FAQs

Videos of live events

Open all Close all
Mainly parties and weddings, but also hen parties, christenings, bar and bat mitzvahs, civil partnerships and corporate events.
We do not take bookings more than 7 months before the event date. If your event is further out than that, you’re welcome to get in touch, but we won’t go firm on a booking til nearer the date for the simple reason that we don’t always know where we’ll be in a year’s time.
Yes.
Yes, we’ve done videos for clients all over Europe, Asia and the Americas. We love filming in all kinds of cultures and surroundings and have found that the appeal of a lip-synched music video is universal.
Most of our clients deal directly with us but we’re also happy to work with your party planner (and can recommend some very good ones if you’re looking).
We ask that you email us first, because most days we are busy working with clients and it’s not good to have our phones going off in the middle of a job! Of course, after that we can speak by phone.
It depends on the type of event, the number of guests, whether it’s on a weekday or weekend, the location etc … The ballpark figures for 2021/22 are: £1,500 for a party (21st, 50th etc) and £3,000 for a wedding. Shorter, weekday evening events are less expensive. Longer events over several days, or events taking place abroad are more.
Travel and accommodation (if required) are extras. We charge train tickets, air fares and taxis at cost. As far as accommodation is concerned, we will usually try to get back to London after an event, but sometimes need to stay in a local hotel or, if you have any spare room, with you or your friends.
No, we are below the VAT threshold so do not have to charge you VAT.
We ask for a 25% deposit on booking and for the balance to be paid within 7 days of the film being delivered to you.
The best way is bank transfer, but you can also pay by Paypal or card. We will provide both an invoice and a receipt for payments.
You do. But if you’re not sure, we can make suggestions. It’s important to choose a song which guests know, and which has clear, simple lyrics. You can see some of the songs we've done in the past here.
Usually one song which is lip-synced (i.e. guests miming the words) and one which is background music to film footage. For longer videos, there will be additional background music.
For as long as it takes. For parties, this usually means we arrive an hour before the start and finish at midnight. For weddings we arrive in time for the ushers’ lunch and leave at midnight.
We bring our small handheld cameras with lights attached. They work off their own batteries, so there are no messy wires or wobbly lights.
No, if a guest doesn’t want to be in it, then we don’t film them. We’re tactful and not over-pushy. In practice, most guests enjoy the process and love the result.
If the church is happy about it, we’ll take a long shot of the bride and groom at the altar, and capture them coming down the aisle, but we don’t usually film the whole ceremony. Remember that our videos have a music soundtrack, so the audio of the bride and groom taking their vows won’t be on it.
Yes, we film speeches and put them on a separate video, unedited.
We usually have the video ready within 2 or 3 days of the event, sometimes sooner.
Yes, and we will do our best to accommodate them. As every line of the song has to have a matching piece of footage, and each line has only been spoken by only one person, it’s difficult to take someone out and replace them with someone else!
Not normally, because so much of what we do is about being at the party/wedding and editing while the memories are fresh. It’s more difficult and takes longer to edit other people’s footage.
It depends on the event, but usually between 6 and 20 minutes for the main video, with speeches supplied as a second video. For longer events, the video may be up to 30 minutes.
We email you a link to where it is hosted on our website. The video will have a password so only you will be able to see it.
Yes, we can send you a special link which allows you to download it.
You email them the link to the webpage on Jenks&Co, with the password.
Yes, we have public liability insurance.

Lip-Sync movies

Open all Close all
'Lip-sync' means that the people sing the words from the song when they film themselves, but once it's been edited, only their movements can be seen. Their voices can't be heard because the song provides the soundtrack.

'Home movie' means that the footage is made up of selfie clips filmed by different people in different places, uploaded to Jenks&Co and edited by us.
The person who sets up the project uses the online system on Jenks&Co to give the movie a title, choose a song, add names and email addresses to the guest list, allocate lines from the song to each guest, and send out the invitations to guests.

