Putting Together An Easy Family Tree Video
Posted: Monday, January 18, 2010
by Jeff Sallee
http://www.SecretsOfGenealogy.com
With all of the work you have put into your completing your research and compiling your family history, you may want something a little more interesting than a simple chart to showcase your completed project. A family tree video is a great way to bring photographs, records and other documents to life in a very visual way. By making use of a scanner, movie making software, and perhaps even a few audio files, you can create an exciting video that will assist you in telling the story of your family in a new way.
While a photograph can really tell a story on its own, adding an audio file to narrate the photograph can bring it to life; add music from the appropriate era, or using a voice narration to add extra depth to the visual detail already being displayed. Your audio files can give a voice and a new life to family members long since passed on by sharing details about their lives that other family members might not have known. Scanned documents, like birth certificates or newspaper clippings can often be difficult to read, especially if they are very old. Adding audio will help share and explain the information that your viewers will be seeing.
When selecting the order in which you will display your photographs and other documents, keep in mind that too many documents may become boring to those viewing the video; interspersing items like marriage records and birth certificates with relevant photographs will help detract from the perhaps mundane sight of displaying a generations old document. For example, follow a scanned marriage certificate with a wedding photo! Or follow a birth certificate with a photograph of the family with the new baby!
By utilizing the right software for your project, these scanned images can also be combined with clips from home movies. While these clips, for obvious reasons, will not exist for several earlier generations, adding those that do exist will help provide a feel for the era. Your research might have turned up public domain video, however, that can also be integrated into your project. A great example of this would be a public domain clip that shows perhaps the founding of and growing of the city where your great grandparents settled to raise their family. Public domain photographs can be used in much the same manner; they will provide and add to the great sense of the history that your family photographs and documents offer. If your grandfather fought in the Civil War, but you have no photograph of him in uniform, look for photographs that show large groups of soldiers or other representations of the war. Pair these photographs with your scans of letters written from the front lines, or even with photographs of medals earned by your grandfather.
Creating your digital family tree can be an intensive project, but it is a very rewarding project! Once complete, you will have a beautiful and entertaining video that will carry your family history into the future for new generations to enjoy; and perhaps even add to!
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Jeff Sallee is a hopeless genealogy enthusiast and also the author of "Family Tree Secrets: Guide to Creating Your Own Family Tree". Jeff truly enjoys helping others get started in this satisfying pursuit. For more information regarding his ebook or to see other family tree video articles check out: www.SecretsOfGenealogy.com
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