How KeepSakePage works

A page gathers video, voice, written notes and photos from everyone who loves someone, you curate them in private, and on the night you reveal a movie-trailer cut and the whole collection. This is the manual, and the playbooks we wrote for the first parties.

Getting started

Create the page. Pick the address (keepsakepage.com/word), the occasion and the honoree's name. The occasion sets the colors, the wording and the music mood; a memorial drops the confetti.
Settings first. Add a portrait, the informal name ("Dad") and the headline name ("Walter Hanley Sr."), and set the event date. The contribution form and the reveal both read these.
Share the contribution link. It is your page's plain address. Anyone with it can add a message; nothing they send is visible to anyone but you until you publish.
Your dashboard is the same address with #admin. Co-admins you add in Settings sign in there with their own email; a reviewer gets only the Review tab, a full admin everything.

Inviting people

Track who you've asked under Invites: add names one by one, or paste a list from a spreadsheet (name, then an email or phone per line). Anyone auto-flips to ✓ Submitted when a message arrives under the same name.
Send the ask. Each row has WhatsApp, text, email and copy buttons with the message pre-written. ✉️ Email the N waiting sends it to everyone with an email who hasn't contributed, once per 20 hours, with replies coming to you.
Two messages, your words. The first ask and the friendly nudge (and their subjects) are editable under ✏️ The wording, with placeholders for the first name, the honoree and the link. Every reminder carries an unsubscribe link; unsubscribed or bounced addresses are skipped automatically.
Questions for people who freeze. Settings → 🎤 Questions: the recorder shows them one at a time above the camera. Leave it blank for the standard ones.

Reviewing & organizing

Everything arrives pending. Approve, reject, ★ feature (goes first), edit names, notes and captions, or delete. Bulk-select for the easy ones. Each card shows who did what last.
🙈 Hold back keeps an approved contribution out of the reveal and the trailer — a surprise the honoree shouldn't see yet, or something the family wants to keep to itself. It stays in your archive.
Organize groups approved messages into sections ("From the grandkids", "College friends") and sets their order. That order is the reveal's story.
Contributors can fix their own typo for 24 hours after sending, from the link on their thank-you screen.

The trailer & the AI director

Build makes a first cut: a few seconds of every video and voice memo, one line from every note, a beat on every photo, over your song. Pick a target length; Fit to length trims windows to hit it.
🎬 AI director's cut (Premiere includes three runs) listens to every recording's transcript, picks the moment in each, the line in each note, and the running order. It runs in the background — you can leave the page — and you apply the result when it's ready. Earlier cuts are kept and can be restored.
Trim by ear. Each clip row has a preview; set "from / to" to the moment that lands. Switch off anything that doesn't earn its place. Captions and pull quotes come from the transcripts.
✂ Trim by phrase. On a video or voice row, "By phrase" shows what they said as tappable phrases. Tap the first and the last you want and choose Use just this. Also use as its own part keeps the clip and adds a second part of the same recording (open the trailer with Jenna's hello, close it with her last line); Split before it cuts a clip in two. Parts show "part 1 of 2" and can be removed with ✕ part. The full reveal still plays every recording once, start to finish.
Late arrivals appear in a box above the clips; add them with the director or with default windows and they slot in before the closing clip.
Save, then flip the trailer on so it opens the reveal. Preview it any time from the reveal link.

Playbook: a great trailer and reveal

The trailer is the film the room sees first; the full reveal is every message, in order, that the honoree keeps. Both are built from the same approved contributions and the same plan, and the new tools — the phrase picker, Director's notes, Looks, the quick preview — are there to make a good cut in an evening, not a weekend. This is the order that works.

Before you build

Approve generously, hold back deliberately. Everything the trailer and the reveal use is an approved contribution. Approve first, then use 🙈 Hold back for anything that should stay out of the film and the reveal (a surprise the honoree shouldn't see yet). Rejecting is for things that don't belong at all.
Fix names and relationships now. They are burned onto the screen under every clip and note. Edit them on the Review card before you build; the plan picks up the live name, but a typo caught late means a re-render.
Organize is the reveal's story. Groups ("From the grandkids", "College friends") and their order on the Organize tab are the order of the full reveal, and the director reads the same order as a hint. ★ Feature puts a message first in its group.
Upload the song first. Trailer → Music: song 1 plays under the trailer; songs 2 and 3 play on the reveal page afterwards. Trim each to the stretch you want. The director needs no song, but you will want to hear the cut over the real one.
Name the headline. Settings → the informal name ("Dad") and the headline name ("Walter Hanley Sr."). The title card, the end card and the invitation all read these.

