Birthday photos that are not all of the cake.
Everyone at the party has a camera and nobody has a job. Give them one, for ten seconds at a time, and the night comes back from every side of the room.
7 moments, at the hours they usually happen.
This is the run of show you start from. Move any of it, rename any of it, throw half of it away — the prompts move with the times.
- 20:00Arrival
- 20:30The Surprisethe centrepiece
- 21:00Dinner
- 22:00Toast
- 22:30Cake
- 23:00Dance Floor
- 01:00Late Night
Short enough to do while holding a drink.
Every prompt is an instruction somebody can follow in ten seconds. Never “document the atmosphere”. These are real ones, from the library your night is built out of.
- Photo · asked of 2
Your table, before anyone sits down.
- Photo · asked of 3
Capture the faces watching, not the front.
- Photo · asked of 2
A toast in progress.
- Photo · asked of 2
The speaker, and then whoever they're looking at.
- Photo · asked of 2
The face, not the present.
- Photo · asked of 2
Find two people who hadn't met before tonight.
- 01
One code on the table
Guests scan it and type a first name. No app, no account, no password — it runs in the browser they already have open.
- 02
Asked at the moment
A prompt reaches them when the night reaches Dinner, not at the start of it. Different people get different things, so one moment comes back from several places at once.
- 03
One album, the next morning
Photographs, voice notes and answers, in the order the night happened. Yours to open, download and send.
- Do guests need to download an app for a birthday?
- No. They scan the QR code and the whole thing runs in their phone's browser. There is nothing to install and no account to create — they type a first name and they are in.
- How does it know what to ask for at a birthday?
- The run of show is already written: Arrival, The Surprise, Dinner and 4 more, at the hours they usually happen. Each moment carries its own prompts, and they reach your guests when that moment starts rather than all at once. You can move, rename or delete any of it.
- Is everyone asked the same thing?
- No, and that is the point. Different guests get different prompts, so one moment comes back from three places at once instead of forty copies of the same photograph. Nobody is asked so often that they stop being a guest.
- Can people find photographs of themselves?
- On nights of a hundred guests or more, yes. A guest can add one selfie when they join, and anything anybody catches them in turns up on their own page — no scrolling through four hundred photographs looking for your own face. The album shows everyone who did it, and pressing a face opens every frame they are in. It is optional for the guest and they can remove it, and every match made from it, whenever they like.
- Is there a video of the night?
- Yes, and you do not have to make it. Every night gets a short vertical film — the moments in order, a few photographs from each, and the voice notes your guests recorded underneath. It is built at the same time as the album and sits on it, so sending the album link sends the film with it.
- What happens to the photographs afterwards?
- Photographs keep arriving for 10 days after the night starts — the phone that died at midnight, the one with no signal in a basement venue. When that window closes the album is finished and emailed to you: the evening as a timeline, every photograph, and the short film. It is kept for a year, and you can download the whole night as one file at any point. The album is not in any search engine and never will be; the link is the only way in.
- When should I set up a birthday?
- Whenever you like — nothing is charged until you have seen the whole thing built. Most hosts do it the week before and change Arrival the morning of.
Nobody remembers the night they were in the middle of.
Everyone in the room has a camera. What nobody has is someone telling them where to point it, at the moment worth pointing at.