SM 2233 Multimedia Production Introduction School of Creative Media

What is this course about?  “the big picture” – how multimedia products are produced  How do we achieve goal?  What are the different roles in a multimedia production?  What is the process? You got to involve in the process!!!!  Nothing can substitute experience!

What is this course about?  Many other courses look at individual media, small set of tools and techniques  Real-life project use multiple types of media, use many different tools  How do these tools interact? Do they work together? How do we set up a “production line” to produce the final product

What is this course about?  We will talk about:  Proposals  Budgets  Scheduling  Management  Reports

What is this course about?  To make the course more interesting we will focus on :  Work in a practical context  Understand group dynamics  Focus in the process

What is Multimedia?  Multimedia is the use of several different media to convey information.  Multimedia may include text, spoken audio, music, images, animation, video and interactivity.  Multimedia also refers to specific computer system  Not all multimedia product / project involve computers. But using computer devices becoming a common practice.  A communication form that uses any combination of different media;  Multimedia programs are often interactive and include games, online presentations, live events and creative projects.  Also referred to as newmedia.

Types of Multimedia Projects  Many type of projects in multimedia:  some typical categories:  Websites  Educational/Training software  Games/Entertainment  Commercial presentations/Advertising campaigns  Exhibition/Trade show  Art/Performance  What else you can think of?

Types of Multimedia Projects  Project differ in:  Risk  Size / length of time  Team size  Team composition  Innovation

Risk High risk types:  Commercial presentations (For game deveopment, risk could be as high as 90%)  Live events  Projects with tight deadline  Projects without a clear goal More interesting multimedia projects. Lower risk:  Art projects, no definite guideline for judgment

Risk  How can we determine the level of risk?  Project size – smaller projects are safer  Team size and composition – large varied teams introduce management problems  New tools and techniques – doing something new is a source of risk  Experience – the more experience the better

Project Size  A commercial presentation may take one person a few days to prepare  A game could take a team of 75 three years to produce  As projects get bigger they become harder to manage - longer time & more people

Team Size  Small teams can be quite informal, no need for management.  Easier for small team to keep track of means towards the goal / final product.  Problems occur when teams get larger.  Large teams may loose sight of the final product as a whole, as individuals tends to focus on particular portion only.

Team Composition  How diverse is the team?  Are there only creative talents, or are there technical people as well?  How do you manage both technicians and artists, motivated by different things?  Different work cultures can produce issues in the production process

Politics  Larger teams divided into groups or departments  Groups will fight over:  Resources – money and facilities  Responsibilities – two groups wanting to do the same thing  Blame – whose fault is it when something does wrong

Innovation  Is there something new about this project?  New media type?  New technology?  New tools ?  New effects ?

Innovation How does innovation affect a project? Pro:  Increase value of the project – commercial, artistic, academic, etc.  Increase multimedia production standard Con:  Adds risk!  More planning  More time, more training,  Lack experience with new technique/media, need to experiment, develop prototypes

Production Process  For standard products can have a relatively standard production process - what needs to be done according timeline  For rapidly developing areas this is much harder, don’t fully understand the media, hard to standardize production process

Production Process  There are three areas where a standard process is starting to emerge:  Websites (Rich-media)  CD-ROM / DVD – commercial/advertising presentations  Games  Live events  Websites and CD/DVD are quite similar - traditional approach

Web / Media Presentation  Usually done with relatively small teams, mainly creative people  Relatively short term, several weeks/months  Projects tend to be client driven, hired to produce a particular product

Games  High risk, high innovation projects  Usually larger teams with a mixture of creative and technical people  Long term projects, usually taking several years to complete  Involve certain peripheral products, like character figurines, posters, etc.

Live Events / Presentation  More interactive  Direct contact with participants/ audience  Large amount of production deal with time issue  All media elements need to be produced and “rehearsed” (tested)  More interesting – can be creative in electronic media design, as well as performance elements (stage design, music, speech, lighting, etc.)  Instant response / feedback of the project