Transcripts: the director's ears

Every recording gets transcribed once. The first AI director's cut, Pull quotes, By phrase and Director's notes all read the transcripts. The line under the buttons says how many of your recordings have been heard; the first run is the slow one (a few seconds per recording), later runs reuse the text.
Phone-line messages arrive transcribed already. They sit in the cut like any voice message, with the transcript as the card's text.

The first cut

Pick a target length before anything else. 3:30 is the sweet spot for a party: long enough for everyone to appear, short enough to hold the room. 2:00 for a crowd that will see the full reveal straight after; up to 15:00 if the trailer is the whole show. You can change it later and tap Fit to length.
Use the director, not Build, for the first cut. Build gives every clip a default window (seconds 1–6) in Organize order — fine for a quick look. 🎬 AI director's cut listens to every recording, picks the moment in each, the line in each note, and orders everything for an arc: a punchy open, laughs and specifics in the middle, the most moving moment last. It runs in the background (30–90 seconds) and you can leave the page.
Read the director's notes. Each row shows a 🎬 line saying why that window was chosen. Anything the director did not place is switched off and flagged — flip it on if it belongs. Earlier cuts stay in the history and can be restored.
Save often. The plan lives in the Trailer tab until you tap Save trailer. The reveal and the renders use the saved plan.

Steer it in plain words: Director's notes

Say what you want, the way you would to an editor. "Put the grandkids first and end on Mom." "Cut Uncle Bob to the part about the boat." "Make it four minutes." "Open with Jenna's hello and close with her last line." "Warmer — use the lake photo behind the titles."
Nothing changes until you apply it. The director answers with a short summary of what it would change, what it could not do and why, and the exact edits. Apply, or Discard. After Apply there is one Undo.
What a note can do. Reorder (the whole running order), trim or re-aim a recording to the phrases you name, switch items off or back on, use a second stretch of a recording as its own part, change the target length, switch the Look, and put one of the page's photos behind the cards.
Your hand-set windows are pinned. Any window you set yourself — from/to, the phrase picker, a note that named that person — shows a 📌 and survives the director's next run. Tap the pin to release it, or "unpin all" in the notes box.

Trim and split by phrase

Tap, don't scrub. On a video or voice row, ✂ By phrase shows the transcript as phrases. Phrases already in the cut are outlined. Tap the first phrase you want and the last; the window follows, with the director's small lead-in and tail.
Three things to do with a selection. Use just this trims the clip to it. ＋ Also use as its own part keeps the clip and adds the selection as a second part of the same recording — open the film with someone's hello and close with their goodbye. ✂ Split before it cuts the clip in two at the first phrase you tapped.
Parts are ordinary clips. Drag them anywhere, switch them off, give them pull quotes. A row shows "part 1 of 2"; ✕ part removes one. The full reveal still plays each recording once, start to finish.
Aim for complete thoughts. Five to eight seconds for most clips, up to about twenty for the genuinely great ones. Never start mid-sentence; skip the "is this on?" opener.

Words on screen

✨ Pick the best lines chooses the single most quotable line of each written note, verbatim. Edit any line in its row.
💬 Pull quotes picks one to three memorable phrases from a recording and pops them on screen as they are said — the best way to make a mumbled line land. Run it for all, or ↻ on one row. Remove any you don't like; they never cover the picture.
CC full captions shows the whole message as captions while a clip plays. Use it for a hard-to-hear clip or a room with the sound low; "over the top" for a landscape clip, "read-along panel" for a portrait one. Leave it off by default — pull quotes read better.
Photo captions are a switch on the Trailer tab ("Show photo captions") and only appear in the film, never on the reveal.

