You Should Interview Your Loved Ones. Here’s Why.
Sitting in front of a camera in the living room of our family home, my grandma Eileen talks to me about her life.
“I’ve always been in Liverpool. I’ve spent 85-and-a-half years living in Liverpool 9. I’ve had different addresses… but they’ve all been in Liverpool 9.”
She tells me about when she started dating Grandpa:
“I was running out of excuses!” She laughed, “I was just scared to start going out with him because I wasn’t sure I liked him that much!”
Undeterred, he decided to propose on their second date.
“Of course I said no! He proposed to me every time we went out after that!”
And then a few months later, one evening after a night on the town:
“I don’t know whether I had an extra gin and tonic or not…I said ‘Alright, yes!’”
There’s a moral of the story in there somewhere — something about never giving up on chasing the one you love — but it’s slightly undercut by the fact that I probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my ancestors being a little bit drunk. But then, that might be true of most of us.
My conversation with Eileen was full of stories like this. Some sweet, some funny, some tragic. There were stories I was familiar with — although Grandma, a liberal embellisher, would always have newly-minted details to spice up the old classics.
She talked about growing up in Liverpool, being evacuated after her house was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941, leaving school to start work at the age of 14 after her father died, getting involved in amateur dramatics and sharing a rehearsal space with the Beatles, and much more. I learned a lot of new things about her, stories I’d never heard before.
The interview lasted about 2 hours, and conducting it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I’d gotten the idea a few months earlier, when I came across a video by filmmaker Philip Bloom. “My Dad” was a simple 30-minute interview with Philip’s father, spliced with photographs and old home movies, with some music playing underneath.
Arnie Bloom, a retired pharmacist, recounted childhood memories, reflected on his experiences as a father, and detailed his struggle with alcohol dependency and cancer.
I must have watched that video a dozen times. I was captivated by Arnie’s life story, a man I’d never met. A man who hadn’t free-soloed El Capitan or escaped from a maximum security prison. An ordinary person who, like my Grandma, had led a pretty “normal” life.
“Normal” does not mean boring.
Everyone has stories worth telling.
Everyone.
In the 6 years after my interview with Eileen, her memory started to deteriorate. In 2020, when it became obvious that she couldn’t look after herself in Liverpool, my family decided to move her up to Scotland to be closer to us. I’ll never forget how confused she was when we came to pack up her things. She recognised my face, knew my name, but couldn’t tell me how I was related to her.
Even in her old age she’d been sharp as a tack. It broke my heart to see how confused she’d become. Eventually, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It didn’t come as much of a shock.
I desperately wanted my Grandma to remember her life again, and so I finally got around to editing the interview I’d recorded 6 years previously.
I broke out the scanner and started scanning old photographs to lay over the interview footage, even digitally repairing and upscaling old photos that had been ripped and torn. I researched and discovered the best methods of digitising our old videotapes, and loaded some clips into the edit.
Once I’d added music, I was left with a tight (and, dare I say, kinda professional) 30-minute documentary piece. It was a distillation of my Grandma’s life, a portrait of her as I’ll always remember her: sharp, warm, bubbly, and always talking.
After showing the film to my brother, he immediately said what I’d been thinking:
“Everyone should make one of these.”
“But it needs to have a name. It needs to be called, like, a ‘lifereel’ or something. You know, like a showreel for your life.”
And so, on her 90th birthday last year, my family sat down with Grandma and we watched her lifereel together. Immediately, her eyes lit up in recognition. She watched attentively, often nodding her head and saying “that’s right”.
She pointed at the screen and said “She’s saying everything I’m thinking!”.
There aren’t many positives to Alzheimer’s, but it was nice to see that every time Eileen watched her lifereel, it was as though she was watching it for the very first time, reacquainting herself with the memories that marked the progression of her 90 years on planet Earth.
A few months later, she passed away.
If you’ve ever talked to a parent or grandparent about the past, and thought ‘We really ought to write this stuff down’, here’s my advice:
Don’t.
Sit them in front of a camera and interview them on video.
Make a lifereel.
Half of a story is in the telling, and most people aren’t natural writers. But everyone can sit down and talk about their life. I’m so glad that I had the foresight to sit down with my grandma and interview her, to capture her memories while she still had them.
I will always have that piece of her. I’ll get to introduce her to my future children.
Obsessed with the potential of the lifereel, I decided to film an interview with my mum. I was prepared this time, with better lighting and a list of carefully curated questions.
We sat down for a few hours and talked about her life. Just like with my grandma, the stories were funny, introspective, and often emotional.
“I felt a lump under my arm… It was diagnosed as lymphoma.”
She talked to me about her time spent in hospital, the chemo, baldness, endless infections and eventual remission.
“I suppose it would be a bit worrying if it did reappear. You’ve had so much chemo that they probably can’t give you much more... Things are improving all the time… you’d hopefully stand a chance.”
A silence.
“You’ll be fine.” I say.
She laughs.
Only a few months after the interview took place, mum’s lymphoma reappeared. She’s been back on chemo and has undergone some new therapies, and we’re hopeful.
What I hope to impress upon you is that the best time to do this is now.
We never know when memories will start to fade.
We never know when health problems will arise.
And if there’s anything the last 2 years have taught us, it’s this:
We never know how long we have with the people we love.
We owe it to them, to ourselves, and to future generations to capture those memories that would otherwise have been lost in time.
If you’re interested in making a lifereel but don’t know the first thing about filmmaking or editing, I’ve set up a website at lifereel.co — it’s an online course to teach you everything you need to know about making a lifereel of your own.
But beyond that, I hope I’ve convinced you to go and record an interview with a loved one. You don’t even have to edit it into a lifereel, but please go and film an interview!
You will not regret it.
