Sharing Your Family History Video II: The Screening

Most of my “DIY” tagged blogs focus on the process of creating your family history video. This blog and the last one (A Note on Video Formats) assume you have finished your masterwork and are now ready to unleash it upon the world.

(Why worry about video formats? Well, where you decide to play your project will have consequences for the format you output to – hence my last blog Sharing Your Family History Video I.)

This week I am talking about a live screening – in front of an audience (cue applause).

I always encourage my clients to host a live screening of the finished project. It's a great chance to get a bunch of family and friends over to watch the documentary. Most people I know choose an evening (rather than a day on the weekend – I'll tell you why in a sec.), send out invitations (increasingly “evite” and similar), provide snacks and drinks, and then crank up the projector!

There's nothing like watching a family history video project with an audience. It's a whole new dynamic: Humorous parts that may have caused a smile before, now get laughs, sad bits often draw tears, and the life's hard decisions gain understanding and often admiration. There's always animated discussion following and friendship and family bonds are almost always deepened by the shared experience.

So, no arguments, it's a great idea to host a live screening. Let's get down to specifics.

Projection Equipment
A lot of my projects are created especially for an occasion – like a 50th wedding anniversary, a 70th or 80th birthday, or a multi-state family reunion – where there may be upwards of a hundred people. So I like to project the life story onto a big screen for maximum impact!

To do this you will need a screen, a projector, some speakers, and a lap top computer to play the video (either from a DVD or a video file on the computer's hard drive).

Projectors can be a little pricey, so unless you already own one, it may not be too cost effective to go out and buy one. The good news is that almost every workplace office has a projector that you should be able to borrow; failing that you can hire projectors for the night. (Grab a screen while you are at it – they are much cheaper to hire than projectors and you can get the stand-alone kind that just pops up from the floor.)

For sound, you should be able to hijack an existing sound system in the house and just route the audio from the lap top to the speakers (using a one-eighth stereo to dual (RCA) cable maybe).

If you decide to project, choose a room that you can darken. If that's too hard, then hold the screening at night - so much more cinematic. (The color tone and picture quality of projected video is miles better in a darkened room.)

HD Televisions
With TVs getting bigger and better, you can also play your family history video on a flat screen TV. You will need to get the video into the TV, and to do that you can just pop in a DVD into whatever machine you use at home for that (DVD player, X-box, PlayStation, etc).

You can also connect a device like a laptop or an iPad direct to the HD TV using an HDMI cable. HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) cables are simple and super-high quality - and they are taking over the world. While a lot of older machines don't have the slot, almost every new device does (Tip: HDMI cables are about half to a third of the price if you buy on-line!).

Going Off-Site
About half the time, my clients play their family history video at a function house for their (party) audience. (More rarely, they hire a small cinema.) Sometimes they bring their own equipment and sometimes they rely on the house.

A word of warning. If you are going to permit a function house to handle the projection arrangements, get there well ahead of time (ideally, a day or two before) and carry out a dry run. My experience has been that more often than not something is messed up – from blown projector bulbs and broken connections from central control, to bad audio, incorrect aspect ratios, and guys who just don't know how to operate the technology they have been put in charge of.

And make sure you bring a spare copy (or two) of the video – think redundant systems!

What to expect
With a bit of luck, the night is a smashing success and there are lots of laughs and perhaps some crying.

Be ready for your critics – if you have interviewed a number of people for the project, some may be a little grumpy with their (or their spouse's) allotted screen time! Screenings with family often bring suggestions, corrections, and even new material. (“You didn't have any photos of Grandma Joan? I have her old album at home...”) .

Suggestions, corrections and new material are great, but also a problem. Are you going to re-edit? Well, if you have the project all set up somewhere accessible (like Final Cut Pro) then it's really not a big deal to go in and add the new material. And with that new material now included, you can send out copies of the project to everyone who is interested. With that in mind, it is sometimes best to make and hand out bulk copies after (not at) the screening.

You have put in so much work to get you family history video made. Give it a proper launch with a public screening.