Category
Volunteer/Partnership
ATLFilmParty
Streamling a growing independent film festival's operations and web presence by integrating cross-platform services, automating content updates, upgrading to a unified newsletter and CRM, a scalable self-hosted ticketing solution, and launching a brand-forward site redesign.
ATLFILMPARTY aims to bridge the gap between the established television and film industries and up-and-coming independent filmmakers. Through accessible local screenings, microgrants, networking and mentorship opportunities, and a vibrant, peer-driven creative community, it is building a more sustainable, grassroots ecosystem for independent filmmakers to showcase their work and fund future projects. Since the launch of the festival's new platform—spanning the website, marketing, and supporting tech stack—the festival has seen more regularly sold-out events, an increase in grant funding secured, and a 500% increase in average attendance.
Working closely with the team, I audited their operations and known pain points, then streamlined existing services and processes into a more efficient, targeted system that kept the marketing team on marketing tools, the content team on content tools, and so on. This not only kept content more up to date and accurate, but also improved collaboration and productivity across the team.
Overview
Technologies
Gatsby.js
Serverless Functions
Prismic.io CMS
Google APIs
DevOps & Infrastructure
Pretix
Linux
Nginx
Postgres
Docker Compose
Role
Full Stack Developer
Web Designer
Client
ATLFilmParty
Automated Builds On Google Calendar Updates
Integrated Google Calendar API to trigger the site's build process and deployment via webhook sent from GCP. Calendar updates are available to the frontend in less than 2 mins on average and, if included, event location data uses Geocoder service in Maps API to include active link to directions on Google Maps.
Highlights
Scalable, Decoupled Architecture
Prior to this project, the ATLFP team worked within a single platform using shared credentials and no role separation. Decoupling the services allowed for proper role separation, safer automated deployments and content updates, and reduced manual steps and cross-tool friction for team members. As the team grows, the architecture ensures they can change or scale out services independently while staying lean in others.
Hands-Off Site Dev Ops
New or updated CMS content is added to the GraphQL schema as queryable custom nodes while the pages and routes are dynamically generated for each post via Gatsby's Filesystem Route API at build-time. CMS and Calendar updates send a webhook to Netlify servers triggering a fresh deployment and site content update.
Brand-Forward Site UI/Design
The site design, inspired by DIY Zine culture and Brutalism, keeps the content as the main focus. A limited, high-contrast color palette ensures ongoing WCAG color contrast compliance during design and any future updates. Material UI components, with custom styling and functionality, ensured consistency in design, accessibility, and responsiveness.
Self Hosted Ticketing Service
Operating solely on grants and the support of some really awesome sponsors ATLFilmParty operational costs need to stay bare-minimum. A major pain point was with event ticketing. We found a pretty awesome open source solution in Pretix that could be self-hosted.
I opted for a DigitalOcean VPS running Debian for the starting point. The main highlights of the stack consists of Docker (Docker Compose), Pretix, Postgres, Redis, Nginx, and Mandrill.