Partnering With You In Our Process

 

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.Groucho Marx

Partnering with you in our process

Working together!
Brothers, Peter and Hugh Sibbald
©John Sibbald, 1964.
We use audio and video recording to create extended personal documentaries with an approach that is more memoir than biography, stories from a life rather than merely about a life.
Overview of Our Process:

Choosing from a palette of digital multimedia, clients can commission projects of varying scope from short broadcast quality audio-recorded stories, through visually supported sound memoirs and career tributes, to in-depth TV-bio-pic-like multimedia personal history films — in their own voices or from the voices of families and friends.

You peruse our packages to chose an appropriate beginning point for a discussion, and then contact us. Initial consultations are free according to the package level. We will be happy to answer your questions and to work with you to focus and fine-tune an approach to fit your unique need. This is a highly individualized process, and our service is personal, hands on, and low-key. We will not up-sell. Indeed, in the end if a single picture is enough, Peter also runs Sibbald Studios at The Briars, making portraiture available either at the Briars Resort or any place you wish to have him travel.

Once we have agreed on an approach, outcome, time-table and price, we will encode this in an agreement, and when we have received that signed agreement and a 50% advance, we will begin.

Depending on the scope of the project, this may vary:

  • supplying you questionnaires and story-prompting tips
  • pre-interviews and brainstorming sessions to develop story lines, lists of interview questions and auxiliary interviewees
  • site visits to scout locations and peruse family archives for the purpose of selecting  support imagery, existing audio and footage as well as other materials for potential inclusion in Video Portraits.

In any event, the key to the process is the work that happens before cameras or audio recorders ever start to roll, and that begins with communication. Ongoing communication will be paramount and any changes that evolve will likewise be confirmed in writing  electronically or by hand-written note.

Our aim is that you will have only one surprise: just how delighted you are with our work.

Investment:
Although on the surface it may appear such projects take little more than the time necessary to record the conversations, whether video or just audio, this recording is but a brief if exciting step in the overall process. Depending on the package, hours of preproduction may be required to ensure great recorded conversations, and for each one of those by the time additional interviews, footage, images, and sound design have been woven together, the process may have extended out in several dozen hours or weeks post production for each hour of recorded material. Investment can be considerable, but then the point after all is a legacy that can be passed on for generations. This is why for both voice and video portraits we offer simple packages that focus on the recording phase with only nominal post production to ensure people’s stories can be captured.

Our Process in Summary
5 Phases
1. Consideration
  • You review our offerings and call us to discuss what you have in mind.
  • Free consultation (up to 1.5 hours) and first look at possible support material where applicable.
  • If you select to proceed, you select a package and based on that we will create an agreement.
2. Pre-production
  • Once we have the signed agreement and relevant deposit, in advance of our next meeting we will send you materials to help you begin to do the important homework in selecting stories, questions, and where applicable, images and any other support material.
  • We meet a second time (up to 1.5 hours) to help refine the questions, story and incorporation of support material.
  • We will follow-up with a summary from our pre-prodcuction meeting which will help the subject prepare.
3. Production
  • We will arrive at the mutually determined location with appropriate equipment and crew to conduct the the audio or video recording session(s).
  • We will execute any other recording agreed upon.
  • You will supply us with:
    • Images, digitized and appropriately labelled with captions answering who it is, what is happening, where and when.
    • Any footage likewise digitized and appropriately labelled.
    • Progress payment.
  • We will digitize/convert any other images or footage that is mutually agreed upon for inclusion in the project.
4. Post-production
  • We will wrangle the various recorded conversations and any other data and weave it into a rough assembly (not including any titling or narration).
  • We will upload a low resolution copy of that rough assembly to a private link for your input and approval.
  • Considering that feedback we will complete the edit process.
5. Delivery
  • We will deliver the final version of the project in the agreed upon number of copies.
  • You will provide balance of payment.

 

 

Our Mission
To relieve clients of concerns about putting their personal histories in order by helping them capture, share and preserve their signature stories as a legacy of which they will be proud.

 

 

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