Links

Articles

News

Reviews

Amateur Theatre

Contact

Other Resources

Creating AMP's Swan Lake Site

Jeremy Scott is the internet designer at Dewynters Advertising PLC and is the creator of Adventures in Motion Pictures' Swan Lake, the site which I consider to be the very best dance site on the entire Web. It was also one of the first theatre sites really to make use of the technology of the Web to create the atmosphere of the show, rather than simply give lots of text-based information, plus pictures.

I began by asking Jeremy about Dewynters (a name already familiar to those who, like me, read their West End theatre programmes from beginning to end!).

Jeremy
Dewynters Advertising Plc is a full service advertising agency to the entertainment industry. Mainly operating in the area of West End theatre, our client list includes:

• Cameron Mackintosh
• The Really Useful Group
• Royal National Theatre
• Bill Kenwright Ltd
• The Royal Opera House
• English National Opera
• Adventures in Motion Pictures
• David Pugh
• Apollo Leisure
• The Barbican
• Birmingham Royal Ballet
• Pola Jones
• Chichester Festival Theatre
• Triumph Proscenium Productions Ltd
• First Call
• First Night Records
• Robert Fox
• Mayfair Theatres and Cinemas (Curzon Cinemas)
• Riverdance
• Turnstyle Group (Smokey Joes Cafe)
• Barry Clayman concerts
• Disney/Stella Musical productions (Beauty and the Beast)

Peter
What do you think the function of a show-related site such as Swan Lake should be? I ask because I find so many theatre sites seem to be little more than translations from print brochures.

Jeremy
I think that you have to realise that the Web for a lot of theatre producers is last on their list of priorities. This is changing, but very slowly. Only a year ago, most people's perception of someone who used the Internet was of a sad anoraked techie with little interest in going out of his/her bedroom let alone going to the theatre.

This is an attitude that still exists up to a certain point, but on the whole, due to the massive media hype, it has changed. We also have more information as to who is using the Internet coupled with an increase in feedback from theatre-goers via email or snail mail with requests for web presence.

This has forced production companies to realise that there is a relatively inexpensive medium which can be used to help promote their show, with the added bonus of being world-wide and more dynamic than, say, a press ad. For the price of a full page colour ad in The Times you can have quite a large site with text, images, animation, forms, and so on. The only difference is that the Times can claim that your ad will reach so many millions and can point to surveys showing that this has resulted in so many thousands of ticket bookings. The Web, however, although it is world wide, still has a smaller audience which is not guaranteed, and little if no information exists regarding resulting ticket sales.

To get back to the question: a lot of clients want to have an Internet presence as an extension to printed materials with the web address printed on the ads etc. So the primary function of a theatrical web site is to give the audience more information than can be placed in a small ad: detailed description of what the show is about, where the show is on, how to get there, ticket prices, show times, who is in the show, what the critics have said about it, and lastly some more images that give the viewer more of an idea of what to expect. Hopefully on this information they might decide to book tickets.

This is of course mainly what is in the programme. The reason that web sites look like translations from the brochure is that, for a new show, product recognition and continuity are quite important: the brochure would have followed a certain style guide and the web site would have done the same. Most clients can’t justify spending time and money creating web specific content.

The secondary purpose of a theatrical web site, and this seems to be how people use the sites, is a sort of follow-up after actually seeing the show. People will see a show and if they liked it they will visit the site and give feedback. So the site needs some sort of extra information e.g. the Swans Nest in Swan Lake. This enables the client to build a two way relationship with the audience as well as a mailing list.

The third use of the web site is more for long running shows. That is to build a data base of images, quotes, video clips, lyrics, music, etc. that can be used by the audience for fun, and by the producer as an instant source of information and for education for research purposes. A good example of this is the Les Miserables site, for which we created the gift shop section.

Which brings us to the final use, which is on-line purchasing i.e. ticket booking and merchandise sales.

The other thing that affects what appears on the site is the show content. For example Voyeurz was a show that lent itself to the Internet. The show was highly technical and the imagery lent itself to the medium. Fem2Fem were already on the Internet as the producers were American and more net-friendly. So we were lucky as they were willing to spend time and money creating something different (which included a live video feed from Fem2Fems dressing room).

A Midland Bank Proms site I did was different, as they just wanted the site as an information point, showing dates, times and short descriptions.

Peter
Did you have much contact with the show's choreographer, designer or director when you were creating the site, or did you simply base it on your own reactions to the piece? Which leads me to ask: were you "into" ballet or dance when you began to work on the site? Do you think that too much knowledge of the subject actually gets in the way when creating a "street level" site?

