Telling your life story can be very personal. How do you make people feel comfortable talking to you about their life?
Yes, telling your story is very personal and we take this very seriously. Kellie and I, and the team we are privileged to work with, have become very good at making people like yourself feel at home with this process by being sensitive to the concerns you might have, and by quickly demonstrating just how down-to-earth we are.
As much as possible we work around your schedule, not ours. We also do all of our interviewing and additional shooting in the comfort of your home or homes. We encourage other family members and friends to join in the process if this helps make you feel more comfortable. When we come over for the interviews, it’s just two of us coming over for a chat. You never have to address the camera directly; rather it is there only as a “third person” listening in on a one-on-one conversation. And when we say conversation, it really is just that. You and the loved ones you’ve included in this film are just taking turns having a casual conversation with someone who is really interested in hearing your stories.
We have interviewed literally hundreds of people. In almost every case we have found that once people begin talking about themselves and their family, they find it easy and a lot of fun. We have made many friendships doing this kind of work, which I think really speaks to the personal nature of this process, and the respectfulness of our approach.
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Will this take enormous amounts of our time? How long does the process take?
One of the charms of this process is that it hardly uses any of your time at all. Folks often worry about having to devote weeks of their time to this, when we typically only need a couple of hours from each participant. Usually someone from the family volunteers as the project “coordinator”; the person that spends a little more time than the others organizing the photos, and working with us to schedule time for the interviews and additional family footage. Other than that, each person will only spend about two hours talking with us at his or her convenience. Also, when we shoot additional family footage, it’s usually when the family is getting together anyway for some occasion.
Once the interviews are shot and all relevant material is gathered up, it’s now up to us to weave the stories together over a period of several weeks. All told, from start to finish the whole process takes about a month to a month-and-a-half, although this can vary from project to project depending the availability of those involved. The vast percentage of this overall timeline is time we dedicate to the process, leaving you free to take care of your own important day-to-day affairs.
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Do I need to write down my memories and stories in preparation for the interviews?
It doesn’t hurt to give some thought ahead of time to what you’d like to talk about, and sometimes writing things out can help you to organize your thoughts. Doing this would be in preparation for our pre-interview rather than the formal interview itself. During the pre-interview, we have a chat with you and make notes about the highlights of your life story. We then write up a summary of these highlights and have you look it over to make sure we got it right.
From the story summary we develop a series of questions that we will use in the formal interview to bring out in more detail all the wonderful memories and key story highlights. You do not need any written material. The one-on-one interview will bring out all the important points, driven by the questions we will ask you. These questions will be about everything you already know everything about, because it’s all about you.
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I’m worried I’m going to get really nervous on the day of interviewing. Is this a common fear?
Yes this is common for most of us. When I say most of us, I’m including myself. In fact, if you train a camera toward me I’ll probably get more nervous than most people. It’s natural to feel this way. But what’s really neat about doing a Storybook Film is that this passes very quickly, usually after the first or second interview question. We often say, “Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let’s go back and visit those questions again”, and with everyone now more relaxed we start over. What’s great about it is that we can stop and start anytime, go back and talk about certain things again, take breaks. You can stop us and ask if you can rephrase something at any time. All of it gets totally fixed up in editing. Perhaps it’s because people have so much control over the process that they so quickly lose their jitters. After all, it’s not like being on live television!
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Do other family members get to be in the film even though they’re not being interviewed?
We encourage participation from as many family members and friends as you think are appropriate. Shooting footage of visiting family members or a family get-together is an important part of the process, and helps to bring full context to the story of people’s lives.
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What other additional footage do you include?
There really isn’t much of a limit of the amount of additional footage we like to shoot, as long as it’s geographically possible and fits into the shooting schedules outlined in our various packages. We love to shoot additional material. If you have a hobby that you would like to show - gardening, collecting, playing hockey, playing with the kids or grand kids, singing, photography etc. – we would love to capture this for inclusion in the program. Perhaps you have places in your immediate neighborhood that bring back fond memories, or you would like to show how much you love to cook. A romantic stroll at dusk with your spouse is always special. All of these are great ways of showing what makes you who you are.
