Designing a Film Website
Post-production on my first feature film ‘Are We Monsters’ is going well, we are now on the animation stage. However, upon my research at the European Film Market and following various indie feature films, each film has its own website.
I investigated the recommended aspects to include on a feature film website to get the appropriate information to an audience and distributor alike.
This lead to the development of arewemonsters.com.
Layout
You want your film to grab audience attention quickly and impact them instantly. We worked hard on making an introduction animation that draws the audience in. It zooms in through tree leaves and unveils the characters with a strong vibrant red, the one used in the marketing of the film.
Under the animation we get straight into the context; the film logline/newsletter. One of the biggest selling points to a distributor is the number of people on your mailing list. The more people signed up, the more people who will be notified about the film’s release, so if you haven’t yet, add yourself to the arewemonsters.com mailing list, we’d really appreciate it.
The logline will be something you have likely spent a long time on. A single sentence or two that summarises your film in a memorable way. It’s likely that you’d have a few different loglines that you’d use in different situations, some thorough about your film, some more catchy that doesn’t explain the plot fully. The one we use for ‘Are We Monsters’ is:
“A werewolf conflicted with identity, Maya seeks to understand the two sides of herself- before the consequences become deadly.”
Beneath the logline we outline some of the notable qualities of the film. ‘Are We Monsters’ is a progressive character-driven piece, so we highlighted the diverse characters of the film and the landscape, which we also consider a character.
Following this up with screenshots and concept character art. Finally linking to social media and news articles towards the bottom.
SEO
One of the main qualities to bear in mind is the SEO of your film’s website. When putting together your page, you will likely have a tab for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Under this tab, use common phrases that suit your film that are searched for often within your SEO description and title, making sure they are relevant to your film. I’d also recommend using similar phraseology in the text of the homepage too so that it can be found within the text at a first glance by the audience.
Other Pages
Across the rest of the website, we included a Blog section to show film progression and updates, a media press section where we link people to news articles about the film and a behind the scenes section where people can see how they can get involved further through social media. Adding another layer of intimacy for the audience with the makers of the film.
Adapt With Time
Your web page will likely not keep this layout throughout the entire film’s life. Our film is currently in post-production and not currently available for purchase, not even a trailer. But as soon as we have a trailer online, that will go in place of the intro animation for an audience to get engaged as quickly as possible.
The pages available will also likely update with time too. For example, when the film is completed, it’s likely we will have a page on where to purchase the film, area for the soundtrack, tour locations and a further breakdown of socials and behind the scenes content.
Some examples from the following websites
aserialkillersguidetolife.com
Home, UK Cinema Tour, Soundtrack, Videos, Synopsis, Social, Shop, Get Film Now
invasionplanetearth.com
Home, The Story, About the Production, Soundtrack, Store, Press, Original Concept Art, Contact, Socials
But there are many more examples online, just search for the film title followed by “website” to find more examples so that you can map to a film that is similar to your own.
Hope you found this useful, again if you wanted to check our website arewemonsters.com for reference, we’d appreciate you taking the time to have a look, cheers!
