More Video Biography Questions

This week I return to a subject I covered 2 years ago, in January 2010: Questions to ask in a video biography interview

I recently came across the book “30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans”. Published November 2011, it is written by gerontologist Karl Pillemer, founder and director of the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging, and is available in paper, as audio, and on the Kindle.

Gotta love a guy who takes the time to sit and visit – and listen – to our most experienced citizens. (Hint, hint.)

He's done a lot of listening as it happens: Since 2004, Pillemer and his Legacy Project at Cornell University have interviewed more than one thousand Americans over the age of sixty-five. In that time he and his project have sought and gotten advice on all the "Big Issues" like children, marriage, money, career, and aging. And he has boiled down what he has heard to his “thirty lessons for living”.

One of Pillemer's first lessons came from nearly-90 years old June Driscoll whom he met in a nursing home:

“Young man, you will learn, I hope, that happiness is what you make it, where you are. Why in the world would I be unhappy? People here complain all the time, but not me. It's my responsibility to be as happy as I can, right here, today.”

One of the goals of the Legacy Project is to encourage people to talk with elders – older family members, friends, neighbors - about their lessons for living. And after road testing hundreds of interview questions, the team came up with these as being particularly thought-provoking for their respondents and which brought a wide range of interesting answers. (And to these, I have added my own follow up questions.)

Video Biography Questions
If a young person asked you, “What have you learned in your years in this world,” what would you tell him or her?
Follow up: Do you think that those lessons still apply to young people today?

Some people say that they have had difficult or stressful experiences but they have learned important lessons from them. Is that true for you? Can you give an example?
Follow up: How did you cope with stress in your life? Did that change over time?

As you look back over your life, do you see any “turning points”; that is, a key event or experience that changed the course of your life or set you on a different track?
Follow up: Do you regret taking any of those turns? Why or why not?

What would you say you know now about living a happy and successful life that you didn’t know when you were twenty?
Follow up: How would you have gone about advising or guiding your younger self if you had had the opportunity to do so?

What can younger people do to avoid having regrets later in life?
Follow up: What has been your biggest regret?

What would you say are the major values or principles that you live by?
Follow up: Are there other principles you admire in others?

There are many excellent questions here designed to elicit wisdoms and life lessons and could easily take their place in a video ethical will. Others questions can easily be added around the topics of a successful marriage, mistakes to avoid in raising children, and how to find and succeed in a successful career.

Another List of Video Biography Questions
Now, if you are planning a video biography covering the spectrum of a life, you are going to want a bunch of other questions besides. You are going to have to cover some of the quotidian. For that you can check out my earlier blog.

In addition to the places to find questions that I mentioned in my previous blog, I recently came across the Family Tree Magazine list of questions for interviewing relatives. And although prosaic, they're not bad. To give you a flavor, here are the first 6:

What's your first memory?
Who's the oldest relative you remember (and what do you remember about him or her)?
How did your parents meet?
Tell me about your childhood home.
How did your family celebrate holidays when you were a child?
How did you meet your spouse?

None of this, of course, is to substitute for your own ideas and those of the family. In my video biography projects, I am always careful to check with the family to see if there are any particular stories or areas that they want covered.


Jane Lehmann-Shafron is a video biographer who co-founded Your Story Here LLC Video Biography a video production company that specializes in preserving family history. Based in Orange County CA, she was recently featured in "Success" magazine and in the "Los Angeles Times". Her award-winning films have been screened in festivals in the United States and Canada. She can be contacted on 949-742-2755 or through her website.