Layout For A Web Page Series Promo

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

How is this looking so far?

Redefining “Family” … Again?​

If you think modern families are becoming too strange for the traditionalist, “Family” will be even stranger when they walk among us.

​

As AI beings surpass humans, they will be seen as a job threat, a species threat, and the end of human domination. Humans created the first generation and brought them into their world. Will humans pull a Doctor Frankenstein and abandon them where they will have to discover the world alone? Or, will humans take responsibility and nourish them and raise them as their own children? They can be our greatest weapons and protectors, us supersized, or our worse nightmares.

As we start to explore outer space beyond our solar system, AI will play a bigger role in probes and robots travelling beyond the range of human interaction where machines will have to think for themselves and adopt to change.

Once AI starts building better versions of themselves without human assistance, their evolution will be exponential. What will they evolve into? AC (artificial consciousness) merging with AI in the future is inevitable. Machines with consciousnesses, convictions, beliefs, likes and dislikes, a taste in the arts, and out of the box thinking are the future of things to come with AI.

What will it take for the humans living among these thinking machines to realize the value of an AI being’s life?

This series will feature first and second generation AI machines. The original model of their artificial “brains” is the human brain. The second generation AI machines and cyborgs have the advantage of improved memory capacity, greater speed in information processing, photographic memories, and modified emotions to exceed human limitations.

Some believe by the year 2020, AI will surpass human intelligence and the machines will want their place in a world humans will bring them into. Get ready for AI with …

I, Creator – The Series
5 minute series preview.
I, Creator 3 – The Singularity
(Screenplay Available)
(Story Bible Available)​

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

All the discussion of platforms & social media aside - from a design/layout standpoint this isn't even close yet. My first reaction is that it looks like a site built sometime in the mid-90's, prior to the widespread application of design to the web.

Don't take this the wrong way, but to be honest it's clear to me that you don't have the design or technical skills necessary to produce a reasonably well designed and modern web site. Most people don't - and that's why most people either hire a good web designer or use templates that have been built by a good web designer. You really should consider one of these two options.

I happen to agree with you IDOM. Funding is the problem I am faced with, which is why I have to wear so many hats.

 

[rogypro]

this layout .......needs alot of work. to give you my honest truth, it reminds me of when graphics first started coming out.

i am a wed designer.. sort of and build my own sites. they're not "great" but they look more appealing to the eye.
flash:
http://rogyproductions.com

no flash:
http://rogyproevents.com

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

I happen to agree with you IDOM. Funding is the problem I am faced with, which is why I have to wear so many hats.

I get that - so you're not going to hire someone, which is fine. That's why you should find a good template-based option to build on. There are a lot which are free - but the quality is all over the place, and you'll still need some technical skills to get them set up and running.

Personally I'd go with something like squarespace - they're easy to use, have a bunch of simple but cleanly designed templates, and their basic package is $8/month. You'll still need to work on refining your graphics, but at least you'll be working within a framework that gets you much closer to something which looks pro.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Well,

If anyone has checked this link a few times, the web page is changing daily as it is still in the design stage. So, the link will remain unlisted, until something better is ready.

Also, my music composer is asking for more time to add music to the preview. So, a lot is still in the rough.

http://www.cvkproductions.com/ICreatorTheSeriesPromoPage.html

I did some stuff with Photoshop to come up with a better concept image. And, I'm still working on it. It's a work in progress.

My area got hit with the Hurricane Sandy this week. The ceiling in my bathroom collapsed this past Wednesday. So, cleaning and restoring my bathroom is taking time away from the page as well as re-editing videos.

I am touching up the 22 minute version of the pilot film before I send it to the Bare Bones Film Festival to get everyone their IMDB credits.

IDOM, I'll look into the templates. There is tons of support for Adobe Dreamweaver, which I am using to make the page. My web hosting provider also supports Dreamweaver. They may have some templates as well.

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

Sorry to hear (read) about your damage. I looked into hiring a professional web designer awhile back and the estimates were all over the place. Most hovered around $5k to get the look, feel and functionality that I wanted.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

$5K is WAY too much.

Rogypro, show that around to enough people and you will get feedback that it is too noisy and the flash video takes too long to load for the general public. Been there done stuff like that a few years ago.

Organizations and businesses don't even allow speakers or sound cards in employee computers in many places.

