Funeral slideshow guide
How long should a funeral slideshow be?
As long as the service allows, and that is usually less than a family expects: often one piece of music, three to five minutes. Ask for the minutes before you choose a single photograph.
Ask for the number first
Your celebrant or funeral director knows how the service is timed and how long the chapel is booked for. Ask them one question: how many minutes can the slideshow run? Everything else follows from the answer, including how many photographs you need.
What most services use
The advice Australian funeral homes publish runs from two or three minutes at the short end to six to nine at the long end. One piece of music and about forty photographs is the suggestion you will meet most often. A slideshow inside a service is watched by everybody at once, in silence, so a little short is better than a little long.
One film for the service, a longer one for afterwards
The photographs that will not fit in the service are not wasted. A longer film, playing at the gathering afterwards while people talk, is where the whole collection belongs. Nobody has to sit through it, and people will stand and watch the part of the life they shared.
Videmory makes both from the same set of memories: a Service Tribute set to the minutes of the service, and a Wake Slideshow for afterwards, which holds each photograph for 8 to 30 seconds, dissolves slowly between them, and is silent unless you add music. A Life Story, with everything in order, is the one to keep.
Make it exact, and tell the person pressing play
A slideshow that overruns leaves a celebrant waiting; one that ends early leaves a silence. In Videmory you set the length and the film is built to it, to the second, anywhere from 30 seconds to 60 minutes. Tell your celebrant the running time and they can plan around it.
Leave yourself an evening
However it is made, a slideshow needs time at the end: to be watched through, corrected and handed to the venue. Building a film in Videmory is not instant. In our own test a film of eight and a half minutes took about twenty minutes to build, and each new preview is built afresh. Aim to finish the day before, and see what to hand the funeral home.
Short answers
Quick questions.
How long is a typical funeral slideshow?
Three to five minutes is common, often the length of one piece of music. Published advice from Australian funeral homes ranges from two minutes to about nine.
Can a slideshow be made to fit the service time exactly?
In Videmory, yes. Set the minutes and seconds you have been given and the film is built to that length, anywhere from 30 seconds to 60 minutes.
What if we have far more photos than the time allows?
Play a shorter film in the service and a longer one at the gathering afterwards. In Videmory the long film can run for up to an hour, from the same set of memories.
Videmory Tribute
A funeral slideshow everyone who knew them helps make.
Send one private link. Family and friends add their photographs and video from their own phones, and Videmory puts a life in order and builds the film. AU$199 for the finished film, after you have watched it in full.
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