Film School for Slideware: Film, Comics, and Slideshows as Sequential Art

By studying what comics and film theory suggest about selecting and sequencing images, both regular slideware users and students learning about multimodal communication can find ways to use the software more effectively, creating more productive relationships among their audiences, their slides, and their rhetorical goals. Though some, like designer Edward Tufte, have suggested that programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint are too flawed to be used effectively, it is possible to create rhetorically effective slide presentations that make excellent use of visual design and take audience response into account, a fact reflected in the commentary of professional presenters and designers like Seth Godin, Nancy Duarte, and Garr Reynolds. By joining their advice to the observations of visual communication theorists such as Lev Kuleshov, Roland Barthes, and Scott McCloud, it is possible to improve slideware presentations not only on a slide-by-slide basis but also at the level of the sequence, where multiple slides work together to convey meanings and create significant audience-speaker interactions. To take note of the family resemblances among slideware, film, and comics as sequential visual forms is to begin to unlock the greater potential of slideware applications like Microsoft PowerPoint.

► Many uses of slideware applications (like MS PowerPoint) are ineffective.
► Resemblances exist between slideware, film, and comics as sequential visual forms.
► Comics and film theory can inform and improve implementation of slideware.
► Slideware presentations can be improved at the level of the sequence.
► Other multimodal compositions may also benefit from this approach.