Our Video Biographies portray the life stories of individuals (or couples) who wish to preserve their family’s history.  Interviews with friends, colleagues and family members are interlaced with scenes from everyday life, personal photographs, home movies and other materials such as old documents, awards, or archival footage from the era.  Favorite music is often included or original compositions may be customized for the program.

Documenting the life of a person or a couple needs to be approached with openness, patience and care.  It cannot be hurried or fit into a standard formulaic mould.  Before we shoot even one frame we take the time to listen and to learn about the arc of the subject’s life, and what experiences, people and events helped to influence that life.  We develop a video script in collaboration with the subject and his or her spouse or a family member. We schedule interviews with the friends or colleagues who are most important in the telling of this story and arrange for videotaping scenes that will best illustrate some of the topics discussed in the interviews. 

In one of the biographies that we produced, we witnessed one man’s spiritual journey; in another we looked back on a man’s career and how it had touched many lives; and for one family we told the love story of their parents in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary.  Each biography is a unique piece of history, meant for generations to see and to gain understanding about where they came from.  These life stories range from 25 to 60 minutes in length, and they can take two months or more to produce, as we always try to adapt our schedule to suit the family’s situations.