The invitation tells the guest what the movie is called, what the song is, what their lines are, and how to film themselves. It gives them a link to the song on YouTube as a reminder of how it sounds, and another link to the lyrics so they can see where their line is.

The guests film themselves on their iPhones/smartphones/laptops, and upload their clips to the project.

The host of the project reviews the clips and clicks a button to ask Daisy and Kitty to edit them into a finished film. Daisy and Kitty do the edit, usually within a day or two, and put the passworded film on Jenks&Co for the host to watch and share with the cast and other friends and family.
In theory, yes.

It’s best to choose a song which everyone knows and which has simple lyrics. On our site, we have added a catalogue of over 300 songs with lyrics. If you choose one of these, the lyrics are already there so all you have to do is decide which guest gets which line. If you want a different song, you’ll need to contact us to tell us what it is, then we can very quickly add it to the catalogue.
There’s no limit but in practice the number of guests should not exceed the number of lines in the song. So if the song has 40 lines, no more than 40 guests. Of course, you’ll often be treating a family as one guest and asking them to sing a line together, so even with 40 ‘guests’, there might be 80 people involved.
After you’ve added guests and allocated song lines to them, the next step is to send out email invitations to them from our system. To do this, click on the 'Invitations' tab, tick the guests you want to send to, and click the 'Compose invitation' button. This brings up our standard invitation which:

• tells the guest what the title of the project is, what the song is, and what lines they have been given.
• provides them with a link to the song on YouTube and to the lyrics with their lines highlighted.
• gives them tips on how to film their clip.
• tells them the deadline
• tells them where to upload their clip to

As host, you can edit the standard wording, but make sure you leave the merged fields (the song lines, 'suggestion' and upload link) intact.
The default is that anyone you invite can see who else has been invited and can also see whether or not they have uploaded clips, but they cannot play the clips of other guests. Only you can do that. You can change this default setting by going to the 'Settings' tab on your project and amending the privacy settings.
Yes, it's important to give them a deadline. The template invitation text automatically inserts a paragraph about when guests must get their clips back and sets it 5 days before the date you have told us you want the finished film. You can make the guest deadline earlier if you want by changing it on the Invitations tab.
If you go to the Invitations tab of your project and scroll to the right, you'll see a 'Delivered' column. In most cases, a date will appear in that column within 5 minutes of you sending an invitation to a guest. If no date appears, it means that the email sent from our system has been blocked by the guest's account, usually because the account has a firewall or thinks the email is spam.

The best way round the problem is for you to copy the invitation for that guest and send it to them from your private email address in the hope that the firewall will not block it. For advice on how to do this, see the next-but-one FAQ: 'Is there a way for me to copy the invitation and send it to a guest from my private account?'
On the far right of the Invitations page is an 'Opened' column. It shows the date the guest opened the invitation email. If there is no date 48 hours after you sent the invitation, it usually means that the email has been filtered by the guest's email system into their Junk folder. This is similar to 'not delivered', but slightly different: the email has been delivered, but has been siphoned off.

It's a problem, because if the invitation is in Junk, the guest may never see it. You need to get in touch with the guest and suggest they look in their Junk folder. It's also worth you copying the invitation for the guest and sending it to them from your private email account (rather than from our system), because that may stand a better chance of not being filtered into Junk. See the next question for advice on how to do this.
Yes, and it is worth doing if an invitation from our system is not getting through to the guest because it's being blocked by a firewall or diverted into Junk. Here's how you do it:

1. Go the the Invitations tab of your project.
2. Tick the box on the left of the name of each guest you want to send the invitation to.
3. Click the orange 'Compose invitation' button.
4. When the standard invitation text comes up on the screen, click 'Re-use last invitation body' if you had previously edited the standard wording and want to use the same wording now. If you hadn't edited it, skip to step 5.
5. Click the cerise button labelled 'Send me test invitations for all ticked guests (for forwarding)'.