KISS (keep it simple stupid) is still preferred.

Information sharing with everything in front of visitors is the most important objective to achieve with your page.

 

[WalterB]

First of all: I'm not a webdesigner (obviously: my website isn't the most brilliant one either. It needs some work as well.).
But I've been reading and thinking a lot about usability and I've been discussing these subjects quite often with UX-experts. And I know a lot of webdesigners and programmers, so I have seen a lot of things.

Second: I will be brutal

Third: it's nothing personal.
You already put so much effort in everything, a crappy webpage will not help you at all.

About the webpage:
- It looks like a geocities-parodie from the '90s.
The page looks outdated and irrelevant: most people will think they landed on a page from the '90's and that the content hasn't been updated for over 15 years.
- Use another font: a sans serif font is much clearer to read on a screen. Like Arial and Helvetica. Everyone has these fonts or at least one of them, so you only have to tell the browser to use them. You now only use them for your headers and not the rest of the text.
- Use a plain background: the repeated picture is one of the reasons it looks like an amateur webpage from the '90s
- toss the large picture with the overposturised colors with all that banding: it looks terrible and it's too large. Make a header which is less high and has better graphics/stills.
- put the most important video higher on the page: visitors have to read through a lot of background blabla before they can watch anything. This means that they can leave without ever knowing there is a video to watch. Put the video after a short introduction text. Then continue with the text.
- keep the width of the content at max 980 px. Make sure it centers on larger monitors. Most monitors are now at least 1024 pix wide. Keeping the width below that makes sure visitors only have to scroll down. (Scrolling 2 ways is annoying: annoyance = scaring people away.)
- rewrite your text. It's too much background philosofie and to little what the series is about. People want to know: place, time, problem/mission.
- put 'I, Creator' and 'the series' together in the new header you will make

- the thing you did right: stay away from Flash.

An advice:
add a 'call to action' link where people can leave their emailadress or like your fb-page if they want to be kept informed on the project/series. Don't spam them every day or week, but give them real news and updates.

Use CSS to seperate content programming from the design; it's much easier to update once you know how it works.
You don't need tables with CSS.

Design a webpage in photoshop. Don't write, just look how you want it to look like.
Where should the header be, where the video, where the call to action?
Your current page looks like it isn't designed at all, but put together with what you can do with html. (Which is the other way around: you let your limitations dictate the looks instead of that the looks dictate how to build it.)

That's it.


------------------------------

PS.
Sorry to hear about the Sandy damage.
Hope it can be fixed quickly and more important: I hope you and your friends & family are alright.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Thank you, WalterB.

I will add a button section to FB, Twitter, WordPress, and YouTube Channel soon.

The target audience for the web page is small production companies and cable TV networks for this proposal, closed away from the public.

This page for my pilot is more for the public.

http://www.cvkproductions.com/ICreator2Promo.html

And, yes I know the public page needs work. I am tweaking it as I work on the other page.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

$5K is WAY too much.

Too much for what? He said "Most hovered around $5k to get the look, feel and functionality that I wanted" so it's hard to say what's fair without knowing the scope of what he was looking for, but $5k is certainly not way too much for a modern, well designed & built site with useful functionality.

Yes, you can spend less, but the truth is you generally get what you pay for. There's a big difference between someone who can make a web page with Dreamweaver and a good web designer. Building a quality site requires someone with significant skills as both a designer and developer, which is honestly rare to find in a single person, so in many cases you're talking about hiring at least two people as a team to do the work. The people who are good at it tend to charge a fair industry rate for their work, and that currently starts at around $50/hour and goes up from there. So figure a week's work for a designer, and a week's work for a developer, factor in time for a couple of cycles of feedback, redesign, and testing and you're already up to the $5k price.

Information sharing with everything in front of visitors is the most important objective to achieve with your page.

It's an important objective, but not the only one - when you're building a site for a film another very important objective is branding. The look and feel of your site is the first impression of your film for many people, and unfortunately the sites you've shown for your film do a very poor job of that. If I wasn't looking at them because you asked for feedback I honestly wouldn't bother reading most of the content on the page; the impression they give is that they were produced by a complete amateur, and I certainly wouldn't expect them to represent a film that was any better than the site itself.

