What it is
Not a template with your logo dropped in. A site designed around your work, built from scratch, and animated so it feels alive as people move through it.
Most small business websites look like the same handful of themes because they are. That's fine if you sell something purely practical. It's a problem if the thing you're selling is taste, craft, or experience, because the site quietly tells people you're ordinary before they ever see your work.
A cinematic site does the opposite. It uses full-bleed imagery or video, oversized confident type, and motion that responds to scrolling, so the page feels designed rather than assembled. Done well, it buys you the few extra seconds where someone decides you're worth taking seriously.
A first impression that holds
Most sites are judged in a couple of seconds. Motion, scale, and restraint buy you the extra beat where someone decides to keep scrolling instead of leaving.
Looks like your actual work
If you make beautiful things, a stock template quietly undersells you. The site should set the same expectation your work delivers.
Built to be found and to load
Cinematic doesn't mean slow. Everything is compressed, lazy-loaded, and structured so search engines can read it properly.
Yours to keep and grow
You own the site and the domain. Nothing's locked behind a builder subscription that raises its price every year.
Case study: this website
The best proof I can offer is the site you're on right now. Every technique below is running on this page.
tidesocialstudio.com
I built this site the same way I build client sites, which makes it an honest demo rather than a mockup. There's no stock theme underneath it. The background is a live gradient rendered in your browser, the homepage is a scroll-driven journey from dawn to nightfall, and the footer is a graded video coastline that dissolves into the page rather than sitting in a hard-edged box.
It's also built to hold up under scrutiny. The video is compressed and only loads when it's nearly in view, the type is self-hosted so nothing flashes on load, and every page has proper titles, descriptions, and share images. Cinematic and fast aren't opposites, they just take deliberate work.
A full-page animated gradient that shifts with scroll and reacts to the cursor, so the page never feels static.
The homepage moves through a dawn-to-night coastal sequence, with each section revealed as you travel.
A graded video coastline that fades seamlessly into the page instead of sitting in a hard box.
Oversized display type, rolling link letters, and a custom cursor state for every kind of target.
Scroll the homepage, then scroll to the bottom of any page. That's the level of finish your project gets.
What's included
Everything needed to go from nothing to a live site. No surprise line items at the end.
Design and build
- ✓Custom design, no template or theme
- ✓A full-bleed motion hero built around your best asset
- ✓Scroll reveals and transitions tuned per section
- ✓Up to five core pages
- ✓Mobile and tablet layouts, not just a shrunken desktop
Technical and launch
- ✓Fast, modern build with compressed media
- ✓Search basics: titles, descriptions, sitemap, share images
- ✓Contact form that emails you directly
- ✓Domain connection and going live, handled
- ✓Two weeks of support after launch
How it runs
Four phases, roughly four to six weeks, with two points where you review before anything moves forward.
Discovery and direction
A kickoff call and a short questionnaire, then I come back with the direction: structure, references, and the feeling we're building toward.
Design the key pages
I design the homepage and one interior page first, since those set the language for everything else. You review, we refine.
Build and animate
The approved design becomes a real, fast site, and the motion gets tuned in the browser where it actually lives.
Launch and hand off
We connect your domain, run final checks on real devices, and go live. Then you get a walkthrough so nothing feels like a black box.
What it costs
Clear starting point, and an honest list of what moves it, so you can work out roughly where you land before you ever get on a call.
That covers everything in the included list above: a custom design, up to five core pages, the motion work, mobile layouts, search basics, a working contact form, domain connection, and two weeks of support after launch. Most projects start here, and plenty stay here.
Projects are split into two payments, half to book your slot and half before launch. You get a fixed quote before anything starts, so the number doesn't move unless you ask for something new.
Questions
Most projects run four to six weeks from kickoff to launch. The biggest variable is how quickly feedback and content come back, so if you're ready to move, it can be faster.
Time for a kickoff call, a short questionnaire, your logo and any brand assets, your photos or video if you have them, and reasonably prompt feedback at two review points. If you don't have imagery, we'll talk about options early.
No. Hosting, domains, and deployment are handled as part of the project. At the end you get a walkthrough so you know where everything lives and how to make small updates.
Yes. I'll show you how to make everyday text and image changes, and you'll have the walkthrough to refer back to. For bigger changes, you can hire me for a small block of time rather than paying an ongoing retainer.
Your domain, which is usually around twenty dollars a year, and hosting, which for most sites of this kind lands at little to nothing. There's no required monthly platform fee.
That's common. We can rebuild it, keep your existing content and search history intact, and redirect the old pages so nothing you've earned gets lost.
That's what the two review points are for, and why we design the homepage before building anything. Revisions are built into each stage, so we course-correct while it's cheap and easy rather than at the end.
The project includes guidance on structure and what each section needs to say, and I'll refine what you provide. Full copywriting from scratch is available as an add-on.
Tell me about your brand and what you're hoping for. You'll get a clear scope and a fixed quote before anything begins.
Start a project