Our First Video Biography

We’ve been interviewing people on camera since 2106, including several segments for KIKU’s “The Wisdom of Hawaii’s Elders” series, but Dr. Ching’s video was our first video biography, where the purpose of the entire project was to capture his life stories on film for his family. We’re so honored that the Ching family trusted us with this task and agreed to be our “guinea pigs” since it was our first time and we didn’t know how the project might evolve along the way.

The Interview

And evolve it did. We expected the interview to last one hour, maybe two hours at most. Then we would edit the footage into a single film, maybe around 30 minutes long. Well, the interview went over 3 hours! We all had a wonderful time, and Dr. Ching said he enjoyed having “fresh ears” who never heard his stories before ?

How We Arrived at Chapters

When it came to the edit, there were so many amazing stories, we couldn’t imagine leaving anything out. That was when we decided to give the raw footage to the family. It isn’t standard practice for videographers to give raw footage to a client, but in this case we felt it was important.

We also decided that instead of editing the footage into a single film, we would pull out pieces to make short chapters, creating a series of videos that could be watched individually or binged. Looking at the behavior of our own children, they probably wouldn’t voluntarily sit down to watch a 30-minute interview with my grandfather. But they might watch a 5-minute video on his adventures spear-fishing!

In the same vein, we thought the younger members of the Ching family might be interested in a chapter on their great-grandparents’ courtship one day, and maybe another day they might want to hear about when their great-grandfather lived in Beijing. These short chapters are meant to draw the teens and young adults in, and when they’re older and they’ll appreciate it more, they’ll have the entire interview to enjoy.

We Found Our Calling

This was a life-changing project for us. We went into it almost on a whim, thinking it would be a fun addition to our services. But after our interview with Dr. Ching, both of us felt like we found our calling. With Nolan’s gift for interviewing and my experience putting stories together, we knew we were ideally suited for this work and it’s something we love and we’re so excited to bring it to the community.

Huge mahalo again to the Ching family for their trust and patience with us. Dr. Ching is an amazing, loving and inspiring man, and we’re so blessed to have met him.