Martin Couzins talks turkey with the egghead who designed the Web
site for the hit film Chicken Run
The chickens may have hatched a plan to escape the farm in the
film Chicken Run, but for one developer this meant a free range on
developing the film's official Web site, writes Martin
Couzins.
For Jay Sachania, working as lead designer and programmer on
chickenrun.co.uk this meant producing a Web
site that was fun and reflected the feel of the film.
"The main theme of the site was fun. The site tries to get
across the unique British flavour of the film. As well as giving
clips/trailers of the movie, we added a section called the 'slide
show' depicting 1950s England. Users can get a feel for the film by
interacting with the slides and pop-up characters," says
Sachania.
The site also allows users to send postcards, download screen
savers and play a game where you can throw eggs at one of the
film's characters Mrs Tweedy. And in the "cast" section visitors to
the site can learn more about the characters. The chickens and the
baddies talk about their roles in the film as actors would talk to
journalists.
Sachania says he didn't have to look to other Web sites for
ideas because the film generated so many. "When working with a film
like this you are spoilt for materials to populate the site. We
also had very strong ideas of how we wanted the site to look and
function so we didn't need any additional inspiration besides the
film."
The result so far (from 15 May to 16 July) has been 13,920,663
hits and 153,562 unique visitors. Not bad considering Sachania
first started thinking about the site in March. "Initially, we
delivered a virtual Easter egg hunt in April with a microsite. The
full site went live in June," he says.
The site was built and designed using a Mac G3 Powerbook/500 and
a G4/400. The language used was mySQL. The Apache Web server runs
Solaris. Sachania deployed a range of skills in building the site.
On the design side he used Adobe Imageready, Photoshop and
Illustrator, and for programming he used Macromedia Flash 4,
Director 7 and BBEdit.
Looking back, he says the worst aspect of working on the site
was burning the midnight oil. "And, as with all sites," he adds,
"try and avoid the stress when nearing the end of a project."
So what's next? "First chickens and now cows; I am working on a
site for Boddingtons." And one last paltry attempt at humour.
Sachania says the best aspect of working on chickenrun.co.uk was
"working with cute chicks".
Curriculum vitae
- Qualifications: BA in fine art, MA in hypermedia
- IT skills: HTML, Lingo, worked for Compuserve Tech support, Mac
and PC skills
- Hobbies: creative socialising, normally involving fermented
vegetable drinks
- Favourite book: Illusions by Richard Bach
- Favourite pub: The nearest one to me at any given
moment
- Describe yourself in three words: cheeky chicken
lover