Sometimes a laugh belongs in there.
The montage is silent. That does not always have to be absolute.
If you have a recording of his or her laugh, or a voice saying your name on an answerphone, or eight seconds of a speech at a birthday, we can place it against the right photographs and let it sit there once, in the middle of the quiet.
It has to land in the right place. One moment, at the point where the photographs have already earned it. Not a soundtrack, and never underneath a eulogy.
Sometimes it does not work. The recording is too rough, or the room is wrong for it, or it undoes what the silence was doing. We will try it, you will hear it, and if it is not right we take it out and nobody minds. The silent cut always exists either way.
1
Send what you have
Voicemail, video with his or her voice over it, a phone recording, an old cassette. Rough is fine. We clean it up.
2
One moment
We find the point in the montage where it belongs and place it there, against the photographs that carry it.
3
You hear it first
Always. Nobody is surprised by a voice in a chapel. If it is not right, it comes out.
4
Two files
The silent loop for the venue, and the version with the moment in it, for whenever the family wants it.