Tribute Films and Documentaries of Your Life?

Times have changed since the grainy, choppy home movies of yesteryear. We live in a time that allows us to document our lives, our history and our heritage, but most of us still do not have professional-quality video that captures major milestones in our lives or documents our family history. Mad Props Productions, a New York-based professional film production company, is changing all that.

Founded by husband and wife team Christy and Jonny Sheehan, both of whom have years of professional film and TV production experience, Mad Props Productions creates both short- and long-form broadcast-quality films to honor the lives of everyday people. Clients hire them to produce tribute videos to honor people’s birthdays, retirements, upcoming weddings and other major events or to create family documentaries.

The Sheehans founded Mad Props Productions when some tribute videos they produced for fun captivated their audience and created a demand for more. They loved making the videos so much that they decided to make their passion into a business.

“Mad Props Production was a natural outgrowth of my desire to figure out everybody’s life story,” says Christy Sheehan, whose journalistic curiosity led her from studying English at Oberlin College into a career writing for many media outlets, including VH1, A&E and Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine. She later produced a short biography on Althea Gibson that aired on USA Network’s coverage of the U.S. Open. “What we do is very similar to the biographies and specials that are produced for TV. In a way, we can help anyone feel like a star.”

The DVDs that Mad Props produces are often given as gifts or screened at parties and events.

“The experience of watching a professionally produced film about the guest or guests of honor draws people together and gives shape to the event,” says Jonny Sheehan, who attended The New School Eugene Lang College and whose television production work has aired on NBC, ABC, MTV, VH1, A&E Biography and other outlets. “Most people are very visual, so what they remember most from any event is what they see.”

What guests do not see is all the time the Sheehans and their crew put in to creating these tribute films. They spend hours interviewing their friends and family, carefully lighting each interviewee and applying their make-up so they look their best. They pour over decades’ worth of accumulated photos to identify just the ones to include in the film. The music aficionados search their extensive library to create a musical score that expresses the sentiments of the film. Then, they edit all the content to tell a story through the video.

Mad Props Docs is a new service the company offers, producing family documentaries to capture stories and historical information for future generations. With this service, the Mad Props team works closely with the client to select photos and video footage from the client’s library and then shoots additional footage and records voice-over and music to help tell the family’s story.

“Imagine the next generation of your family being able to see and hear their great-grandmother explain what her life and the 20th century experience was like,” says Christy Sheehan. “The power to connect generations who are getting older with those who are just starting out, or even those not yet born, is what Mad Props Docs brings to its clients.”

Mad Props now offers a “Director’s Cut” service, editing people’s photo and video collections to show the most meaningful images and organizing them either thematically or chronologically. “This service answers the question, ‘What are we going to do with that box of photos?’” says Christy Sheehan.

The Mad Props team serves clients throughout the U.S. and parts of Canada, with video rates starting at $5,000; custom packages are available. For more information, visit www.madpropsproductions.com or call 718-288-6023.

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 Media contact: Lisa Elia PR Phone: 310-479-0216 Fax: 888-548-5950 e-mail: Email Contact

SOURCE: Mad Props Productions