Memorial Video Case Study

The first memorial video I ever made was about my Dad. He had grown up poor in South Australia, the descendant of immigrants who had fled chaos in mid-19th century Germany. They escaped war and poverty in Silesia for peace and poverty in Australia! He became a navigator in the Pacific war against the Japanese and was later stationed in Japan for the Allied Occupation. He was an amateur boxer and rugby player. In civilian life, he built his own house and worked with early computers. He loved my mother more than anything. I wanted my children to know their grandfather.

My twin boys were only one when he passed away from liver cancer at 74. So we couldn't interview him. Instead, we filmed me talking about the history of our family and about Dad. We interspersed photographs of Dad as a boy (not many of them!) that we panned across and showed in close-up. (We had to fix them up a bit first in Photoshop.) It was like a very sophisticated photo montage.

I had quite a few good air force photos and several documents. We added captions showing the time, place and who the people were - I had to ask Mom for help on that. (Don't men and women in the service always have nice photos? I guess the risk of dying prompts them to take the trouble!)

We added music. We made a DVD with chapters and a menu. We put it in a DVD box with a special cover we designed showing Dad with the handle-bar mustache he had in the Air Force and we put all the major facts in his life on the back. The whole thing was like an A&E biography!

My three boys watched it with great interest and asked lots of questions. My Mom cried when she watched it. She showed it to the other grandchildren. We made copies for all the family. We even posted a piece of it on YouTube so relatives living in other cities could see it.

Some people like to use PowerPoint. Video has many of the advantages of a PowerPoint presentation - but it's more accessible. Everyone can play a DVD but not everyone can get PowerPoint up and running. Also, PowerPoint presentations run on computers but mostly we prefer to watch things in our living rooms. Once made, you just pop it into the machine and it plays. The editing can be tricky - especially if you want a professional look - but anyone with a camera, an editing program, and some perseverance can do it.

Read more about memorial video:
Memorial Videos - Surviving Death has Never Been Easier

Read about the subject of another memorial video: Video Memorial to Dead Nazi Survivor

I have come a long way since that video memorial of my dad and now, many years later, I really know what I am doing! If you need help, by all means stop by my video memorial web page Video Memorials