Website

FINAL PRODUCT: https://ryanstottmedia.wix.com/my-site-1  

 Research

 Some Examples Of Bad Web-design:

1: https://www.arngren.net/

 

 As you can simply see from this screengrab, this website is a mess. Because its in norwegian i genuinley have no clue what this website is for. I think that its likely some form of online shop.

 

2: The Rudgwick Steam & Country Show

 

 As you can tell this website was to advertise the Rudgwick Show and has been left abandoned after the hosts lost their land after 2017, I am assuming 2017 was their last show since that was the last one advertised. You can tell that they put lots of effort into this website because of the actual decent cut outs but unfortunately it doesn't look good. 

Film Website Analysis:

1.Pacific Rim Website

2.Jurassic World

3 http://www.it-movie.net/

1. The Pacific Rim Website

This is the home page of the Pacific rim promo website. there are a handful of clickables including social links, language choices, different pages and interactive "games". The image you can see is actually a video playing in the back, I'm assuming its the film trailer playing. The game / character maker is a good interactive segment that could possibly be a factor for someone to return to the website. It's good to know that the "VFX" page and the "Social" page don't work. The VFX link doesn't work at all and wont load, but the Social link opens what should be the social page but it isn't imbedded correctly.

Also after checking the tabs again i discovered that the "Join the jaeger uprising" button also doesn't load at all

This page has the language, social and home links which are shared across all the pages but has an embedded trailer. No link to buy or redirection to acquire the film.

This synopsis page is quite a simple but effective way to present the story of the films. It's just an overlay from the home page so you can press the "x" and it will send you home. I Originally thought that they took a screengrab of the homepage but i obviously i discovered otherwise

Overall I like the layout and how it was formatted. it's very simple and accessible for people who might have difficulties

2. The Jurassic World

This is a very interactive website which includes games actual real life parks, the films, a community page and information about the characters / dinosaurs.

This is a really good example of well made attention grabbing advertising website. The best thing that was on the site but is now not available was an interactive map of the park from the movie. The video page incudes trailers and extras.

Because the film isn't currently in cinemas its more of a whole franchise advertisment and not as amazing as it was. Unfortunately wayback machine wasn't working for this site when i tried to access it but the map they had on there before was amazing.

2 things to note down though is that the Community page doesn't work and also the "Ilsa Nuba" at the tob doesn't work at all which is disapointing,

3. The IT Movie

When you first open the page you are instantly met with the film trailer which is a good way to introduce people to the product and get them interested straight away. After you finish the trailer you just see the IT Clown and it says "chapter two Only in cinemas" which is a very plain, straight forward way to present the website.

it has some tabs at the top which include video, which is just the trailer again, synopsis. photos and world release because this website hasn't been updated since the film actually came out.

its a very simple but effective use of a promotional website in my opinion. If i was into horrors / the IT franchise this would definitely catch my eye.

In my information page i know i want to include some helpful numbers/websites incase anyone needs them either to recommend to a friend or use themself after seeing the website and watching the film. I Went to the NHS Site that i used in the actual doc and took some numbers / sites from there to include in the info page.

Idea

The site that i will design and create will be simple, only have the essential information, Dark to fit the tone of the documentary

 

 

 

 

Planning

 

 

 
Very Rough Design For the homepage of the Website:

 I want to include a "lightbox" on my site aswel as a warning for sensetive content because of the documentaries topic and i don't want to have someone be uncomfortable because there wasnt a warning

Production:

 I Added a "Lightbox" to give a Trigger warning because it is a sensetive subject for people and i don't want people to have a bad experience which could have been avoided so i made sure to have this precautionary measure in place for the few who would rather not watch something about mental health,

Here is my Home page. Its very plain and simple to fit the actual documentary. I Used black as the main colour of the page because it fits the nature, topic and colour scheme of the actual product that im trying to promote with this website. The little brain icon i use throughout the page is a reference to it being a Film about mental health and i thought it would be good to have a little icon to represent and complete the product. All these images were taken after i finished the website because i was focused on making the product and forgot to take progressional evidence unfortunately.

