Photographs and/or videos supplied, together with memorable quotations and short stories can be creatively assembled and sequenced to appropriate music, for a meaningful and personalized tribute.

The final product is an "authored DVD" that can be played in any DVD player. The disk surface is attractively customized with photos, text and graphics.

Please inquire for more details.

The passing of a loved one is a difficult and stressful time ... and so much needs to be done to prepare for a funeral. One of preparations usually involves the gathering together of old photos that highlight the life of the person for display at the funeral reception. These old photos are also sometimes assembled into a computer-based "presentation." All of this needs to be accomplished within a mere few days, while the family is under considerable stress, with the passing of their loved one.

Ideally, it would be much easier and the result could be much better, if the person, or their family had some basic source content prepared and set aside ahead of time, while the person is still living ... Incidentally, this pre-planned approach is often required by employers of people who work in higher-risk or high-profile occupations.

Old photos need to be scanned and available as computer files saved onto several copies of a CD or DVD. The family needs to know where copies of this disk are located. These digitized old photos are perfect and now readily available for assembling into tributes for special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries. Another benefits of this approach is that the person, along with their family and friends can share and enjoy the look back at the person's life's highlights ... while they are still living! When the person does pass away, the family now has a great base of "materials" to work with, to use in the production of the "final chapter," so to speak.

As you are aware, the pre-planning of funerals is more and more popular these days. The same approach can be used for the planning of memorial tributes. As an added benefit, this preplanning can involve the input from the individual for which the presentation is planned. Much can be done when everyone is relaxed, as opposed to having to try to do everything in such an extremely short period of time, under the most stressful situation ... the passing of a loved one.

My suggestion is that as people write their personal wills, this would also be an ideal time and opportunity to also plan and prepare some aspects of their memorial tribute.

Early in 2009, I had the unique opportunity to produce an extensive memorial tribute for Elisa Loyo Gutierrez - a graduate of Confederation College who was working as a chef in the Philippines. She was last seen on December, 23, 2008 and was found dead several days later, in a locked office at her place of employment in the Philippines.

Her family and everyone that has ever known her and her positive, and caring personality cannot comprehend anything other than a case of foul play. To-date, the family is still looking for the Philippine authorities to conduct a full and transparent investigation, in an attempt to determine what happened to this remarkable, up-and-coming young chef. The memorial funeral took place, over a month later at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Thunder Bay.

Early in her life as a student at Confederation College, I had the opportunity to take a number of promotional photos of Elisa. These photos were then used as the basis for a memorial tribute presentation. I enlisted the help of her best friend "Trinky" to contact her many friends to gather other photos, short tributes and stories. The result was an extensive 40-minute, seven-part memorial tribute that was shown at the funeral reception and with the approval of her family was made available to friends and family wishing to acquire a copy.

With the approval of her family, two of the seven-part tribute have been posted on YouTube in hopes that someone viewing the presentation may have the right connections to Philippine authorities to hopefully move them to conduct a full and transparent investigation into her death.