The Client
Buckinghamshire Film Office is a new enterprise, established by Buckinghamshire Council to maximise the economic and social benefits of the county’s success as a filming location. Income generated from Bucks Film Office is used to improve local highways, property, and parks.
This is a project run in partnership with: Filming in England, Pinewood, Buckinghamshire LEP, Visit Buckinghamshire & the Chilterns and Film Offices UK.
Project Brief
The website needed to appeal to film producers and give a taste of the variety of locations that are used in filming. The design was to be responsive, optimised, easy to navigate and accessible; meeting the Buckinghamshire Council’s rigorous testing that ensures compliance with WCAG AA standards.
The website is designed to be a one-stop shop for all filming requirements. This means that it needed to include:
- A process for requesting filming permits and licenses
- A database of Council- and privately-owned locations
- A database of local crew and facilities that support production
- The option for residents to register their location or support services
The design had to fit the branding guidelines for this new enterprise.
They chose to work with us because we were responsive and were able to suggest and recommend features that would meet the brief and offer future development to the site. Our quote was competitive and we were able to meet their tight launch deadline.
Our Solution
The first challenge was to regain access to the domain name, as this had been purchased by someone else.
Then we moved on to the technicalities. Having built many Council and Charity websites, we are competent in developing solutions that comply with WACG standards. This, along with search engine optimisation and integration with MovieSite software, underpinned our design.
Buckinghamshire Film Office was able to supply written content and great images of local film production which set the scene. Our design layout includes a search facility, clear calls to action to action and links that aid navigation. We ensured that the filming requests and location registration processes were easy to complete and minimised administration for the small team.
The project launch was brought forward a week, but we focused all efforts on completing all the requirements and compliances.
“The whole experience was fantastic, the team were so adaptable, flexible and accommodating, even coming to meet me in a coffee shop to discuss initial concepts, as I had to remain near to a shoot location. They responded to every email and phone call quickly and felt like the site was as important to them as it was to me. I was provided excellent training on completion of the site so I am left confident with making changes/tweaks as are needed.”
– Ruth Bryant, Bucks Film Office
For us, this was a fascinating project to work on and we discovered lots of amazing locations on our doorstep!
The Results
The website met the Buckinghamshire Council’s accessibility requirements, as well as the brief set by the Film Office.
“I couldn’t be happier with the site; I have received a lot of positive feedback both from productions (our main target audience) and other film offices! Framework Digital is amazing, they are so passionate about what they do and you can feel and see this in their work and in every encounter you have with the team.”
– Ruth Bryant, Bucks Film Office
Since the launch of this site, we have been contacted by a Film Office in another county that is keen for us to develop a similar website for them.
You can visit Buckinghamshire Film Office by clicking the link below.
https://buckinghamshirefilmoffice.com/
