HIGHBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL web proposal
DREAM. CREATE.
CONTENTS 2
Cover Letter
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Project Overview
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Functionalities
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Architecture
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Components
10
Prototype
12
Timeline
14
Cost Breakdown
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Team Bios
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COVER LETTER Dr. Jim Owens and Professor Greg Bandy, This package contains our complete prosopal for the Highbridge Film Festival website redesign. We’ve been looking forward to sharing it with you. Our team has spent a lot of time thinking about the Highbridge Film Festival site and how we want it to be presented to web users. We are eager for it to sell the festival, and we feel it should show that Asbury students are capable of professionalquality work. Part of the research for this project included visiting the sites for other film festivals across the country. We were actually surprised to find that many of them were not very appealing. Many of them have decades of credibility built up, however, whereas Highbridge is still establishing itself to the public. So we understand how much is riding on our ability to get a goodlooking and functional site up and running. Fortunately, of course, almost all of us have been involved with Highbridge already—as filmmakers, promoters, or audience members—and we have a special sense of connection with it before coming into this project. So this is a job that we not only can, but want to complete with excellence. The project as we have outlined it will focus on a technical reconstruction of each page, graphical revamp of the site, and a streamlining of the site hierarchy. Each of these steps is detailed inside. The only thing we need to begin is your approval. We hope you’ll be eager to give it once you see what we have planned. Sincerely,
Design Team Megan Scott Jack Brannen Scott Rohrer Austin Brooks Jeff Giblin Devon Salyer Tim Pachuau
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PROJECT OVERVIEW We recognize that the Highbridge Film Festival website is charged with the difficult dual task of supplying information and selling a product, both to filmmakers and potential audience members. Additionally, the yearly festival themes require virtual site overhauls every year—and not by a full-time web team, but by a group of students. This means that the festival website must be simply and logically constructed in addition to being informative and visually persuasive. To these ends, we propose the following three pieces in the reconstruction of the site. First, we will implement a new technical contruction based on a template model for future graphical redesign. The site architecture will be separated from the site design, meaning that from now on, redesigning the site will be as simple as changing one CSS stylesheet and swapping out one folder of graphics. The pages can stay intact while the look and feel is refreshed. Second, we will update the current design to the visual theme of the 2009 Highbridge Film Festival. This theme is a departure from last year’s more muted feel to a bold, energetic aesthetic. Third, we will reconsider the current site architecture and reorder it to make the site hierarchically sound. Each page will be logically placed based on where it lies in the master scheme. This will facilitate easier navigation and information-finding for the user as well as discourage arbitrary hierarchy in future additions to the site. We believe that these changes and additions to the website will heavily strengthen its ability to contribute to the success of the festival.
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FUNCTIONALITIES Information:
The new Highbridge website will be the one-stop location for all potential filmmakers, audience members, and sponsors for information about the festival. Viewers can quickly and easily find out how and when to buy tickets, filmmakers will have access to regulation information and entry forms, and business owners will be able to learn why the festival is a worthwhile sponsorship investment.
Clarity and simplicity:
The site will be a direct, accessible, and well-articulated source of textual and image content for all members of the target audience. Both the inter- and intra-page design will focus on logical layout, intuitive navigation, and information that is present in all (and only) the right places.
Design:
The new design of the site will center around a dark and very vibrant color palette designed to give the festival a more dynamic and bold feel. The color palette will be implemented in a minimalistic and clean-lines center-column layout designed to emphasize the professionalism of the festival and give instant credibility to it in the eyes of any site visiter.
Inspiration:
The site will serve to encourage entrants, participants, and sponsors to lend their time, talent, and money to the festival by communicating the unique opportunity and excitement the festival offers.
Reusability:
The site will be designed as a completed template, so that future visual redesigns of the site will not necessitate a reconstruction or recoding of any page, but simply a swap of graphics folders and CSS stylesheets.
Compatibility:
The site will be compatible with the latest versions of Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. The site will integrate into the school’s content management system (CMS) so that the content is easily updatable.
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ARCHITECTURE HOME PAGE
SCREENINGS
GEN INFO
NEWS Pictures
CONTACT US Pictures
HISTORY Pictures
PHOTOS FLASH VIDEO
FLASH VIDEO
FILMMAKERS
FESTIVAL 09
VIDEOS
TICKETS
Content
WEEKEND SCHEDULE
JUDGES PARTNERS
Pictures
Pictures
Pictures
COLLEGE FILMMAKERS
HIGH SCHOOL FILMMAKERS
Content
Email Links
CLIP 1
Poster Pic
Link to Admissions
Photos/Logos
SUBMISSION INFO
PRIZES CATEGORIES
SUBMISSION INFO
PRIZES CATEGORIES
Pictures
Pictures
Pictures
FLASH VIDEO
Links
Pictures
PDF APP
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PDF APP
COMPONENTS The redesigned Highbridge Film Festival website will include 19 unique web pages as well as additional layouts for displaying video content and event photos.
The Home Page:
When navigating to the site, the user will see a splash-screen home page and have the option to view a 30-second Flash video. Below the video will be links to the 4 subdivisions of the site: the 2009 Highbridge Film Festival home page, general information, galleries of past winners, and a section for filmmakers.
The 2009 Film Festival Subdivision:
On the 2009 film festival page, the user will navigate to the other three subdivisions as well as the subpages that are related to the current year’s festival (3 screens): ticket information, a weekend schedule, and information about the judges and partners.
The General Information Subdivision:
From the general information page, the user will navigate to a different subdivision or select any of the content pages under the general information subsection (3 screens): recent news, the history of the festival, and contact information.
