Tips for Making Your Own Family Tree Digital Video
A family tree digital video is a fun way for commemorating your family’s most memorable moments and history. Admit it – family albums and scrapbooks are now passé. It’s already the 21st century, after all! Presenting your family’s lives and portraying the family lineage will be more fun and interesting to watch on digital video. Plus, with digital video you can easily share with family and friends online via email, YouTube, Facebook and even Twitter.
Here are a few tips for making your own family tree digital video:
Tip #1: Collect everything prior to starting.
Collect everything you can get your hands on! Get a hold of pictures and videos of your family and relatives, your ancestors’ old photographs and pictures of important family events like births, marriages, deaths, birthdays and reunions. Collect marriage and death documentations, medals, awards and certificates honoring your family members.
To create a family tree digital video, everything you collect should be converted into digital format. Thus, a scanner will help by a great deal – and so will a digital camera and digital video recorder.
Tip #2: Use simple, user-friendly video editing software.
Of course, you will need some type of video editing software to compile, edit and modify your pictures and videos. You don’t necessarily need professional (and usually complicated) video editing software – especially if you don’t know how to use it. A simple and user-friendly video editing software will suffice (there are plenty of which you can download from the web!). After all, your digital video doesn’t need to be perfect or professionally made – it just needs to be “well made” and appropriate for your target audience.
Tip #3: Select the videos and photos you’ll use to tell the story of your family.
You cannot cram all your pictures and videos into your digital video. This task may be daunting and hard, especially if you would want everything to be seen for your digital video. Start by eliminating pictures that seems unnecessary or redundant. Choose the pictures that tell the story the most – choose photos that are most amusing, most fascinating and most memorable. Oh, and don’t forget to give equal show time to all family members, show all of them at least once in the duration of your digital video.
Remember that the goal is to tell the story of your family’s history with video and pictures. Select the pictures and videos that help you to tell that story. Remove the ones that do not help to tell your story.
Tip #4: Plan, plan, plan!
Plan the presentation of data you wish to present on your digital video. Carefully and briefly explain your family tree, by focusing on one person at a time and showing pictures and videos about them. It really depends on you how you want to arrange your data, whether you want to explain from your oldest ancestor to the newest member of the family, or vice versa. Be creative!
Remember that you are not limited to using only photos and videos. With a good video editing program you can add titles or text screens. You may add text to tell a funny story or inside joke, or as a way to transition from one photo to another. Use your artistic creativity and have fun!
Tip #5: Plan your audio.
To keep your video from becoming dull and boring, it is essential to add audio to your digital video. You can record your own voice or someone else’s to add a commentary, tell stories, or describe events as they are being shown. If there is nothing to say, you can simply add music to fill in awkward silences. Use music in the background during transitions between sections of the video (Hint: Choose the same music each time in order to create a musical theme).
Try your best to be creative with your digital video project. Inject personality and character in your digital video. Make something that you and your family will be truly proud of; something that your family will want to show on every family reunion and special occasion.
All the best to you!
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