Questions

For a service or a visitation, most families choose the Tribute film — a life in order, from the earliest photographs to the most recent. If you would rather the pictures simply play, at length and uninterrupted, choose the Photo tribute. If you want something short that relatives can watch on a phone wherever they are, choose the Life story trailer.

If you are not sure, write to us and describe the person and the occasion. We will tell you which one we would make, including when the answer is the cheaper one.

Tribute film, 3–6 minutes. Photo tribute, 3–5 minutes. Life story trailer, 60–90 seconds. Anniversary “Our story”, 2–3 minutes. Milestone birthday or retirement, 1–2 minutes. Personal hero film, 45–75 seconds.

These are the lengths the films settle at naturally. A film is not padded to reach a number, and a life is not cut short to fit one.

A Tribute film is a story. Photographs are chosen, ordered and cut to music, some are brought into motion, and the whole thing is shaped to carry someone from beginning to end.

A Photo tribute is your photographs at full length, restored, moved and cut to music, with nothing generated at all. It is the film that plays in the room while people arrive. Families who want only their own pictures, exactly as they are, choose this one.

Whatever you have. A tribute film usually draws on thirty to a hundred photographs; a single cherished picture can become a moving moment on its own. For films with new scenes of a person, 15–25 clear photos of them work best.

Each film includes a number — up to 60 for a Tribute film or Photo tribute, up to 40 for an anniversary film, up to 30 for a milestone film, up to 25 for a trailer. Beyond that, each additional 25 photographs is $49.00.

Send everything you have regardless. We would rather choose from too many than ask you to go looking again, and we will tell you before adding anything to your order.

That is enough. Some of the best films we have made came from fewer than a dozen pictures. A small number of photographs, restored properly and given time on screen, reads as deliberate rather than thin.

Yes, and the work nests, so the second one is not simply double. If you order a film, the living portraits and the print-ready restorations that film needs are half price as separate files — $34.50 and $19.50 each instead of $69.00.

Three films or more and we would rather price it for you as a person than let a form do it. Write to us.

Yes: anniversaries, milestone birthdays, retirements, weddings and personal films, with the same care and the same consent rules.

Yes. Restoring faded, scratched and torn photographs is part of what we do. Phone photos of prints work too.

No, and please do not. Photograph them with your phone and send the photographs. An original print lost in the post cannot be replaced, and we have never needed one.

If a print is severely damaged and you want it handled as a restoration job in its own right, write to us first and we will quote it separately.

After you order you get a private link of your own. It is where you send photographs, watch your film when it is ready, and download it. Send a few or all of them, and come back to add more at any time.

Yes, up until we begin building. Your link stays yours. The thing to know is that the clock starts when your photographs reach us, so adding a late batch moves the date.

Yes. We can use the photograph as it is, or lift one person out of it. Tell us which you want. If a group photograph is the only picture you have of someone, say so — it changes how we treat it.

Much less than you would think. Flat, even light matters more than megapixels: lay the print down, stand so your shadow is not on it, and fill the frame. A phone photograph taken that way beats a scan taken carelessly.

It shouldn’t, and if it does, we fix it. Motion is kept subtle and every face is checked against your originals before delivery.

We start from your photograph and we enlarge it — we do not draw it again. The restoration repairs what time did to the print. The motion is added to the picture that is already there: a slight turn, breath, cloth moving, light changing.

Every film starts from your own pictures. We restore and animate what’s there. We don’t manufacture a stranger who only resembles them.

No. For a memorial film we will not build a likeness model of your relative, and we will not generate their face. The face in the film is the face in your photograph, enlarged and moved — never redrawn.

The one place a model of a person is trained is the Personal hero film, and that is for living people only, with their own consent. It is a different product with a different rule, and it is never applied to someone who has died.

No, unless you ask us to and it is your own family. If they are smiling in the photograph, they smile in the film. If they are not, they are not.

This is a firm rule rather than a limitation. The moment we start adjusting a face to be more pleasing, it stops being them.

If you have a recording of their real voice, we can include it exactly as it is, and that is always the better choice.

We will never imitate the voice of someone who has passed. A generated voice is offered on the consent form as an option you choose deliberately, it is not a recording of their real voice, and we say so on the form and again on delivery. Most families choose music only, or words on screen, and it is never the lesser choice.

Some films place the person in an imagined setting — a garden, a shore. These are plainly symbolic, and we describe them to you that way before we build them.

We will not portray real events that did not happen as though they were a record. A wedding that did not take place does not get staged.

Music is properly licensed. If you want a particular song and we cannot license it, we will tell you rather than quietly use it, and we will find something close.

No. We will not include third-party logos, brands or copyrighted characters, however much a family loved them. A team cap in an original photograph is part of the photograph and stays; the badge does not get added to anything.

Five business days from the day your photographs reach us — not from the day you order, because we cannot begin before they arrive.

