Questions About Your Alternative Guest Book and Recording Life Stories

An Audio Guestbook is a old style telephone that has been adapted to record voice messages rather than make calls. These are used at special occasions and events a a replacement for the traditional guestbook. A personalised message can be recorded to encourage guests to leave their message. Then on the day the phone just needs turned on a placed in an accessible location so guests can pick up the phone and leave their well wishes and memories in their own voice for you to relive in the future.

While other companies offer the phone and sign hire they just provide you with the raw or slightly edited messages. What I do differently is I combine the cleaned up messages with music from your special occasions such as the song you walked down the aisle to or the song that was playing when you had your first kiss etc.

This also brings all the messages together into one easy to listen to file rather than having to click through them all individually.

I do also provide all the cleaned up audio messages as individual files alongside your edited audio guestbook.

When you enquire about purchasing an Audio Guestbook I will ask you what date or dates the event will be held so I can ensure the guestbook phone is available on those dates. Once this is confirmed I will then arrange a date a few days before your event to deliver the guestbook phone so that you have it in plenty time for your event. This will either be delivered in person or by post. This also means you have time to familiarise yourself with it and record your welcome message, there will be instructions included on how you do this. You or someone you trust can ensure the phone is set up on the event day. When the event is over the phone should be returned to me, either by post or I can pick it up. I then download the audio, make sure it sounds good and pair the messages with your selected songs and interviews depending on the package you have chosen. You will then receive the audio digitally for a approval before I send out your own USB with the audio loaded onto it for you to keep forever.

An audio time capsule is a personalised audio documentary, recording life stories and preserving memories in their own voice. It's like a private podcast or audiobook all about yourself or a loved one that can be shared with family and friends. It involves interviewing a person or multiple people about their life story in one or more sessions and recording this. This is then professionally edited together with songs chosen by them and sounds to enhance their stories and reflects their personality. The finished product is available digitally or in physical media forms such as USB sticks or CDs so this can be listened back to by family or friends and can be shared with every future generation.

For the interview I usually ask the subject to prepare a bullet pointed list of what they would like to discuss. This helps to get people thinking about what they want to say before hand and usually makes the recording flow better.

It helps for this to be in a rough order, for example beginning with who they are, their family history, their parents, their birth, early years and school, growing up, jobs they had, holidays they went on, relationships and stories up to the present day. Whilst they recount their story from this list I can ask additional questions that I think could be interesting to add and usually the subject remembers more stories naturally too. You are also free to let me know specific topics in advance that I can also ask about.

If the subject does not wish to write down a list of stories to discuss I can conduct a typical question and answer interview. However, this can sometimes make people feel quite on the spot and they can often remember more they wished to say after the recording is over

I tailor this to you!

The shortest interview session would be an hour for a 30 minute audio time capsule. I can spend the whole day with you or I can split longer interviews over multiple days.

This helps to maximise the memories and stories that are captured in your audio time capsule.

I should also note that if you have chosen a Bronze Package I would spend around an hour with you. If you have chosen a Gold Package I can spend a few hours with you.

The different packages are there to suit different price ranges for the audio time capsules.

No matter what package you pick you can rest assured that every audio time capsule will be professionally recorded and crafted.

I base these on the length of time I can spend on your capsule so I can spend longer talking to you and creating your capsule with a Silver and Gold packages than I can with Bronze.

The business and charity/community group packages offer different services such as podcasting adverts and documentaries so packages and prices will be tailored to suit the individual requirements here.

This depends on a number of factors. First a consultation should take place and a date arraigned for the interview recording to take place. The recording could be done in one day or across multiple sessions on multiple days.

Once the recording has been completed the editing and mixing of the audio should take no more than a week when it would be sent to you for final approval. Once you are happy with the audio time capsule and this has been confirmed with me I will package the final product as requested and send this to you.

The exact amount of time the edit and mixing would take depends on the package purchased e.g. a Bronze Capsule would take less time to edit than a Gold Capsule.

When you buy a gift certificate you will either get a e-gift certificate or physical gift certificate that you can gift to the person you wish to record an audio time capsule. Once they have received the gift certificate you or they can reach out to me to arrange the recording date where I will visit the subjects house (unless otherwise arraigned) and record their life story. I then edit the audio and deliver their audio time capsule in the preferred formats.

I take the recording and use my experience to professionally edit it into an audio documentary about the subject including music and sounds to build on the stories told. This helps to recreate them in the listeners mind and reflect the personality of the subject through their song choices

Editing the audio is the part of making an audio time capsule that takes the longest amount of time. From cleaning it up (removing any coughs or any part with me asking questions) to picking out the best stories to make into the capsule. I also take the time to build a narrative that helps each part of the subject's life story flow together into an understandable story that is easy to listen through. Then I build on that with sounds and music to tie everything together like a nice neat little audio bow. That is mostly what you will pay for when you buy an audio time capsule.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to answering this question.

- I have experience in interviewing a range of people that allows me to pick up on certain parts of the interview and ask more questions about that to get just a bit more information out of the subject.

- The equipment I use is professional quality and will achieve a clearer sound than a phone recording would.

- I can licence certain music for use in these audio time capsules that is included in the price.

I offer a transcription of your audio time capsule that would also be included on delivery of the product.

All of the images on the website and social media have alt text associated with them, I try to keep fonts clear and a decent readable size and I try to keep a high colour contrast to make sure all text is legible.

If there is anything more I can do to make the products or website more accessible for you do get in touch.