Building a site that’s worthy of an Academy Award
Independent Media is a woman-owned production company that represents huge filmmaking talent, including Ben Affleck, Regina King and Sian Heder, who recently won the Academy Award for Best Picture for CODA. What they didn’t have was a Hollywood-quality site — one with a lightweight, seamless user experience — that reflected the caliber of the content they produce.
The approach
Given the industry they’re in, Independent Media needed a site that properly showcased the creative, captivating, culture shaping visuals they and their roster produce. We worked with an external design partner to optimize their concepts for functionality to create an interactive, immersive user experience. One that feels instantaneous, too. For instance, as you scroll through the company’s 27 filmmakers, we predict where you’ll land to pre-load HD content so it starts playing as soon as you stop scrolling. Through research and prototyping, we built a custom video player that exploits the limits of compression while maintaining Hollywood-level quality. Through understated elements and subtle interactions, the design takes a step back to showcase the video content. The result is a lightning fast, highly functional site that puts the visuals in the spotlight.
Project highlights
- 🌐 Built in Webflow
- 🎥 Custom video player
- 📼 Houses hundreds of HD videos
- 🦇 Proximity to one Batman, and one The Batman director
- 👩💼 Women-owned business
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Working with Gigantic was inspiring and impactful. Given the nature and timeline of this project, our company needed a collaborative and nimble partner—not just one who lists those qualities as bullet points in a capabilities presentation, but a partner who actually exhibits them day in and day out. Gigantic worked with our team to create and implement design decisions in real-time and, like any true partner, asked great questions and challenged us which has only benefited our company as a whole.
Working with Gigantic was inspiring and impactful. Given the nature and timeline of this project, our company needed a collaborative and nimble partner—not just one who lists those qualities as bullet points in a capabilities presentation, but a partner who actually exhibits them day in and day out. Gigantic worked with our team to create and implement design decisions in real-time and, like any true partner, asked great questions and challenged us which has only benefited our company as a whole.