Funeral Slideshows: 10 Unusual Things to Include
When a loved one dies, many people decide to create a funeral slideshow to remember and honor them. There’s usually not a lot of time, and often the best you can do is collect what photographs are available and have them included in some sort of semi-automatically generated funeral slideshow. And that’s fine. After all, it’s about the person, not the slideshow.
But what if you want to make it a little better? What if you have the time and know a bit about video editing and can handle iMovie or Windows Movie Maker? How do you improve the tried and true (but slightly worn) traditional funeral slideshow? how do you think memorable tributes to loved ones that, rather than be displayed at the funeral, will be treasured for years to come. How do you create a funeral slideshow that becomes a family heirloom?
Well, don’t say goodbye to those photographs. The basis for any funeral slideshow will continue to be images. Although, a little care in restoring photos with Photoshop, and a little thought about how you traverse them and where the virtual camera lands, will pay you back many times over in audience appreciation. And don’t forget the subtitles. Haven’t we all attended funerals and sat in front of endless images wondering who we’re looking at? Us watch outwe are there after all, but who are all these people? Is that the granddaughter; Is that the son John that she never visited? you ask yourself. But without subtitles, there are no answers. So the first thing to include in your knockout slideshow is subtitles.
1. Captions
When you collect the photos, get information about them. Find out the time, place, people and occasion of the photos. And when you do, include it as a title. If you’re not sure, look in the back! There is often a description, and some photo processing labs from the 1960s onwards helpfully printed the processing date on the back of the image.
You can copy photos with a digital camera, but it is better to scan them.
Exploration? You Will you need to scan to get images into your editing program. And there’s a bit of “black art” in the scanner settings with all that confusing nonsense about dots or pixels per square inch (dpi or ppi). Luckily it’s not that complicated: printing requires 300 dpi/ppi to reproduce the original at the same size. Video and digital displays are usually happy with 72 dpi/ppi. So I should scan at 72 dpi, right? (We are talking about a funeral slide show that is going to be shown, probably from a video DVD.) “and larger. If your original image is smaller than 4″x6”, scan at 600 dpi/ppi. And if you’re scanning a small photo negative or slide, 1200 dpi/ppi or even 2400 dpi/ppi is your number) .
2. Handwriting
In the past, people had what we called a “hand”: they could actually write! If you’re lucky enough to find the person’s handwriting on the back of one of those photos you’re scanning, be sure to scan it and include it (possibly with a split screen). You should always try to include samples of the person’s handwriting. It could be from the description of that photo, but it could just be an old (possibly the last) shopping list, or it could be a letter written a long time ago or even recently. It can be a signature from a driver’s license or passport.
IT’S OKAY. But what else can you include in your montage besides photos and captions? Well, the trick to going from ho-hum to oh-my is to collect as much and as varied material as you can. The goal is to capture and preserve the uniqueness of your subject.
3.Stories
A death is almost always the occasion for families to be reunited: the children fly (often from across the country, or even further afield), and the thoughts of family and friends turn to the good times and all the happy memories. . Some people will be composing and presenting eulogies. So you should take advantage of these unscheduled gatherings and record brief recollections on the subject from those friends and family. You should find time to do this informally before the funeral.
Some people may not fly or be able to attend the funeral for whatever reason. But your funeral slideshow can still feature them or their stories. When you can’t record the person directly, record them through a webcam. No webcam? Record your voice over the phone (Skype can help with this). Once you’ve assembled your slideshow, you can play the voice over an image of the person telling that story.
What other thing?
4. Poems and Sayings:
Death, despite all its pain, is a stimulus to consider the great issues of life. And a collection of sayings or homilies that the person lived or that express their hopes and beliefs helps us focus our thoughts. Sometimes a person was known by his Good words or his mood. Certainly the examples should be included as simple text screens or as text “crawls”.
5. Old video footage
Almost inevitably, there will be video footage of the deceased somewhere in a closet of one or another family member. You just have to ask around. Maybe a birthday or just a family barbecue. Nothing brings a person back to our memories better than video, ideally with audio as well.
You may need to convert old 8mm, 16mm or super 8 film into a digital format so you can add a clip of it to your funeral slideshow. But here’s a hint: don’t stick with the cheapest. Some converters don’t even look at what they’re doing with your valuable old film and the end result can be too dark or too light, or it can have horrible jagged black edges.
6. Cards and letters
I mentioned handwriting above, so now let’s focus on cards and letters.
Grandparents, in particular, avidly collect cards and artwork from their grandchildren. Have you ever met a grandparent who throws away a single photo or letter from a grandson or daughter? Well, these items can also be included in the funeral slideshow to show how loved and honored the person was in life.
7.Voiceover
Depending on the length and complexity of life, it may be helpful to tell the story through storytelling.
Now, a family member is often designated to present an overview of the person’s life at the funeral. That same person is often well placed to provide the narration or voiceover for the visuals of the funeral slideshow. Sometimes it is enough for the person to review the images and other visual material and then say a few words about some of them. (Any modern computer allows you to plug in some kind of microphone to get an internal voice.)
8. Cuts and memories
What, are we following the president here? Actually, most people at the end of a long life have a scrapbook somewhere with some now yellowed and brittle news clippings about themselves. It could be a prescription they sent, an announcement of their engagement, attendance at a benefit dance or similar event, or it could be high school sports. Or, you can have someone really famous on your hands with a whole book of scrapbooks.
Other people keep keepsakes like track, soccer, swimming, or golf trophies. Or they have traveled or led a busy business life and the home or office is full of gossip. You can film or photograph these things and add them to the funeral slideshow.
9. The lid of a DVD case:
IT’S OKAY. Home stretch. After putting together an impressive funeral slideshow, you need to burn it onto a DVD and put it in a box so that it is properly identifiable and records the important milestones in the person’s life. You add the best portrait of the deceased you can find, perhaps in a collage with some images from his youth. You can also include maps right there in the box (you should also include them in the slideshow, of course).
Family and friends will likely want their own copy of your funeral slideshow, so it pays to make the project catchy and recognizable.
10. Web Publishing
Why not? With the wide variety of free online web hosting available, many people decide to publish their funeral slideshow on the internet so that it is available anywhere at any time from any computer to any friend or family member.