A picture is worth a thousand words.
Memorial Slideshows are so special and can showcase so many aspects of a person’s life, and do so within a short span of time – they are usually 5 to 10 minutes in length. If you or someone in your family has ample time and technological skill, and doesn’t feel emotionally overwhelmed by their grief during the time when they would need to edit it, then wonderful! But I’m here to offer help if one or more of those things might pose a problem.
The music and selected photos, video, audio, and featured words can be emotionally poignant in a way that transcends what is said in a eulogy.
The mere glimpse of their smile and the joyful moments they had in their life, and bearing witness to the joy others had alongside this person, helps mourners in the midst of their deepest, freshest grief.
It can be profoundly healing to remember the happy times.
One of the best things about a memorial slideshow is that usually viewers can get an overview of a person’s entire life, from childhood to the age they were when they died, and these viewers are introduced to sides of the person’s life that this mourner may not have known about, or may have never had a visual for – like what the person looked like as a child, who their friends were, the other side of the family that one side never really interacted with, and more! The comprehensiveness is impactful in a way that may be unexpected. A well-made slideshow weaves together sight, sound, memory, and story in a powerful way.
Additionally, a slideshow tribute can be a great conversation starting point for people who are uncomfortable and feel awkward and nervous at funerals, and overwhelmed by the heavy emotions of this occasion – the photos give people something specific to latch onto and talk about while standing beside someone who is viewing the same one.
If you’re interested in allowing me to take the burden of creating the slideshow off of you and your family, I’ll need a phone or video call with you first before I can start editing. (See the bottom of the page for my contact information, in order to set up this consultation!)
You’ll specify which of the features I can offer you do or don’t want incorporated into this slideshow. Pricing of the slideshow depends heavily on number of photos to include, and also on features desired. We will discuss your needs and settle on a price before I begin work on it.
(Click for examples of my past video editing!)
Memorial Slideshow Elements:
PhotographsThe heart of any memorial slideshow are the photographs used, of course!
Ideally, these photographs will be collected from multiple different people’s collections, and I am happy to reach out to others to ask for their photos on your behalf as part of my service. Many mourners are very disappointed if there are not any photos of them with the deceased included in the slideshow, especially if the person was a close family member with a lot of shared photos, but the person who was working on the slideshow didn’t possess any of those photos.
Let me work together with you to bridge that gap and incorporate everyone’s photographs! Or as many as we can.
This is a rare aspect to include, but of course if there are any easily accessible home movies, cell phone video, recordings of their voice, etc, I’d be happy to incorporate this into the memorial video tribute. It may not be 100% a “slideshow” technically anymore, if there are more multimedia elements than just photographs. The way I create slideshows is always a video file anyway though, not a slide presentation. Audio or video always adds so much to the finished product.
Adding quotations about what it feels like when someone dies to the memorial slideshow tribute can be so comforting to viewers, helping them realize they aren’t alone in this pain, as many truths about grief actually are fairly universal. It can be a way to bookend chapters of the slideshow, or make the slideshow feel like it has a stronger conclusion. Even just one quote can be powerful, but adding these in are a very optional part of the process.
This is a rare element for people to want to include, but can be really personal and powerful. If your loved one always was known for saying a certain thing, said something particularly profound one time, or mentioned how they wanted to be remembered, I’m happy to incorporate this text into the slideshow tribute.
Captions be a wonderful addition to any slideshow. They explain who is in each photo so that friends who attend the funeral can learn who the family members are and vice versa. It eliminates confusion and answers questions the curious viewer would be asking to themselves while watching, and it really helps people viewing the slideshow appreciate the slideshow much more fully.
Captions can also explain the context, the setting, the year, and any other pertinent information.
Even more special sometimes is when words were written on the back of physical photograph prints by the deceased, or the deceased’s mother, the personalized, recognizable-to-close-family handwriting will be a powerful thing to overlay on-top of the photographs, if you scan both sides of the photo for me. It can add a lot to the slideshow to have the caption be in the honoree’s own handwriting.
The choices for music can be a tricky thing because of copyright laws, but it’s such an important part of the slideshow. Fading photographs in and out based on the flow of the music, the beats, the changing of chords and notes is one of my skills and so important to the process. I’ll talk to you about the options for music, be it royalty free instrumental options, or finding ways to incorporate your loved one’s taste in specific bands and artists.
I’ll carefully leave photos on for enough time that people can fully appreciate each photograph, and make sure not to change photographs too quickly nor leave any photo lingering uncomfortably long. There will be different lengths of time for photos on screen depending on how many people (or objects, detailed settings, etc) are in each particular photo.
Subtle visual effects such as brightening/deepening the color in photos, removing yellow cast to make the photo more properly white-balanced where white objects look white and other colors look the correct colors accordingly, targeted zooming in towards your loved one’s face in every photo, fading in and out, and more in order to improve the viewing experience.
Timeline For Editing Slideshows:
Funerals and Celebration of Life events are often happening within less than a week of someone’s death, but editing memorial slideshows takes time, and I cannot promise unrealistically fast timelines.
If you are considering hiring me, your loved one’s funeral probably needs to still be 5 or 6 full days away for us to make this work, because my typical timeline is as follows:
1. One Day for the No-Fee ConsultationYou contact me for a no-fee consultation, and we are able to do this no-fee consultation within 24 hours or less of when you first reach out. During this consultation we will decide how many Editing Days I’ll need based on the specifications of your slideshow (typically between 1 and 4 Days needed).
And then I provide a contract for you to sign a few hours of this consultation.
Uploading the photographs can take varying lengths of time and can happen the same day as the no-fee consultation if you’re fast.
I am going to need you & everyone else who will be sending photographs to me, to aim to send me the photographs by a deadline of at least 24 hours prior to the workday when I am planning to edit the slideshow. This provides buffer time in case there is a technical problem of some kind. If you want me to reach out to other people for providing photos, I’ll be asking you please provide the information of the other individuals at least 48 hours before the workday when I’ll be editing the slideshow, so that they can have some time to gather and send me the photos by my 24-hours-prior-to-editing deadline.