This will send each guest invitation (and remember, they are all different) to YOU. When you get them, forward each one to the relevant guest from your own email system. The guest will get the invitation they would have got if it had been sent through our system, with their song lines and their upload link, and as it's coming from your private email rather than our system it may have a better chance of getting through firewalls.
If you got to the Home tab of your project and scroll down, you will see all the guests, their lines and the clips they have submitted. If you click on the yellow button labelled 'Show clipless', it will filter the list to show only those guests who have not submitted a clip, so you know who to chase.
The best way is probably to phone or text them, but you can also send a 'Chase' email from our system, and this is a good way if you have a lot of guests to chase. Go to the Invitations tab, tick the box on the left of the name of each guest want to chase (or click the 'Tick clipless' button at the top of the column), then click the blue 'Other messages' button, edit the email, and click 'Send'. The chasing email will be sent to all the guests you had ticked.
Any smartphone will do the job, and any file generated by iPhones/Samsung/Android will work. You can also film on your laptop if it has a camera.
Yes, you can. Go to the Home tab of the 'target' movie (the one you want to copy the guests TO), and you will see a drop-down of your other movies with a button saying 'Copy guests' on its right. Fro that drop-down, choose the 'source' one, click 'Copy Guests' and its guests will be added to your target movie, joining any others which are already there. Obviously this only works if you have two or more movies.
If it’s a well-known song, they should have an idea of the tempo, but on our site we also provide YouTube links to the songs in our catalogue and when the invitations go out, those links are included. So guests can click on the link and listen to the song before doing their selfie.

Also, it doesn’t matter too much if the timing is out. When Daisy and Kitty edit the clips, they can adjust them to synchronise with the soundtrack.
You can change the song as long as you have not sent any invitations to your Guests. Either go to the 'Home' tab and click on the small blue text saying 'change song', or click on the Song tab and then click the green 'Choose' button of the song you want instead.

If you have already allocated lines from the old song to guests, you cannot change the song, so the thing to do is to set up a new movie, choose the song you want for it, and then copy over the Guests from the old movie to the new one. See the next Q&A on how to do that.
After guests have uploaded their clips, you can play them and decide whether to have them edited by Jenks&Co or not. It's completely up to you.

If you want us to edit, click the 'Submit for Editing' button on the Home tab. That will trigger a purchase process and ask you to pay £175 for the edit by Paypal or card. When you've done that, we will start editing your clips.

If you don't want us to edit the clips, you will still be able to play them individually, just not together or with the song as the soundtrack.
You can do a lot of things completely free of charge :

- set the movie up as a project
- add guests
- choose a song
- allocate lines
- send the invitations
- receive the clips back
- review the clips

If after reviewing the clips, you decide not to ask Jenks&Co to edit them, there is no charge.

If you ask us to edit them, the current fee is £175. In addition there is a fee of £18.11 for each song used in your video, which pays for the licence from MCPS, the body which collects fees on behalf of songwriters and musicians.

If, in addition to the lip-sync movie, you want to add clips of guests saying nice things about the birthday boy/girl, or you want to add lots of photos after the lip-sync movie with a soundtrack underneath, the price. Currently it is £279 + £18.11 for the music licence.
If you want Jenks&Co to edit your clips, the system will quote you a price when you press the 'Submit for Editing' button, and you can then pay online using the PayPal system. If you do not have a PayPal account, it doesn't matter because on the PayPal system, you can pay securely with a debit or credit card.

Once you’ve paid, you’ll get a receipt from PayPal and there will be a link to Jenks&Co's invoice on the project home page.
It depends on the number of clips, but allow for 3-5 days. If the finished video has to be ready for a particular date (e.g. the subject’s birthday), you should encourage your guests to get their clips in 10 days before that date so that Daisy and Kitty can schedule the editing in good time.
The video will have its own web page on Jenks&Co and the link to that page will be on your Home tab. We’ll also allocate a password to the video and email it to you. It is then up to you who you give the web address and password to. Whoever has it can watch the video.