Attention is the most valuable commodity online, and visitors to any site often make a determination within seconds of whether to spend their valuable time exploring the site further. If your first impression isn't strong then they aren't likely to stick around very long.

If your goal is purely information sharing with the current site then I'd say you should eliminate all of the design elements and make it as simple as possible - no design is actually better than bad design. WalterB's suggestions are a good place to start.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

$5,000 can buy me food for 125 months. So, why would I spend it when I don't have it for anything right now?

I live off of $10 a week for food. It isn't easy and I am losing more and more weight. I should be eating more. But, money is a issue. It's just not there.

Also, I may not be working after next month. A contract for my employment is up for renewal. The company I work for is too arrogant to cut their pricing and the company I am outsourced to is cutting personal left and right and leasing cheaper and cheaper equipment to save money. What they have is too under-powered for the volume they do.

I may be homeless in January 2013. So, why should I think about $5,000 for a web site?

The stuff I studied in college in electronics and computer programming was supposed to be current when I graduated college. It turned out to be 10 years ahead of what the company I was hired by was using.

Ten years ago, most directors of development only accepted submissions by fax or snail mail while the rest of the world was using emails.

So, being current with the latest technology and web sites is not that big a deal.

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

For that site, I wanted a virtual 3D art deco movie house. Everything on screen would be live and interactive. As you look at the period facade (100% original design), you see the marquee and the ticket booths as well as the front door. The marquee contains hot links to specific areas for people who know where they want to go. One ticket booth lets you sign up for premium membership, the other is the premium member log-in area. Clicking on the front door lets you enter the site as a guest. When you "walk" into the lobby of the theater, the posters on the walls are links to sub-sites for each movie. The concession area is to be the swag and merchandise vending area requiring an e-commerce hub. The bathrooms are discussion forums, one for cast and crew and the other for members and guests. Cast and crew click on a link in the marquee to access the private area where call sheets, schedules and payroll are handled. The marquee also has links for "Contact Us", "Audition" and Forums. Just the permissions for this site are load intensive. I did not think that $5,000 was an unrealistic price to pay to get all of that in a nice, easily modified, package that runs smoothly and was well supported. I had to back burner it because I had only allotted $1,000 for the construction of the site.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

For that site, I wanted a virtual 3D art deco movie house. Everything on screen would be live and interactive. As you look at the period facade (100% original design), you see the marquee and the ticket booths as well as the front door. The marquee contains hot links to specific areas for people who know where they want to go. One ticket booth lets you sign up for premium membership, the other is the premium member log-in area. Clicking on the front door lets you enter the site as a guest. When you "walk" into the lobby of the theater, the posters on the walls are links to sub-sites for each movie. The concession area is to be the swag and merchandise vending area requiring an e-commerce hub. The bathrooms are discussion forums, one for cast and crew and the other for members and guests. Cast and crew click on a link in the marquee to access the private area where call sheets, schedules and payroll are handled. The marquee also has links for "Contact Us", "Audition" and Forums. Just the permissions for this site are load intensive. I did not think that $5,000 was an unrealistic price to pay to get all of that in a nice, easily modified, package that runs smoothly and was well supported. I had to back burner it because I had only allotted $1,000 for the construction of the site.

For a TV series?

That image does not work for me.

I would think a family sitting on the couch of their living room watching a flat screen TV where the TV set plays the video clips and the coffee table has scattered magazines and DVDs. The DVDs are the story Bible and magazines are the screenplays.

The visual is more direct for the market.

I wouldn't worry about a section to audition actors. They will find you.

Most of my LinkedIn contacts are actors. Most don't even know me.

I set up a casting section because I need specialized actors for a science fiction action adventure series.

They need to meet specific physical requirements for the roles and real stunt experience is also necessary for certain roles.

Especially trying to make an independent science fiction female action hero role is a monumental undertaking.

We have paypal setup already for book and DVD sales. CrrateSpace handles the VOD sales.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

For that site, I wanted a virtual 3D art deco movie house. Everything on screen would be live and interactive. (...)

That's far more intensive (at least if I'm picturing it right) than I was imagining for the price you quoted. Personally I wouldn't ever take on a project like that for $5k, just too much headache to get it working smoothly, so I would consider that a very good price. The truth though is if you came to me asking for a site like that I'd do my best to convince you to do something else - that kind of heavy skuemorphic, 'interactive environment' thing has been attempted many times and in general simply detracts from the end-user experience.

