Label Your Film Reels, Tapes, Slides Before You Die

We received a phone call today from one upset woman. She explained her husband had died in May after a sudden illness.

With the holidays approaching, she wanted to do put some of the photos her husband had taken into a music video montage for her kids. “It’s a beautiful way to celebrate his life, the places he was, the vacations he took with them…“, she added

VHS Tapes UnlabelledHere’s the problem: there were 31 carousels of slides that were completely unlabeled. Each slide carousel had 100 to 140 slides, so we’re talking thousands of slides here. Even after I offered her to view her slides at our store – we have viewing stations for these old memory media – going through thousands of slides still seemed very daunting to her. So we decided a different approach. She’ll randomly pick a carousel to go through, view the slides, and pick out the ones that touched her. Then she’ll do another carousel. The minute she finds 50 slides she can use for the video montage, she will stop.

The slides she picks will be from different periods of their family lives, may not even be contiguous periods, but it’ll still be a beautiful video slideshow.

So ladies and gentleman, label your memory media. These days, you’re not recording in 8mm film reels, VHS tapes, Hi8 tapes, it’s all digital. Label your digital file folders. If you backup family photos in hard drives, label the hard drives. Maybe fifty years from now, someone is trying to piece your life together, make it easy for them.

Speak Your Mind

*