If an Englishman’s home is his castle, then what is his website? His seaside caravan, his southern Spanish Villa, or simply his garden shed come man cave? Now I don’t know the answer to that, nor even if it is a valid question, but I do know that here at East 15 Films we needed, no, wanted, a digital home away from home. 

Somewhere we could lay out our wares, a space that we could just call ours, and organise exactly how we wanted. No fighting for attention with a million ads. And no different versions of our work to suit different platforms; shorter form for Twitter and TikTok, longer form for YouTube, video heavy for Instagram and copy laden on Linkedin. No, this could be our little den, our way.

We’ve had websites in the past, but they were more one pagers with our showreel and contact details. This was to be so much more than that, a digital showroom with all that we are, that could encompass us as a company all under one roof. So we set about it. That was almost 3 months ago. Damn its hard work.

Hardly a couple of days into it and the greys seemed to be multiplying by the minute, my Mac book had almost gone out of the window on numerous occasions, the coffee pot was empty and I wondered why, why the f*ck was this so difficult and why had I even bothered? Did we need this? Would people care?

In the midst of the stress and the YouTube tutorials and the late nights, I was about to give up after spending nearly a whole evening slightly resizing a header photo and not being successful, calling out every name under the sun, the image resized, it clicked into place, and although far from from being finished, the website had at least started to take shape. It wasn’t the end, it wasn’t even the beginning of the end, but it was perhaps, the end of the beginning. And then something happened. The frustration turned to excitement. The clenched Jaw and fists relaxed. Did a smile start to creep across my face? I think it may have you know. Our home page looked professional and welcoming, minimalist but not cold. The contact page worked, and I sent myself a little email, part test and part kid who just found a new discarded toy. All the buttons and hamburgers and links worked.

But it wasn’t that which was causing excitement. Rather it was the first time I’d seen our work laid out like that, all in one place, all together. Half a lifetime of creation. Memories came flooding back, the work, the pain, the fun. People we’d spent unhealthy amounts of time with, people who were now life long friends. Some challenges overcome, some not. Three nights on the trot shooting in an Irish pub, packed to the rafters with live music and swimming in Guinness and sweat, hours in the scorching sun filming football, underwater shoots in the freezing Ocean, flying drones, crashing drones, the burning furnace of the pie and mash shop, the attempted robberies of us and our equipment in Greece, the edits that just wouldn’t, well, edit. The long days and even longer nights. And the characters who sat in front of us and our cameras and opened up a little door to their soul. Oh the characters. We’d worked on a hell of a lot of projects, and we’d produced some good work, if I do say so myself.

And to be completely honest, I wasn’t proud, I was inspired. Not by how far we’d come, but by how far we could go. I wanted to achieve more this year, to build, develop, better understand our customers and their needs and help them realise these. To make better films, to be more creative, more unique, more accessible and ultimately more effective in what we do, build film. Create powerful, engaging, thought provoking content that entertains and sells. So please come in and have a look around. You will see that we make promotional and documentary videos and produce photographs and images. You’ll find we are a small team who produce tailor made personalised content with love and a smile. You’ll realise we have years of experience and plenty of happy customers. We hope you are inspired by what you see and what we could do for your company or brand, and if you are, please get in touch. Because that’s the point of this website, to inspire others. And, along the way, we may just have inspired ourselves…
Mitch Panayis, Director East 15 Films