The MPS Short Film Department at the School of Visual Arts required a website that would serve two main purposes: showcase films and recruit new students. Having surveyed other film websites, I was generally unsatisfied with the "gallery section" approach to displaying student work, which seemed to relegate "the goods" to a potentially missable part of the website. I was equally dissatisfied with a sidebar approach as it seemed to relegate videos to second class citizens. I wanted to find a much richer solution that would weave video content directly into the user experience. Hence, split-screen.

On nearly every page, video and text content are literally given equal space: text occupies half the screen, video content occupies the other half. The "crossfader" button that hovers silently atop both halves awaits a pronouncement from the user on which half should consume the other. Once the user moves the crossfader left or right, the halves shift into disequilibrium and scale their content proportionally until either text or video is displayed in full grandeur. At the end of the process the user is left with either a beautifully rendered typographical treatment of pure text or a theater-esque display of video content. "Crossfader" was developed specifically for this design; it is not a plugin. Try it out here.

This is a responsive site, meaning special attention has been paid to make the site display well on tablets and mobile devices, in addition to the desktop. It launched in July, 2013.

This site has won a Silver Davey Award in the category of Video and Moving Images as well as a Silver W3 Award in the category of Structure and Navigation.