The blueprint
How to tell a story worth keeping.
This is the exact structure we use on every film we produce, and the questions we ask to get real answers. Use it yourself, for free, with nothing more than a phone — or let us run the session and edit it for you.
The seven parts.
In order. Each part is usually thirty to sixty seconds of finished film.
Before
Where the story starts. The town, the house, the year, the family they were born into. One or two sentences — this is the runway, not the flight.
“Where did it all begin for you?”
The moment
The decision, the meeting, the loss, the leap. Every story worth hearing has one hinge. Find it and the rest arranges itself around it.
“What was the day everything changed?”
The why
The reason it mattered enough to keep going. This is the part families quote back to each other for decades.
“Why did you keep going when it would have been easier to stop?”
The hard part
The winter they nearly lost it. The diagnosis. The year nobody talks about. Leave this out and the story sounds like a brochure.
“What was the hardest stretch, and who got you through it?”
The people
Names. Say them out loud. A grandchild hearing their own name in their grandmother's voice is the whole product.
“Who should I be sure you mention by name?”
The lesson
What they'd want someone to take from all of it. Short. Said plainly. No speeches.
“If someone only remembered one thing you said, what should it be?”
The message
Spoken directly to whoever is standing there with a phone in their hand, years from now. This is the part that makes people cry, and it's usually eleven seconds long.
“Look at the camera and say it to them.”
The interview sheet.
Print this, put it face down on the table, and only glance at it when the conversation stalls. You will not need most of them.
- 01What's the earliest thing you remember?
- 02What were your parents like when you were small?
- 03What did you want to be, before life had an opinion?
- 04How did you meet?
- 05What's a day you'd live again exactly as it happened?
- 06What were you most afraid of, and did it happen?
- 07What's something you did that you never told anyone about?
- 08What do you know now that you wish you'd known at twenty-five?
- 09What smells or songs take you straight back?
- 10What should this family never stop doing?
- 11What would you say to your great-grandchildren?
- 12Is there anything I haven't asked that you want on the record?
Six things that help.
Let the silence sit
The good answer almost always comes after the pause. Don't rescue them — count to five in your head before you speak again.
Ask for a scene, not a summary
"He was a hard worker" is nothing. "He was on the tractor before it was light, every day of that harvest" is everything.
Film the hands, the shop, the dog
Cutaways of ordinary things — a kitchen table, a doorway, tools on a wall — turn a talking head into a film. Ten shots is plenty.
Sit them near a window
Daylight on one side, camera on a stack of books at eye height, phone in landscape. That's a good-looking interview.
Sound matters more than picture
Get the phone or a cheap clip-on microphone within a metre. Close a window. Turn off the fridge hum if you can.
Record more than you need
Forty minutes of talking makes a strong three-minute film. Ten minutes rarely does.
Or let us ask the questions.
Most families find it easier when the person asking isn't their own child. We run the session remotely, edit the film, and hand back everything you recorded.