As a quick way for you to tell all your guests that the video is ready, we have created a button on your Home tab called ‘Tell guests video is ready’. Press that, and the video will be inserted inside an electronic card which you can send to all the guests free of charge.
Yes, there’s a download button on your Home tab which allows you to do this.

Spoken Word movies

Open all Close all
THINGS YOU CAN DO FOR FREE
Set up the movie
Add and invite guests to take part
Receive their clips and photos back into the project
Edit the clips and photos, position them on the 'Filmstrip', and add music
Generate a movie from the filmstrip and watch it on the Editing page

THINGS YOU CAN DO AFTER PAYING A £40 FEE
Download the movie to your desktop
Have it hosted on its own Jenks&Co page, with a password
Wrap the movie in a Jenks&Co greeting card
Send the card + movie to the subject and all the people who took part

THINGS THAT MAY COST MORE THAN THAT
If you ask us to edit the movie, we will quote you a price which you can accept if you want
If the combined size of your movie exceeds 1GB, we reserve the right to ask for an extra contribution towards storage costs (most movies will be well under this threshhold).
By 'home movie' we mean that the clips which make up the movie are selfies filmed by people on their iPhones, in contrast to clips which are filmed by Daisy and Kitty attending a party or wedding with their cameras. The selfies may not actually be filmed 'at home', but they are filmed in different places by different people.
It means that the picture AND THE SOUND of the clips which people upload are heard on the finished video. So if a clip has 3 people saying 'Happy 80th Granny!", their voices will be heard on the video if it's a Spoken Word video, but if the same clip was uploaded to a 'Lip-sync' video, you'd only see the picture because the voices would be obscured by the music soundtrack.
If you are the person organising the movie, start by going to the landing page of Home Movies, and when you get there you'll be offered a choice of 'Lip-Sync' or 'Spoken Word'. If you choose Spoken Word, the system won't ask you to choose a song and as there's no song, you won't need to allocate lines from it to guests. What you will do is:
- give your movie a name
- enter the Guest names and email addresses
- add 'suggestions' to the guest invitations as to what they say, wear, do
- send out the invitation emails.
Once you've done that, it's up to your guests to film their clips and upload them back to your project on Jenks&Co.
The person who created it. They decide what it's called and who is invited to take part, they send out the invitations, they edit the clips, and they choose who to share the finished video with. It's their product.
Exactly the same way they'd send in lip-sync clips if it was a lip-sync video: they click on the link in the invitation email which takes them to a webpage on Jenks&Co where there's a big green UPLOAD button. They press that, select their clips, and upload them to the project.

As an alternative, guests can send their clips in by WeTransfer to homemovies@jenksandco.tv, remembering to write their name and the project in the Notes box so we know which project it is for.
As many as they like. They may do a couple of different takes and send them all in, giving the Producer a choice as to which one to use.
That's up to you. You can do it yourself on the 'Editing' tab where all the clips are shown. On that page you can:

- choose which clips to use and which to discard
- set the duration of each photo and clip
- decide the order in which they appear
- create transitions between clips (fading in or out)
- add a music soundtrack

If you'd rather we did it for you, you can submit a request using the 'Ask Jenks&Co to edit' button and we will look at your project and quote you a price.
Yes. You can do this in ways.

To see how consecutive clips on your Filmstrip look when joined together, click the orange 'Select clips to preview', choose the clips you want to preview, then click 'Preview selected clips'. The system will take a minute or two to generate the preview and when it's ready a pop-window will display it for you. This is a good way to check 3 or 4 clips at a time without generating the entire movie (which can take a long time because there's lots of processing to be done).