The Screenings Subdivision:
The gallery main page will contain links to a Flash-based photo and video gallery that will showcase pictures and winning films from previous festivals (2 screens plus video and photo content).
The Filmmakers Subdivision
The filmmakers main page will link to separate subpages for college and high school applicants. From this page the user will find information about how to submit a film and access lists of the categories and prizes (6 screens total).
Unified Content:
The footer found at the bottom of every page will contain links to each of the four subdivisions as well as external links to Asbury College, the Asbury College Media Communications department website, the Theater and Cinema Performance website, and sponsors’ websites (via linked logos).
Commitment to Versatility:
Each page of the site will include photos and content that will be able to be easily replaced and maintained through Asbury College’s content management system.
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PROTOTYPE This is what the page-to-page flow of the website will feel like. These screenshots also give a rough idea of the look of the site on each tier of the architecture.
Main Menu
Submenu
Content Screen
Multimedia Screen
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TIMELINE
November 13
October 30
All Screens submitted
Final Screen Concepts
October 28
Main Menu, Submenu, Content Screens
November 6
Final Screen Content Submitted
November 18
November 25
Site Audio / Video submitted
Working Prototype submitted for review
December 11 Final Website submitted
December 4
Functional Beta submitted
Because we want to maximize client satisfaction, each of these deadlines will be contingent on client approvals along the way. We would rather slow down production or take a short break than complete unsatisfactory work—or be asked to hurry this job beyond what we have committed to for quality’s sake. If a deadline needs to be renegotiated, please let us know.
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COST BREAKDOWN [ Based on an hourly fee of $100 per hour ]
JOB
TIMELINE
HOURS
COST
Designing
150
$15,000
Coding
100
$10,000
Content
50
$5,000
Photography
80
$8,000
Animation creation
80
$8,000
Animation on site
5 secs in length
Video Editing
60
Video on Site
1 hour approx.
Compression - client videos
7 hours
$500 ($100 per second) $6,000 $12,000 ($200 per minute of video)
(to compress 20 five minute videos)
$1,500
Navigation / Architecture
50
$5,000
Construction
80
$8,000
Number of Screens
20-30 screens
Proposal Costs
$30
$4,000 - $6,000 (2 hours per screen)
Contingencies
$8,000 - $12,000 TOTAL COST
Total Number of Videos: Total Length of Video: Total Number of Animations: Total Length of Animations:
To be determined 1 hour total 1 5 seconds
$91,030 - $98,000
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TEAM BIOS This team of students is thrilled at the opportunity to present this proposal for the redesigned Highbridge Film Festival site. With much previous experience with the Highbridge Film Festival (as contestants, designers, and audience members), they look forward to this chance to promote the festival in a new way and set the stage for the Spring 2009 Special Events class to take the quality of publicity to another level. Each of the students on the team has had several years of concentrated coursework in all of the media skills he or she will be using for this project, and the team is excited to take on this job in a way that allows each person to specialize in his or her own area of expertise and interest. Although this is one of the biggest projects most of the members of this team have tackled, the group is approaching the job as an opportunity to show off their best work and really pour all their creative talent into a site that will shine.
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JACK BRANNEN: Project Manager and Graphic Design Jack Brannen is a graphic designer with additional experience in project management, multimedia design and writing. After his 2008 Highbrige Film Festival Award and previous experience with the 2008 Highbridge Film Festival promotional team, he looks forward to his contribution to the Highbridge site project as the content manager/editor and task administrator. john.brannen@asbury.edu
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859.396.7410
Megan Scott: Art Director Megan has been working in the design and marketing field for over two years. Her clients include Film Marketing group, Different Drummer, The Department of Justice, and Asbury College’s Theatre Department, and the 2008 Highbridge Film Festival. Her experience working with the festival will help in understanding how to best redesign and simplify the website.
Scott Rohrer: Animation and Architecture Scott is a freelance designer and animator with years of experience in the field. He will be lending his artistic eye, as well as many organizational skills and technical abilities, to the Highbridge site project, focusing on overseeing the architectural structure of the website and providing animated video content.
megan.scott@asbury.edu
scott.rohrer@asbury.edu
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231.645.2501
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937.369.8477
Austin Brooks: Photography Austin has been working in photography and videography for over three years, with experience in numerous jobs in sports broadcasting as well as film. After being an award winner at the 2008 Highbridge Film Festival, Austin looks forward to his role as a videographer and photographer for the website team.
Tim PachUau: 3D Animation and Video Tim is a graphic and visual artist with additional skills in 3D modeling and illustration. He has worked for The Inheritance Firm in Lexington, Ground Up Marketing in Philadelphia, and freelanced for 2 years. He hopes to do motion graphics and animation as a career. For the 2009 Highbridge site, Tim will work with animation, coding, and design.
austin.brooks@asbury.edu
timothy.pachuau@asbury.edu
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502.294.5644
Jeff Giblin: Audio and Video Jeff, an audio and video producer for many years, has had media experience with many personal and coursework projects throughout the past few years, including both strictly directorial and audio engineering roles. For the Highbridge site, Jeff will be working to provide video content and produce and edit audio.
Devon Salyer: Web Coding Devon is a media producer with additional skills as a designer and animator, including extensive experience coding websites and animations. Although Devon is pursuing a career in both production and multimedia, she is working to code the Highbridge website as web manager on the team.
jeffrey.giblin@asbury.edu
devon.salyer@asbury.edu
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704.681.2434
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