Placeholder imageA single life
The Cornerstone
The single person a family is built around, in one unhurried portrait. The voice, the laugh, the turns of phrase that are theirs alone.
EnquirePut an extraordinary life on film.
Family history almost always reaches the next generation secondhand, retold and slowly lost. We capture yours at the source. The result is a premium documentary, kept for future generations, with the whole experience handled for you.
Ways to tell a life.
How you frame your story is as essential as what you say. Here are the types of films we offer.
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Placeholder imageA great love
The Long Love
Two lives and the years between them. How they met, what they made, and the bond that still holds.
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Placeholder imageA whole family
The Gathering
Many voices, one film. Each person remembering the parts the others had forgotten.
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Placeholder imageA life in full
The Opus
A life at feature length. Every chapter restored and followed all the way to its end.
EnquireAnything you imagine
A Film of Your Own
If none of these is quite right, we will shape a film entirely around your unique specifications, in whatever form the story asks for. Tell us what you picture, and we will build it.
EnquireEvery detail, quietly handled.
A concierge experience, from the first call to the finished film. Your family carries nothing.
For many families it becomes the first time in years that a parent is asked to tell their whole story, slowly and with full attention, and the first time everyone gathers to listen. We carry every detail, so your family can simply be there for it.
This is made for one audience only: you, your family, and the people you love. It is never a commercial and never for show, and it is meant to be done once, while the story can still be told first-hand.
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We listen, then handle everything
It begins with an unhurried conversation about your family and the story worth telling. From there, every arrangement is ours: the planning, the scheduling, the travel, and an afternoon spent looking through old photographs together. Your family lifts not a finger.
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We film, at home
A small and gentle crew comes to a place that feels comfortable. There is no rush and nothing to perform. Most people forget the camera within minutes, and find themselves enjoying the rare gift of being asked, at length, about their own life.
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We finish it, and gather everyone
We shape everything they shared into a cinematic film, then deliver it as an occasion: your family together, the lights low, the story beginning. You keep it as an heirloom, alongside a private archive of everything, held in your name.
Get in touch
The quality we hold limits how many films we make, so we take only a few families a year.
Our services.
Each is shaped to your family, and made to be handed down.
The Portrait
A short filmEight to fifteen minutes, filmed in a single relaxed day at home. A whole life distilled to its essence, delivered as a keepsake to hand down.
EnquireThe Chronicle
A full documentaryTwenty to thirty minutes, filmed across several visits, with the people who love them adding their own memories. Finished with a private premiere. Most families choose this.
EnquireThe Lineage
The complete storyA feature-length film across more than one generation, with travel, restored archives, museum-quality packaging, and an archive we tend for years to come. By invitation.
RequestFilms begin at $19,000. We agree the final commission together on the first call, and a deposit holds your place for the year.
Questions families ask.
Most films take three to four months: enough time to plan, to film without rushing, and to edit with the care a life deserves.
Most often a son or daughter commissions it for a parent or grandparent. But any life is worth telling, including a couple, a founder, or your own, captured now for the people who will one day wish they had asked.
Yes. We film at home, at their pace, with a small and gentle crew, and we build the whole day around them. Most people forget the camera within minutes.
It is theirs, and no one else's. Real voice, real words, recorded exactly as they were spoken. We never script, clone, or fake anyone's voice. We use software only for ordinary cleanup, like reducing background noise and balancing color. All human authorship, nothing artificial, written into your contract.
Films begin at $19,000. The final price depends on the length and the work involved, and we settle it together before anything begins.
With a short, free call, and no obligation. If it feels right, a deposit holds your place and we begin to plan.
Yes, wherever the story lives.
Founder · on setMade by a person, not a machine.
I have spent my career behind a documentary camera, and I have learned that the moments worth keeping are never the rehearsed ones. They arrive when someone forgets the lens and simply speaks: the catch in the voice, the sudden laugh, the long pause before a hard memory. I started Prima Persona so families could hold on to exactly that.
Every film is led by me, from the first conversation to the final cut. Nothing is scripted, nothing is faked, and nothing is left to a machine, because a story this precious deserves a person who treats it as their own.
Javin · Founder, Prima Persona
Start your family's film.
Tell us about the person whose story you would like to keep. Share a little or a lot, and a real person, never an automated reply, will write back within one business day. The first conversation is always free, and the sooner we begin, the more of their story we can keep, in their own words.
By appointment · Austin, Texas · hello@primapersona.co