A 50th is the first birthday where the whole shape of a life is visible: the childhood everyone has heard about, the twenties nobody photographed properly, the years of building something, and the person they are now. The trick is not to collect everything. It is to find one or two people for each decade who can tell it.
Assign a decade to a person
Ask a sibling or parent for the first ten years, a school friend for the teens, a flatmate or colleague for the twenties and thirties, and a partner or close friend for the recent years. Each person only has to find a few photographs and one story, and between them the whole life is covered.
Find the photographs that establish each chapter
A 50th birthday video does not need forty photos from one holiday. It needs the first day of school, the terrible haircut, the first car, the wedding or the trip that changed things, and a recent picture of them laughing. Ask for the pictures they are actually in — by fifty, many people have spent years behind the camera.
Balance the big achievements with the small habits
The promotion and the marathon belong in the film, but so does the Sunday crossword, the dog, and the way they always ring on your birthday. Ask contributors for one thing the birthday person does that nobody else does.
Include the people who are no longer there
By fifty there are usually people missing — a parent, a grandparent, an old friend. A photograph of them together, placed at the right year, says more than a caption could. Ask the family whether they would like those pictures included, and respect the answer.
Bring the collection into Videmory
Invite friends and family to add photos, real video and messages from one link. Add the years or ages you know, review the collection — from your phone or, for the tidying, a computer, since the same birthday opens on either — and let Videmory build the film in the order it happened. Making the film and watching the complete watermarked preview are free; you pay only if you want to download the finished film without the mark. Introductory launch offer: AU$49 for your first finished film, AU$15 for each additional version. Introductory pricing is available for a limited time and may increase in the future.
See a life fall into order · Collecting and dating photos · How many photos you need
Your questions, answered
How many photos do we need for a 50th birthday video?
Between sixty and a hundred and fifty works for most 50th films: roughly one or two photographs a year, weighted towards the years with the best pictures. Videmory shows each photo for about three seconds, so a hundred photographs is around five minutes of pictures before the video clips and messages are added.
Should we collect messages from people in every decade?
Yes, if you can. A message from a school friend placed beside the school photographs, and one from a colleague beside the work years, turns a collection into a story. Videmory plays a dated message at that point in the life; undated messages play together at the end.
What if the photos from their twenties are missing?
It happens to almost everyone born before phone cameras. Ask friends from those years directly; the pictures are usually in somebody else’s album. If a decade stays thin, a single good photograph and a message from someone who was there carries it.