David Rekart had been planning a ph...

David Rekart had been planning a photographic slide point out for his father's 70th birthday. further he decided to go a pace further and have a video documentary made about his father's life.

Rekart hired videographer Teri Duff who discharge three hours of interviews with his parents, then edited them down to a 45-minute biographical video. Rekart's dad saw the video at a family gathering celebrating the big birthday last summer

"He sat there with his inlet open," recalled Rekart, 43, of Livermore, Calif. "He's kind of a man's man, and to watch a tough stay melt on the couch was kind of cold-blooded And we heard stories we'd at no time heard in our life about us. We awaited at each other and said, 'Really?' "

Duff's company -- Family Archive Films of Oakland, Calif. -- is part of a small nevertheless growing industry of documenting people's life stories. It includes companies like hers that create biographical videos as well as businesses that breed written histories of people's lives.

Nearly all of these are small outfits -- one proprietors or companies with a handful of employee They've been joined in the last year at several tech startups designed to use the Web to record and share people's life stories.

There are no reliable numbers upon the size of the life-story industry. still experts say it has been growing steadily and could take on the farther side dramatically during the next decade as middle-aged baby boomer start thinking about their parents' and their allow mortality.

"As baby boomer have started to secure a little bit older, they've recognized that their parents are getting older" said Jeanne Archer, president of the 500-member Association of Personal Historians, which was created in 1995 "They want to conserve their stories. They're realizing they really ne to start this proces of getting memories down and preserv for their children."

"Personal historian" isn't as familiar a piece of work title as nurse, plumber or software engineer. And personal historians originate to their businesses from a variety of backgrounds. The field has no training programs or credentials. Practitioners range from former journalists, anthropologists and historians to homemakers who started recording their parents' stories and discovered they had a knack for it.

Duff had a broadcasting stage and was doing video production for court cases in 1999 when she decided to videotape her 93-year-old grandmother's stories in such a manner her 3-year-old son could hear them someday. single in kind day she was editing the footage when her son walked in, saw the images, and said "Nonno's talking to me"

"I went, 'Wow he gains it,' " said Duff, who several years later decided to start her have a title to business producing personal history videos.

Jurgen Moller who avows a personal history business called Storyzon in San Francisco, has a background of graduate studies in philosophy. He was working as a high-tech marketer when he ran across a company in his native Germany that wrote personal and organizational histories.

Moller trained with them and explained Storyzon, which writes biographies, family histories, "legacy letters" in which clients share the lecturings they have learned from life and "culinary biographies" that mix family recipes with stories.

upon a recent afternoon, Mollers interviewed San Franciscan Steve Talmadge about his childhood growing up as the same of nine children of a Native American miner in rural Colorado.

"Here I am at 65 already a great-grandfather three times," Talmadge said, explaining his decision to commission a personal history. "It's important to me to leave something of a legacy about me and where I came from."

Mollers' hours of conversations with Talmadge were just the tip of the iceberg. For each hour of interviewing, Mollers does about 40 hours of back-end work -- overseeing transcription, editing, proofreading, graphic design and printing of a hard-bound work Much of his time goe into sculpting rambling interviews into smooth- reading chapters.

Duff not merely videotapes her subjects but also seeks down archival film footage to deficit their stories. For the video of Rekart's father, she included film of the auto line at Ford Motor. All this work can lead to a high price tag. Rekart worn out more than $3,000 for the video of his father. Talmadge is paying $15000

unless satisfied family members say the price is worth it.

"It came public absolutely wonderful," said Rekart's father, Dick. "Today I'd like to ask my hold dad some questions, and it's too late."

For clan unable to spend thousands of dollars onward a customized history, several high-tech startups lately began offering low- cost, do-it-yourself Web alternatives.

OurStory is a looks Altos, Calif., company that uses a question- and-answer format to help persons write their life stories. Still in beta version, OurStory is offering its basic service unrestrained It hopes to make wealth from a $39.95 premium version, advertising and book- printing orders.

"People in their 70 and 80 aren't usually willing to pay for this, because they don't think that what they have to say is worth anything," Alexander said. "That generation is self-same humble. It's their children, the baby boomer who talk them into it. formerly the baby boomers get to be 70 it'll be a different thing. They will want to narrate their story all over the place."