A filmmaker’s site has one job: move someone from curiosity to a message. Anything that slows that down — a heavy autoplay reel, a menu hidden behind an animation, a form with nine fields — costs enquiries.
Start at 360 pixels
Design the narrowest screen first. If the headline, the play button and the contact link all work in one thumb reach, the wide layout is easy. Doing it the other way round means squeezing, and squeezing always shows.
Weight is a design decision
Compress showreels hard, use a poster frame, and never autoplay audio. A visitor on mobile data leaves before a 40MB hero loads, and never knows what they missed.
- Poster image first, video second.
- Lazy-load everything below the fold.
- Keep the contact route visible on every screen.
Make the next step obvious
One primary action per page. On a portfolio that’s almost always watch the films or start a project. Two competing buttons of equal weight means the visitor picks neither.
Test on a real phone
Dev tools lie about touch targets, thumb reach and how bright a light theme looks outdoors. Ten minutes on an actual handset finds problems no simulator will.