What a Community Interview Costs and What Moves the Price

Starting from what you are paying for

A community interview looks simple from the outside: two people sit down and talk. The price reflects everything around that conversation. Samuel Okafor, our Interviews Editor, spends time before the recording learning about the person, agreeing on topics and making sure the guest knows how the story will be used. After the recording comes the longer stretch of work, turning an hour or more of speech into a first-person piece a reader can follow without effort. When we quote a Community Interviews project, we are pricing that whole chain rather than the hour at the table. The recording is often the shortest part. Transcription, editing, a read-back with the guest and a portrait to sit beside the text all take time, and each is counted.

I am Daniel Whitfield, and I handle the quotations. People often ask me for a single figure, and I understand why. The honest answer is that a base price covers one conversation, one edited story and one portrait, and the final figure moves from there depending on a handful of choices. I would rather explain those choices openly than hand over a number that grows later.

The base: one conversation, one story, one portrait

For a single resident, our standard Community Interviews package starts at $950 CAD. That includes a preparatory call, a recorded conversation of up to ninety minutes, a full transcript, an edited first-person story of roughly 900 to 1,200 words, and one natural-light portrait of the guest taken the same day. The portrait is part of the price because we think the words and the face belong together. Claire Beaulieu, our Photo Editor, chooses the frame and writes the caption, so the image is considered rather than an afterthought. The guest also receives the edited text to read before anything is published, and one round of corrections is included.

What the base does not include is travel beyond the Kingston area, a second portrait setting, or a guest who wishes to be interviewed on more than one occasion. Those are real additions and we list them separately on the written quotation, so you can see which line is which.

• Preparatory call and recorded conversation up to ninety minutes
• Full transcript and edited story of about 900 to 1,200 words
• One natural-light portrait with caption
• One round of corrections after the guest reads the draft

What pushes the price up

The largest single driver is length. A conversation that runs three hours produces roughly twice the transcript, and the editing is not proportional to the final word count, because a long conversation has more to choose from and more to leave out. Cutting well takes longer than cutting a lot. A second driver is the number of voices. A story built around a family, a club or a small business with four people speaking is not four times the cost of one, but it is meaningfully more, since the pieces must be woven together and each person checked. Travel is a third factor: a visit to a farm, a harbour or a town hall outside Kingston adds time on the road and sometimes a night away.

Finally, there is the question of setting. A portrait in a kitchen or a workshop usually costs the same as one in our studio. A location that needs permission, extra lighting or a long wait for the right hour does not, and we will tell you at the quotation stage rather than after the visit.

• Longer recordings and heavier editing
• More than one guest in the same story
• Travel outside the Kingston area
• Locations that need permission or extra setup

What keeps it lower than you might expect

Some choices reduce the cost without reducing the care. A guest who can come to our Ontario Street studio saves the travel line entirely, and the natural light there is dependable on most days. Arriving with a rough idea of what you would like to talk about shortens the preparatory call and the editing, because the conversation needs less steering. Flexibility on timing also helps. If you are comfortable with us scheduling the session when our calendar is quieter, we can often fit it in without disturbing other work. We do not call that a discount, because the standard price is the price; it simply means fewer extras appear on your quotation.

Keeping to one portrait and one round of corrections is the plainest saving of all. Many guests find that a single carefully chosen image and a clear, honest draft are all they need, and the base package was built around exactly that.

How the quotation and payment work

Everything begins with an enquiry through the contact page. Tell us who you would like to interview, roughly how long you expect to talk, and where. I will reply with a written quotation that breaks the work into lines, so you can see the base and each addition. Nothing is charged until you have read it and confirmed in writing. Once you confirm, we book the session and send an invoice, which you pay by bank transfer. There is no checkout on this site and no card payment; the arrangement is deliberately plain. If you need to cancel or change the plan, our payment and refund policy sets out what happens at each stage, and I am glad to walk through it before you agree to anything.

Because the quotation is written, the figure on it is the figure you pay unless you ask us to change the scope. If a conversation runs longer than planned, we tell you before the editing begins, not after.

A sensible way to decide

If you are weighing whether an interview is worth the cost, ask what you want the finished piece to do. A family wanting a record of a grandparent's working life needs something different from a club marking an anniversary, and the second may justify more voices and a longer text. It can help to start small. One conversation, one story and one portrait is a complete piece on its own, and many people find it is the right size. You can always return later for another guest, and the first project will have shown you how we work.

Whatever you decide, ask for the quotation in writing and read it slowly. A fair price is one you understand line by line, and I would rather you understood ours than agreed to it quickly.