Making a film is a complex time-consuming and often exhausting process. It doesn't seem fair that after you put all that effort and expertise into making your film, you should then have to go and work in a completely different medium and make a website for your film. Although it doesn't seem fair that you should have to make a website for your film, you really should make one. A website helps you push your film forward. Not only does it help you get visibility for your film, but it helps you control the narrative about your films. You get to tell people what your film is about and why they should watch it. Websites also make the job of the press easier when they're going to cover your work. If you have a well-written clear visible press kit on your website, the press will be a lot more willing to give you coverage. We will discuss what should go into a press kit in the next video. Having a website for your film is a bit of a catch-22. On the one hand, you're a lot more likely to get money from grantors, investors, and crowd sourcing donors if you have a wonderful website. On the other hand, creating and hosting something that goes beyond a basic website costs money. The easiest and quickest way to build your website is through drag-and-drop platforms. Weebly and Wix are some of the best drag-and-drop platforms out there. They come with a lot of templates so you can choose from and you can build your website fairly quickly without a lot of expertise. Some drawbacks of drag and drop platforms are that if you use the free version, you will have to have your name on their address. They are also quite limited in terms of how much you can customize the look and layout of their templates. There's some templates that are a lot more customizable but they require some coding expertise. Platforms like concrete5 and WordPress has some very customizable template, but in order to go beyond their basic offers, you're going to need to know some CSS and some HTML. Even WordPress and concrete5 templates have limitations in terms of how much you can customize them and what plugins you can add to them. If you have the expertise or can hire somebody who does, you can always code with WordPress template from scratch and have a lot more control over what they're worksite will look like. If you want to go beyond the more basic platforms and you don't know how to code, you can always hire a company to make a website for you. You can also contact the local university and find computer science or experienced design students to code their website for you. The latter option will likely be cheaper, but it will also require more hand-holding. Either way, if you choose to go beyond basic Weebly or Wix for your website, you will have to pay about $12 a year for your the main name and about $200 a year for hosting your website, you can add those to your budget. When you set up your website, remember to add something like Google Analytics or a plugin that will help you keep track of how many visitors you're getting, how long they're staying for, and what geographic locations they come from. That kind of data will help you measure your websites impact. As you make your website, remember that it will change over time. Websites are living documents that evolve as your film evolves. Whether you coded your website or you had somebody else code it, make sure that you know how to make changes to it. In the next video, we will look at the sections and information your website should include.
