INTRO

Streamlining the Filming
Process Abroad

For filmmakers looking to film internationally, it’s almost impossible to produce a shoot in a new country without hiring a local guide. But even after hiring a fixer, a seasoned producer will always need to maximize their local knowledge and dive deep in researching filming locations. The Asian World Film Guide bridges that knowledge gap by creating a one-stop-shop for finding information necessary for all media production related needs such as crew, location, talent, equipment, visas as well as general country information.

As the sole designer for the project I worked on the user experience of the website. Our team was made up of myself, a project manager, and 2 devs. The design and prototype is meant to be a proof of concept.

GOAL

How might we create a tool to facilitate talent, equipment, and location sourcing while filming abroad in Asia?

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHT

Creating A Platform That Offers Guidance And Accessibility

The project began by surveying members of the Asian World Film Festival on their needs. Our sample group was made up of filmmakers, producers, directors, and others familiar with the process of filmmaking in foreign countries. Through these interviews we gained insight into the typical process a filmmaker might go through while preparing to shoot a film abroad and through this highlighted many of the pain points along the way.

One of the major themes across my research in speaking with producers was a need to be as well informed as possible. When planning a shoot overseas, budgets can easily vary from $50K to $500K+ depending on the project. For producers their number one priority is making sure that every single aspect of production is well planned out in advance so projects don’t go over budget. Because of this filming in unknown countries becomes quite risky, requiring time to research the best weather conditions and seasons, major holidays, visa policies and general cultural nuances, in order to make sure a production runs smoothly. 

One member of our survey gave the example of India to illustrate the complexity of this process. In India there are 28 states and 8 union territories. Each state or region celebrates many different holidays, but not all are the same and some celebrations vary from state to state. This information is easy enough to find on google but imagine being a busy producer having to hire a director to work on your project when they are only available for one week in July.  This example does a great job of illustrating how much time this process could take. 

INFORMATION ACCESSIBILITY

Easy discoverability, clear functionality, and intuitive interfaces to streamline a film producers process as much as possible.

Scalability

Create a framework that would be scalable to multiple countries across Asia.

Basic Site Architecture

RESEARCH

Competitor Analysis
And Site Architecture

As I came to learn, many government agencies provide country specific film resources online. Unfortunately the majority of these sites suffer from poor and ineffective design. All of these sites however offered valuable resources we could aggregate into our online tool in a way that was intuitive and comprehensive.

In order to increase scalability, each of the country guides on the site are built with the same framework. Through each country's page you can navigate to the each of the various sections of the guide. Because of the intricacies of each country this project puts that information into a consistent format that’s accessible and easy to use.

DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Streamlined Modularity

Prominent Search

For quick searching, the homepage features a search bar meant to aid navigation for users who come to the website with a clear idea of what country they are looking for information on. 

Explore by Category

The explore by region section of the homepage serves as a tool to encourage discoverability through the website. This feature allows users to dive down and explore different regions of Asia to find suitable project candidates. The “Popular Countries” section highlights popular countries for filming, often for their high number of filming resources, scenic landscapes, or visa policies.

Modularity

Since a large part of this project's goal were around  offering information on a large number of countries, modularity became the main tool to solve for the website’s scalability. In this system each of the individual country guides follow a uniform framework and navigation. Many of the modules appear on multiple pages within a country guide such as the image gallery and map modules.

Menu Navigation

The inclusion of a menu bar on each of the individual country guides helps surface the sub-level guide categories of each country in an organized fashion. Through this users can access the various sections of the guide such as general country information, notable locations, camera equipment and talent sourcing, as well as visa information and any filming rebate programs a country might provide.

REFLECTION

A Proof of Concept

This project was meant to serve as a proof of concept and it reflects the thought and preliminary research that went into building an online film guide type tool.

CREDITS

Advisor - Asel Sherniyazova

Project Manager - Rachel Sine

©2020.CHRISARELLANO