Skapa Films
SKAPA FILMS is a full-service production company specializing in all phases of post-production from editorial to finishing, and VFX. Their founders, Spencer Patzman and Matt Allen, have built a powerful and effective operation that embraces fully remote post production for a wide array of clients, including artists like Megan Thee Stallion, supplement company Olly and health tech company Oura.
Goals
The Zero Folks team had already worked on several occasions with Spencer and Matt, so we knew it was going to be a great experience collaborating with them when they reached out about a new website. After a relatively quick onboarding meeting, we had a clear picture of their needs:
- A new portfolio website for Skapa Films that showcases their work
- An easy path for prospects to contact them
- A content management solution that makes use of their existing system: Vimeo
Considerations
Video is arguably the most powerful medium on the web, but it does not come without its issues. Playback speed, bitrate, loading times and differences between how devices treats codecs and file formats is just a few of the friction points that can occur. For bigger companies, using a custom-built CDN and adaptive streaming approach could solve a lot of this. For a project of this scale, that would most likely be too resource-intensive. So, we had to find a nice medium between site performance and video showcase.
Another small yet interesting challenge was the overlapping sections and their "paper tears." Most websites are composed of multiple sections, and it's become popular in recent years to have sections overlap as you scroll, like swiping a paper across another. This overlapping effect is easy, but once you add rasterized artwork such as paper tears and have to make it adapt to different breakpoints and content contained within each section, it gets a bit more complex.
Strategy
Unlike bigger project that entails a more holistic brand strategy, designing a website in isolation comes with fewer creative challenges and more practical implications. For SKAPA FILMS, we had to figure out the following:
- Outline and build a looping slideshow for the site homepage that contains looping video that resets on each transition
- Create a component library of paper tear sections that can be reused for multiple pages
- Draft and implement a content management system that fetches all video from Vimeo
The collaborative aspect was engaging and straightforward from day one. After testing a few different layouts as low-resolution wireframes, we landed on a column-based model that emulated the best parts of sites the founders really enjoyed.
Throughout the project, we played around with a couple of different aesthetics for the paper tears. Some were vector-based and more minimalist, while others were rasterized textures that brought more of a "scrapbook" feel to the brand. Given the digital nature of their work, we agreed that a more grounded and tactile look would bring it all together.
Delivery
In the end, the clients were very satisfied with the project, and our engagement with them remains active to this day. After wrapping up, we had delivered:
- A 5-page portfolio website featuring the works of Skapa Films
- A looping video slideshow that showcases their latest work
- A content management solution that lets them manage their videos directly through Vimeo