The second way to review your work is to generate the entire movie by clicking the green button on the Editing tab. Be aware that you can only generate a movie of 300 clips unless you are on our 'Unlimited Clips' programme, so if you have ore clips than that, and want to see them all, you'll need to upgrade first. Currently this costs £40.
If you go to the 'Editing' tab of your dashboard, you'll see a section called 'Your Library' and another called 'Guest Library'. The Guest library shows clips and photos uploaded by your guests. The Your Library shows ... yours. You'll see a green button labelled '+ add to your library'. Click on it to drop your own clips and photos in there. Once they're in your Library you can move them on to your Filmstrip and they will appear in your movie.
Yes. The people in Spoken Word movies are not miming a song (which is what happens in lip-sync movies) but the movie can still have a musical soundtrack if you want, either spanning the entire movie or just the bits which don't have peoples' voices. It's up to you.

If you think you want a soundtrack, click the 'Add a soundtrack' button on the Edit page of your movie. That will bring up a list of copyright-free music and special effects sounds which you can add to your movie at no cost. You can also add music of your own.
The free version of our service allows you to watch your finished movie on our web page. If you want to download it you have to pay the upgrade fee which is currently £40. When you've paid that, a blue 'Download' button will appear on the Home tab of your project. When you click it, the movie should start downloading to your computer but some browsers will open it in a different window and start to play it. If that happens, look for three vertical dots somewhere in the window, click them and you should be offered a download option.
If you have opted for the completely free version of our service, the only way you can play the movie is on the project Home page or Editing page. Your friends would need to watch it there.

If you upgrade to the premium service (current cost £40), we will put the movie on a dedicated web page, and you can send friend that link. You can also wrap the movie in one of our electronic cards and send it to them by email. And you can download it to your own computer. So you have more flexibility in how you share it.
When you create a movie project, only people logged in with your username and password can access the dashboard where the clips and photos are stored, so if you keep your log-in private, those clips and photos will also be private.

Once you generate a movie from the clips, its privacy depends on how you store it. If you download it from our site, the downloaded file will be on your computer and as long as you protect access to your computer, no-one but you will see it. If you ask Jenks&Co to host your movie (see the question above), you will have to set a password for it, and it will only be playable by people who access the relevant webpage and input the password. So again, it's under your control.

Photolab

Open all Close all
We scan loose photos, photos in albums, 35mm slides, negatives/transparencies, and paper documents. We convert 8mm and Super 8mm cinefilm of any length (not 16mm cinefilm though, nor cinefilm with sound), APS film, camcorder tapes, VHS tapes, DVDs, CD-Roms, and audio cassettes.
You don't have to but it's good if you can! When you fill in the online order form with all the things you 're sending us, the page will show you a price quotation and when you submit the form to us, we'll look at it and come back with any comments. We'll also confirm the price and send you an invoice. After you've paid, we'll start the scanning and conversion. If the work we do turns out to be greater or less than what was on the form, we'll let you know and either request another payment or give your your money back. It has to be flexible because sometimes people don't know quite what they have and if they mis-describe an item, the task changes.

For people who just have a jumble of photos, videos, tapes, and film, and who don't have the time or inclination go through it all and itemise on our form, we have our 'BoxofStuff' option (see next Q&A!).
If you send us loose photos and they are in groups, we will try to scan each batch of photos in its group, and we will also try to scan groups in the order they come to us (i.e. if they are in a box, we'll do one group in the box then the next) but as we use multiple machines we can't guarantee that we will always get the groups in exactly the order you want. Once the photos are in the online archive we create for you, they can of course be easily moved into folder sorted by year or event or subject.
Our scanning process includes DIGITAL ICE Technology which removes most surface defects like dust and scratches, but photo prints are very static so we can't promise that the scanned image will be 100% dust free, especially with older and darker photos. If additional work is required on your images we can offer you our photo restoration service to remove all marks using Photoshop.
Yes, we use DIGITAL ROC Technology which restores and corrects colour.
If you have a box of photos, videos, film and slides that you want us to digitise, but you don't have the time to list everything in it, you can tick the 'BoxofStuff' option on the order form and submit it without an inventory. When we get your order – more like a provisional order, really – we'll email you a label so you can post the 'stuff' to us, and when the box comes in, we'll go through it and compile a list of what's inside. Then we'll email you a link to a webpage which shows that list, and the price for scanning/converting. You tell us which bits you want us to do and pay for just that. The cost of going down the BoxofStuff route is £20. If you go on to place an order with us, we give that back (by knocking £20 off the bill). If you decide not to place an order with us, we keep the £20 to pay for the return of your box and to cover the time we spent going through your box.
That depends on what you want us to digitise and how much of it there is. Digitising a cinefilm for instance, is different from digitising photos, which in turn is different from digitising negatives. You can see the prices for each type of item in our online form, and also see how the price reduces the more you do. Or you can download the price list and order form here
It depends on what you want us to digitise (some thing take longer than others), the volume, and whether there are other jobs ahead of yours, but generally we try to finish each job and get everything back to the client within 3 weeks. If you have a deadline, please get in touch with us and we will do our best to meet it.

