As any filmmaker would I embellished the production with still images, music and in one scene, had a female friend read from a diary my mother wrote during a working vacation she and Rita took together across Europe. I shot the diary over her shoulder and was quite proud of the result. Today I’m grateful for this legacy of her life, and the lives of her extended family, the gene pool shared by many of us gathering for Christmas this year.
When I shot the biography I was marketing a product I called “Life Stories” from a website named “legacy media”. I spoke with no one who didn’t get excited by the idea of preserving the stories of a parent, grandparent or older relation before time removed the opportunity. Another producer in North America got national media coverage on the subject and yet another developed and sold online a package designed to teach any videographer how to create a professional video biography. To my knowledge they got as far as I did, which was nowhere. Three siblings could commission a biography for less than six months of mobile phone bills! If you could arrange to have your grandfather speak to your grandkids for so small an investment what could possibly persuade you not to do it? Seriously. Take a moment to tell me. I would greatly appreciate it and just possibly you might tell me something I hadn’t thought of, something that might allow me to accept our willingness to allow priceless family history to vanish forever.
