What Is A Legacy Video And Why Is It Important?
What is a legacy video?
Traditionally speaking, a legacy video walks through the chronological events of someone’s life. The subject of the video will answer questions like, “Where did you grow up?”, “How did you meet your spouse?”, “What were some of your favorite hobbies?”
However, Midwest Legacy Films has a different approach to creating legacy videos. Our legacy videos focus on honoring the life of a loved one. We are able to do this by incorporating the perspective of the subject’s family, friends, and other close associates. This makes the legacy video a much more meaningful and interesting video to watch. Opposed to simply having the subject tell biographical facts about themselves for two hours.
We take an in-depth look at their life, experiences, stories, and the impact that they’ve had on their family, friends, and the environment around them.
The ultimate goal of any legacy video is to honor.
Honor can be shown in different ways. But generally speaking, honor stems from a place of impact or change. For example, let’s say your friend Tim wanted to show his Grandmother what a positive influence she has been on his life. He starts by putting his thoughts on paper, what are some things Tim might write down about his Grandmother? Here are a few ideas:
- Values she instilled in him (example: Grandma was a hard worker which showed Tim how to work hard)
- Acts of kindness she displayed over the years
- Memories he holds dear (example: Grandma taking him to the zoo where he fell in love with animals)
- Lessons he’s learned from her
These are simple categories that a legacy video would revolve around. But not an exhaustive list.
What makes legacy videos important?
The two primary reasons legacy videos are important: preservation and inspiration.
- Preservation of family history, memories, and values
- Inspiration to future generations
- A gift that never goes away
- Helps ease grief
The preservation of memories, history, and values is the primary reason people invest into legacy videos. A video is the most authentic way of preserving someone’s life. Photographs and books and second hand stories don’t live up to the realness of watching their loved one talk and laugh and smile. Even when they are long gone a video can make someone feel like they are with you.
The inspiration of future generation of family members is another reason people invest into legacy videos. Watching previous generations of family members talk about their lives, the struggles, the stories and the values that carried them through is something no human (until recently) has had the privilege of doing.
A gift that never goes away is hard to come by. Flowers wither, cars breakdown, fun events come and go but a legacy video will stand the test of time. A legacy video makes for a meaningful gift because it is centered around the person who it’s given to. This is fundamentally different from most gifts people will receive in their life.
Grief is a lesser talked about area where legacy videos can be immensely comforting. As human beings we love, we cry, we feel deeply. Much pain is experienced when a loved one passes away. Death permanently impacts people, people can shut down, people can become full of despair, people’s personalities can change overnight when someone dies. So, legacy videos serve as a way to help people mourn and get through the first steps of the grieving process. They do this uniquely because no other medium can offer such a first or second look into someone’s life and impact. Watching a legacy video when someone has passed away can be very hard. But that helps people process death, it helps process loss. And this moves people away from bottling up their emotions and helps them go through the remaining steps of grief.
Watch An Example
Here’s a legacy video we did on behalf of a young man named Spencer. Spencer was diagnosed with encephalitis when he was a child. Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain, this delayed Spencer’s mental development significantly. After a decade his encephalitis worsened leaving him in conditions where the family feared he might pass away.
They contacted Midwest Legacy Films to create a video that preserved precious moments from Spencer’s life and his impact on friends, family, and classmates. They also wanted something to show at Spencer’s celebration of life service.
Next Steps
If you’re interested in creating a legacy video, you can give us a call at 612-564-2157 or you can fill out the contact form below and we will reach out to you.