It wasn’t until I held my first child that I real­ized life wasn’t about me, it was about fam­ily.  Watch­ing my par­ents and my wife’s par­ents con­tinue to age and see­ing them inter­act with their grand­kids is what got me into this busi­ness.  I am very pas­sion­ate about my work, and I believe it shows up in every project.

“Find what you love to do, and every­thing else will fall into place.”  I’ve heard many vari­a­tions of this through­out my pro­fes­sional life.  It wasn’t until I started Fam­ily Doc­u­men­taries in 1999 that I began to expe­ri­ence this for myself.  I absolutely LOVE what I do!  I have been doing this full-time for over 10 years, and I’m just as excited now as I was when I started.

Before open­ing Fam­ily Doc­u­men­taries, I spent months talk­ing with other fam­ily based video com­pa­nies to learn as much as I could and get a feel for the mar­ket.  I found that most of them had a strat­egy to turn out prod­uct in as lit­tle time as pos­si­ble so they could keep their pric­ing as low as pos­si­ble.  I found this to be very dis­cour­ag­ing.  I wanted to cre­ate videos that could really evoke emo­tion, not just slap some­thing together for the sake of a pay­check.   So against everyone’s advice, I took a gam­ble and started Fam­ily Doc­u­men­taries with idea that peo­ple would be will­ing to pay a lit­tle extra for a bet­ter video expe­ri­ence.  I obvi­ously made the right choice.  My busi­ness has grown every year since I started.  Many of my cus­tomers are from refer­rals and repeat busi­ness, and I can afford to take the time to do the kind of work that is really satisfying.

I believe Fam­ily Doc­u­men­taries is a suc­cess today because peo­ple have come to appre­ci­ate the emo­tion that I bring to their most val­ued trea­sures, their fam­ily his­to­ries.  Whether it’s a wed­ding, mile­stone birth­day or the cel­e­bra­tion of the pass­ing of a loved one, I treat you and your fam­ily as if you where my own.

~ Jim Rei­den­baugh, Owner