Making a memorial video often falls to one person, in the days when they have the least energy to give. The good news is that the work has a natural order. Follow it and the film almost assembles itself: gather, sort, choose the length, tell the story, then check it on the screen it will be shown on.
1. Gather the photographs in one place
- Ask the family to send originals, not screenshots of messages. Originals are sharper and keep their dates.
- Make one shared folder and one person responsible for it, so nothing is lost in group chats.
- Scan prints at a decent resolution; a phone scanning app is fine for most albums.
- Note who sent each photo. You will want to thank them, and they can answer questions about it.
2. Sort by time, then by chapter
Put everything in rough date order first: childhood, young adult, marriage, children, work, later years. Then look for natural chapters, such as a house they lived in for twenty years or a trip they talked about forever. Chapters give a film its shape. Do not guess dates you are unsure of; a photo can sit in a chapter without a year.
3. Choose the length before choosing the photos
Decide how long the film should be, then work out how many photos fit. Guides for funeral slideshows commonly suggest around five to seven seconds per photo with soft transitions, so a four-minute film holds roughly thirty-five to forty-five photographs. Our free slideshow calculator does this arithmetic for you.
4. Let a few photos tell the story
The hardest part is leaving photos out. Pick the ones that show who they were, not only what they looked like: hands at work, a favourite chair, the dog, the garden. A short caption or a few lines of narration can carry a whole chapter.
5. Check it where it will be shown
Play the finished film on the television or projector at the venue before the day. Check that faces are not cut off, captions can be read from the back of the room and the sound is not too loud. Keep a second copy on a USB drive and another device.
When you would rather not do it alone
Everleaf turns the photographs and a few memories you share into a documentary film and a lasting memorial page. You review every word of the story before anything is narrated, and you watch a free preview before you decide.