Help me interview my parents for posterity.

December 16, 2008 11:43 AM

How much time should I set aside to interview my parents for an oral history project? How many topics should I expect to cover? And who can I get to transcribe the video later?

My parents aren't old (they're both in their mid-fifties) but I've decided to start an oral history project with them while I'm home for Christmas. My aunt tried to do this with my great grandmother when she was in her nineties, and by then it was too late, so I want to get a head start.

Searching through old MeFi and AskMe posts pointed me toward this great book on personal histories, to the Smithsonian's guide to oral history, and to Story Corps' DIY guide to interviewing, so I'm all set for good questions to ask and for how to set up. But since this is going to be an ongoing project (which I intend to work on pretty much every time I'm home, a few times a year) I want to figure out how many hour-long interview sessions (which is the limit my camera gives me before I have to upload) I should try to do over five days, and how much ground I ought to try to cover—how focused or unfocused I ought to be.

I'd love to discuss my parents' childhoods, but I'd also really like to discuss how they met and the first few years of their relationship, before my sister and I came along. Should I focus on specific stories that I know about (my mom's family at the 1965 World's Fair, my dad's road trip with his grandparents), or will that narrow things too much?

Also, as my digital video isn't guaranteed to last, I want to have someone transcribe the interviews. Know any good transcription services?

posted by ocherdraco to society & culture (6 answers total)

Interviewing is exhausting, both for the interviewer and the interviewee. I would not be comfortable with more than one, one hour session in a five day period; since your opportunities are limited to a few visits a year, maybe two.

You really don't want to make it an arduous task for anyone involved, you know? Maybe just start with one hour per parent on the first visit and see how it feels for everyone.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:53 PM on December 16, 2008

Anyone have any ideas about video transcription?
posted by ocherdraco at 2:53 PM on December 16, 2008

Regarding transcribing: you can easily do it yourself...there's a program called Inqscribe for video transcribing. They offer a 30-day trial so you can see if you like it before you buy. I transcribe part-time for a company and that's what I use. I'm sure you can also google "transcription company" and find someone who will take it on, but I don't know how much you are looking to pay. Most companies are charging at least $1.25-$1.75/minute, which will add up quickly.
posted by Bella Sebastian at 3:21 PM on December 16, 2008

DarlingBri is a little conservative in my opinion. I regularly do 3-5 20-40 minute interviews in a day, which is exhausting, but somewhere between 1 hour in a week and 2 hours a day is probably a sweet spot. You are a bit ahead of many interviewers in that you have an established relationship with the people and at least some shared knowledge of what they are going to tell you. This will make the interviews easier on both of you, and probably the best thing to do is to interview them for an hour, assess how you both feel, and decide how frequently you could do this. For me, I think I would be able to do 1-2 of these types of interviews per day (but only one for the interviewee, that is, I could interview 2 people for one hour each a day), given the fact that my family is talkative and would probably only need a little prompting to tell stories for an hour.

I think another thing to consider is what do you want your final product to be? Are you going to write a book, edit a video? Are you going to keep the original videos without editing? This could influence how you ask your questions: if you are going to write a book, then it doesn't matter so much if they range all over the place. But if your final product will be videos, especially if you aren't editing them, you might want to have some more thematic sessions.

Transcribing is a time-consuming practice. Figure 2-3 times the length of the audio (assuming you are only transcribing the words, and not also describing the visual) if you are a fast typist, longer if you are not. If back-up is your main concern, you might want to consider other options. However, there are a number of cheap and free options for transcribing that you can look into, more for PC than Apple, but nevertheless. I'm only doing audio recording, so I don't have a lot of info on video transcribers, but I found Transana when researching my audio options, and it looks pretty good for video.
posted by carmen at 6:22 AM on December 17, 2008

"DarlingBri is a little conservative in my opinion"

That is the only time in my entire life this statement has ever been made about me. I may get it put on a t-shirt now :)
posted by DarlingBri at 8:58 AM on December 17, 2008

:) Well, as W.S. Gilbert says, I often think it's comical / How Nature always does contrive / That every boy and every gal / That’s born into the world alive / Is either a little Liberal / Or else a little Conservative!

Joking aside, on the transcription, I'm not looking for tips on how to do it myself. I'm lousy at transcription—I once did some as a job during college and ended up having to quit because I was just too damn slow.

What I'm looking for are suggestions for services that will do it for me that are relatively inexpensive but fairly accurate.

Carmen, my plans are to keep the full video to be transcribed (I'll likely prettify the transcriptions and print them in a book), but to edit the video for presentation.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:17 AM on December 17, 2008