Start with the music, not the photos
A funeral tribute video is nearly always played to a piece of music, and it is the music that sets the length. A typical song runs three and a half to four and a half minutes. A hymn is shorter; a classical piece can be longer. Whatever you choose, that is the space you have to fill.
Each photograph then needs long enough on screen to be taken in. Five to seven seconds is about right — enough to recognise a face, notice a detail, and remember. Any quicker and the film becomes a blur people cannot keep up with; any slower and it starts to drag, especially for the people at the back.
Put those two things together and the arithmetic is straightforward. A four-minute song at six seconds a photograph is about 40 photographs. Two songs back to back is roughly double that.
A rough guide by length
These are starting points rather than rules. A film with a few video clips in it, or with a longer pause on a particularly important photograph, will hold fewer.
- One short piece (about 3 minutes): 25 to 35 photographs
- One full-length song (about 4 minutes): 35 to 45 photographs
- Two songs (7 to 9 minutes): 60 to 80 photographs
- Three songs or a longer tribute (10 minutes or more): 90 to 120 photographs
If you have too many
Most families do. A lifetime produces hundreds of photographs, and choosing between them can feel like choosing which memories matter. It helps to think of the film as a story with a shape rather than an album that has to contain everything: childhood, growing up, the people they loved, the things they did, the last happy years. Two or three photographs from each chapter tells the story better than twenty from one.
It also helps to be practical. Photographs where the person is small, or in the background, or squinting into the sun do not read well on a big screen, however much they mean to you. Choose the ones where you can see their face.
If you genuinely cannot narrow it down, a longer film is the honest answer. Nobody at a funeral minds a second song.
If you have too few
This is more common than people expect, particularly for someone older whose photographs are mostly prints in a box, or for someone who was always the one holding the camera. Twenty good photographs are plenty for one short piece of music, and a slower pace on each of them is not a problem — it can feel more considered, not less.
Printed photographs can be scanned, and it is worth doing properly rather than photographing them with a phone: a scan keeps the colour and the detail, and a phone photograph of a print usually catches the glare from the lamp. Ask family and friends too. Someone nearly always has a photograph you have never seen.
Video clips and other things
A short clip of them talking or laughing is often the moment in a tribute that lands hardest, and even ten seconds is worth including. Bear in mind that a clip takes the place of two or three photographs in the running time. Handwriting, a favourite recipe, a letter, a scan of their signature: all of these can be photographed and included, and they tend to be the details people mention afterwards.