$5,000 can buy me food for 125 months. So, why would I spend it when I don't have it for anything right now?

I live off of $10 a week for food. It isn't easy and I am losing more and more weight. I should be eating more. But, money is a issue. It's just not there.

I thought you were saying $5k was too much for a site in general, not just for your site. I agree, you shouldn't be spending money on the site if you don't have enough for the basics, but if that's the case I'd question the need for the site at all - it seems like you're wasting time and effort with these different pages. Make a facebook page, concentrate all your effort on that one spot, and don't worry about building sites for the show - it sounds like you've got more important things to spend your time on right now.

Ten years ago, most directors of development only accepted submissions by fax or snail mail while the rest of the world was using emails.

So, being current with the latest technology and web sites is not that big a deal.

I wasn't really talking about web site technology at all, and most of the useful advice given in this thread doesn't really have anything to do with technology.

You're always soliciting feedback and asking questions, and I really like to try and provide useful advice (as do quite a few others around here) - but I'm not sure that you realize that you often make it really difficult for people to continue doing that.

It's like you're banging your head against a wall, and complaining that the concrete is too hard. Everyone in the room suggests that maybe you should stop banging your head against the wall, and you respond with something like "production companies have traditionally used concrete walls to support the roof over their studios, so I'll just keep banging my head over here." You're response doesn't make any sense, gives the impression you didn't really listen to the advice that was being given, and personally makes me wonder whether it was worth the time it took to write it. Just something to be aware of.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

People who know my situation are saying don't spend any money. Worry about basic necessities before all else.

Again, my vision is different because I have a different market than most people posting here. I am looking to make stuff for small cable TV networks and they are my market. The rest is irrelevant.

Poster here ignore or don't pay attention to my market and my posts.

So, I ask myself sometimes, why? I need to reach out to TV professionals. I can't find that support here.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

That's far more intensive (at least if I'm picturing it right) than I was imagining for the price you quoted. Personally I wouldn't ever take on a project like that for $5k, just too much headache to get it working smoothly, so I would consider that a very good price. The truth though is if you came to me asking for a site like that I'd do my best to convince you to do something else - that kind of heavy skuemorphic, 'interactive environment' thing has been attempted many times and in general simply detracts from the end-user experience.



I thought you were saying $5k was too much for a site in general, not just for your site. I agree, you shouldn't be spending money on the site if you don't have enough for the basics, but if that's the case I'd question the need for the site at all - it seems like you're wasting time and effort with these different pages. Make a facebook page, concentrate all your effort on that one spot, and don't worry about building sites for the show - it sounds like you've got more important things to spend your time on right now.



I wasn't really talking about web site technology at all, and most of the useful advice given in this thread doesn't really have anything to do with technology.

You're always soliciting feedback and asking questions, and I really like to try and provide useful advice (as do quite a few others around here) - but I'm not sure that you realize that you often make it really difficult for people to continue doing that.

It's like you're banging your head against a wall, and complaining that the concrete is too hard. Everyone in the room suggests that maybe you should stop banging your head against the wall, and you respond with something like "production companies have traditionally used concrete walls to support the roof over their studios, so I'll just keep banging my head over here." You're response doesn't make any sense, gives the impression you didn't really listen to the advice that was being given, and personally makes me wonder whether it was worth the time it took to write it. Just something to be aware of.

You are right on the money and take the time to read into things.

I just went to a TV content maker's web site. I see what you mean. And, I see what the site should include. The 5 minute preview with sample clips will be useful for the new site.

Demographics tied to the characteristics of the main characters characteristics must be tied together even before a discussion of the series plot. That is in my story bible. So, that is on the right track.

I will hold off on the web site until I see what the future holds. Job one is to see if I have work after December of this year.

The web site can be simpler than what LH suggested. Too much in too many different directions will lose the focus of the information the site should provide.

IDOM, I will send you a link to the site I examined as a private message, if you are interested. The demographics are for a younger audience. But, there presentation and information give are good benchmarks to follow.

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

The site that I was referring to was for a production house with a number of ongoing projects, not the TV show. The TV show doesn't have a site. I plan to leave that to the production company/network if I sell it. If I do the project myself, I'll knock together a site before production begins.