Yes. Rush delivery is $99.00 and puts the film in your hands within 48 hours of your photographs reaching us.

Often, yes, with rush delivery — but write to us or call before you order rather than after. We will tell you honestly whether we can, and we would rather turn the order away than take money for a film that arrives the day after the funeral.

When your photographs reach us, and not before. If you order on Monday and send photographs on Thursday, the five days run from Thursday.

A saved order is kept for 60 days with the code we give you. Enter that code on the order page and everything comes back — quantities, samples and notes.

Yes, always. Nothing is delivered to a funeral home, shown at a service, or sent to anyone else until you have seen it and said yes. You watch a watermarked preview first; nothing is final until you approve it.

Two rounds. Further changes are available for a fee we will tell you before doing the work.

Note the time of anything that needs changing — “0:14, this photograph is too dark”, “0:22, the cut is abrupt” — rather than describing it generally. Timecoded notes get fixed in one pass; general notes usually take three.

A standard MP4 — the same kind of file a phone records. It plays on any phone, laptop, smart TV or chapel screen with nothing to install, and it is yours to copy, email or put on a USB stick.

Yes. An MP4 is what chapel systems expect. If the funeral director has asked for a particular size or format, tell us before we finish and we will deliver it that way as well.

By a private link. The download link lasts three days, so please download the film when it arrives rather than leaving it in your inbox. Once it is on your own device it is yours permanently.

If a link expires, write to us and we will send a new one. Nobody has ever lost a film this way and we do not intend to start.

Yes. You get a permanent, royalty-free license to keep, copy, share and show the film for personal and family purposes, including at a service and on your own social accounts.

Tribute film $395.00 · Photo tribute $195.00 · Life story trailer $295.00 · Anniversary “Our story” $295.00 · Milestone birthday or retirement $249.00 · Personal hero film $349.00.

Restored living portrait $69.00 each, three for $179.00 — one photograph repaired and then brought to life, delivered as both the print-ready still and the clip. Rush delivery $99.00. Each additional 25 photographs $49.00.

The order page prices your exact combination, including the discounts below, before you pay anything.

Not a coupon, but the pricing nests. Order a film and the living portraits are half price — $34.50 each — because that work is being done for your film anyway, and what you are paying for is receiving them as separate files of your own to print, frame and send to family. Inside a film order you can also add print-ready restorations of photographs you do not want brought to life, at $19.50 each.

Bundles always take the cheapest combination automatically. You cannot accidentally pay more by ordering in the wrong order.

Yes, where the law requires it. For New Jersey that is 6.625%, added at checkout and shown before you pay.

By card, or with the digital wallet and PayPal options shown at checkout. Payment is handled by Stripe.

No. We never see your full card number. Payment happens on Stripe’s own checkout page and your card details never touch our site.

Three situations, plainly:

• You cancel before we begin — refunded in full.
• You are not satisfied after the included revisions and we cannot put it right — we refund 50% of the price.
• We decline your order — refunded in full.

Because each film is made to order from your own materials, we cannot offer a general change-of-mind refund once production has begun.

Yes. Funeral directors should write to us about partner arrangements rather than ordering at the prices above.

Because we are working with photographs of a real person, and we will not do that on an assumption. The form is one page. It records that you have the right to give us the photographs, what you want done with them, and what you do not want done.

Nothing is made before it is signed.

The people building your film, and nobody else. Your photographs are used only for your film. They are not shown to other customers, not used as samples, and not published anywhere without you asking us to.

They are deleted when we are done, or sooner if you ask.

No. We do not sell your materials, and we require the production services we use not to train their own models on them.

Yes. It lives on a private link that is not listed anywhere and not indexed by search engines. It is yours to share; it is not ours to show.

Yes, at any time, including before the film is finished. Write to us and say so.

Yes, and it is how most families reach us. We can work directly with the home, or alongside it with the family as our customer. See for funeral homes, or write to us and we will come and show you the work.

Yes. The consent still has to come from the family, and the family still approves the film before it is shown. Those two do not move.

That is what it is for. The license covers showing it at a service, and the file format is the one chapel equipment expects. Tell us if your system needs something specific.

Tell us, with timecodes, and we fix it. Two rounds of changes are included and most films need less than one. If after that we still cannot put it right, we refund 50% of the price.

Every film goes through a likeness check with you before delivery. If it doesn’t look like them, it isn’t finished.

Yes. We may decline an order we find distasteful or that we believe would harm someone, and we refund it in full. It has to be said out loud so that you know the line exists.

We own the copyright in the film as a creative work, and you get a permanent, royalty-free license to keep, copy, share and show it for personal and family purposes. Your photographs remain entirely yours — that never changes.

Write to contact@echoesoflife.ai. A person answers, usually the one who would build your film. If you have an order already, quote its reference and it saves us both a message.