Synthetic Pictures
My Role
UX/UI Designer
Reinvisioning a CMS platform for a film production company based in Austin, TX
BACKGROUND
My former company, Synthetic Pictures, is a film production company specializing in creating television commercials, feature films, and music videos. They are based in Los Angeles, with offices in Austin and New York.
My former boss contacted me about the opportunity to redesign their website. He contacted me because he knows I am very familiar with film production methods, and requirements to earn new business, as well as my "newly" acquired skill of UX design.
I always had my opinions about the old company website, and had many ideas (nailing down the IA) in order to bring this site up to speed.
SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS
Synthetic Pictures reps about a dozen directors across the planet. In order to win new business, they "pitch" one of their director's work (reels) to advertising agencies or other clients for any particular job that they are bidding on. The website needed to clearly and concisely display each directors work, and needs to be modular in order to make a custom "reel" that displays a similar body of work to the project that they are bidding.
WIREFRAMES
For these wireframes, myself and the Directors agreed that the most important concept was to showcase the work front and center. No having to dig around to find a video, or a play button. It needed to be "in your face" and easy to access. I set out to design a clean, and fairly minimal set of wireframes that also allows the user to engage with the deep volume of work.
Under "WORK" I created two subcategories (Directors and Work Styles). This clearly helps a client narrow down the large body of work from our company to find something more specific to their needs. After spending several years building custom reels to send to prospective clients, it was clear that our clients were coming to the site to either find a specific director, or have a look at the specific directing styles in which the company specializes.
The second tab outlines all of the specific categories that our client may need to see. For instance, if they are shooting a commercial for a tourism board, they would obviously want to see the tourism work that our company has produced.
THE OUTCOME
There has been quite a bit of positive feedback since this new site was launched. It runs very smoothly on desktop and mobile, and makes it very easy for clients to quickly get what they need. There are several other touches amongst the website, like integrated gifs and an adaptive news page, but for this case study I chose to focus on the information architecture. Making a site that is on par with other top production companies has allowed Synthetic Pictures to ramp up their business and win countless new jobs for their directors.
Working for my previous company was a joy because I could truly blend my previous work experience with my future career. I am fluent in film "production speak" so this process went very smoothly. Also, I will admit that it was very exciting to work on legitimate professional work as a UX freelancer and not as a UX bootcamp-er. Throughout the project I was constantly interfacing with my former boss (the main stakeholder), as well as the executive producer of the company, a well known graphic designer and also a top dev agency in Los Angeles. It truly was a great experience!
Thank you.