Sound

Boost video voices evens out quiet phone recordings with a compressor. Turn it on when the first cut has a clip you keep leaning in for; it reaches the rendered file too.
The ♪ soundtrack clip. A video of someone playing or singing can take the screen for a while and then keep playing under everything after the song — tap ♪ on its row, set how long it stays on screen and when its music ends.
Songs that run out. "Repeat the songs until the end of the cut" (Music) loops the play order with a short fade at each join, so a long cut never goes quiet.
Where the music starts. With the title card, or after the cold open — under the cold open the bed sits low and lands at full on the title.

Their own song

Write the brief, then the lyrics. Trailer → Customize → Their own song: a few lines about who they are and two memories, a feeling and a style. “Write the lyrics” drafts a real song from the brief and the family’s messages; tweak any line.
Make it, free during the beta. “Make the song” produces two takes in about two minutes; pick one as the trailer’s song. Not sure of the voice yet? “Hear a taste” makes just the chorus first, for a fraction of the cost.
Or have it made by hand. The brief and lyrics can go to a person who produces it for you — same result, about two days.

The cold open and the stinger

Write the cards first. Trailer → Cold open: one line per card, a breath each ("In a world where… / most men slow down at 80."). Suggest lines drafts them from the page. Rated cards are a wink; don't overdo it.
No one to record it? Design a narrator. Under Audio & sync, describe a voice (or pick a preset), hear three, keep one, and it reads the cards for you — already synced. The stinger can have its own voice, or borrow the cold open’s.
Make the music too. “Make a bed” scores the cold open with an instrumental that fades out on the title card; the stinger can get a riser or a boom (“Stinger hit”).
Stuck for words? “✨ Script ideas” now writes three cold-open or stinger scripts from your own trailer — the people, the clips, the honoree. Every trailer also ends on a “Built with love on KeepSakePage.com” card, so the stinger is pure fun.
Record the voiceover on a phone, somewhere soft. Voice Memos is fine; a closet or a parked car is a surprisingly good booth. Read the cards once for pace and once for warmth, use the second take, upload it, and tap sync so each card lands on its line.
The stinger is the laugh after the end. One more card and a recorded line after the closing — optional, and the room loves it.

Look and background

Twelve Looks, no theme art. Film (the original), Celebration, Wedding, Memorial, Modern, Rose Gold, Midnight, Garden, Retro, Scrapbook, Spotlight and Holiday change the card colours, how slowly things fade, and (for some) a film grain or a vignette. Settings → Template picks the page and the film together; this sheet changes the film alone. The occasion sets the default; tap another in 🎨 Look & background. Looks apply to the rendered film, not the in-browser preview.
One choice dresses everything: Settings → Template. A template sets the page your guests see, the reveal and the film together — twelve, from Film to Midnight to Rose Gold, some with a film grain or a vignette. This sheet changes just the film.
A family photo behind the cards. Tap one of the page's photos and it sits washed — blurred and darkened — behind the title cards, the note and voice cards, or every card. A note can do the same: "use the beach photo behind the titles".

Check it before you render

Runs x · target y. If it runs over, Fit to length trims windows (never below three seconds), then photos, then notes; or switch something off. Videos are never switched off by the fitter — that's your call.
▶ Preview opens the saved trailer on the reveal page — the browser version, with the music and the cold open. Good for order and pacing.
⚡ Quick preview renders the same plan at 480p in roughly half the time of a real render, so you see the Look, the background, the pull quotes and the mix exactly as the file will have them. Previews don't count against the six renders a day and send no email; they appear in the list with ▶ Watch.
Late arrivals. Contributions approved after the cut was built appear in a box above the clips. "Add them (director picks the moments)" slots them in just before your closing clip; nothing else moves.

Render, then reveal

Render the trailer on the server. An MP4 with everything in it, so it plays on a TV or a projector with no wifi. About a minute per four minutes of cut; you get an email with a link when it's ready, and it stays in the list for download.
Flip "Opens the reveal". Once saved, the toggle at the top of the Trailer tab makes the trailer the reveal's opening. Preview the reveal from the Publish tab; Party prep caches everything on the phone or laptop you'll play from.
The full reveal is a different film. Every approved contribution, start to finish, in the Organize order with its section cards — minutes per message, not seconds. Render it after the party for the family's keepsake rather than before; the trailer is the night's film, the reveal page is what they open the next morning.
The teaser is for phones. A vertical 30-second cut of the three best moments with their pull quotes, watermarked, for Instagram or WhatsApp. Pick the moments yourself under 📱 Teaser, or let the director's picks stand.

