1. Making Multimedia & Multimedia Skills
Introduction to Making Multimedia
Guidance and suggestions for getting started
Multimedia Skills
What skills required

2. Introduction to Making Multimedia
The stages of a project:
Planning and costing
Idea/objectives
Multimedia expertise required
Structure & navigation system
Time & cost estimation
Designing & producing
Testing
Delivering

3. Introduction to Making Multimedia
What we need?
Hardware
Software
Good ideas
Talent
Skill
Good organization of works

4. Introduction to Making Multimedia
Hardware
2 most significance platforms:
Macintosh OS
Intel-based IBM PC or PC Clone (MS Windows)
Development environment
Powerful workstation (Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, or mainframe)
Apple (Macintosh OS) more suitable for multimedia editing
Cross platform format (both Mac & Windows)

5. Introduction to Making Multimedia
Software:
Multimedia software tells the hardware what to do
Text, images, sounds, and video.
Capturing images, translating between file formats, and editing your resources
Photoshop, soundForge, Premiere, GIF Animator, etc.
Multimedia authoring
Macromedia Director or flash
Everybody can make multimedia project!!

6. Introduction to Making Multimedia
Creativity:
Develop a sense of its scope and content
Difficult to learn creativity
“but like classical artists who work in paint, marble, or bronze, the better you know your medium, the better able you are to express your creativity”
Know your hardware & software first!!

7. Introduction to Making Multimedia
Organization
Develop an organized outline a a plan that rationally details the skills, time, budget, tools, and resources we will need for a project

8. Multimedia Skills
Multimedia developers come from all corners of the computer, art, literacy, film, and audio worlds
To produce good multimedia, need detailed knowledge of computers, text, graphics arts, sound, and video
Normally multimedia project – team effort.

9. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Multimedia Team (Prof. Wes Baker – Cedarville University, Ohio):
Executive Producer
Producer/Project Manager
Creative Director/Multimedia Designer
Art Director/Visual Designer
Artist
Interface Designer
Game Designer
Subject Matter Expert
Instructional Designer/Training Specialist
Script Writer
Animator (2D/3D)
Sound Producer
Music Composer
Video Producer
Multimedia Programmer
HTML Coder
Lawyer/Media Acquisition
Marketing Director

10. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Project Manager
Center of action
Responsible for overall development and implementation of a project as well as day-to-day operations
Budgets
Schedules
Creative sessions
Time sheets
Illness
Invoices
Team dynamics
Technical & operational expert

11. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Multimedia Designer
Designing the look & feel of a multimedia project
Screen color, visual consistency, meaningful icons, simple screen elements, content layout, content structure
Graphics Designer, illustrators, animators, and image processing specialist – visual
Instructional Designer – navigation pathways and content maps
Information Designer – structure content, determine user pathways and feedback, and select presentation media

12. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Interface Designer
Interface provides control to the people who use it
Backgrounds, icons, control panels – result of am interface designer

13. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Writer
Create character, action, and point of view – create creativity
Write proposals, script voice-over and actors’ narrations, write text screens to deliver messages, and develop characters designed for an interactive environment
Glean information from content experts, synthesize it, and then communicate it in a clear and concise manner

14. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Video Specialist
Videographers, sound technician, lighting designers, set designers, script supervisors, grips, production assistants, and actors.
Skilled in managing all phases of production, from concept to final edit

15. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Audio Specialist
Wizards who make a multimedia program come alive, designing and producing music, voice-over narrations, and sound effects.
Selecting suitable music and talent, scheduling recording sessions, and digitizing and editing recorded material into computer files

16. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Multimedia Programmer
Software engineer
Integrates all the multimedia elements of a project into a seamless whole using authoring system or programming language
JavaScript, OpenScript, Lingo, Authorware, Java, C++, etc.

17. Multimedia Skills – The Team
Producer, Multimedia for the Web
Network Engineer
Putting together a coordinated set of pages for the World Wide Web
Creative process, skillsets
Website never finished, remain dynamics
Most of the time maintaining the multimedia program for easily access by user

18. Planning & Costing Project Planning Costing
The process of Making Multimedia
Idea Analysis
Pretesting
Prototype Development
Alpha Development
Beta Development
Delivery
Hardware
Available Skills and Software
Idea Management Software
Building a Team
Pilot Projects and Prototyping
Task Planning
Scheduling
Costing
Billing rates
Example Cost Sheets

19. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia

20. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia
Idea Analysis
Ideas = purpose or goal against the feasibility and cost of production and delivery
Use note paper
What is the essence of what you want to do? What is your purpose and message
How can you organize your project?
What multimedia element will best deliver your message?
Content material?
Creating something new or improvise old version?
Hardware? Enough?
Storage needed? How much?
Hardware available for your end user?
Multimedia software available?
Capabilities & skills – hardware & software
Team or individual?
Time?
Money?
How to distribute the final project?
Who, what, why, where, when & how?
Audience analysis: Who is it for?
Needs analysis: Why develop it?
Content analysis: What will it cover?
Resource analysis: How and how much?
Estimate: When will it get done?
Think about marketing and distribution.

21. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia
Pretesting
Define project goals in greater detail
Skills required
Content
Costing (money & time)
How to sell it
Prototype on paper with an explanation of how it will work

22. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia
Prototype Development
Develop working prototype
Building screen mock-ups, human interface menu & button
Select a small portion of a large project & get that part working as it would in the final product
Test your prototype along several fronts:
Cost
Market
Human Interface
Purpose: test the initial implementation of your idea and improve on it based upon test results.

23. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia
Alpha Development
Detail the storyboard – bring in end user for gathered information
Graphic art
Sound and video production
Test on working prototype

24. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia
Beta Development
Too late to bail out
Committed serious money, time and energy
Wider tester
Concern should be simply successfully steering the project to its well-defined goal.

25. Project Planning: The Process of Making Multimedia
Delivery
Worries toward the marketplace
How will your project be received by its intended audience?
Issues:
Hotline, after sales maintenance, server co-location,

26. Project Planning: Hardware
Most common limiting factor for realizing a multimedia idea: no sound board; no sound effects; no synthesizer; no MIDI composer by you on-site; no high-resolution color display; no modem or network; no network
Listing the hardware capabilities of the end users’ computer platform
If the capabilities are not enough, discuss with end user (examine the cost)

27. Project Planning: Available Skills and Software
Make a list of skills & software capabilities available
Budget for new and more powerful software and for the learning curve required

28. Project Planning: Idea Management Software
SiteSpring, Microsoft Project, Designer’s Edge, Screenplay System’s Screenwriter and Story View ~ useful for arranging ideas and tasks, work items, employee resources, and cost required for multimedia project
To help you stay within tight schedule and budget
Project Management Software provides Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling functions to calculate the total duration of a project based upon each identified task, earmarking task that are critical and that, if lengthened, will result a delay in project completion
Used of Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT), Gantt Chart

29. Project Planning: Building a Team
Multimedia requires a set of skills so broad
Need a team, know what expertise required for a project
Building a matrix chart of required skills is helpful

30. Project Planning: Pilot Projects and Prototyping
Pilot project phase
Test ideas, mock up interfaces, exercise the hardware platform
Determine the actual cost of the project

31. Project Planning: Task Planning
Brief checklist of action item for which we should plan ahead:
Design Instructional Framework
Hold Creative Idea Session
Determine Delivery Platform
Assay Available Content
Draw navigation Map
Create Storyboard
Design Interface
Design Information Containers
Research/Gather Content
Assemble Team
Build Prototype
Conduct User Test
Revise Design
Create Graphics
Create Animations
Produce Audio
Produce Video
Digitize Audio and Video
Take Still Photographs
Program and Author
Test Functionality
Fix Bugs
Conduct Beta Test
Create Golden Master
Replicate
Prepare Package
Deliver or Install at Web Site
Award Bonuses
Throw Party

32. Project Planning: Scheduling
Timeline
Estimate total time required for each task and then allocate this time among the number of persons will be asynchronously working on the project
Scheduling difficult for multimedia:
Making multimedia is artistic trial and error
Technological upgrade during development
Client feedback

33. Costing
Production and manufacturing industries – simple matter to estimate cost and effort
Multimedia is not a repetitive manufacturing process
Multimedia development is a continuous research and development effort characterized by creative trial and error
Production cost (30-second commercial spot storyboard costs about RM50K)
Storyboard production
Postproduction editing
Actor (per hour)
Composer (audio production)
Animator (graphical production)
Administration and management cost
Three elements in project estimates:
Time
Money
People

34. Costing: Billing Rates
Set according cost of doing business plus a reasonable profit margin
Contractor and consultant can bring specialized skills such as graphic art. Programming, database expertise, music composition.
Make sure your billing rate is higher than theirs

35. Costing: Example Cost Sheets

36. Proposal
Executive summary, briefly describing the project;s goal, how the goal will be achieved and the cost
Creative issues, technical issues, project estimation and project plan, cost estimation for each phase, contract terms.

37. Assignment 1: Proposal Dateline: Week 4 (4th August 2006)
The cover page
Table of contents
Need Analysis and Description
Target audience
Creative strategy
A description of the look and feel of the project
Project implementation
Gantt Chart/PERT, task scheduling
Budget
Relate directly to the scope of work in Project implementation
Limitations of the proposal (if any)