I think a very reasonable question to ask is … but what do you DO!?
I like to say that I make “Heritage & Legacy” films, which is a kind of documentary.
The question you might like to ask but be too polite is to say, “how do you make MONEY doing that? Where does the MONEY come from?”
I’ll tell you that, so you don’t have to ask, but first let me tell you about the kinds of films I’m interested in making.
A heritage & legacy film could be about a person, or people, or places. And by places, that could be a company or a community. A community might be like - a town or a city - but it also might be like - a faith community, a church or something like that.
So it’s a documentary about someone, or a family, or a company - and there could be lots of reasons to want to do it.
A company might want to do it as a way to invite customers into being more than customers, but fans. Or a company might want to use it to invite investors into their story. Or maybe someone built a company up over their lifetime and is about to hand it off, and wants to record the past to help carry the company into the future. It might be a powerful recruiting tool, to help find the right candidates.
A community might want to do it for many of the same reasons - to create community engagement or involvement, to help rally support before a big bond measure, to foster community development - or for a big milestone like a Sesquicentennial or something like that.
Non-profits can think about all these same things in all these same ways. The premier of a film can be a terrific engagement and fundraising event in and of itself, and I have a lot of background in both non-profit and events and can help pull that stuff off.
A lot of good can come from inviting people into our story, but first they have to know our story which means we have to tell our story.
Too often we don’t. We’re focused on features and benefits and the tyranny of the urgent, the next quarterly report, the next product launch, whatever. If we pull back a bit and look at who we are, what we’ve been through, and where we are headed - telling that story in the right way can help cast vision for everyone to rally around.
But about families. About people.
This is the best reason of all.
Maybe you’ve lost someone close to you. Maybe you never have.
But once they’re gone, there are days you just want to hear from them.
You’d want so much to see their face and hear their voice and remember things with them.
And - if you’re the one making the film - there are probably things you wish you could say, but you just can’t quite find the time or the way to say it. This is a way. This is one way.
It’s a little bit of preserving the past, telling those stories of heritage, but it’s a lot of cementing your legacy. Because how the story is told becomes something that’s up to you. But you gotta tell it. You can’t wait.
So these films - they don’t have to be History channel or Ken Burns type documentaries - but they sure can! We can do that!
If you’ve ever seen the show Legacy List where it’s kind of like Antiques Road Show in your house - we can do that.
We can do a “family tree” thing where we discover who led to you!
But that’s not the only option for sure.
What about the Trip of A Lifetime? If you’ve been on some amazing, life altering trip already and you have photos and videos from it, we can work with that - and with you - to capture that story and what happened through that trip. If you’re planning a trip like that, imagine taking someone with you to capture it so you can experience it over and over forever.
What I love to shoot are Day in the Life videos - and you can do this at any time in your life. Imagine doing it once every 5 or 10 years. Following you through one day in your life, learning all the things that are happening, what’s on your mind, what you remember - going through one ordinary day or one special day and capturing that on film is like a living, breathing, time capsule.
Imagine inviting me to your family reunion, and what we could put together from that.
Imagine working with us prior to a family reunion, putting something together in advance that you can watch at your family reunion!
You can decide you want to do this as something you want to gift your loved ones.
You can decide you want to gift a loved one with this - “here, Mom & Dad - we want you to do this, we got this for you.”
Which gets to how I get paid.
This style of documentary is “documentary for hire,” meaning that you are my client, and I work for you. You pay me to do this for you.
Let me be honest: I can see a future, and I’d love this future, where I can make a living doing this for people and publishing it to YouTube or some other platform, and the ad revenue is enough for me to live on, and then I can pick any interesting people I want or you can submit your story to me and I can produce it or not, and it’s free!
But that’s not how it is right now, and that’s not how it is for any legacy & heritage filmmakers.
In general, people and companies are hiring companies like Fascination Film Studio to tell their story with them and for them.
So that begs the question … “like, what does this cost?”
That’s kind of hard to say offhand - we need to set a time to meet and walk through what you want to accomplish.
What I can say, is it costs a lot less than what gets produced for television.
Like - if you’ve seen the famous Ken Burns documentaries on Public Television - those cost like a million bucks.
If you’ve watched Discovery Channel or History Channel, throw out the very best shows on there, and just think about the run of the mill time filler shows. Those are $100K - $150K an episode.
If you work with Fascination Film Company, you’re going to pay like 10% - 20% of that - maybe less - and you’re going to wind up with something that looks as good or better than that.
So - in that way, it’s a great deal!
But - it’s still a big investment. There’s no question about that.
At an estate level, at a forever legacy level, it’s a small amount.
As a gift, it’s a big one.
But - it might be worth it. Sometimes we give big gifts. Especially when it’s for a good reason.
And our lives, and our relationships, and our legacy … pretty good reason.
What you’ll end up with is a film that you can watch - it will be available on digital platforms, and a thumb drive so you can have something physical, and you’ll get a keepsake book with photos, something you can hold, and it will have a QR code that links to the video.
Recording your story is something that everybody should do by the time they’re 75.
But you don’t have to wait until then.
As our family was working on our own film for our family, my sister in law Sarah found the story of George Harry Stouffer. This guy was absolutely loved in his community! The obituary was a newspaper article that sung the praises of a guy who was a pillar in the town of Colfax, Iowa.
He died at 47.
Had that Stouffer heart.
Big, strong, but not always good at beating for long.
As I record this today, I’m 47.
You know, tomorrow isn’t promised.
Don’t wait.
And you know - I’m not the only one doing this sort of thing. If this seems like a good idea but you don’t know if you’d click with me, find someone who you think is the right fit. And if you can’t afford to hire someone to do it, do it yourself! But do it. It’s important.
The people who love you will be so glad you did it.
If you want to talk to me about it, no pressure - no obligation. I’m easy to get ahold of.
Let’s talk! Let’s talk about your story. Let’s tell it together.
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