Mr. Information Super Highway
12 03 2007This past week I rented “An Inconvenient Truth” and I’ll be starting my third viewing soon. I want to watch with both commentary tracks, and I will watch it at least one more time after that. The main thing that comes across in this film is that Al Gore is very passionate about his subject. A comment I’ve read many times is “Where was this guy in 2000?” Thus intimating that he would have won the election. Oh wait, he did win…never mind.
Anyway, I totally bought into Mr.Gore’s thesis, and he backs it up with hard evidence.
The other major thing I noticed as a geek was the great presentation. NO Bullet points. He’s using a Powerbook, with Apple Keynote as his software. After listening to the first commentary I found that Gore downloaded practically everything he uses from various Internet sites. The director and his team simply went out and found the best versions they could, so that they would look better on the 15 foot widescreen they setup for Gore to use.
My first analysis of the presentation shows that as with most things, it’s simple but very effective. Usually slide transitions are limited to fades and simple left-to-right soft wipes. The effect (and this may be a factor of the Keynote software) is very cinematic and not at all what you usually see with Powerpoint. The other great thing is that the 15 foot screen space is used incredibly well. For major impact the entire screen may be filled, but many times smaller areas are used, I suspect to involve the viewer a little more and to make things less static. Again, text has a cinematic look, and is placed at points all over the screen to add a little more variety. All slides use a black background with white text
No matter what your politics or your feelings about global warming, if you are a presenter you owe it to yourself to watch this film. It will provide you with lots of ideas to make your next session more memorable.
Related posts
But, I don’t have a 15 foot wide TV. (It uses too much electricity, and I don’t want to leave a big footprint.) I think most people would agree that the earth is getting warmer, but they might argue about why. We ARE coming out of an ice age. Remember Ice Man? He lived during the ice age. If he hadn’t driven his Lexus around Italy and Switzerland, you couldn’t leave your brass monkey out overnight in Florida without it being ruined. So, thanks, Ice Man! You gave us the tropical weather we all love. And no. I haven’t seen the movie. I did watch the election on TV. And I remember voting. And being able to successfully inspect my card to make sure it was punched correctly.
[...] reading John’s post about “An Inconvenient Truth”, I decided I should give it a viewing. I did this mostly for [...]