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Personal Video Biographies

When Greg Farnese and Laurie Appel aren't doing their day jobs -- he's a cameraman at Philadelphia sport events, she's a clinical psychologist -- they are working in a new niche of the video market. The Swedesboro, N.J. couple produce 20-minute documentary biographies of ordinary Americans.

The customer provides still photos and home videos, if they exist, and a list of people to interview. Laurie does the interviewing and writing, and Greg edits the video on his home computer and narrates. The price, which averages around $8,000, varies according to the number of interviews and locations.

The result: a present for the living, a memorial for the dying -- and a personal possession that wouldn't look out of place on many cable channels. NPR's Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered, takes a look at the "professional" home video trend.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Robert Siegel
Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.