Catch their reaction (optional)

Turn it on in Publish → 🎥 Reaction cam. Off by default. When it’s on, anyone opening the reveal is offered the chance to record their own face and voice as they watch.
It’s theirs to give. They turn their own camera on, see themselves with a red dot, and nothing is sent until they watch it back and tap send. The clips appear only in that card — never in the tribute, the book or the feed.
Make one the closing moment. Any reaction can be promoted to play at the end of the reveal (“Use as closing”), or left off entirely.

When something looks wrong

A render dropped a clip. The render's line says who and why (timed out, or ffmpeg failed). Shorten that clip's window or re-upload the original and render again; the rest of the file is fine.
The director didn't place someone. Their row is switched off and flagged. Flip it on, set a window by phrase, and it stays pinned.
No transcript for a recording. Silence, music over the voice, or a language the transcriber missed. Set the window by ear with ▶ Preview; captions and pull quotes won't be available for that one.
Ask ❓ Help. The button at the bottom right of every dashboard tab answers from the help center and from what your page is doing right now — a running render, a failed job, how many clips are on — and emails JT with the thread when it can't.

The checklist

Approve, hold back, fix names, set groups and the headline name.
Upload song 1 (and 2–3 for the reveal page); trim them.
Pick the target length; run 🎬 AI director's cut; Save.
Steer with Director's notes; pin what you set by hand.
By phrase for the clips that need a tighter window or two parts.
✨ Best lines for notes; 💬 Pull quotes for recordings; CC only where needed.
Boost voices if a clip is quiet; loop the songs if the cut is long.
Cards, voiceover, sync; a stinger if you have one.
Look and a photo background; ⚡ Quick preview; fix; Save.
Render the trailer; flip Opens the reveal; Party prep on the playback device.
After the party: render the full reveal and the family archive.

Playbook: voiceovers

The cold open and the stinger can carry a recorded voice reading the cards. It is the single biggest upgrade to how the trailer feels.

Write the cards first (Trailer → Cold open). One line per card; "Suggest lines" drafts them from the page. Keep each card to a breath.
Record on a phone, somewhere soft. Voice Memos is fine. Hold the phone 20 cm away, a closet or a car makes a surprisingly good booth. Read the cards in order, pause a beat between them, and leave a second of silence at the start and the end.
Two takes. Read it once for pace, once for warmth. Use the second.
Upload it (⬆ Upload a voiceover), then tap 🔁 Sync: the app listens to the recording and times each card to the words. If you change the cards later, sync again — the ready check reminds you.
No one to record it? Under Audio & sync, The narrator designs a voice from a sentence (or a preset), lets you hear three, and reads the cards for you — already synced.
Music under it is optional: the cold-open bed sits at about 45% under the voice and lands at full on the title card.
The stinger voiceover works the same way over the post-credits cards.

Playbook: songs

Three slots. Song 1 is the trailer's music; songs 2 and 3 play on the reveal page and after the trailer. Name them and credit the artist — the reveal shows it.
Trim each song to the stretch you want ("use from / to"), and choose when the music starts: with the title card, or after the first clip or two so the first voice stands alone.
Ducking. Under a video or voice memo the music drops to about 10% of its level and comes back between clips; adjust it if a song is busy.
Play order lets you repeat or reorder the slots across the show.
Where songs come from. Use music you own or have the right to play at a private family gathering. A song ripped from a streaming service is for the party, not for posting the reveal publicly. The family archive keeps whatever you uploaded.
Levels: uploaded recordings are leveled automatically once processed, so quiet voice memos and loud videos sit together. Songs are not — pick a version that isn't clipping.

Playbook: party night

The show plays from a browser. Plan for the room's wifi to fail, and it won't matter.

