2018 Your Celebration DESTINATION continued from page 14 part. Start early. You’ll have a very good head start in this process if you already have your digital photo collection organized into albums or folders on your computer. For my eldest child’s bar mitzvah, I had more than 100,000 photos to choose from. It seemed like an insurmountable task to narrow that down to 100-150 photos, but my strategy worked. I already had the photos organized into categories and arranged by month and year. If I thought a photo qualified for the montage I copied and pasted it into a new folder called “Montage.” I then began to delete photos from that folder if I felt they were redundant or didn’t make the final cut. It’s important to have a good vari- ety. You want to tell a story with the montage, showing how your teen has grown from birth to this big day. While every experience — from first steps and potty training to little league and braces — is important to your immediate family, remember that the audience is going to get restless (and hungry). If the saying that a picture tells a thousand words is true, then you don’t need an abundance of pho- tos to tell your child’s story. Your friends and family are also going to be watching to see if there’s a photo of them. Therefore, it was a priority of mine to try to find a photo with every family member (even the sec- ond cousin you don’t see very often) and as many friends as possible. In the year leading up to the mitzvah, try to take many group photos of your teen with their friends. FRANKLIN ATHLETIC CLUB EDITING Our Bar Mitzvah was executed professionally and with the utmost attention to detail. Everybody had a blast! Which software is best to create a montage? There are lot of options out there, and it comes down to what you’re comfortable using. I made my son’s bar mitzvah montage using Corel VideoStudio, but other popular applications include iMovie, Adobe Premier Pro, Pinnacle Studio and Final Cut Pro. The free Windows Movie Maker (which used to come with all versions of Windows but has been discontinued) is a quick and easy way to produce a montage. When editing, remember that it’s not only about the transitions between photos. The pan and zoom feature is important to use, espe- cially in photos with many people. You’ll want to pan across the photo and zoom in on faces, otherwise your guests sitting far from the - The Weinsteins, Farmington Hills Create your perfect celebration contact Crystal at (248) 352-8000, ext. 298 FRANKLINCLUB.COM 2178650 C16 celebrate! • 2018 jn screen won’t be able to see who is in the photo. Have a roadmap in place before editing the montage. Most montages begin with baby photos to show the journey from babyhood to child- hood and then to the pre-teen years. Grouping your photos into themes will also be helpful in telling the story ( family, friends, vacations, sports, camp, school, etc.). Some montages group several photos into the same screen, but I’m not a fan of this because there are too many photos to focus on and the audience will give up. Displaying each photo for 4 sec- onds is enough time (remember, 150 photos at four seconds each will come out to 10 minutes exact- ly). You can either randomize the transition effects or stick with one transition. I chose to randomize the effects, but I kept it to only a hand- ful. Otherwise, it will distract atten- tion from your photos. MUSIC The choice of songs can help tell the story of the montage. Let your teen be part of the process and recom- mend some of his or her favorite songs or artists. You want to pay attention to the lyrics of the songs to be sure they’re appropriate. Some songs are used in most montages, so choose whether you want to go with the standards or be more creative. If you want to include some videos in the montage, keep them short and sweet. A 10-second clip is enough. Also, consider saving the videos for the end when you can fade out the music. Ultimately, you want to remember that while this montage is very special to you, many of your guests are eager to get to the party section of the event. Don’t hold them captive watching your family memories. Rather, set the tone for the celebration showing how proud your family is of your teen and how their life has been shared with so many friends and family members. Finally, be sure to test the mon- tage ahead of time at the venue to ensure the video and audio quality is to your liking. After all the time you spent producing the montage, you don’t want to endure any technical malfunctions. • Rabbi Jason Miller is a local entrepreneur, edu- cator and blogger. He is president of Access Technology in West Bloomfield. Follow him on Twitter at @RabbiJason.