How do I add impact to a Keynote deck using cinematic techniques?

After watching way too many boring slide decks at work and having to make them myself, I thought about how I could make the slide deck viewing experience better. The answer was hidden from me in plain sight for years in the Export...to Movie selection in the File menu of Keynote.

After I discovered that I could export a slide deck into a video, I thought about my decks as movies and slides as shots in the movie. Then, instead of putting text and static images in slides as bullet points, I wrote a screenplay that showed a story that conveyed the information in the text and images. I copied the screenplay text into a Keynote file and broke the text up into little chunks, one for each shot, i.e. slide.

For each shot, I used the Build In, Action, and Build Out tools to animate characters and props in the story. I used the Transitions tools to smoothly move from one shot to the next in a cinematic way. There's more to it of course, but those are the broad strokes. I now making short cartoons and movies using these techniques.

Sometimes a short, simple bullet point slide deck is fine. Sometimes you need more, or want more.

I made a few 2D animated cartoons that show how to get started with this process. I'm working on more lessons like them to explain the details.

The first of these is "Making Moments - Lesson 1 - How to ease into animation with a Keynote cartoon". Take a look. You may get a few ideas about how to pump up your Keynote presentations.