The day before, on the laptop you'll bring: open the reveal link, tap 📶 Prepare for the party, and let it download everything. It stores every clip and song in that browser; on the night the show plays from those copies whether the wifi is up or not. Don't clear the browser's data afterwards.
Run the ready check (Publish tab). It confirms the page is published, the trailer is on with clips, the songs are set, the voiceover is synced, and party prep ran on this device within 48 hours. Fix anything red.
Plug in. HDMI to the TV, power to the laptop, sound to whatever is loudest — a small speaker beats a TV. Set the laptop to never sleep. The show requests a wake lock, but a plugged-in laptop is the real insurance.
Test one clip with the room's sound an hour before. Volume at 70%, not 100%.
Go fullscreen from the reveal (the ⛶ button). Cursor hides itself. Keys: space pauses, → and ← skip, esc closes.
The phone remote. From the reveal's 📱 button, point a phone at the QR code: it gets Play, Next, Back, Pause and Close for the screen, so nobody has to lean over the laptop. Share that link only with whoever runs the show — it carries the reveal key.
Film the reaction. A second phone opens the reaction link (Publish tab) and records the honoree watching; it attaches itself to the page. Start it before you press play.
Order of the night: the trailer first (3–5 minutes, everyone watching), then the full reveal on a loop while people eat, then the keepsake book on a tablet passed around. Tap 🎵 The Songs for a playlist without the clips.
If something breaks: reload the same page in the same browser — the stored copies survive a reload. If the laptop dies, any phone with the reveal link plays it over the phone's data.

After the reveal

The honoree's reply (Publish tab) goes to the top of the reveal; a thank-you to everyone who contributed is one copy-and-paste away, with every email they left.
Save as video records the trailer or the whole reveal to a file from the reveal page (organizer only). The 📦 Family archive zips every approved message and file with a manifest.
Pages live a year from creation; a purchase adds a year. You get a reminder at 30 days and 7 days and on expiry. Thirty days after expiry the files are removed (the text stays); download the archive before then, or extend the page.
Archive a page (Settings → Page lifecycle) when it's done collecting: the form closes, the reveal keeps working.
Close your account from Your pages. It deletes the pages you own and every file in them; there is no undo.

Keepsakes for later

What it is. The other direction: one person records messages — video, voice, a note, a photo — for particular people, and each is emailed on a date they choose. A birthday years away, a wedding morning, an anniversary. Start at keepsakepage.com/later; your page lives at your own address and nobody contributes to it.
Addressing. Nothing goes anywhere until you choose who a keepsake is for and the day. You can change or delete it until it's delivered; once opened it's theirs and can't be recalled. Dates fire in your time zone, on the hour.
What they get. One plain email from "you via KeepSakePage" with a private link. No account, nothing to buy. They can keep a copy, set it aside, or decline. A child's keepsake goes to the parent or guardian you name.
If an address stops working. Name a keeper for the page (they get one note explaining the role, and a reminder a year) and, optionally, a fallback person on any keepsake. A bounced address re-routes to them with the recipient's link; we tell you if there's nobody. Once a year we email you the list to check. Recipients you've told in advance can update their own address.
Release on a death. Not offered. Every keepsake has a date; if you want one to arrive after you're gone, pick the day it belongs to. A dated keepsake still goes out if you're no longer here; the email says when you recorded it and makes no claim about you.
Price. Your first three keepsakes are free; $59 once unlocks unlimited keepsakes and people for good — no renewals. You can also give it to a parent or grandparent with a code.
Your copy. Download everything you've recorded, your people and the record of every change from the desk at any time. The promises behind all this are in the Terms.

Privacy, safety & your data

Nothing a contributor sends is visible to anyone but the organizers until the page is published, and the reveal link is unguessable. Short links can carry a password.
Emails contributors leave are private to the organizers and used only to share the finished reveal and follow up. Every reminder has an unsubscribe link.
Every reveal has a Report this page link; reports go to the people who run KeepSakePage, anonymously.
Organizers control what the honoree sees: hold anything back, feature what matters, reject what doesn't belong.
Questions? Reply to any KeepSakePage email, or write to contact@keepsakepage.com.