#It’s just seven days till Christmas… I hope my true love gives to me…

A memoir for the ages…#

Preserving a family’s collection of photos and videos is a wonderful thing. But they can only do so much. They can be random, often candid sneak peeks into our past… snippets of time… that give us clues to how people lived, worked or played back in the day. And thank goodness we have them.

But they don’t tell the whole story. To do that, and to do it justice, would require letting the people of our past actually tell their stories themselves… in their way… using their voice.

We specialize in something we call A Life Story. Here’s how we work it:

1. We meet with the family member who is coordinating the project to discuss their goals and desires.
2. Based upon that meeting, we select a series of open ended questions designed to stimulate the subject into answering the questions or telling the stories the family wants to hear.
3. We discuss these questions with the family coordinator to see if there is anything else that they would like us to include.
4. We then schedule a shooting date. We advise our clients not to “coach” the subject and to let us meet him or her for the first time just before shooting starts. We find spontaneous reactions to the questions we ask make for better videos than rehearsed lines.
5. The interview can take place in our studio in front of a green screen or in the comfort of the subject’s home.
6. The interview would be conducted by one of our employees who is skilled in facilitating conversations. The interviewer will sit off camera so the subject will be the sole focus of the video.
7. After the interview is over, we would take the raw footage and edit it to its polished version.
8. If the shoot was performed in our studio and if the family desire, we can digitally replace the green background with any setting of their choice, or simply use a black backdrop upon which we can display photos or videos pertaining to what the subject is saying at various times.
9. We invite the coordinator and the subject to screen the rough cut of the edit and invite comments and suggestions.
10. Once the final cut has been made, we encode the footage to the media of their choice (DVD, DVA, or computer file) and make it available to the family. We also have the ability to make as many copies as needed so the entire family can possess this valuable keepsake.

Everyone has a story to tell. And now we have the ability to be able to record, collect and most importantly, pass those stories on to the next generation – unaltered by time or circumstance.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories, and can tailor a Life Story package to cater to every need and budget. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit www.homevideostudio.com/mtd