The reel starts in under two seconds
Poster frame, adaptive streaming, correct preload and a player that does not fight the browser. A reel that buffers has already lost the person you built the site for, whatever is in it.
Los Angeles
Entertainment websites in Los Angeles the reel is the whole argument.
A production company site has about six seconds to prove the work is good, and most of them spend those six seconds loading.
Overview
What a production site has to do
Entertainment and production website design in Los Angeles costs $5,000 to $40,000. The two things that decide whether the site works are video delivery, because the reel is the entire pitch and it has to start almost instantly, and structured credits, because the people hiring you search by title, role and collaborator.
Credits as structured content
Title, year, role, format, collaborators and festivals, as data rather than as an image of a poster. That is what makes work findable, filterable and linkable, and almost no production site does it.
Unreleased work needs real protection
Password-protected pages are not security. If you are sharing work under embargo, expiring links, watermarking and access logging are the minimum, and they are worth scoping properly rather than assuming.
Directors and crew need their own pages
People are hired individually. Each director, DP or editor needs a page with their own reel and credits that can be sent on its own, and that survives them leaving the roster.
Press and festival material in one place
Stills, key art, logline, technical specifications and contact. Journalists and programmers will not email you for assets they can download, and half of them are on a deadline.
Yours, unconditionally
Code, design files, domain and hosting in your name. Rosters change, agencies change, and none of that should ever put the site at risk.
Pricing
What a production site costs
| Project | Range (USD) | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual director or crew site | $5,000 to $10,000 | 3 to 5 weeks | Reel, credits, bio, contact, video pipeline, editable by you |
| Production company | $10,000 to $22,000 | 5 to 10 weeks | Above plus roster pages, project structure, press area, secure sharing |
| Studio or larger slate | $22,000 to $60,000 | 10 to 20 weeks | Multi-audience structure, deep credit data, access control, migration |
| Video delivery setup | $2,500 to $8,000 | 1 to 3 weeks | Encoding, adaptive streaming, poster frames, CDN, measured start times |
| Secure screening | $3,000 to $12,000 | 2 to 6 weeks | Expiring links, watermarking, access logging, per-title permissions |
| Care plan | $200 to $1,200 per month | Ongoing | New projects, roster changes, updates, monitoring |
Video delivery is where the money should go on these sites. A beautiful design serving unoptimised masters performs worse than a plain one that starts instantly.
Detail
What to ask any LA agency
| Ask them | A good answer sounds like | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| Who is actually doing the work? | Named people, and what is subcontracted | The team you meet is the sales team |
| Show me one on a phone, on cellular | A URL you can open right now | A desktop screenshot |
| What does this cost? | A range, and what moves it, before a call | You must book a call to hear a number |
| Who owns the code and design files? | You do, unconditionally, in the contract | Ownership ends when the retainer does |
LA has more agencies than any market on this list and more of them subcontract than will say so. Ask who writes the code before you ask the price.
Comparison
Where production sites lose the job
| Problem | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Reel that buffers on first play | The six seconds you actually had |
| Credits as poster images | Nothing searchable, nothing filterable, nothing indexed |
| No individual pages for the roster | People are hired individually and cannot be sent |
| Unreleased work behind one shared password | A leak you will hear about from someone else |
| No downloadable press material | Coverage that goes to whoever made it easy |
| Site nobody internally can update | A slate that is six months out of date |
FAQ
Common questions
How much does a production company website cost in Los Angeles?
An individual director or crew site runs $5,000 to $10,000. A production company with roster and press areas runs $10,000 to $22,000. Studios and larger slates run $22,000 to $60,000.
How do we make the reel load instantly?
Encode properly, serve adaptive streams rather than one large file, use a real poster frame and put it behind a CDN. We measure time to first frame and give you the number before and after, because on these sites it is the metric that matters.
Should we host video ourselves or use a platform?
A streaming platform for almost everyone, because encoding and delivery are solved problems and doing them yourself badly is worse than the licence fee. Self-hosting is justified when branding or access control requirements rule the platforms out.
How do we share work that is not released yet?
Not with a shared password. Expiring links, per-recipient access, visible or forensic watermarking and access logging, scoped to how sensitive the material is. It is worth deciding before something leaks rather than after.
Do our directors need their own pages?
Yes. People are hired individually and a director's page needs to stand alone when it is sent to a producer, with their own reel and credits, and it should survive them moving on from your roster.
Why do credits need to be structured?
Because that is what makes work findable. Title, year, role, format and collaborators as data rather than as an image means the site can filter, link and be indexed. Most production sites publish posters and wonder why nothing ranks.
Can our team add new projects?
It has to be possible without a developer. A slate that is six months behind reads worse than no slate, and new work usually needs to go up the week it is announced rather than the month after.
Do you have an office in Los Angeles?
No. We work with LA production companies remotely on Pacific hours and would rather say that than imply otherwise. Not carrying LA overheads is part of why our numbers differ.
Next step
Tell us what you need.
Send us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you what it takes, what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it. If we are not, we will say so.