Cards

Open all Close all
The cost depends on 3 things:

1. Base price of the card
For the current range of cards, this is £1. If you upload your own photo, there is no charge.

2. The number of items you add to the Card
The first item is free. The second and following items cost £0.30 each.

3. The number of recipients you send the card to
You can send to up to 30 people free. After these fees apply:
• 31 to 50 recipients: £10.00
• 51 to 100 recipients: £15.00
• 101 to 200 recipients: £25.00
• 201 to 300 recipients: £34.00
• 301 to 400 recipients: £40.00
More than 400 recipients: contact us
When you create your first card, our system stamps it as free. As long as the number of items you add is no more than 10 and the number of recipients no more than 30, it will be free to send.

If you create a second card, you cannot make that the free one. But there's nothing to stop you changing your first card so that it has the same design, content and recipients as your second one, and sending it free.
We have a minimum payment of £10 because payments of lower value get gobbled up by transaction charges. If, for instance, we took payments of £2, too big a chunk of it would be lost to PayPal.

Asking for a minimum payment of £10 eases this problem. It does mean that you may be paying more than the cost of the card you're buying, but the credit remains on your account for future purchases.
There is no expiry date. The credit will stay on your account until used.
Images for the front cover have to be uploaded as 1920 x 1080 pixels. If they're not exactly that size, they won't work.

If you have an image which is not this size, you need to re-size it before uploading. You can do this on a Mac in 'Preview' (double-click your image and it will probably open in Preview, then click on 'Tools' in the main menu and drop down to 'Adjust size'). There are also quite a few free online services where you can do these adjustments (search Google for 'Free resizing of photos')
You can add JPG, PNG or HEIC files as Content.
You can add mp3 or m4a files. If you have an iPhone, there's an inbuilt app called 'Voice memos'. (If you can't find it, download it for free from the App Store). Recordings made on that app will be saved on your phone as m4a files.
Yes, on the Content tab, there's a function labelled 'Copy items from another card' with a drop-down. Click on that drop-down and it will show all your other cards. Choose one and let go, and all its items will be added to the card you're on.

If you only want to copy some (and not all) of the items from another card, the best way to do it is to add the type of item (photo, video, text or audio) you want to your card, then click the button labelled 'Choose photo [video] [audio] [text] from My Media'. That will take you to the My Media page where all your media assets are stored, you can select the one you want and it will be added to the item box you just created.
After logging in to Jenks&Co, go to 'ME' in the main menu and drop to 'My cards'. Click on the card you want to check and on the next page, click the 'Send' tab. There you will see columns which show the date you sent the card and the date each recipient opened it.
If you click the 'Add Music' button on the Content tan, it will show you 20-30 tracks which are royalty-free. You can add these to your card by clicking 'Select'. If you want to add different music, you need to click on the pink 'My Music' tab which comes up when you click 'Add music', and upload an MP3 track of your own and then, after uploading it, select it for your card. It is up to you what music you upload.