Considerations
for Your Tribute Video Production
There
are only a few great ways to honor a life, celebrate a career, or just say
“thank you”. And one of the best is a Liberty Tribute Video®.
Tribute
videos are really just another kind of life story video, but are made with an
audience in mind wider than just the subject and their family. Often (but not
always) the tribute video will be screened at an event coinciding with an
anniversary, a birthday, a memorial, or a retirement. So it will be important
to tell the story of your subject’s life. But you will need to do it in a way
that is informative as well as entertaining and – if you are up for it –
humorous.
Liberty Entertainment Group will
help to give you some ideas about the kind of material you should think about
including in your tribute. And we are going to give you some suggestions for
themes that will make the video more interesting, and possibly even funny. And
we will talk briefly about pacing…
Elements and Assets
Many
of the tribute video elements are obvious: titles, personal photographs, stock
images maybe (to illustrate a career step for instance), music, and picture
captions.
Some
elements are less obvious, but more fun: video stories and testimonials from
friends and family (easy to gather these days from the far flung when everyone
has a smart phone that is video and audio enabled); voice over or narration
telling the story of your subject (also easy to create with an Android or
iPhone); or text screens with favorite sayings, inspirational quotes, life
steps or other narrative points.
What
else? Well, you can think about shooting interview footage of the subject
themselves either in a static interview setup or as they go about some task or
pastime; hunting out archive footage illustrating a time or a place relevant to
the subject; finding archive or stock images that might be brought in to
illustrate a point (e.g. the home town, a favorite book or film, a vacation
spot etc.) or used for comic effect. Also, sound effects can add depth and
texture to an image – or signal a laugh point.
As
part of your planning process, think about what there is out there and what can
be created that could be used to create this killer tribute. Think also about
whether you want a theme, or a running gag.
Who to Include
A
career tribute should certainly include business associates – not just people
of the same rank but those who may have reported to the subject, and those who
might have supervised them (even the boss usually has a board of directors…).
For business people, also consider customers and suppliers.
If
the subject has a family, by all means include video of the kids and grandkids.
(Nothing a grandparent likes more than seeing the little ones being all cute on
the big screen.)
But watch the weighting of the family material – while the
subject may not have any limits when it comes to the kids (!) don’t bore the
rest of your audience.
A Word About Pacing
Liberty
Tribute Videos can unfold like the documentary that they are; but tribute
videos need to be more fast-paced. Images, which in a video biography might
stay on the screen for 10 or more seconds, need to come and go in 3 or 4
seconds. And while you might get away with just two or three elements in a
video memoir, in a tribute video it helps to have 6 or 7 different elements and
two or three story strands.
Text
will need to be bold, and possibly animated; transitions will need to be
sharper and the whole project should not be longer than 20 minutes. Actually,
something between 10 and 15 minutes will be about the right length. Remember,
you want to leave your audience wanting more – not less.
A
truly great project will need some planning, and some patience. The use of
smart phones can certainly take some cost out of the project, but also consider
using a dedicated video camera with external microphones for best production
values. Done properly, few gifts are as well appreciated and as widely enjoyed
both now and forever as a tribute video.
Contact one of our friendly staff at Liberty Entertainment Group for pricing and more information.
Call: Main~ 213-422-2878 Voice~ 323-305-4676
E-mail: info@libertyentertainmentgrp.com