Jeremy
I have had no contact with the show's choreographer. I dealt with Katherine Dore in the production office. As we designed the show image and logo I had constant contact with the designer, but not the set/costume designers.

I did however have an interest in dance, having studied ballet as a child and having an interest in contemporary dance now. I also was very impressed with Swan Lake as a show for its visual impact and lack of pretensions. So you can say that I was somewhat of a fan of the show. I think that my knowledge of dance was a definite help when starting to create the site. It meant that as a graphic designer I was more in tune with what was important to the client.

After looking at other dance sites we realised that there was no animation/movement. And movement is what dance is all about, so we wanted a good balance of animation. The visual impact of the show was also important, and so we tried to give the pages as much impact as possible (large text stark images).

Peter
What actually is your relationship with AMP?

Jeremy
AMP are clients of Dewynters Advertising. We handle the design and production of all printed materials including, poster, leaflet, programme, ads, etc. as well as media booking, marketing and some of the merchandise.

Peter
Which comes first for you, content or design?

Jeremy
This is difficult as without content there is no design and visa versa. Obviously I am the designer and although I create some content most of it is given to me or I request it. So the design is what I do, and from that slant the design is more important.

Also when designing for a theatrical audience, I am lucky firstly as most of the people viewing our pages are Mac users, viewing in Netscape (80%), interested in the Arts in general and as a result they expect the web to be a very visual media. And are willing to wait a little longer for pages to load. I don’t get requests for a text only version of the site!

This frees me to a point not having to limit my self to 480X640 monitors and I am not as concerned by restricting my self to a 256 palette as I would normally be. This is not to say that I ignore PC users completely: I work on both PC and Mac and if a page looks dreadful on a PC I will alter it.

I also feel that if a site looks ghastly people will not stay to look around. This also reflects on the show as a whole. The opposite applies if there are too many large image files slowing down the site. With sites created to be at the forefront of technology etc. people with the slower systems and modems will always loose out, but I feel strongly that you can’t always design for the lowest common denominator as this is a definite block on creativity and progress as a whole. I’m always reading things where people are preaching that we should consider the slow modems and non-image browsers and design to the lowest common denominator. I think that that it crass, and is usually written by people with an anti-design/IT slant. The fact is that most home computers sold today are being boxed with 28.8 modems or faster and with Pentium or power PC processors.

Peter
You told me that you wanted the site to look as though a fan had created it. Surely most fan sites are fairly "sterile" (to use your own word) in that they either consist of reams of info presented in great chunks of text, or are gushing and full of trivia? In what sense would you say that yours is like a fan site?

Jeremy
That was probably a misleading thing to say. What I meant was that I wanted the site to have more of a personal/street level feel. The good thing about the Net, but which is fast fading, is that it has/had a personal feel. When reading text, it was/is written in a personal, casual way so that you feel that you are communicating in a one-to-one situation instead of with a great corporate body. I find a lot of sites are delivered as one way information sites and don’t want feed back, or at least don’t encourage it. I, on the other hand, feel that this is what the Internet is all about and to ignore this is net treason. I think that a lot of the fanzine sites are incredible in just how much information they gather and the dedication that some of them have is astounding. But you have to realise that masses of irrelevant trivia is what a lot of people want to read. I personally put links to this well of information. And I think that relationships between the unofficial and official sites should be encouraged. I know for a fact that some official site go out of their way to discredit unofficial fan sites and even attempt to get them removed. I think that this is counter-productive and anti-Internet behaviour.

I mean on the Swan Lake site we have a section listing the famous people that have been to the show. This is exactly the sort of trivia that people want to read. And it's fun! After all you couldn’t put a list like that in a newspaper ad!

Peter
I also remember you saying that now you would change it. What would you change? Why?

Jeremy
I have an incredible short attention span, which makes me ideal as an Internet designer. And, like most artists, I find that something you do one day seems dated and crude the next. I think this is exaggerated on the Internet because technologies are always changing, e.g. the introduction of Flash or Future Splash now enables us to create full page large animations and text in vector format that would have been impossible 8 months ago! Pages that I designed a year and a half ago didn’t have frames, animated gifs or Java script.

I first created Swan Lake back in September/October last year and little has been done to it since. I think if I were to change it I would use Flash to create more dynamic movement, rollover buttons etc. This may happen when the site expands to include Cinderella later this year.

Thanks to Jeremy for - very patiently! - answering my questions: we all look forward to seeing the revamped AMP site with Cinderella later this year.

Articles Indices:

2001
2000
1999
1998
1997

©Peter Lathan 2001