A Eulogy Montage can be a great way people to speak remotely at a funeral service, or as a way to send loving messages / memories to the bereaved from afar. Especially for friends and family who can’t currently travel or gather because of COVID-19, Montage can be a loving alternative. We’ve been seeing many touching examples of this recently.
While Montage is not specifically designed for funerals / eulogies, it can absolutely be used for this purpose.
If you’re considering using Montage to honor a loved one who has recently passed away, just keep in mind that Montage is typically used for celebratory events, so there may be aspects of the product that come across as slightly insensitive given the somber context of a person’s death.
For example, there may be instances of product copy-writing in the Montage user experience which mistakenly refer to the recipient in the present tense. Likewise, the general tone of our product can be quite celebratory (e.g. Exclamation marks!) which may seem disrespectful to certain audiences.
As the creator you can choose a “suggested time limit” which will be displayed on the invitation, but if people go over the time limit, their videos will still be submitted. We don’t actually enforce any time limits on videos, we just recommend them.
Pro Tip: Especially for this type of situation, we highly recommend people record their videos off-line (i.e. using the regular camera app on their phone) and then upload them to the Montage, as opposed to recording directly in the browser. This is just an extra measure you can take to ensure a smooth experience for them. If something goes wrong during the recording process, at least this way their video will not be lost.
When you go to create the Montage, you should enter the name of the deceased person as the “recipient.”
For the Montage “occasion,” please select Other, and then write in a custom title (i.e. “Funeral” or “Eulogy”). The name of the “recipient” will automatically be included in the title of the Montage. Do not include their name as part of the custom “occasion,” or it will appear twice in the invitation. (e.g. “Jane’s Jane’s Eulogy Montage”)
Next, when you get to the Creative Prompts options, be sure to edit any prompts that use the present tense, and check for any automatic prompts that could be inappropriate. For example, one of our standard prompts for birthdays is “Without John, the world would be…”
We recommend choosing the “Semi-Private” privacy option when you create the Montage. This will allow you to include a custom message on the invitation explaining how people’s videos will be used. For example, “This Montage will be shown at the funeral service on Sunday,” or “This Montage it will be publicly viewable online via social media.” The point being, this is very sensitive content. Please be explicit to all your invitees about how you plan to use their videos.
For a project with such gravitas, it’s common to want to use your own background music. Though, our background music also might be totally fine. It’s at least worth a try. We recommend compiling the Montage using our default background music, and then you don’t like how it sounds, there is an alternative method you can use to add your own music. Instructions on this page.
Lastly, we know that this can be an incredibly hard time. If you need any help with any of the above, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly and we’ll be happy to walk you through it.
Our sincerest condolences,
– Cougar & Warren (Montage founders)