What Are LifeStory Interviews?
LifeStory Interviews are short oral histories that highlight your life’s turning points, challenges, and significant moments. These remembrances become an invaluable gift that enriches your shared family history and connects you to past and future generations. You may be pleasantly surprised by what emerges! Capturing recollections that may have lain dormant for years can reshape how you think about your life and the people who have profoundly affected you.
Dealing with Grief
Much like a trove of letters, a LifeStory Interview offers a way to experience loved ones again. Seeing them as they were in life, hearing their familiar voices, and recollecting and celebrating the times you shared ensures that their memory endures.
The woman in the above photo is my mother, who died when she was 92. I regret that I didn’t record a LifeStory Interview with her. I realize now that I knew her in her role as the mother of six children, but many of the experiences and decisions that formed who she was remain mysteries, unknown to my siblings, her grandchildren, and me.
What Is Involved in the Interview Process?
A Life Interview is really about telling your story. Biographical questions and optional photographs, letters, music, and keepsakes spark the recollection of important events and milestones. Before filming begins, we will ask if you have a preferred set of questions or topics you would like us to cover.
Video is the perfect medium for Life Interviews. You are free to pause, ponder, and rephrase; we knit the fragments and separate memories together in the editing.
Sample LifeStory Interviews
Possible Topics to Explore and What Is Involved
Friends and Colleagues, Grandparents, Raising Children, Parents, Growing Up, School, Teachers, Love & Relationships, Marriage & Partnerships, Working, Religion, Serious Illness, Family Heritage, Military, Remembering a Loved One, Justice, The Aging Experience, Pets
The process begins by filling out the form below. Once we receive your information, we contact you via email or phone, whichever you prefer. The interview is approximately 90 minutes to 2 hours and includes finding a suitable location to set up our camera, lighting, and audio equipment. Initially, some people feel a little nervous before we begin, but they soon relax. The atmosphere is informal, conversational, respectful, and non-judgmental. By the time the interview begins, a lot of the nervousness fades. We normally edit to remove the interviewer’s voice and phrase questions so that the client reveals the question within the answer. For instance, “where did you grow up?” ANSWER, “I grew up in Friendship, Maine.”
Pricing
A basic package starts at $850. This includes a free consultation before agreeing to proceed, a USB drive with the edited version of the LifeStories Interview, and up to 10 photos scanned and added to the video. The final video will be a minimum of thirty minutes and can be up to an hour long. Adding additional photos costs $10 each, and extra USB copies of the interview cost $50 each. A deposit of 50% is due on the day of filming, with the balance due when you receive your LifeStory video.
To Get in Touch
Team
Michael Richard
Michael has been working professionally in digital media for twenty-plus years as a web and graphic designer and as a photographer and videographer on assignments for clients. He and his partner, Wendy Hebb, have produced three documentary films, one about the local food movement, one about the Alewife runs in Damariscotta Mills, and one about a small group of citizen activists. His clients include Tufts University, Washington State University, Portland Trails, and the Maine Arts Commission. We look forward to helping you tell your LifeStory!
Wendy Hebb
Wendy joined the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in 2017 as a consultant on a new initiative, the Tufts Food Lab. During the preceding eight years, she was Program Director for the Washington State University Bread Lab where she organized The Grain Gathering, an annual international conference, and developed a regional and national network to advise, communicate and sustain Bread Lab research and outreach. Currently, Wendy is the co-founder and Director of GameDay Nutrition.
Prior to joining the Bread Lab, Wendy owned restaurants in Idaho and Maine, co-founded Native Studies with members of the Penobscot Nation, and consulted on the concept and design of independent food enterprises. Her essays have appeared in Bread Lines and Kitchen Work.