The image shows a person on a long climb that is only partially completed.  The misty mountains give an aura of mystery and challenge to the hiker's journey. The picture perfectly symbolizes our presentation's thesis. Unfortunately, the image was in portrait (the image is taller than it is wide). To see the hiker, we would have to zoom in so much that the first steps of the path and the rest of the journey would be invisible to the audience.

Project

The challenge was to create a visual that would allow the presenter to convey the big idea that “the path from A to B is long and arduous, but our firm has the tools and processes to get it done.”

Solution

The TV documentarian Ken Burns is a master of taking still photos and panning the camera around to create the illusion of motion. Motion is one of the best ways to capture an audience’s attention.

We used the Ken Burns effect to create the stunning visual below. Using this technique, we zoomed in on the beginning of the hike, the lower third of the image. Then, we shift focus to the current status of the journey, the middle third. Finally, we reveal the symbolic end of the process, the top of the mountain, and the upper third of the picture. To achieve the Ken Burns effect with this portrait image, we used PowerPoint's Morph transition. The result is shown in the video below.

In PowerPoint, this is actually three slides. The image is roughly three times the size of a standard slide. We placed the lower third of the image in the frame of the first slide and then duplicated the slide.

In the second slide, we moved the picture so that the middle third of the image was visible. Finally, we duplicated the second slide and moved the picture to the upper third of the last slide. All three slides use PowerPoint’s Morph transition.