“I want to capture this person just the way I know them.”
With their voice, their laugh and their way of telling a story a little bit better each time than it really was. MyBestGoodbye gives people the chance to tell their life story in their own voice and to preserve it for the people who matter to them.
The first conversation takes 30 minutes and is free of charge.
Photos show you what someone looked like. They don’t tell you how they told a story.
People own more pictures of their families today than ever before, and yet the stories are often missing. Many families seem to know certain stories by heart. Only years later do they realize that nobody remembers exactly how they went.
Many people at first associate a memory film with serious illness. But it is worth asking: Why do we wait until time runs short before we start asking questions about a life?
Our everyday life produces endless memory material.
Holiday pictures, Christmas videos, birthday photos, voice messages and about three hundred photos of the same sunset. What is often missing is the moment when someone deliberately asks:
“Tell me. How did it all actually begin?”
That is exactly where MyBestGoodbye begins. From single memories, a told life story emerges.
Maybe you know one of these moments.
You know for sure that your father told this story a hundred times. But suddenly you can’t quite piece it together yourself.
Your daughter asks you what Grandma was like as a young woman, and you realize you never asked her yourself.
You find an old photo of your parents and realize that nobody knows where it was taken.
Dad tells the same story at dinner yet again. Everyone rolls their eyes. And at some point you would give quite a lot to hear it one more time.
Every person carries stories that exist only once.
I have a personal conversation with a person about their life: about where they come from, love, decisions, mistakes, turning points, the holiday where everything went wrong, the really good stories and what they would like to pass on to their loved ones.
From this comes a film in which you truly experience this person, with their voice, their laugh, their way of telling a story and their view of life.
No special occasion is needed.
Sometimes the person in front of the camera first thinks: “My life isn’t really special.” Usually this is said by someone who, two minutes later, tells how in 1974 they drove all the way to Morocco in a borrowed Beetle. To you, your life is normal. To your family, it is their story.
Some films are made because someone consciously wants to preserve their story for their family.
Perhaps at 60, 70 or 85, because a person wants to pass on a part of their life.
Others are made because a person knows their time is limited.
Then they want to consciously leave something behind for their family, and both belong to MyBestGoodbye.
“I want to leave my loved ones something of me that truly sounds like me.”
This is how your film is made.
You tell your story, and I take care of everything else. You are in charge of coffee and cake.
We get to know each other
In a free 30-minute conversation, we talk about the person in question, your wishes and whether we are a good match.
The interview
I come to your home or to a place that means something to you. We start at the beginning, and you get as many breaks as you need.
The film
From the conversation, a high-quality film is made, with the stories that make you laugh and the moments when it goes quiet.
The handover
You receive the film in durable formats, backed up in several places, and you decide who may watch it and when.
“We can just record that ourselves.”
Yes. And it is wonderful when families do that. When a father tells his child his life story, he is talking with his child, and both share decades of common history.
Many details are taken for granted. Some questions never arise because both believe they already know the answer. I don’t know the story yet and can start from zero.
“Wait – how did that even come about?”
“What did your parents say back then?”
“How did you feel about it?”
“Why did you decide to do it anyway?”
A side remark can suddenly turn into half an hour of life story. You can set up the camera yourselves. The difference is the stories that emerge when someone listens who doesn’t know them yet.
And yes, sometimes that includes the story of Uncle Ernie, who made some spectacularly bad decision in 1987 after his third glass of red wine. Of course, that goes in.
Questions that start stories with me.
Which of these would you like to ask your mother, your father or yourself one day?
- How did you actually meet the love of your life?
- What was the dumbest decision of your life?
- What did you do that your children had better not know about?
- When were you truly happy?
- Which holiday went completely wrong?
- Which mistake would you make again?
- What do you absolutely want to pass on to your children?
What MyBestGoodbye stands for.
- A life doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be worth telling.
- The most interesting family stories usually feel completely normal to those who lived them.
- We should ask people questions while we can still hear their answers.
- A person tells their story differently when someone sits across from them who doesn’t know it yet.
- The story that makes the whole family roll their eyes after the first sentence is usually the one you will miss the most later.
- A good film makes you laugh and cry, often within five minutes.
I’m Vanessa, and I’m curious about people.
I sit across from you, listen, and stay with a side remark when I sense there is a story behind it. For a few hours, my whole attention belongs to this one person and their life.
The idea of preserving family stories had been on my mind for a long time, especially because my grandmother always told me stories about her childhood, and years later I could no longer remember so many of the details. When I suddenly lost my godfather, it became clear to me how much I would give to truly know his story, to see his carefree laughter once more and to hear his inspiring words, in a video film like the ones MyBestGoodbye captures.
In my conversations, laughter is welcome, quite a lot of it. It may also go quiet, and both belong to a life.
In the end, a film is made about this person and their life, which a family can watch together today, and maybe one day again for a completely different reason. Then you hear that voice again, that laugh and that one way of ending a sentence, and for a moment the feeling is back:
“Yes. That’s exactly how she was.”
Book an introductory callMyBestGoodbye – Remember – Recognize – Feel