Kappes Films
A film production company with a presence that reflects its work: precise, cinematic and uncompromising.
Starting point
The films already showed a high level of craft. The previous website did not convey that standard clearly, and long load times made it harder to explore the work.
My contribution
I redesigned and rebuilt the website, from its cinematic visual direction and project structure to video integration, loading behaviour and enquiry forms.
What this enables
Prospective clients can watch the films, identify relevant services and enquire directly. The website leads from the work to a conversation while reflecting the films' visual standard.
A strong visual eye,
without a digital home.
Kappes Films produces brand films, recruitment films and social content for organisations including Deutsche Bahn, Sparkasse and Klinikum Erding. What was missing was a digital presence that reflected that quality.
The relaunch had to bring two things together: space for the films and a direct path to an enquiry. Project presentation, mobile use, loading behaviour and contact paths were therefore reworked together.
The visual direction draws on Darius' work with RED Komodo and Arri Alexa. Cinematography and restrained camera interfaces shaped the website: the films take the lead, while the interface gives them a distinctive frame.
Performance Score
Google Lighthouse · kappes-films.com
Comparison from the project review, not continuous monitoring. The test date and device profile are not documented here; Lighthouse scores can vary with the test environment.
LCP 19.4s → 0.8s
Maintained.
security headers.
semantics.
Not a template.
An instrument.
Viewfinder Hero
The hero recreates the view through a camera's viewfinder, with a pinned GSAP animation, technical metadata for ISO, shutter and lens, and a showreel button that opens a consent-gated Vimeo modal.
Cine Core Design
The design system draws on RED Komodo and Arri Alexa interfaces: near-black surfaces and tonal depth rather than borders. Calibre is the sole typeface, in Light and Medium, as restrained and technical as the camera interfaces themselves.
Performance-First
Next.js 16 with Turbopack, deployed on Vercel Edge. Cloudflare handles DNS and Strato SMTP handles mail. The contact form uses honeypot spam protection, with a dedicated consent system for external media.
Beneath the
surface.
A website is more than its visible surface. Behind Kappes Films is infrastructure built around performance, security and maintainability.
Migration to Cloudflare DNS. A 301 redirect from the apex to www and a project-specific Vercel CNAME. Multiple domains consolidated into one primary domain.
SMTP with SPF and a strict DMARC rejection policy. Service-based routing for different enquiries. Honeypot spam protection instead of reCAPTCHA.
A dedicated consent system loads Vimeo content only after permission is given. The legal notice and privacy policy were updated as part of the relaunch.
Vercel with Turbopack builds and edge deployment. Automatic SSL through Let's Encrypt.
A presence that matches
the quality of the films.
Visitors can watch the productions, identify relevant services and enquire directly. Design and engineering support the same path: from the work to a conversation.