It is, of course, all too easy for presentations to lose the attention of their audience. Even the most interesting information can soon become an overload. Opus lets you create more interesting, dare we say even entertaining, presentations which will have a real impact on your audience.
This key is to make your presentations different. Different in the way they look and different in the very way they are presented.
Here are some ideas and guidance:
Its all too easy to get carried away with multimedia but if you’re not careful your audience will become annoyed by constant interruptions or delays while you waste their time with special effects which add nothing to your information.
Too much razzamatazz will become distracting and your audience will be concentrating on what you might do next rather than on your message.
Instead use special effects to.
Get their attention – A strong multimedia start to your presentation will set a different tone to many other presentations and will instantly get your audience’s attention. But keep it short. Some examples of snappy intro pages are provided in the templates.
Highlight key messages – perhaps a summary of the key points you have just raised could be animated onto the screen with appropriate background music to reinforce the message in a different way. A Congratulations page is an example.
The most obvious way in which your presentation can be different is in its overall look and feel. Opus Presenter is designed to provide features which make it easy to create stylish and unusual presentation designs just as easily as bland everyday presentations.
Page Templates – The templates provided with the program provide some striking and stylish designs to give you a head start towards making an impact.
Blends and Shapes – Opus provides special blending effects via the Blend option on the Effects menu. Try these on images you use in your presentation for a stylish, professional effect. There are also special borders that can shape your images. These are available on the Borders tab of the Properties dialog.
Textures and Transparency– Using one of the Texture effects from the Effects tab of the Properties dialog can give even the simplest presentation a different look. The Transparency setting from the same tab or via the Objects toolbar can also be very stylish – allowing you to quickly create watermarks.
Drop Shadows – a common design effect often used by professionals to lift text, is the drop shadow. It is available from the Objects toolbar or on the Effects tab of the Properties dialog.
Animation – when you’ve found a point where special effects and animation are appropriate use the Animation Wizard to create some unusual visual effects.
Use the facilities of the program to mix up the way information is presented. Use snippets of video or montage slideshows to illustrate products or processes with a stirring or appropriate soundtrack. Perhaps included videos of adverts or interviews or narrations from other people. Or pre-record your own narration for some of the pages.
If appropriate make your point with images and music to give both you and your audience a rest from your voice. An example might be a quick slideshow of product images or events, or of new staff members.
To use the panache of multimedia effectively, you need to ensure that the majority of your presentation is consistent, so that the elements intended to have the impact will be different enough to get the attention of the audience. And it is as well to keep those highlights in a consistent form too – your presentation will be more coherent and not "bitty".
Television is a medium your audience will be familiar with for both information and entertainment. TV professionals are adept at ensuring they keep our attention – so why not crib some ideas from them. Next time you watch a documentary or an interview, notice how often they change the viewpoint or the manner in which information is presented.
Instead of overloading your bullet points with information or leaving the same bullet on screen for ages while you explain a complex point, why not pop-up boxes of additional information or visual examples as you go, replacing them with another as you move on. Your screen won’t get overly cluttered but it won’t get monotonous either.
You can control when and how these appear just as easily as you can the bullets of your presentation.
Opus lets you create stand alone presentations and interactive CD-ROM’s allowing you to give your audience copies of your presentation to take away.
The presentation can be supported with a whole range of additional information, links to websites, related presentations, contact information, even order forms. It allows you to give your audience more information than they would ever be able to assimilate in a presentation. It also lets your audience review and further assimilate what you said.
Alternatively, if it is an internal presentation you can create a Standalone version that can be stored on the company intranet.
Where appropriate make a point by way of a simple on-screen test. Either your audience can provide the answers or they can be rhetorical questions. But a multiple-choice mock quiz can present information in a slightly different way and provides room for humour if appropriate via inappropriate answers.
Grab a page from the Training Page Templates provided with the program to get you started.
In some circumstances it may be appropriate for your presentation to be an interactive conversation with your audience.
Opus is particularly adept at making presentations where you can jump easily around between different pages instead of stepping backwards and forward through the whole thing. Used carefully this can make involve your audience more and make your presentation much more fluid and effective.
One of the best ways to stop your audience drifting off is to get them involved. With imaginative use, Opus features such as the drag and drop features or text input can be used to request involvement in decisions or suggestions from the audience.
Why not ask them to decide a list of priorities or key features taken from a list or design a workflow. You could then compare that result with the actual requirement on the next page.
Why not use Opus to create background music and info loops to play while your audience arrives or as they leave. Use it simply to welcome them or to set the tone for the presentation in an interesting and stylish way.
Several such welcome pages are provided in the templates supplied with the program.
An animated introduction is also a great way of establishing that this is not a standard presentation but something more modern and entertaining.
Opus can let you create simple games and screensavers even if you are not a programmer. These could be used for audience participation during the presentation but are most effective as promotional items to be given away, especially if they reinforce a particular message in the presentation.
Don’t forget Opus also lets you create training materials, questionnaires or even easy access to a resource library of information, an archive of existing presentations and documents.