Director Course Overview

Throughout this course we are going to design & build a Multimedia Business Card that will be epitomised for both CD-ROM and Internet distribution.

This course will take you through the entire multimedia development process, from concept to production.

Planning is probably the most important stage in the development process, remember "failure to plan is planning to fail". The result of our planning stage will result in a "Requirements Document" and a "Storyboard".

The Requirements Document will clearly identify the aims & objectives of the project and propose a development timetable. This timetable is not fixed in stone and as the course progresses you will see that we will have to make amendments to the "plan" in order to meet our objectives satisfactorily.

The Storyboard is a big picture view of the entire project. It will graphically illustrate the scenes that we will need to create and how each scene will relate to the others for navigation purposes. The Storyboard gives us the view that a project manager would have of the project. This will be one of the many hats that you will be wearing during this course.

OK, let's begin:

Requirements Document

Aims and Objectives

We are going to produce a Multimedia Business Card.

The Card will need to satisfy the following criteria:

• It must begin with an intro & loader screen that will introduce the card in an entertaining and tasteful manner. This screen will allow download time for the card and give the viewer a chance to focus his/her concentration on the card.
• There will be a main menu that will contain the usual elements of a business card. The following are suggested elements:
  • Company Logo*
  • Company Name*
  • Company Postal Address
  • Company Telephone & Fax Numbers
  • Company General Info E-mail Address*
  • Company Web Site Address*
  • Employee Name*
  • Employee Position*
  • Employee Department*
  • Employee Office Telephone Number
  • Employee Mobile Telephone Number
  • Employee E-mail Address*
  • Employee Alternative E-mail Address*
• The elements indicated with an "*" will be actively linked to other pages, the location of these pages will be determined by the type:
  • Company Logo and Name will link to an internal page that will contain information about the company, e.g.: location, business type etc.
  • Company General Info E-mail Address will open the default e-mail client on the users machine with the company's e-mail address in the "TO" text box
  • Company Web Site Address will link to an external page, the URL for the company.
  • Employee Name will link to an internal page with details of the employee
  • Employee Position & Department will either link to an external page on the company's web site with details of the relative department or an internal page detailing the same
  • Employee E-mail Address will open the default e-mail client on the users machine with the employees e-mail address in the "TO" text box
  • Employee Alternative E-mail Address will open the default e-mail client on the users machine with the employees alternative e-mail address in the "TO" text box
• The card must be user friendly & navigation must be non-linear
• The card should contain a wide variety of media including, but not limited to, text, graphics (produced both internally & externally), sound, digital video, and flash.
• The card should be produced with both CD-ROM & Web viewers in mind.

Schedule

We've got 8 weeks to plan the project, create the "assets" required, develop the movie, test & debug (both visually & coded lingo) and publish the movie on our choice of platform(s)

8 weeks may sound like a lot but bearing in mind that it involves 3 contact hours per week totalling 24 contact hours we've got our work cut out. We will adopt a flexible approach to scheduling. The objective is clear & must be achieved, however the quantity of content and complexity of the movie will be determined by availability of time.

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