Video Services and Costs
The Interview
Our starting point is a simple interview where we ask questions about the person’s life, often starting with “What is the very first thing you remember?”
From here the interview continues for about an hour.
This simple process, a conversation recorded on video, preserves precious memories.
Later, in editing, we sequence the best moments, neaten things up, and add music.
Then we often divide that interview into a series of 3-4 minutes segments, each about a separate phase of the subject’s life.
Our starting price for a simple conversation on video assumes a one-hour video and about four hours of editing, so the cost with travel and so forth is $400.
Enhancements
There are endless ways we can enhance a video and expand the scope of the final product. Below we present examples some options. Other ideas can be custom priced.
Adding in Still Images
The first enhancement is usually to add in family photos and historical images that reflect and illuminate the basic video interview.
Images can either be set next to the subject on screen or we can fill the frame and then return to the interview scene.
Families supply images from albums or from recent events. Other historical images can be found online, though we go out of our way not to violate copyright.
If an image is valuable enough to the video, we may wish to pay for the use, and add that cost to the budget, with the approval of the our client.
Adding in stills will add about six hours to the project, or $300.
Interviews with Family Members
From children to grandchildren, brothers and sisters, we can sit down with more family members to get a different set of stories and fill out the family picture.
Suppose we spent another two hours video recording a group of family members. Between video session and additional editing the added cost would be in the range of $400.
Enhancements
There are endless ways we can enhance a video and expand the scope of the final product. Below we present examples some options. Other ideas can be custom priced.
Adding Home Movies
Home movies from the 1950’s and onward can add great richness to the video project. Assuming the movies are not yet converted to digital, we will need to get that done.
Then we review the home movies and determine how and where to blend them with the interview.
However, imagine that there is a box of a hundred home movies! The task of reviewing them and finding the best moments can be daunting. In estimating this enhancement, we will assume that the family reviews all the home movies, selects the best moments, and supplies them to us in digital form. (We can direct you to many services that will digitize home movies.)
Integrating supplied digitized home movies into an interview: four hours, or $200.