Funeral Slide Shows: 10 Unusual Things to Include

When a loved one dies, many people decide to create a funeral slideshow to remember and honor them. Usually there is not much time, and often the best that can be accomplished is to collect the available photographs and put them into a kind of semi-automatically generated funeral home slideshow. And that’s okay. After all, it’s about the person, not the slide show.

But what if you want to do it a little better? What if you have the time and you know a bit about video editing and can be on your own in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker? How do you improve the tried and tested (but a little worn) traditional funeral home slideshow? As you believe memorable tributes to loved ones that, rather than showing up at the funeral, will be treasured for years to come. How do you create a funeral slideshow that becomes an heirloom?

Well, don’t say goodbye to those pictures. The basis of any funeral slideshow will continue to be the images. However, a little care when restoring photos with Photoshop, and giving some thought to how you scroll through them and where the virtual camera lands, will pay off many times over in audience recognition. And don’t forget the subtitles. Have we not all attended funerals and sat before endless images wondering who we are looking at? U.S careful, we are there after all, but who are all these people? Is that the granddaughter? Is that the son John you never visited? you ask yourself. But without subtitles, there are no answers. So the first thing to include in your slideshow is captions.

1. Image captions

When you collect the photos, learn 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 back! There is often a description, and some photo processing labs from the 1960s onwards printed the processing date on the back of the image.

You can copy photos with a digital camera, but it is better to scan.

Exploration? Your Will you need to scan to get images into your editing program. And there is a bit of “black art” in the scanner settings with all that confusing malarkey about dots or pixels per square inch (dpi or ppi). Fortunately, it is not that complicated: printing requires 300 dpi / dpi to reproduce the original at the same size. Video and digital displays are usually happy with 72 dpi / dpi. So, you should scan at 72 dpi, right? (We are talking about a funeral slideshow to be screened, probably from a video DVD.) If you are going to bother scanning anyway, you can also scan at 300 dpi / dpi for 4 “x 6” images. “and larger. If the original image is smaller than 4” x6 “, scan at 600 dpi / dpi. And if you are scanning a small photo slide or negative, 1200 dpi / dpi or even 2400 dpi / dpi is your choice. number).

2. Handwriting

In the past, people had what we call a “hand” – they really knew how to write! If you are lucky enough to find the person’s handwriting on the back of one of the photos you are scanning, be sure to scan and include it (possibly with a split screen). You should always try to include samples of the person’s handwriting. It may be from the photo description, but it could be just an old shopping list (possibly the latest), or it could be a letter written a long time ago or even recently. It can be a signature of a driver’s license or passport.

OK. But what else can you include in the montage besides photos and captions? Well, the trick to going from boring to oh-my is to gather 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 reunite: children fly (often from all over 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. Therefore, you should take advantage of these unscheduled meetings and record the succinct memories of the topic from those friends and family. You should find time to do this informally before the funeral.

Some people may not be able to fly or attend the funeral for any reason. But your funeral slideshow can still feature them or their stories. When you cannot record the person directly, record it through the webcam. Don’t you have a webcam? Record your voice over the phone (Skype can help with this). Once you have put together your slide show, you can play the voice over a picture of the person telling that story.

What else?

4. Poems and sayings:

Death, despite all its pain, is a stimulus to consider the great problems of life. And a collection of sayings or homilies that the person has lived or that express their hopes and beliefs helps us focus our thoughts. Sometimes a person was known for his Good words or their humor. Certainly, the examples should be included as simple text displays or as “tracing” text.

5. Old video images

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. 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 an old 8mm, 16mm, or super 8 film to digital form so you can add a clip of that to your funeral slideshow. But here’s a hint: don’t go for the cheapest. Some converters don’t even look at what they’re doing with their old priceless film and the end result can be very dark or very light, or it can have hideous 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 shoots 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. Voice over

Depending on the length and complexity of life, it may be helpful to tell the story through narration.

Now, a family member is often appointed to present an overview of the person’s life at the funeral. That same person is often well placed to provide the narration or voice-over for the visuals in the funeral slideshow. Sometimes it is enough for the person to review the pictures and other visual material and then say a few words about some of them. (Any modern computer allows you to connect some kind of microphone. So that there is a voice inside).

8. Scraps and souvenirs

What, are we tracking about the president here? In reality, most people at the end of a long life have a scrapbook somewhere with some now yellowish and brittle news clippings on themselves. It could be a recipe they submitted, an announcement of their engagement, attending a benefit dance or similar event, or it could be a high school sport. Or you can have someone very famous on your hands with an entire scrapbook.

Other people keep mementos like trophies for athletics, soccer, swimming, or golf. Or they have traveled or led a busy business life and the home or office is full of interesting things. You can film or photograph these things and add them to the funeral slideshow.

9. A DVD case cover:

OK. Start section. Once you have put together an impressive funeral slideshow, you need to burn it to DVD and place it in a box so that it is properly identifiable and records the important milestones in the person’s life. 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 have to include them in the slideshow too, of course).

Family and friends will likely want their own copy of your funeral slideshow, so it’s worth making the project engaging and recognizable.

10. A web publication

Why not? With the wide variety of free online web hosting available, many people choose to post their funeral slideshow on the internet so that it is available anywhere, anytime from any computer to any friend or family member.