What Are Life Stories?

You may be wondering what stories are included in a life story legacy video.

A life story legacy video is not an autobiography from birth to present. It is a compilation of important and favorite life stories told by a storyteller on video. Whenever possible, photographs related to the story are displayed as the storyteller speaks. The nature of the stories will reflect the storyteller’s personality. For some storytellers, the topics may be focused only on positive, lighthearted, and fact-based events in their lives. Other storytellers may be more open and willing to discuss a few of the difficult events or even missteps in their lives. The topics will likely also reflect the storyteller’s comfort level speaking on camera.

I conduct an in-person preliminary interview before the actual recording session. One reason the preliminary interview is done in person is so the storyteller and I can get to know each other before the video recording session. Some people are very reserved, and others are more forthcoming. However, it is not uncommon that when asked to reminisce and reflect a typically reserved storyteller may be more forthcoming than their norm. I have heard from a storyteller’s adult child that they had learned something new about their father because he had not previously discussed a particular event with such candor.

Story selection is a gentle process with lots of open questions and no pointed probing. The objective is to get the storyteller on video telling stories in their voice, in their style, with their facial expressions, and showing their emotions.

Preliminary interview

Prior to the preliminary interview, the storyteller completes a questionnaire that provides information about their life and their family. During the preliminary interview I ask questions about family elders, parents, childhood, education, career, family, mentors, major life events, older adulthood wisdom, faith, and life reflections. The goal of the preliminary interview is to select topics, identify common themes in the storyteller’s life journey, and assess what the storyteller is comfortable discussing. I will make an audio only recording of the preliminary interview for my review as I develop the questions for the video interview. I also record the preliminary interview so I can remain fully engaged in the conversation.

Another goal prior to the video interview is to get a sense of the audience for the video. Will it be children, current and future relatives, friends, or the storyteller in the future? Most likely it will be some combination of all those listed. The reason that I list the storyteller is that if one is fortunate to live a long, long life, it is likely that memories will fade. It is well established in the literature about aging that reminiscing about one’s life can be a positive and therapeutic experience for elders with memory impairment. See this page on my website for more information on the topic. I recently visited with a family elder in a rehabilitation center, and he enjoyed viewing a short video I had made of him years ago speaking about his childhood along with photos from his childhood.

What Are Your Stories

One way to consider the story selection process is to ask yourself what are your life stories? If you reflect on your life, what are the important stories? What stories have meaning to you and what stories might have meaning to others? I suggest using the tool of the river as a life journey metaphor. An often-used exercise for memoir writing is to take a large piece of paper and map out your life as a river with the periods of calm and turbulence, decisions at major and minor forks in the flow, high points and low points along the way, and the influence of others along the journey. The following is a good description of the exercise.

Workshop participants are asked to draw their personal river of life on a large sheet of paper. (Other materials may be used as well, such as coloured card, sticky labels, etc.) They are asked to use the course of the river to illustrate key events and experiences in their lives and careers. Bends in the river’s course might be used to represent turning points in life, while changes in the width or narrowness of the river may be used to illustrate changes in the breadth or concentration of focus or activities at different times, and so on. Participants may be invited to include two specific types of features, namely tributaries, which can illustrate the formative influences entering their lives from outside (such as training, ideas, key relationships), and features such as shoals, rapids, or slow-flowing eddies and whirlpools, which may be used to depict times of difficulty or challenges the person has faced. Methods Vignettes: Rivers of Life

It is important to identify the people who have been part of your life journey: parents, siblings, relatives, friends, colleagues, mentors, and individuals you serendipitously meet along the way. Our lives hopefully have periods of calm amongst the likely periods of turbulence as we navigate the river of life. We have help getting started in life and making decisions about which branches to take. Beyond the elements that we cannot control, it is the decisions about which of multiple forks in the river to take, the left or the right, that can be the most significant to our life stories.

The good news is that the storyteller need not go through the river of life drawing exercise. During the preliminary interview, I will lead the storyteller through the process of identifying favorite stories and interesting life stories (including the ones you may have heard a thousand times) for possible use in the video interview.

During the actual video recording session, I will prompt the storyteller to speak about the selected stories. If necessary, I will have the storyteller redo segments of their comments so there is no pressure to be perfect on the first take. I will edit the story segments to produce a polished video of the storyteller discussing life stories.

Consider a Life Story Legacy Video

You may want to consider a life story legacy video to identify and preserve your or a family elder’s most important family stories and photos. It will be a precious memory for everyone. As discussed above, a critical step is to identify topics to be covered in the video during an in-person preliminary interview. If you are interested in a life story legacy video for a relative or for yourself, please contact me via the contact form on my website. I would be happy to schedule a time to talk with you.