Prologue: Your Film Exploration Starter Pack

Inspiration:

Born from a shared love of film watching and film making, Prologue, a movie-recommendation site custom tailored to those cursed with indecision, was made.

What it Does:

Users get the chance to choose their paths and select filters that will create a collection of films matching their wanted genre of exploration, rating, duration, release date, popularity, and the streaming services they may have, helping people expand their taste in movies, one ticket at a time!

How We Built It:

The front end was first planned out using Figma, storyboarded and structured, then the base was then translated into React. Coded by hand without use of AI, each component was created and implemented to the final product. From there, through much trial and error, the front and back end work met together to create the patterns and filters necessary for the curation of movie suggestions based on user profiles. The back end utilized FastAPI to integrate The Movie Db API into the project for the movie data needed.

Challenges We Ran Into:

With less than 5 hours left, the merging madness began. Chatter and change back and forth formed into a perfect chaos. Merging to main, defining logs, and returning strings, were all necessary steps and struggles when creating this curation. After 12 hours of tireless lines of codes and strings of constantly new information, the four creators and their mentor came together and celebrated the beauty of indecision and exploration.

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of:

We took the challenge and we ran with it! Instead of opting for a simple design with canned answers, we fought to take real data and compile it to customized filters to truly have a tailormade collection for our users! Although the project is not exactly as imagined, this is not the end. We are excited to showcase what we have learned and accomplished in 12-hours, but also be able to apply this knowledge to future projects!

What We Learned:

Most of us were first time web builders (and even first time coders) so the knowledge gained in less than 24-hours was endless. From using Figma for the first time to learning about Flex Box, we learned valuable skills that can be applicable to future projects. We learned the importance of connecting the backend to the front end through filters and active displays, as well as the value of Fast API and cookies.

What's Next for Prologue:

We would like to add a nicer filtering system with more options as well as a log-in screen. Our log-in screen was built but scrapped due to time constraints, so we can further develop this website by utilizing cookies and databases to store user information. We would also want to work on a profile page and movie tracker system that would also give titles to the users!