This week has focused on using narration in your family history video.  Another idea while photos are showing on the screen is to have someone read a story, poem, letter (which we covered in the “transparency overlay” week.) 

Think of Grandpa’s voice reading A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore with photos or silent movies of your childhood on Christmas morning on the screen.  “’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house…” Yes, your great-grandchildren will like it too.

1. Look through your storyboard for gaps in information or segues that could be better understood with a bit narration.
2. Write the narration.
   
3. Record your narration as we showed in Part 11 of our video series.
   
4. Be thinking of creative ways you might capture your family this holiday season that will be fun for future generations to enjoy. Begin to plan how you will capture them.
   

Today's blog is a video on how to capture, edit and place narration into your Family Hisotry Video. (click here to watch)

There are times while making a movie that explanation, beyond what you are showing or what you have already recorded through interviews, is necessary.  Just watch any History, Science, or Discovery Channel documentary and you’ll see a mix of interviews by experts, video, and the narrator telling you the story or the details of what you are watching. Some documentaries use a lot of narration, much more than you will use if you have interviewed family members.  But it really depends on what you have to work with to make your own family history video. 

How far back into your tree are you taking your video?  The further back, obviously, the less likely you will have voices recorded that can speak about what has happened.  You may show census pages and even do some pan and zoom to make it interesting but if the name is hard to read or spelled differently, or you show several in a row from different places, narration can become necessary.  While photos and old silent film can grab a viewer’s attention better than a blank screen, an explanation or narration guides the viewer to fully understand what they are seeing. 

As you made your storyboard as few weeks ago, you probably ran across some times that there was just no easy segue from one story to another or from one person to another.  That’s another time that a simple narration can be truly helpful.  It doesn’t have to be more than a line or two.  It could be as simple as stating a person’s name or relationship, or even just a date.

You don’t have to be a professional narrator either.  Few of us speak like Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones but our future generations will be more interested in the fact that they are related to this narrator than how deep your voice is.  In family history videos, related is relatable.