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My father-in-law has recently developed Alzheimer’s. He and my mother-in-law have been such an inspiration to all of us and I really think we should get their story now. Unfortunately, not everyone is available to participate at this time. Sorry to be direct but what are my options?
Your question brings up an important point. Of the many people that have decided that this is the right thing to do for their family, some adopt a “some day” kind of approach, sort of putting it on the shelf for when it becomes convenient for everyone. Sadly, the realities of life carry on and sometimes we unexpectedly lose people very dear to us, or a loved one’s memories become less accessible than they once were. We like to encourage folks to begin the process of telling their family story as early as possible, however sometimes a realistic timeline can stretch on well into the immediate future. The good news is that our overall approach puts strong emphasis on getting the key story interviews recorded very early in the process, often weeks or even months ahead of the less pivotal interviews, editing and so on. Your project can be initiated with a pre-interview to get the story highlights, and the key interviews can be done very quickly thereafter. Additional work on your project can continue when other participants are available. So, to answer your question directly, start the project now so that we can get your in-law’s stories very soon, and we’ll worry about the rest later.
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My parents live in Canada, but out on the East Coast. Do you offer this service there too?
Yes we do. If we don’t have anyone available in the specific location you have in mind, I prefer to make the trip personally. Depending on where you live in Canada or the United States, there is an additional cost to cover getting to wherever your relatives are, but this is usually very modest because it’s only one person making the trip, and we always spring for the accommodation.
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We’re having trouble deciding between the Storybook Film on DVD and the printed Memoirs. How do you choose one over the other?
Well, we always encourage people to consider the Storybook Film on DVD first, because we believe there is something particularly precious in not only passing on information about your life, but capturing intangibles like your unique mannerisms, your laugh (or your cry), and just your “way”. Together with the special quality that family footage can add, when you and your children and your grandchildren look at the program later on you will all appreciate how special this type of presentation is.
Having said that, there are some good reasons why folks would choose the book. Some people simply aren’t accustomed to the concept of being on camera, and prefer to go with a more familiar medium, print. Also, the book will tend to be more in-depth because we spend additional interview time flushing out stories and generally getting more overall information. Since the book is made up entirely of stories and some still pictures, it needs to be more thorough to convey context. In a more practical sense, some people don’t have any pictures to support a DVD presentation, which relies quite a bit on photos to illustrate what’s being talked about, and to cover edits in the interviews.
As outlined in our package descriptions on this website, doing a Storybook Film and your Memoirs in print has the advantage of a price break, since the same interviews can work for both. So if you can’t choose one over the other, perhaps this is the solution for you.
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My sisters and I love the idea of your Custom Personal Tribute, and would love to create one about our dad. We’re not shy about being on camera, but we’re not so comfortable about the written part. Do you help with this?
Absolutely. For a modest fee, Kellie or Caroleen or Esther can help you organize your photos, get the story details from you, and then write up a very professional narrative for your presentation. With one of you assigned as the narrator that reads the text, everyone else that wants to play a role only has to fill in little parts of the story in your own words when we come to do your brief on-camera interviews. When it’s all put together, you have a very special presentation that includes narrative to tell the story we see unfolding in the photos with music, punctuated with heartfelt remembrances.
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How much lead time do you need to do a Basic Personal Tribute Presentation?
Once we have your pictures, we can create your presentation in just a few days. Ideally, It’s best if you can get materials to us well ahead of time as we may have several of these programs on the go at the same time.
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While most of our photos are older prints, we do have a few newer digital pictures. Can you work with these as well?
Digital pictures are not a problem. To get them to us you can put them on a CD and include this with your prints, or you can upload them to our Internet FTP site. We can give you access to the site and file format specifications when you’re ready to begin your project.
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How can I get specific information on your package rates?
Email us at info@storybookfilms.ca and we can send you a PDF file listing all our prices and services. Or, if you’d prefer a hard copy of our rates and a sample DVD (just in case you can’t view our website samples), just let us know and we’ll be happy to send you something in the mail.
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