How Do You Live Stream A Funeral?
Many families have questions about how to best honor and remember their loved ones when they pass away. Families want to respect the public safety guidelines of their state and also be considerate of family and friends that are not able or are not comfortable gathering in large groups. Funeral live streaming is becoming more common in recent times, especially in light of the ongoing pandemic, and is a great option to consider for various reasons.
What are the benefits of live streaming a memorial service?
Live streaming a memorial service has many advantages:
• Adhere to changing public health guidelines for the pandemic
• Allow family members and friends who are unable to travel to participate from the comfort of their home
• Enable a funeral service to be held on short notice due to religious customs
• Capture the stories and memories shared during the service
• Control the size of the service to reduce cost for venue rental, catering costs and travel expenses
• Create a memento of this final milestone and send-off
The truth is that there are many ways to live stream a funeral service. Some people opt for the simple option of using a mobile phone or tablet to go live on social media e.g. using Facebook Live, Instagram Live. This is a do-it-yourself option if you are faced with limited time and budget. Others opt for using the services of the professional to capture and live stream the memorial service. With varying tiers of service provided in the funeral live streaming space, here are some things that you should consider when choosing a professional funeral live streaming company:
Five Things You Should Consider When Choosing A Professional Funeral Live Streaming Company
- How much live streaming experience does the company have?
- Do they do a site visit prior to the service?
- Can they integrate audio from the service location?
- Can a memorial slideshow video be included in the funeral live stream?
- What do past clients say about their experience working with the company?
1. How much live streaming experience does the company have?
Ask the live streaming company about their experience with live streaming, especially their experience with memorial services and funerals. Do they specialize in funeral live streaming? If you are having the memorial service at a church, funeral home or at the gravesite, there are different requirements that the live streaming vendor should consider to successfully live stream the service. How will they connect to the internet for the live stream? How will they power their equipment outdoors? An experienced professional will be able to provide insights from past memorials and share ideas to help you address logistic concerns with coordinating the memorial live stream. It would be helpful to see examples of past services performed both indoors and outdoors to confirm the range of the vendor’s expertise.
2. Do they do a site visit prior to the service?
We consider performing a site visit prior to the memorial service to be a best practice. It is important for your live stream producer to understand the expected conditions for the funeral service so that they can be adequately prepared. Your vendor should be able to let you know how likely it is for the live stream to be successful and share their contingency plans for unplanned incidents.
3. Can they integrate audio from the service location?
Audio is a critical part of every live stream. It is said that people can tolerate not so great visuals with good audio but would not stick around to listen to bad audio, regardless of how great the visuals look. Understand how audio will be captured for the funeral service live stream. It is best for an audio feed from the service location to be integrated into the live stream. Some providers use external mics that are too far away from the speakers for remote viewers to clearly hear the memories and tributes shared during the service. For many, it’s important to hear those stories as they are part of the mourning and healing process so it would be a shame for those attending remotely to miss it.
4. Can a memorial slideshow video be included in the funeral live stream?
Memorial slideshow videos are a great way to encapsulate and remember family, friends, accomplishments, and the fun times experienced by a loved one who passed away. It can be very creative way to capture the essence of the person’s life. It is fairly common for memorial slideshows to be displayed on site prior to the start of the memorial service and after the service concludes. Wouldn’t it be great to share the memorial video with those that are unable to attend in-person as well? Integrating the memorial slideshow video into the funeral live stream is a great way to virtualize that experience for family and friends joining remotely.
5. What do past clients say about their experience working with the company?
Throughout what can be a very challenging period, you want to be surrounded by people who care and seek your best interest. Working with a professional who can articulate what will occur for the memorial live stream, communicate with compassion and empathy, and be trusted to execute without unnecessary additional burden is the type of vendor you want to use when planning a memorial service live stream.
We know how to help you live stream a memorial service
DMV Memorials prides itself on the quality of our memorial live stream services and the professionalism and compassion that is part of how we interact with the families we serve. If you need help figuring out how to live stream your memorial or funeral service, we are here to help you. Speak with our live stream specialist today.
Visit www.dmvmemorials.com/services to learn more about our service offerings. You can also contact Danielle at dmvmemorials@gmail.com or call 202-243-2423.
About DMV Memorials
As the community deals with the impacts of a pandemic in every day activities, we recognize that celebrating a loved one’s life creates challenges with families dispersed geographically across states and limitations to the size of memorial services. We understand the power of connecting the community through the live stream video productions we’ve been doing for several years and wanted to extend the benefits of remote participation in events to these final milestone celebrations through live stream funeral services. Check out some of our past virtual memorials: https://dmvmemorials.com/highlight-reel/.
We serve the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia (DMV), particularly the Washington DC Metro area and surrounding communities, including those in Montgomery County (such as Silver Spring, Rockville, Takoma Park, Wheaton, Washington DC, Bethesda, Cabin John, Chevy Chase, Potomac), Prince Georges County (such as Capitol Heights, Hyattsville, Mount Rainier, National Harbor, Riverdale Park), Anne Arundel County (such as Annapolis), Alexandria, Arlington County, and Fairfax County.