Screen Northants
A film production showcase, a training academy and a donation system in one bespoke build: custom-developed with no SaaS, and no third-party platform taking a cut of donations.
Three sites in one
A film showcase, a training academy and a direct donation system, built as one custom platform instead of three separate tools.
No cut on donations
Donations go straight through Stripe to Screen Northants. No donation platform takes a percentage on top. Only standard card processing applies.
No SaaS, lower costs
Custom-developed in place of Webflow and bolt-on services, so there are fewer subscriptions and less to maintain.
Owned end to end
Code, content, donor data and the donation flow all sit in one Next.js app the organisation controls.
Screen Northants is a Northamptonshire film production company with an unusual second purpose: it runs a training academy that teaches filmmaking the way a teaching hospital trains doctors, on real productions, over a seven-year model. Films like Macbeth, Fortune Cookies, Nene and The Operator are both the work and the classroom.
The site had to do three jobs at once: showcase the films, explain and recruit for the academy, and take donations that fund the work. The old Webflow build leaned on third-party tools to do it, which meant subscriptions, limited control, and a donation service taking a cut.
App Ranch rebuilt the whole thing as one bespoke Next.js application: production showcase, academy and donation system in a single custom platform, with nothing skimming the donations and no SaaS to pay for.
The Brief
Screen Northants does two things most organisations would split across separate sites: it produces films, and it trains the next generation of filmmakers on those productions. On top of that, it relies on donations to fund the work.
The previous Webflow site stitched this together with third-party tools: a website builder, a donation service, separate form tools. That meant ongoing subscriptions, limited control over the experience, and a donation platform taking a percentage of money meant for the academy.
Screen Northants is a private company limited by guarantee, not a charity, so the brief was clear: build one bespoke platform that showcases the films, tells the academy story and takes donations directly, keeping costs down and making sure every gift goes as far as possible.
What We Did
Why It Worked
Because three jobs that are usually spread across separate tools now live in one bespoke build. The film showcase, the academy story and the donation system share the same codebase, brand and data. Nothing bolted on, nothing duplicated.
Donations go straight through Stripe to Screen Northants. There is no donation platform taking a percentage on top, so more of every gift reaches the work it is meant to fund. Only standard card processing applies.
And because it is custom-developed rather than assembled from SaaS subscriptions, the running costs are lower and the organisation owns the whole thing: code, content, donor data and donation flow.
What SaaS This Replaced
The point was not just to look better than the old Webflow site. It was to stop paying for, and depending on, a stack of third-party tools.
App Ranch brought the showcase, the academy and the donations into one custom application.
A supporter can watch the films, read the academy story, and donate one-off or monthly, with the money going straight to Screen Northants and the whole experience running on one platform the organisation owns.
Screen Northants is a real example of replacing SaaS with one custom build
Everything App Ranch builds into a bespoke platform shows up here: the website as the front door, a donation system with no middleman, real data underneath, and full ownership on top, with no subscriptions doing the heavy lifting.
Film showcase
A full-viewport video carousel of Macbeth, Fortune Cookies, Nene and The Operator, with poster fallbacks and trailer lightboxes.
Academy story
Clear pages for the mission and the teaching-hospital model that explain and recruit for the seven-year academy.
Direct donations
Stripe Checkout for one-off and monthly giving, with no donation platform taking a cut.
Self-service for donors
Donors manage or cancel monthly giving themselves via a secure Stripe Billing Portal link, sent by email.
Owned data
Donations, subscribers, contact and ambassador submissions stored in the organisation’s own Neon database.
Compliant by design
UK GDPR privacy and cookie policies, consent-gated analytics, and structured data clean in Search Console.
Selected Outputs
Homepage film carousel
A full-viewport autoplay carousel of four films, each with a poster fallback and optional trailer lightbox.
Direct donation system
Stripe Checkout for one-off and monthly giving with preset and custom amounts. No platform taking a cut.
The academy story
Pages explaining the mission and the teaching-hospital model behind the seven-year academy.
Films as the classroom
Productions like Macbeth, Fortune Cookies, Nene and The Operator showcased with VideoObject structured data.
A film company, an academy and a donation system in one bespoke build: custom-developed, lower cost, and with nothing skimming the donations.
