The Casting Collective: Artiste database, forum, Filemaker intergration & CMS for UK's no. 1 casting agency

link: www.castingcollective.co.uk
IA, design, HTML, software, hosting & support: coldpie

The Casting Collective is an agency in West London who provides supporting artistes (extras, models and walk-ons) to the film, television & photographic industries.

Coldpie were tasked with redesigning & rebuilding the Casting Collective’s website to coincide with the launch of the 2009 artistes book. The company already had a well-designed & successful web proposition so the purpose of the new build was very specific:

To bring the site inline with 2009 branding.
To improve and simplify the overall layout and navigational structure.
To bring all content and artiste management into an easy to use content management system.
To improve the usability and sophistication of the artiste search so that casting agencies can more easily find the artistes they wanted.

Content Management

The CMS allows staff to manage all aspects of the site content, including the ability to:

Add, edit, reorder and remove castings and tie those to the registration process to attract specific types of people not currently on their books
Add and edit team profiles and images
Add and edit locations & direction information and easily create Google maps
Create and send email newsletters to casting agencies
Manage forum categories, topics and posts.

Artiste Search & Casting Couch

As part of the build we expanded the artiste search facility by bringing together four distinct searches (vital statistics, skills, uniform and name) into one search process. This allows casting agencies to find the right people for their brief no matter how particular. At the same time we have worked hard to make sure that the search remains simple to use – with advanced search parameters (such as the 125 dancing skills) easy to access but not in the way of people who want to search on more basic parameters.

Site users can now also view larger images of the artistes on the search results page and have more options in terms of print display. As part of the build we have started tracking artiste search usage so that The Casting Collective are able to gear their business more successfully to the needs of the agencies that use them

For some more info on some design decisions related to this project see the following blog post: Making a complicated search form simple to use