it’s interface. Audacity is quite similar in simplicity, but having everything you need. This is not to be meant as a tutorial or something, but to think differently of audioslideshows. Is it even possible to create also for news topics a higher value with transmitting a set of pictures, plus directly also an audioslideshow an hour later? Or if you are a NGO worker who wants to give a quick update on your project? You have the value of the pictures, but also the extra value of the multimedia.

The guys from duckrabbit are in Nairobi right now for teaching NGOs in creating audioslideshows and they made a little quick and dirty example for a photofilm that perfectly shows what I was talking about before. Total production time: 7 hours (with handshaking, laughters and editing). I think this is at least a direction where we should look at, or what do you think?