 

Evaluation:

https://ryanstottmedia.wix.com/my-site-1

 

Audience Research: 

 I Created a survey with the following Questions: 

1. How Do You Feel about the website?

2. Do you think this design is appropriate for the subject matter?

   
   
   

3.  If "no" what could I change to make it more appropriate?

4. What could i add / take away to make the website better?
   

5. How Would you rate the websites effectiveness?

6. Would This page make you watch the documentary? And Why?

• I sent this questionnaire to a few of my friends here are the results:
  1. They all responded  with Great when it came to how they feel about my website which makes me happy knowing that i presented it well.
  2. They all stated that the design was appropiate for the subject of mental health which im very happy with because the one thing i was scared of during the doc and website was misrepresenting or being offensive to people with mental health.
  3. Because none of them answered "NO" I dont have anything to analyse here.
     
  4. when it comes to what i could add or take away i got told that it was good / perfect and that it needed more information, possibly a trailer and a gallery. Honestly i do agree with the trailer bit it would bring the website into a full circle and i could be completely happy with it. I Don't think a gallery would work with my doc because its mainly made up of stock images and with the more information i definitely agree.
  5. i got mostly 5 stars and a 3star when it comes to the effectiveness. i would probably lean more towards the 3, it would probably work within the specified target audience but when it comes to drawing people from outside in it would probably fail.
  6.  They said that the website is very straight forward and simple to manouver and understand and that they would watch it if they some how found it randomly. I didn't want the website to be overcomplicated, full of links or complicated widgets so that anyone could use it and also so it stays serious.
     

  
  

Comparison With Professional site:

 Its very hard to find promotional film sites especially one that is doc based and similar to my design so I am going to be comparing my site with "The Boy Next Door" website because it was the only working one i could find after a while.

https://www.theboynextdoorfilm.com/#all

*It's good to mention that i knew nothing about this film before hand.

The homepage includes a review, the trailer, a synopsis and links to other articles which makes me feel like its not an official promotional site although its presented as such.

just like my site its got easy navigational tools at the top and the logo at the top sends you to the home page just like what i have with my tool bar. They have included the trailer unlike me who just has the whole doc and 0 trailer or trailer page.

The colour they used makes me feel like its a sad or emotional film which is similar to mine because i used black because of the dark subject theme of my film. 

They use the cover art a handful of times unlike me because i didn't create cover art that i could use.

How I Worked:

 With my research i started by looking at generic but bad websites to see what a bad website looks like and kind of get to grips with the conventions and do's and don'ts. Then i moved to actual Film promotional sites and started to analyse what was on them. I Also looked at the NHS Mental Health Helplines List because i knew i wanted to include some helpful sites or numbers in my information page since the website is about my Mental Health doc.

Everything i needed for reference or for inspiration was on my second monitor the whole time and same with any of the custom assets i used which was actually just the NHS Logo since everying else i used was built into the WIX editor.

My Strengths And Weaknesses:

 The strengths i had during the Website project would be keeping on theme, my adaptability to using such a new tool. I Tried to keep with the whole dark theme and not try to make it "clickbaity" or colourful because that doesn't fit in line with how serious my Documentary is. It probably would do better if it had a wider range of colours that caught the eye but it wouldn't fit with the theme. I learned how to use the wix website editor quite quickly and only came across one or two small hurdles along the way which i quickly managed to fix.

My Weaknesses or the skills i need to develop to be more effective in designing a promotional website would be making a custom icon for the website as it would add a level of uniqueness and possibly make it look more professional with a custom icon. I probably need to improve on my writing skill so i could of had a better information page and possibly even a little synopsis that went along with it which would've added a more indepth view on the doc.

Action Points:

•  A way i could've worked more effectively would be gathering everything i needed before i started instead of midway through.
• another would be to have all the links and references in a document thats open in my second monitor so if i needed to link them i could've with ease.
  
•  Definitely need to remember to publish the website when im fully done because that caused some complications with the audience research