Tears Of Joy Video

Last week I put together a video for a memorial.  It was for a 91-year-old woman, so at least it was someone who lived a nice long life.  This type of video can be the hardest for the family to put together, because they are grieving at the time, and they have so many things on their mind with funeral arrangements.  It’s one of the harder videos for us to do, because it is one of the few videos’ we do that doesn’t celebrate a happy occasion.  But for those I have done, they become a comfort to the loved ones left behind to grieve.  There is something about making their loved one come alive on the screen and reviewing their highlights of their life, that gives their family a sense of peace. When we make this type of video we keep in mind we are celebrating a life, not saying good-bye.  It is good to focus on the positive, especially at a time like this. I thought since this type of video is so hard to put together for the family, I would write a blog to give a few ideas how to organize this type of video before its handed over. 

The first thing you need to do is to think of a theme.  Of course your main theme is your loved one who has passed, but think of his or her life.  What meant the most to him or her?  Was it family, friends, a special talent like art, or music, or maybe a sport?  Maybe it was a combination of these things. 

Start creating categories-maybe 3 to 5 and under each of these categories create a title to introduce the pictures. Decide which order these categories will be placed. Then go through your albums and find pictures or memorabilia that fits that category.  If you want the pictures and other memorabilia to come up in any type of order, like how they happened in their lifetime, or in order of importance, you need to number the pictures and items.  Here are a few things you can include in memorabilia.  Awards, licenses (like wedding license), Diplomas, letters or writings of the loved one, postcards, or any items saved by the person that can be scanned.  If they have a lot of trophies for lets say sports and your doing a section on that sport, it would be good to take a digital photo of the trophies and add it in. 

Remember titles can help you tell the story.  You can have titles to help describe the person’s qualities or to help clarify why this picture was important.  One video we did for a widow who lost her husband, they added quotes about the person from all their friends.  Their daughter sent out a quick email to all her friends and asked them to send a short quote of what the person meant to them, and we weaved these quotes in with all the pictures.  You can also include quotes that meant something to the person.  Many of the memorial video’s I have done I have ended with a quote or a scripture that meant something to the one who has passed away.  It can be a touching way to end the video.

If you have any video clips or voice recordings of this person, these can be a great thing to add.  It brings back the person even more in the minds of those watching the video.  The last thing you need to think about is music.  Think of the type of music that this person enjoyed and songs that would work well with the categories you picked.  When you have all this put together, its time to give it to us to create you an amazing video.  Our goal is to create a memory that will turn your tears of sorrow into Tears of Joy.

NOTE TO THE FRIENDS

Here is some idea’s for friends of someone who lost someone in death.  Sometimes you don’t know what to say or what to do.  Many people send flowers.  I know when my mom died; I got a whole room of them.  But these are not always the best things to do.  Something about the dying flowers the next week brought back the loss.  But you can check with the family and see if they are doing one of these videos and if not, it is a great thing to put together for them.  Take the burden off them and offer to come over and help them put together the photos’ for the video.  It is also a great gift afterwards.  If you go to the funeral and find they didn’t have a video done, you can go up to the person and tell them you would like to help them make one.  It can be a project you can do with them, and it actually helps their grieving process to go through the pictures after the funeral. While you are helping them put together the pictures for the video, you can be a good friend by letting them talk out their grief.  After the video is done, along with the DVD, we can also provide a windows media file that they can either have as a link from our site to send out as an email, or we can post it on one of the many memorial websites or they can create a my space account in their memory and post the video.  That way they can share the video with all their friends.

We here at Tears of Joy Video are always looking for ways to help people celebrate life.  Even in the face of sorrow, you can find ways to do look toward the positive.  We hope our videos will help you find a way to do this.

Cathie Dodd

www.tearsofjoyvideo.com

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