Part 2: Tips and Tricks for Creating a PowerPoint Video

Have you ever wanted to create an animated video but aren’t sure where to begin? One program to consider is PowerPoint. Believe it or not, PowerPoint is good for more than just slide shows— its many design capabilities make it a powerful choice for producing videos.

We used PowerPoint to create our video submission to the American Evaluation Association’s 2017 video contest. We learned a lot along the way, and now we’re sharing our tips and tricks to help you as you create your own video in PowerPoint. (This official resource provides a great overview of PowerPoint’s animation tab.)

Designing

  • Start simple. For beginners, abstract animations tend to look more professional than trying to create very realistic animations. It takes a lot of skill to create realistic animations, so play it safe and design animations that match your skill level.
  • Less can be more. Once you figure out all that PowerPoint animation can do, it’s easy to go overboard and make your video too busy. Make sure that each animation serves a purpose by telling the story, creating a transition, or adding emphasis.

Creating

  • Effect options. Each animation effect has its own options. You can change the direction of the effect, specify the color or size, or set text animations to occur by letter, word, or paragraph. When exploring the animation effects, also take a peek at “Effect Options” to see all the possibilities for the animation.
  • Copying animation. You can use the Animation Painter (similar to Format Painter) to easily copy the animations of one object onto another. Total time saver!
  • Start options. When starting an animation, you can select “Start On Click,” “Start With Previous,” or “Start After Previous.” We recommend using “Start With Previous” wherever appropriate because this allows you to tweak the durations and delays to make the animation occur at the right moment. When an animation starts before the previous animation has finished, the video appears smoother and more professional.
  • You don’t have to always rely on animations to make things happen. There are some cool transitions that can help your video. For example, the morph transition can save you a lot of time. Take a look through all of the transitions and keep them in mind. As with animations, use transitions only when they are helpful to the video; too many transitions can quickly look unprofessional.

Recording

  • PowerPoint is a one-stop shop. You can record your voiceover in PowerPoint and then export it as a video.
  • Tweaking the timing. Animations require constant tweaking of the timing. Don’t hesitate to revisit the timing of each animation and slow it down or speed it up to flow better and match the voice recording.

There are many reasons why a video might be a useful tool for your evaluation (see Part 1 of this series). We hope these tips and tricks are helpful as you begin to explore this feature of PowerPoint.