Telling Stories, Saving LivesA Video Biographer's Beginning

I was asked recently about how I got into the business of video biographies.

Well, it's kind of a long story...

Diagnosed with a modest cancer in 2005, my first reaction was to learn my father's story. My husband knew my story – if anything bad should happen. But only I could introduce my young sons to their dead grandfather.

The surgery and treatment were an ordeal, but nothing like what my dad went through with his liver cancer. And my life, I learned, was nothing like what he went through: the Depression, being sent from home to work for food, war in the Pacific, no education, an explosion of bewildering, post war change.

“We had it good”, he used to say. “I feel sorry for you kids.” It made me smile to remember that. I think the same thing about myself and my own kids. Whatever happened, I had it good. I knew that.

I have a photo – one of his last ever. He's holding one of my two, then two year old sons (they're both off to college next year). Dad is almost all gone, nothing like the bull-chested rugby player of his war years. But I don't cherish this photo. He is so diminished.

I spent a lot of the next 6 months reminiscing – about his life and my own. And with the help of my husband – who was pleased I had a hobby (although no hair) – I made a documentary about his life.

My dad would not be a stranger to his grandsons.

Up to that point, I had been an attorney. And a mother. Now I glimpsed a new calling. A video biographer was emerging.

My first real client was Anne King. Anne also had cancer. When I arrived at her home in Glendale, she was very grey and frail. She barely had a voice. I was anxious that I wouldn't get any part of her story. But as the day progressed, and while the camera ingested my questions and Anne's answers, she bloomed.

Her best years were her World War II years. “We all had the same purpose”, she said. (Looking at Anne's home movies of her 9 year old self jumping rope in the 1930s made me think that those must have been pretty good years too...)

My husband and I both cried when we got a call one week later that Anne had died.

I have learned since that there is a branch of elder care called “reminiscence therapy”. Talking about old times with the help of objects, photographs and even music has actually improves mood, wellbeing, communication and has even been found to stimulate memory in Alzheimer's patients. A recent study (in the Journal of Psychology and Aging (2010) Vol. 25, No. 1, 157–167) found that these benefits were particularly enhanced when the reminiscing occurred with others.

Anne's documentary was a comfort to the whole family – especially her husband who, reluctant to be a subject himself, watched his wife - daily - for months after.

Since Anne King, I have interviewed hundreds of people as a professional video biographer – most of them in their seventies or older. And while I can't be sure that I have added any days to those lives, I am certain that for my subjects and for their families, telling their stories has saved their lives.

The toughest jobs are when I am called in, but just a too late. I, and the family, have to live with the thought that we almost created a little piece of immortality

Telling my dad's story helped save his life, and gave new meaning to my own.

Postscript: Next month I am off to visit my family, including my Dad's brother. He is probably best placed in the family to tell about Dad's upbringing and the hard farm conditions all the kids endured. Also, while I have most of the old documents and photos, I have not - up to this point - gotten my hands on the family's old home movies. Originally shot on 8mm, they were transferred to VHS cassettes in the 1980s but never made it to DVD.

So, when I come back I plan to have the original Regular 8mm (or Super8, I am not sure which) transferred to video so I can incorporate that material into his story. (While I have incorporated home movies transferred from film in many of my projects, it is only recently that I established a segment of the business devoted to video conversion: Video Transfer in Orange County.)