Ebook Multimedia: Making It Work (Eighth Edition): Part 2

196 CHAPTER 7 Making Multimedia In this chapter, you will learn how to: ■■ Describe the four primary stages in a multimedia project ■■ Discuss the intangible elements needed to make good multimedia: creativity, organization, and communi-cation skill ■■ Discuss the hardware most often used in making multimedia and choose an appropriate platform for a project ■■ Understand common software programs used to handle text, graphics, audio, video, and animation in multimedia projects and discuss their capabilities ■■ Determine which multi-media authoring system is most appropriate for any given project In this chapter, you will be introduced to the workshop where multi-media is made, with guidance and suggestions for getting started, and you will learn about planning a project. In later chapters, you will learn about producing, managing, and designing a project; getting material and content; testing your work; and, ultimately, shipping it to end users or posting it to the Web. The Stages of a Multimedia Project Most multimedia and web projects must be undertaken in stages. Some stages should be completed before other stages begin,and some stages may be skipped or combined. Here are the four basic stages in a multimedia project: 1. Planning and costing A project always begins with an idea or a need that you then refine by outlining its messages and objectives. Identify how you will make each message and objective work within your authoring system. Before you begin developing, plan out the writing skills, graphic art, music, video, and other multimedia exper-tise that you will require. Develop a creative “look and feel” (what a user sees on a screen and how he or she interacts with it), as well as a structure and a navigational system that will allow the viewer to visit the messages and content. Estimate the time you’ll need to do all the elements, and then prepare a budget.Work up a short prototype or proof-of-concept, a simple, working example to demonstrate whether or not your idea is feasible.The ease with which you can create materials with today’s production and authoring tools tempts new developers to immediately move into production—jumping in before planning.This often results in false starts and wasted time and, in the long run, higher development cost.The more time you spend getting a handle on your project by defining its content and structure in the beginning, the faster you can later build it, and the less reworking and rearranging will be required midstream.Think it through before you start! Your creative ideas and trials will grow into Chapter 7 Making Multimedia 197 screens and buttons (or the look and feel), and your proof-of-concept will help you test whether your ideas will work.You may discover that by breaking the rules, you can invent something terrific! 2. Designing and producing Perform each of the planned tasks to create a finished product. During this stage, there may be many feedback cycles with a client until the client is happy. 3. Testing Test your programs to make sure that they meet the objectives of your project, work properly on the intended delivery platforms, and meet the needs of your client or end user. 4. Delivering Package and deliver the project to the end user. Be prepared to follow up over time with tweaks, repairs, and upgrades. What You Need: The Intangibles You need hardware,software,and good ideas to make multimedia.To make good multimedia,you need talent and skill.You also need to stay organized, because as the construction work gets under way,all the little bits and pieces of multimedia content—the six audio recordings of Alaskan Eskimos,the Christmas-two-years-ago snapshot of your niece, the 41 articles still to scan with your optical character recognition (OCR) program—will get lost under growing piles of paper, CDs, videotapes, phone messages, permis-sions and releases,cookie crumbs,Xerox copies,and yesterday’s mail.Even in serious ofices, where people sweep all flat surfaces clear of paperwork and rubber bands at five o’clock, there will be a mess. You will need time and money (for consumable resources such as CD-R blanks and other memory or digital storage, for telephoning and postage, and possibly for paying for special services and time, yours included), and you will need to budget these precious commodities (see Chapter 9). You may also need the help of other people.Multimedia development of any scale greater than the most basic level is inherently a team effort: artwork is performed by graphic artists, video shoots by video producers, sound editing by audio producers,and programming by programmers (see Chapter 8).You will certainly wish to provide plenty of coffee and snacks, whether working alone or as a team.Late nights are often involved in the making of multimedia. Creativity Before beginning a multimedia project, you must first develop a sense of its scope and content.Let the project take shape in your head as you think through the various methods available to get your message across to your viewers. 198 Multimedia: Making It Work The most precious asset you can bring to the multimedia workshop is your creativity.It’s what separates run-of-the-mill or underwhelming mul-timedia from compelling,engaging,and award-winning products,whether we’re talking about a short sales presentation viewed solely by colleagues within your firm or provided for a fully immersive online game. You have a lot of room for creative risk taking, because the rules for what works and what doesn’t work are still being empirically discovered, and there are few known formulas for multimedia success. Indeed, com-panies that produce a terrific multimedia title are usually rewarded in the marketplace, but their success can be fleeting. This is because competi-tors often reverse-engineer the product,and then produce knockoffs using similar approaches and techniques,which appear on the market six months later. Good web site ideas and programming are easily cloned. The evolution of multimedia is evident when you look at some of the first multimedia projects done on computers and compare them to today’s titles.Taking inspiration from earlier experiments, developers modify and add their own creative touches for designing their own unique multimedia projects. It is very dificult to learn creativity. Some people might say it’s impossible—and that you have to be born with it. But, like traditional artists who work in paint, marble, or bronze, the better you know your medium, the better able you are to express your creativity. In the case of multimedia, this means you need to know your hardware and software first. Once you’re proficient with the hardware and software tools, you might ask yourself,“What can I build that will look great,sound great,and knock the socks off the viewer?”This is a rhetorical question,and its answer is actually another question—which is simply,“How creative are you?” WARNING If you are managing a multimedia project, remember that creative talent is priceless, so be certain to reward it well. If you don’t, you may find that your talent takes a job elsewhere, even at lower pay! Organization It’s essential that you develop an organized outline and a plan that ratio-nally details the skills,time,budget,tools,and resources you will need for a project.These should be in place before you start to