O/T - have you ever created a website for a movie?

Mac user here with absolutely no experience of building or publishing a website. I have to create and get one up for an independent movie. The usual stuff.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please? I would appreciate any brief (or lengthy) advice from anyone who has done this before and who can advise me on what software you advise me to buy - and where I might find a website with good advice for a beginner moron.

Best, with thanks,

Harry.



Harry Bromley-Davenport.

iLife '06 with iWeb is a cheap and easy solution. Unless you want to dive in and encode the html by hand (not hard, but a lot to learn) you'll probably do well with a template-based web editor where you just drag and drop content into pre-formatted pages. iWeb is very good with Quicktime media, which is important for any trailers or EPK stuff for the film.

Other template based editors are Sandvox, Goldfish and Rapidweaver (look for them on VersionTracker). I also tell people that if they want to get something really cheap and easy online, do it as a blog (Blogger, LiveJournal, etc.)

Thanks very much for your prompt and useful suggestion. I'll look into the things you recommend.

Best wishes,

Harry.



Harry Bromley-Davenport.

Harry,

Not to state the obvious, but this is a Final Cut Pro support / troubleshooting forum. You may wish to GOOGLE "Building A Website". There are many more in-depth web-related threads on The Cow:

[forums.creativecow.net]

...or Adobe InDesign (website building software) here:

[www.adobeforums.com]

There are so many directions you can go, it's not even funny. I personally use Dreamweaver MX / Photoshop CS2 to design & build my site and use Cleaner 6.5 to crush my QT's. FLASH is a whole other beast. I don't know if you are trying to achieve a high-end client site or a simple "My Space" type freebee.

Good Luck...

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hi Harry,

If you are considering iWeb check out this article.

[www.kenstone.net]

--ken

Ken,

That iWeb app looks pretty cool I see Apple removed iTunes from iLife and added iWeb. Nice.

- Joey



Post Edited (08-19-06 16:22)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Hi Joey,

I still code my site by hand but I had some friends who want to use iWeb, so I checked it out.

It is pretty amazing, very intuative, drag, drop, tweak.

Of course you have to shell out $99 for a dotmac acct. (you can publish a folder from iWeb that you can FTP to your own server acct as well)

--ken

<<<Of course you have to shell out $99 for a dotmac acct. (you can publish a folder from iWeb that you can FTP to your own server acct as well)>>>

That was the first question. They don't tie you to their server. I code by hand, too, and yes I do know how to ftp without Fetch. I just need graphic help every so often. I've never opened up my iLife license.

Maybe it's time.

Koz

>>> Of course you have to shell out $99 for a dotmac acct. <<<

What if I already have my own host & domain name? I can't use iWeb to build a site?



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

There are many programs for building web sites and web pages. You can research them and decide which one to buy. But if you want to learn how to design and build a web page and a website, the best way is learning html.

The only problem that I know of is finding the html codes to include a certain type of movie file; this is something that is always changing.

Good luck.

Joey,

Several of my clients already have accts and domain names with different ISPs.

I built them a front door. At their domain homepage (index.html) I created a new homepage that says "Enter". Enter is a link takes the view to the dotmac web acct.

This way the viewer does not have to deal with the terribly long and nonsensical URLs that dotmac and iWeb create. They can use your domain name.

Of course now you are paying for the ISP acct as well as a dotmac acct.

--ken

Thank you all very much for your ideas.

grafixjoe, I do understand that this is an FCP site. I had hoped that, by stating in my "subject line" that it was off topic, I would get help from other film-makers who understand exactly what direction I need to take for a movie website.

This turns out to have been the case, given all the support you have all given.

It's not as if I asked for help in mating two sea elephants, is it?

Thanks,

best wishes,

Harry.



Harry Bromley-Davenport.

Ken - what a fantastic article.

Harry.



Harry Bromley-Davenport.

Hi Harry,

Thanks for the kudos.

Up until now, mating two sea elephants would have been very difficult indeed.

Just released is the "Mating Two Sea Elephants" plugin. While the plugin is Universal it does not offer much RT.

(g)

--ken

<<<Just released is the "Mating Two Sea Elephants" plugin. While the plugin is Universal it does not offer much RT.>>>

Did you search the forum? Seems to me we covered that a month or so back...

Koz

Quote

harry323 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
It's not as if I asked for help in mating two sea elephants, is it?

I can take care of that in AE, but you're out of luck in FCP as it would take too long to render

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

A couple of ideas - Don't reinvent the wheel, jump on other websites...

[www.IMDB.com] The Internet Database... get yourself on IMDB as an individual, then start adding your titles, old and new. List all of the actors and crew, and if any of them are already on IMDB, you've got links before you even started!... Automatic search engine submission and placement. I got on IMDB because I did a scene for someone else, and I pay $50/yr to hype my bio etc.


[www.MySpace.com] create an account and screen name for your movie... and/or for your production company. Join MySpace groups. Automatic search engine submission and placement. Have the cast and crew create accounts, then add them as Friends, and vice versa. It's all about networking and linking, baby!

[groups.yahoo.com] create a Yahoo group for your movie... and/or for your production company. Automatic search engine submission and placement.

The there's www.YouTube.com and more. Also, look for review websites, and genre niche websites that self promote.

I sell DVD-R On Demand at [www.CustomFlix.com] which is owned by Amazon.com... which means you sell your movies on Amazon.com!! High search engine ranking.

There are also Clips On Demand and Video On Demand sites... where if you don't want to market your full movie, you can put up clips and let the site advertise your movie to the world. Let them pay to do the Search Engine submissions...



If you build your own website on your own domain, chances are after spending the money and time, no one will find you because the others have a leg up on the Search Engines. Hop on existing "community" websites mentioned above, and in a couple of hours you'll have an audience of millions.

One Caveat about MySpace: having a couple of dozen friends is impressive - just don't feel bad that Justin Timberlake has almost a third-million "Friends" on MySpace!

People on this site should be more interested in LinkedIn than MySpace. It's the "professional MySpace"-- started by a PayPal cofounder. Pretty cool, nowhere near as noisy. Friends of mine gets jobs from people they wouldn't have met otherwise.

- Loren
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