Jason Baffa presents … Heritage Films

Welcome to a unique opportunity. Imagine curating your own mini-documentary. Professionally crafted and artistically preserved for future generations. A document of a person, an artist, a craft, a family legacy … what we call a Heritage Film.

Commission a portrait for a digital age, curated by award winning filmmaker Jason Baffa.

Please reference this portrait on surfboard builder Tyler Hatzikian as a tonal example :

Why you? Why now?

Everyone has a story.
But what happens when time erodes, or erases the people who can tell it?

What legacy do you want to leave behind?
And how will it be carried forward?

A close filmmaking friend of mine recently and suddenly lost his mother to dementia—a brutal disease many families (including mine) know all too well. It led us into conversations about time … watching our children grow while our parents quietly age. We realized something unsettling. We’ve spent decades crafting award-winning documentary films—diving deeply into the lives of complete strangers—yet we haven’t preserved our own family stories.

My friend has so many questions for his mom that will now go unanswered.
If only there had been time to sit down. To talk. To record. To preserve.

Another friend lost his father to a sudden heart attack at a young age. The absence feels even heavier now that he has children his father never met. His dad loved the outdoors and devoted much of his life, and resources, to protecting the California coast, contributing to a land-preservation trust that is now stewarded by his children and passed on to his grandchildren. It’s a powerful legacy. But imagine how meaningful it would be if his father could tell that story himself—explaining why it mattered, and why it should continue to matter for generations to come.

That question stayed with me.

That’s how Heritage Films was born.

Heritage Films are created as a gift … for children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren … so they can truly know the people who came before them. Using our experience as documentary filmmakers, we record personal history and shape it with care: intimate interviews, family photographs, home movies, and thoughtfully curated visual storytelling.

Why should only a select few ever be the subject of a documentary?
Why not anyone with a story worth preserving?

Heritage Films exists to give families that opportunity.

We’re here to walk alongside you—honoring your story, your history, and your voice—one film at a time.

Whats Next?

A brief conversation with the subject (or about the subject). Discussion of scope and needed assets. Most shoots take 2-3 days. The best projects utilize legacy assets like family photos, old film or video, specific b-roll. These assets sometimes exist and sometimes need to be created (for example, an architect might want us to go out and shoot finished builds, an artist might already have a digital portfolio of work). Scope also includes story-tellers, as stories can be single source or include the Greek chorus of friends, family, collaborators to paint the most authentic and meaningful picture.

What Do I Get?

Deliverables include a hard-drive with a final, mixed, mastered 4K video file (the movie). Source materials archived in 5K (raw interviews, b-roll, scanned photos). Ability to request cutdown extractions of the material for public use.