Motion Hut

I sincerely apologise for not updating the blog more often. Mohtar and me were listening to all the feedbacks that we have got and one issue stood out; the videos. Common issue with the videos is that it takes a long time to load.

After much deliberation, we decided to split the chapters and stream the videos in FLV format instead. This will cut down the time for visitors to view one chapter to another and it also has the advantage of being playable in full screen.

May I say that this new video gallery is still in beta and you can view them from the latest posts. Several issues (such as the non-working timeline) will be fixed later. You can help by giving us whatever feedbacks and ideas that you might have.

Hello everyone! After months of sleepless nights and lots of coffee, motionhut.com is now live. Mohtar and me is very excited about the upcoming launch date and it is finally here. We are both very satisfied that we were able to complete this project together (a testament to our great partnership).

We humbly invite you to browse our site and leave your comments here. Let us know what you like or dislike about our site so that we may improve it to serve you better. We appreciate and will read through all feedbacks that we receive because what you think is important to us. Really, we mean it.

There are videos for you to view right here on the posts itself. Do take note that they can take some time to load (even on a broadband connection). Reason being that we can’t make the size any smaller without compromising the quality of our videos. No worries, while waiting for it to completely load, you can start viewing.

One last thing. Please let everyone know about our site. We have made it very easy for you to do that. At the end of this post, is a button that says Share/Save. Just hover your pointer over it and popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and etc. will appear. Click on your favourite site and log in to share this message.

Want to send an email message instead? No problem! Just click on the E-mail tab and you can start sending an email using Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and etc. Button doesn’t work? It happens sometime. Just tell everyone to go to our site by giving them our URL which is, www.motionhut.com.

We don’t do this special effect.

We won’t sabotage your subtitle.

We sincerely apologise for this delay. We initally set a deadline to launch this site on the 5th of April but somewhere along the way we got held up by a few (may I say) hurdles. This site will of course be launch as soon as possible but we do not want to rush it and let loose a very badly done up site. So, we request your understanding and patience.

Initially, I suggested to Mohtar to use the services of a logo design company. Nowadays, this can be done very cheaply. Mohtar wasn’t against this idea but knowing that I am able to use Photoshop, he urges me to try and design Motion Hut’s logo ourselves. This got me thinking for a while as I search for ideas to design a logo.

After a while, I decided to go with a simple text-based design. Basically a nice font, that says Motion Hut (of course) and some colours to go with it. I was a little lost as to what colour scheme I should use. I tried using red, black and white. I then realise that something wasn’t right about this colour scheme and the site name.

That’s the problem. It is the same colour scheme as the one used by Pizza Hut. Now, since we have the word Hut in the site name, I don’t want it to look like they are somewhat related. After discussing it with Mohtar, he suggested that I use a metallic colour. That’s it! Why didn’t I think of that?

I want the logo to look good on either a dark or light background. Mohtar further contributed to the logo by suggesting a border around the text. I kind of slant it a little to give the logo a bit of character and this is what I came up with. We can’t wait to use it on our namecards, official T-shirts, in the video and etc. Tell us what you think.

I manage to convince Mohtar to use a blogging platform for our site. This is because we want the site to engage with our visitors, whether they are potential or current clients. At the same time, we want to keep our site fresh with new contents from time to time so that it does not go stale (a common problem with a static site).

Of course, the blogging platform of choice here is WordPress. I chose WordPress not only because it is free but also because it is flexible, easy to use and maintain. I am also hoping that Mohtar (who has no previous experience in blogging) will use WordPress and contribute to more posts in his own voice.

After a few brainstorming sessions, we had decided on the WordPress theme to use, the structure of our site and etc. One exciting feature of our site will be to showcase full videos (yes, the whole thing) of our clients’ weddings and vacations. We wanted to show the full quality of our work to our visitors and not just short clips.

Mohtar and me decided to register the domain name motionhut.com from a list that we have brainstormed together. We knew it had to be done since any delay will cause us to take things lightly and slow the progress of our site. With the domain registered and web hosting account opened, it more or less pushed us to get things going.

Prior to this, we had brainstormed for a few other domain names. It is either already taken or unsuitable to reflect the kind of service we offer and the image we want for our site. Some seem hilarious actually and others look too serious. Well, don’t blame two guys who wants to inject more fun and humor to our services as a way to connect with our clients. Look at the list below.

• weddingmotion.com
• pixelatedmotion.com
• sketchmotion.com
• veecut.com
• canwerkz.com
• sceneselection.com
• motionvillage.com
• weddinginmotion.com
• artinmotion.com

You’ll notice that most of the domains has the word motion in it. Mohtar emphasized that we need a word that is synonymous with video but not use the word video at all. We refrain from using the word video as we were afraid that it might make the site sounds like it is a video rental service of some sort.

Anyway, work is underway as we started constructing the site bit by bit and hoping to have it launched on the 5th of April this year (which happens to be Mohtar’s birthday). We are also hoping to at least have one video showcasing the most recent wedding that has been shot and edited by Mohtar. Stay tuned…