During the pandemic, a livestreamed funeral became a painful necessity, and they’ve hung around since. A freelancer based in Wellington explains what it’s like to be the man behind the camera.
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I’m hired by a company who is in turn hired by the funeral home – so that’s the chain. All I know when I’ve got the job is where to go and how much gear to bring. At most, it’s two cameras, one wireless camera up the back, two microphones, and a laptop with a little mobile data thing going. That’s essentially it. Then, when you’re filming, you’re working with a couple of buttons to switch between two cameras, and then a slideshow if they’ve got one.
When I get there, I’m talking to the funeral director to see if they’ve got any requirements, like a slideshow they want to play. Usually, I get there before everyone else and then set up all my gear.
Then the funeral home people arrive as well, in their big hearse, with a casket, and then… It’s weird being part of that. After that, the family starts filtering in. At that point, I’m being really respectful, doing little smiles and nods, trying to not be too over the top.
Most of the time the funerals are like Catholic ceremonies – God this, God that – then there are atheist ones where it’s in a town hall or similar. More of the Samoan and Pacific ones have an open casket, which is a little bit intense.
Recently, there was an Indian funeral, where I filmed back at the crematorium and the whole family was around putting clarified butter on the body, as well as flowers. I had no idea about that. That was also intense to film, but now that I’ve done it once, I wouldn’t be that shocked to do it again.
An open casket is not ideal for me, but I get to see that side of all – I mean, white people have open caskets – but it’s the other funerals I’ve seen, where people aren’t scared of seeing a body. It’s more of a send-off kind of thing. That’s been a big thing to wrap my head around.
The livestream is just a private link. A lot of times I’m like, “Is anybody even watching this livestream?” But some days there are a lot of people watching. Other days there’s literally like one.
Sometimes, maybe a mic will drop out and I’ve got to tiptoe up to the front – “don’t mind me, don’t mind me!” – and fiddle away and fix it. There’s a little bit of that. The stream can drop out, but it’ll be all recorded so it doesn’t really matter. And then, well, again, sometimes nobody’s watching anyway.
On the other end, I’m usually sifting through people as they’re mingling, trying to get gear out. Usually I go outside, they’ll carry the coffin outside to the hearse and then I get as many shots as I can for the edit later. Twenty minutes later, I’m out.
Then the footage is cleaned up when I get home, the start and end taken off, and then some B-roll shots added in. Which is unfortunately footage that’s on my phone. So I get home and I have shots of coffins on my phone, which I have to delete immediately, because I can’t think about it.
It is very surreal. You’re part of this family’s little sad moment for half a day, and then I don’t think about it ever again. Most of the time it’s just little old ladies who have passed away, but sometimes it’ll be like a 21-year-old guy who has died by suicide, and it’s so intense. Then they’ll want to play a song as they leave, which will be like, a song that I love. And they’re playing this song, and I’m like, “Oh god, no.”
A couple of times tears have welled up, if it’s someone gone before their prime. I try to go into documentary mode, distance myself from it. At first it was a bit confronting, because I’m not used to going to funerals all the time.
It was hard at first, but now it’s just a job. Turn up somewhere with a camera and then go home. I’m a bit desensitised to it I guess.
As told to Sam Brooks