Website

Gino Terribilini · November 2, 2005

Check out my website and let me know what you think... I have absolutely NO HTML/ web making experience, so excuse the flaws, but let me know what you like/ dislike about the overall look of the website. Oh, and if you know anybody who could help me out with it, let me know. :D

MotusPictures.com

Grainy · November 2, 2005

Hi Gino

I think what you want is a utilitarian site, but what you've got is a hobby site/work in progress. Here's some things you could consider working on-

1 - the images sit low on the page, at least in the browser view I'm looking at (very standard IE setup 1024x768). I had to scroll to see the bottom of each page. Unless you have a LOT of content (like a blog)scrolling = bad.

2 - The subpages are awfully light in content. What's the purpose of this Web site? I'd keep it under wraps until you can fill it up with stuff to read. The only thing I see here for an outsider is the film clip (the still you post looks very nice!)

3 - in your graphic layout, "Modus Pictures - News" (for example) looks squashed onto the checkered box. I'd give it more room to breathe. Esp. since you've got so little content.

4 - I'd consider something simpler than the checkered design, like black letters in a simple font against a white background. Grids and other fancy designs are hard to read and can irritate some people. These people could be your clients.

5 - font size should all be unified: one size for headlines, one size for the rest of the text. I see some drifting here and there.

best of luck

G

Joseph White · November 2, 2005

hey gino,

overall i agree with the previous poster - keep the fonts together, and put up a working link as ive tried to play the video on 2 computers and it works on neither. bad links to content (or only having it available in one format and one size for that matter) can make things look shabby...

i have friends who are awesome at this sort of thing - write me a note and i'll put you in touch with them,. i think the trick is to really offer something that isn;t out there - generally if you haven't shot much stuff and don't have anything in the works (if you do there isn't much there saying so except for a vague description of something...) a website might be a little premature, unless its purpose is to begin offering services, then you need to really outline what Motus pictures can do for you, the client, and so on. there's also a spelling error (on your "about us" page) that you should try to fix. put your best foot forward and all that good stuff.

definitely keep plugging though!

November 4, 2005

Check out my website and let me know what you think... I have absolutely NO HTML/ web making experience, so excuse the flaws, but let me know what you like/ dislike about the overall look of the website. Oh, and if you know anybody who could help me out with it, let me know. :D

MotusPictures.com

I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt. However that background image "site.jpg" at 70K is way too big for what it does. It would be OK if the visitor has a high-speed connection but there's still a lot of daillup out there! A better approach is to make a much smaller .gif image and have it repeat to form a background, for example:

<td background = "arribkg.gif">(this is one taken from an arri agent's site)

All they've done is destaurate the Arri logo using Photoshop and then use the brightness and contrast controls to take it down to the shadowy level seen here.

You probably don't need such big writing. I'd also suggest you do a bit of research on the "<iframe>" tag. This is like the old-fashioned (but now discredited) "<frame>" tag, but it lets you put little scrollable boxes in wherever you like. With a bit of ingenuity, you can make these look pretty flash!

November 4, 2005

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My other suggestion is that you learn how to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). That allows you to play around with text formatting as much as you like without having to retype everything:

For example instead of :

<p font size = 6 color = red> Blah Blah Blah...

you can have:

<p class = "bigred"> Blah Blah Blah....

The bigred "class" is laid out in a <style> statement placed in the <head> section. Apart from the fact that you can do a lot more to the text with <style> statements, if later on you discover that "bigred" formatting looks like crap, (what was I thinking?! :) you only have to change the one statement in the <head> section to fix all the instances of "bigred" in the <body> section. Saves you an awful lot of re-typing if you've got a lot of "bigred" headings!

A step further is to put all your <style> stuff into a separate .css file eg "motus.css". Then, instead of putting the same <style> statements into every page of your website, you just use the "link rel..." statement to tell it where to find them. That way all your pages have the same "look" and again, you can change the formatting of all the pages at a single stroke by just modifying the ".css" file.

I know this is a bit of a steep learning curve, but once you've mastered all this, you feel more inclined to "fine tune" your website, because it becomes a lot easier to do!

November 14, 2005

I can design web sites. Easy to learn really. But...why bother? In my experience, they are a pain in the ass and won't earn you money or prestige. I feel that it is best to channel everything into your films instead and go the traditional route. What's the use in putting clips on the web, doesn't it dilute your film? Don't they call it a 'spoiler'? Plus the clip 'ages' and then what? leave it? replace it? Then aren't you're actions being motivated to replace the 'aging clip' rather than concentrate on telling an amazing story??