Legacy Video Lounge Podcast

Questions Steve addresses in this segment include:

• How do you help storytellers prepare for their life story interviews?

If you’d like to watch excerpts from a variety of legacy videos produced by Family Legacy Video®, you’ll find them here.

In Part 3, the focus turns to the legacy video production process.

Questions Steve addresses in this segment include:

• How does someone hire Family Legacy Video, Inc.?

Note: Some pricing has changed slightly since this segment was recorded.

Elena and Steve conclude their discussion about the legacy video production process in Part 4.

If you’d like to watch excerpts from a variety of legacy videos produced by Family Legacy Video®, you’ll find them here.

Questions Steve addresses in this segment include:

• What if my family doesn’t have a “fancy” story?

If you’d like to watch excerpts from a variety of legacy videos produced by Family Legacy Video®, you’ll find them here.

Elena is a long-time, awarding-winning news reporter and magazine feature writer. In her own writing and editing business, she has interviewed thousands of people to tell the stories of companies, organizations and individuals.

In this episode, Elena and Steve start off their chat by focusing on the following legacy video-related topics:

• What is a legacy video?

If you’d like to watch excerpts from a variety of legacy videos produced by Family Legacy Video®, you’ll find them here.

Stay tuned – there’s more to come!

Steve is often asked if he can interview multiple storytellers in one sitting, or only one at a time. Actually, it all depends on what works best for any given situation and group of storytellers. For the piece included in this episode, Steve interviewed Dick and Mary-Lou separately, asking them similar questions, and then editing the two interviews together to create an engaging story flow. But Steve has also interviewed groups of two, three, and more storytellers in one sitting. Some reasons to do that: if the storytellers are more comfortable in a group, the dynamics created will be more entertaining and interesting, and if the family is looking for more of a live, spontaneous feel.

In this episode, podcast host, personal historian, video biographer, and Family Legacy Video, Inc. president Steve Pender is joined by personal historian and author Stephanie Kadel Taras, Ph.D. They share some real life examples of how their high net worth clients used life story legacies, in both video and print formats, as communication tools to pass along their values and visions surrounding family wealth to the next generations of their families.

Stephanie is an author and personal historian. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She started her company, TimePieces Personal Biographies, in the year 2000. Stephanie works with clients who want to tell their own stories, hire a writer to work with family members, or document their organization’s history. Her 2013 memoir and social history of West Virginia, titled Mountain Girls, won a West Virginia Writers Book Award. Her 2008 history of Eckerd College won an Independent Publisher Book Award.

Tip #1: Steady as she goes.

Tip #2: Walk to the light!

Tip #3: Shot composition: Stay close.

Tip #4: Use an external microphone.

LET’S PUT THINGS IN CONTEXT

Not everybody can afford these prices, of course. But for those who can, it’s a great, great value.

SO WHAT AM I PAYING FOR?

So people are on thing – gear is another. Professional cameras, lenses, lighting and audio equipment in our experienced hands yields fantastic results – but cost much more than consumer gear to purchase and maintain.

And then there’s travel. While Family Legacy Video is based in Tucson, a large chunk of our productions are shot outside Arizona. I’ve traveled to the east and west coasts, points between, even points beyond, like Hawaii. Travel incurs expenses like airfare, car rental, hotel rooms, meals, etc. It’s only fair to include these costs on top of the production expense – if not, Family Legacy Video could easily lose tons of money on each video. And yet, a lot of prospective clients seem to think this is somehow unfair, or they just want to save money by trying to find someone local to them, or they just don’t like the idea of paying for someone else’s travel expenses, as if our crew is taking a vacation at the client’s expense. Just to be clear, we travel as economically as possible, meaning we squeeze into coach airplane seats, we stay in moderately-priced hotels, and we don’t raid the mini-bars.

Finally, custom legacy videos are time-consuming efforts that can easily run into the hundreds of hours.

WRAPPING UP

He’s also a SunBridge Network Certified Legacy Advisor.

Jeff has been married for thirty years. He has four adult sons. One is currently in law school and a second just took his LSATs. So it looks like the Knapp Law Firm’s legacy may continue for another generation.

Steve first met Jeff during high school. They went their separate ways but reconnected a number of years ago after Jeff stumbled onto the Family Legacy Video® website. While Jeff is an expert in the nuts and bolts of estate planning, he’s also a big believer in incorporating life stories into the process. He kindly put down his snow shovel during a recent blizzard and spoke to Steve by phone from his home in New Jersey. The conversation touches on just what estate planning is all about and how Jeff uses stories to teach estate and legacy planning concepts to his clients as well as ways he encourages his clients to pass along life stories that speak to family values and identity.