render graphics,sounds, and other components, and a protocol should be established for naming the files so you can organize them for quick retrieval when you need them. These files—called assets—should continue to be monitored throughout the project’s execution. Chapter 9 provides planning and costing models for a multimedia project, while Chapter 10 discusses the details of multi-media project and asset management. Chapter 7 Making Multimedia 199 First Person The Credit Alligator usually appears late in a multimedia project and has nothing to do with MasterCard or Visa. This gnarly animal typi- cally lives unseen in the delicate fringes of workgroup politics, but can appear very suddenly, causing great distraction during beta test-ing, adding moments of personal tension, and occasionally destroy-ing friendships and business relationships. After hard cash, the most satisfy-ing remuneration for your sweaty effort and creative, late-night contributions to a multimedia project is to see your name listed in the credits for a particular project. Indeed, getting visible credit is a special, high-value currency, in part because it can be added to your portfolio to help you land the next job.The more of this currency you have, the higher your potential wage and the more likely you will remain employed doing what you like to do. Start building defenses against this alligator up front.When you negotiate the original contract with whoever pays the multimedia bill, be sure to include wording such as: “We shall be allowed to include a production credit display on the closing screen or in another mutually agreeable position in the finished work.”If you are an individual who is contracting to a producer, be sure it is understood that if there is a credit page, your name will be on it. Not all clients will stand for a credit page. Large companies, for example, use many outside contractors to produce multimedia, but as a policy rarely allow contributors to be credited by name. Some contractors and frustrated employees develop ingenious workarounds for burying these important intellectual credits within their work. The Credit Alligator raises its bumpy head over the little things, too, and there are often no appropriate defenses for it. For example, if your name begins with a letter that is toward the end of the alphabet, you may never appear first on the list of contributors, even if your contribu-tion was major. Of course, if your name is Walsh or Young, you have endured this ordering system since first-grade lineups. Warning: revers-ing an alphabetic credit list from last to first will only create or heighten tension; to propose such a list is, in itself, ego-driven and self-serving. Learn to work around it. The most treacherous place for the Credit Alligator to lurk is in the busy stretchoftimeduringthefinalizing ofaCD-basedprojectandthe“going gold”processofproducingafinal master.Ifyouarenotparticipatingin the final mastering but have contrib-uted a piece or pieces to the project, you must trust the person doing the mastering to do it the right way. But, unfortunately it doesn’t always hap- pen the way you want it to. One company recently consulted on a job where their work represented the second-greatest contribution from a group of about 15 contribu-tors, all of whom had credit screens. Their contract required credit, but in the final version of the storyboard, they discovered their screen buried at the end of a four-minute linear sequence of all the other credits and advertisements. They asked the producer to move it up. “Sorry,” said the producer, “it was an oversight.” Then in the last-minute process of re-sequencing, the producer also switched the contracted company’s custom music to his own company’s credit screen, leaving our friend’s screen attached to a pretty ugly leftover sound byte. Because the company was not included in the final feedback and approval loop, they discovered this “little mistake” only after mass replication. It’s tough to change 50,000 shrink-wrapped CD-ROMs, so at that point there was nothing to say. Crediting creative talent is sensitive stuff. Avoid recurring bouts with the Credit Alligator by publicizing your policy about credit screens. Talk about intellectual credit openly, not as a last-minute thing. Negotiate hard for inclusion of credit in all the projects you undertake for clients. Remember, multimedia doesn’t spring from the bankrolls of inves-tors and publishers—it’s the result of the hard work of talented, real people. 200 Multimedia: Making It Work Communication Many multimedia applications are developed in workgroups comprising instructional designers, writers, graphic artists, programmers, and musi-cians located in the same ofice space or building.The workgroup members’ computers are typically connected on a local area network (LAN). The client’s computers, however, may be thousands of miles distant, requiring other methods for good communication. Communication among workgroup members and with the client is essential to the eficient and accurate completion of your project. If your client and you are both connected to the Internet,a combination of Skype video and voice telephone, e-mail, and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) may be the most cost-effective and eficient solution for both creative devel-opment and project management.In the workplace,use quality equipment and software for your communications setup.The cost—in both time and money—of stable and fast networking will be returned to you. What You Need: Hardware This book will help you understand the two most significant platforms for producing and delivering multimedia projects: the Apple Macintosh operating system(OS) and the Microsoft WindowsOS,found running on most Intel-based PCs (including Intel-based Macintoshes). These computers, with their graphical user interfaces and huge installed base of many millions of users throughout the world,are the most commonly used platforms for the development and delivery of today’s multimedia. Certainly,detailed and animated multimedia is also created on special-ized workstations from Silicon Graphics,Sun Microsystems,and even on mainframes, but the Macintosh and the Windows PC offer a compelling combination of affordability, software availability, and worldwide obtain-ability. Regardless of the delivery vehicle for your multimedia—whether it’s destined to play on a computer, on a Wii, Xbox, or PlayStation game box, or as bits moving down the data highway—most multimedia will probably be made on a Macintosh or on a PC. The basic principles for creating and editing multimedia elements are the same for all platforms. A graphic image is still a graphic image, and a digitized sound is still a digitized sound,regardless of the methods or tools used to make and display it or to play it back.Indeed,many software tools readily convert picture,sound,and other multimedia files (and even whole functioning projects) from Macintosh to Windows format,and vice versa, using known file formats or even binary compatible files that require no conversion at all.While there is a lot of talk about platform-independent delivery of multimedia on the Internet,with every new version of a browser there are still annoying failures on both platforms.These failures in cross-platformcompatibility can consume great amounts of time as you prepare ... - tailieumienphi.vn