The American Side — Site Launch Profile

Designing the website for Indendent Film.

clevermethod

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clevermethod 2013 blog posts

3 min readFeb 21, 2014

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Introducing “The American Side”

clevermethod was approached by Jenna Ricker and Centre Street Film to develop the official movie site for The American Side, an in-the-works mystery/thriller film project to be set & filmed in Western New York. Let’s go through some of the development and strategic process in the site.

Building the Site

TheAmericanSideMovie.com was developed to serve two main purposes:

Provide key information on the ongoing project while Writer & Director Jenna Ricker promotes & fund-raises for the movie
Serve as a social media ‘hub’ that Jenna & her Team can use for generating ‘grassroots’ support for the film in the Western New York area

Conceptualizing the site with Jenna was exciting for our creative team since it is a different industry than we normally work with, plus the idea of using the site to galvanize support from the local community really resonated with us since most of our staff are from the Buffalo area.

Designing the Site

The major attraction of the finished site is the full-sized background that cycles short clips from the promotional trailer. Josh, our Senior Interactive Designer and Bob, our Web Development Manager worked together to build this feature using inspiration from a variety of sources.

With creative direction from Jenna, we created the eerie and mysterious vibe she was looking for that would recreate the tone of the story and captivate visitors once they land on the site. Since the film is still in development and additional scenes may be shot, the idea of using the promotional trailer in such a prominent way on the screen drives home the idea of using the site as a promotional tool: After watching the quick cut-scenes for only a few short moments, the visitor can quickly learn of what to expect with this movie.

Building the Social Network

As a team we decided that social media/networking should be a major part of promoting the film, the focus being on organic community growth. In emphasizing the need to inspire support from the Buffalo, Niagara and Western New York community overall is a key component to the success of this film, but also future films. The team behind The American Side is hoping that this film will be a catalyst for future growth in the regions film industry, which can only happen with the support of fans and key community leaders.

Site goals were to make a mailing list easily accessible to visitors for future developments, highlight a Twitter feed that shows the most recent Tweet from @TheAmericanSide, film production & story background, and of course a utilize a full-screen video of the promotional trailer that plays when the visitor clicks the bottom-right corner of the screen. Jenna has been given strategy and promotional tips from Ed our Online Marketing & Social Media analyst to make sure that word gets out about this exciting new project.

Looking Ahead

We’re hoping that as support and the size of the community behind The American Side increases, so will the social media strategy that organizes the film project. Jenna & company hopes to use the site & social networks as a tool for reaching out to the community for finding extras, location scouting, and much more. We’ll be supporting Jenna and Centre Street Films as production picks up, and keeping our followers informed of site developments.