Gilda Heileman is sitting in a recording studio telling the story of her life. "My father was born in 1901, and his father died when he was 21 days old, so I never knew my grandfather," Heileman relates, as expensive broadcast-quality video cameras capture her tale.
"People think they don't have interesting stories, but ordinary people usually have the most interesting backgrounds — just talking about living through a war or immigration or growing up in extreme poverty," said Steve Duff, president of Blue Ash-based Life Capsule. Duff founded the company in 2001 to combine his background in technology — he was in technology with Procter & Gamble for five years, then owned a database management and Web design firm — with his passion for learning about family history. Clients hire Life Capsule to produce a DVD or VHS documentary about their lives. "I was amazed when I saw the quality of the finished product," said Heileman's daughter Michelle Walter, a media planner from Fort Wright. "It looks like you're watching the Biography Channel."
The DVD version, which Duff said most customers prefer because of its longevity, offers special features such as deleted scenes, chapter selection capability and a slide show of family photos. The finished product is presented inside a mock hard-bound book, with the subject's name as the title on the spine. "What we've done is figured out how to streamline this process and apply mass production technique one person at a time," Duff said. Bill Poff, director of video production, said Life Capsule wouldn't be possible without digital photography and videography, which keep production costs manageable. Without digital, he said, it would cost up to $100,000 to equip the business to its current productions standards. "Photos don't last; this will last," Poff said. "I want 100 years from now when people do genealogy that they pop in a Life Capsule video." James Strider, director of statewide outreach services for the Ohio Historical Society, said the aging of the population and advances in technology are having a profound impact on the way families preserve their heritage. "We're going through a really significant technology revolution," he said. "The convergence of computing, telephony and television technologies is a truly transforming impact on how historians and everyone do things." That transformation will be among the things addressed Nov. 6-8 at the inaugural Building Connections Conference in Columbus, which will bring together all type of heritage-related professionals. The Ohio Historical Society is a leading sponsor of the event, and Life Capsule will be an exhibitor. Among the advances of technology is the ability to keep memories in great shape indefinitely. To that end, Life Capsule has a vault containing digital masters of every film and DVD it has done, plus high-resolution scans of every still photograph ever used. Redundant backups are kept off-site.
His wife, Laura Stanton, was luckier with memories of her grandfather. Duff had created a Life Capsule of him less than a year before he passed away unexpectedly. "We have everything about him on his video — his hand movements, his laugh," Stanton said. For Duff, that's what it's all about. He plans to expand Life Capsule to other cities and is seeking a small group of investors, as well as corporate partners to help him do so. "We're strongly looking at franchise or another expansion model; we want to do millions of these," Duff said. "Each of these films we've done are like little bricks in a wall, and someday we'll have created a whole huge wall." About Life Capsule |
An
interviewer, videographer and makeup artist look on as her life
story unfolds: "My dad was such a good salesman that (when)
he had his appendix taken out, he was on local anesthesia and sold
the doctor a washing machine." Heileman's life story will be
turned into an hour-long documentary, but she's not famous. She
is, however, significant: a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter,
church pianist, Northern Kentucky native and all-around lover of
life.
Thanks
to professional lighting, sound, editing, photo scanning, makeup
and interviewing techniques, the finished product is a high-end
documentary featuring the subject speaking about his life, integrated
with 50 to 75 personal photographs.
Though
the technology has changed, what drew Duff to start his business
was old-fashioned emotion. "My grandparents died when I was
7, and as I get older my memories of them are starting to fade,"
he said. "I wish I had had something like this."