week 11 -adriel,nicole,amanda

There are a few factors and principles that makes project management of multimedia productions successful. The first principle or process is the whole production of the multimedia production or project. The most important or significant part of the production is the planning stage. Production is a phase when the project is actually rendered. In this production process, it is important that the storyboards are prepared, navigation maps draft out, and so forth. It is during this phase that important and continuing tasks are most dealt and monitored with.

For example, if the project is built and done by more than one person, it is very important that a management structure is established in advance. This is so that if one person is away on emergency lift or unavailable, the project partner will be able to continue the project from where is was left off. This management structure will include specific milestones that will make monitoring easier. Also, it will include production expectations for each contributor. This will act as a guideline and monitor contributors.

After the production stage comes the start up process. In the start up process, it is important to check all development hardware and software. It is important that all software is available before the start of project. Besides that, there is also the need to review organizational and administrative setup. It does not matter if you alone are handling the project because all these steps will ensure a smooth flow of completing the project.

It is also crucial to determine the capacity of your CPU and RAM- lower capacity means there will be limitations for your project size; while bigger capacity will allow you to explore more on your project and allow space for miscellaneous. Another relevant area is that are there sufficient disk storage space for all work files because these will affect your project outcome.

Another area to monitor is the time factor. It is important to keep track of the time frame given to complete the project and ensure that all management system is in place. The Gantt Chart is a good way of self monitoring throughout your project.

For every project, financial role plays a big factor. It is important the financial arrangements are secure and planned out. Should there be any emergencies, you can be rest assured that there is back up. As for clients, it is vital that you have all their contacts so that communication will be made easier. Should any problem arise, there will be room for discussions and negotiations.

To work on a successful project, one not ony have to concentrate on the project but also to have a good background communication with the clients as they are the sole provider for the financial issue on the project itself. Working with clients are not easy especially the fussy ones. Therefore, the developer will have to build good rapport between he or she to the clients they correspond to especially towards the management level in the big corporations.

In order to do so, always ask the needs and wants of the specification on the project itself. Ask in datail so you could eliminate further changes from the management itself. Another way to make sure is to develop a cheme to the management which specifies the number and duration of client approval cycles. For example, give a number of times which the management can adhere their changes to. For instance, 5 times and later after that the developer may charge them an acess fee if they want to make extra changes from then on. This step is to ensure rectifications to be done in proper timely manner and eliminate changes.

As the updated changes is done to the multimedia production by the developer. He or she will have to update the information to their clients. As the production file is huge, the developer need to think about the storage space needed for the production. For example, always have a back up copy of the project itself to eliminate any unwanted mistakes such as power shortage. Then, use software pogram such as Zip to make the file smaller. Furthermore, have a huge data storage. One prominent way to transport the files to the client as soon as possible is to courier them however with technology one would be able to update the changes through the website which the client can acess and download from the attachment provided for instance.

Tracking the workload of the project is another successful way to make sure everything is done in order and in detail as time passes very fast and a dateline on the project could be easily missed out on. One easy way is to develp your name file project to the maximum 8 characters provided which associates with the topic of your project. For the larger project ensure that you have equip yourself with the latest update on the software programming you are using to enhance better quality project. For example, Creative Suite which was launched recently.

The next step of making multimedia productions successeful would be the process of copyrighting. In fact, any form of work whether is be an idea, or a project needs copyrights as they are the safety measures for people who want to make sure their ideas and works are not copied and tampered with by anyone wanting to do so. A person's idea may be good in that it is creative and is getting the interest of clients but if intellectual properties like these are not inserted with a copyright statement, one will risk losing that property to another and make all their hard work go to waste.

All forms of production have their setback and difficulties. Multimedia productions are no exception. To have hazards and annoyances are only normal and what makes multimedia productions, in fact any other productions, successful is the ability to overcome them, manage them, and even learn from them. But should they be allowed to fester and continue to hinder the production, they may very well be things that makes the whole process fail. These hazards and annoyances may be both big and small, and they may come in a wide array of forms. Some examples would be uncooperative co-workers who just cannot accept constructive criticism and so they become insulted and under perform in their task. To solve this, managers should have one-to-one talks with workers like these and try to convince them that they have to accept criticisms well and that it was given for their own good and for the good of the team.

Clients may also be a problem as they can sometimes be very fussy and demanding. They may ask for changes and amendments at a wrong time and the way to avoid this is by stating in the clause or contract that should changes be made to the production, extra charges will be incurred. This will discourage them from having too much of their own way and will then give managers and producers of the production less trouble and more time to finish their work. All-nighters, or people who have the tendencey to fail to get enough sleep can also present a hazard. Because of their lack of sleep, they will be unfocused and very unproductive and the way to amend this would be to give a warning to them that should they continue on with their late nights, their position in the team will be in doubt. This can also be applied with deadlines if workers fail to meet them.

week 11 assessment

Discuss the principles for successful project management of multimedia productions.

week 10 assessment

Create a simple storyboard of a computer game.

week 9 -sarah,daniel,samuel

First of all multimedia content is known as content that defines what the project is all about. It can be practically anything about the elements of multimedia. However, when acquiring rights to using multimedia content, there are certain copyrights and red tapes to go though if you want to use them for your own purpose.

Since the late 1980s, investors in the multimedia marketplace have been quietly purchasing electronic rights to the basic building blocks of content such as, films, videos, photographic collections and textual information bases. Preexisting content can come from a variety of sources be it pictures from your friend’s computer or from a stock house or image bank offering hundreds of thousands of hours of film and video or still images, available for licensing for a fee.

Besides that, there are certain copyright law issues, which the Malaysian Intellectual Property Law consists of three sections them being copyright, patent and trademark. Basically anything tangible can be copyrighted and it can be done by one’s self. Patenting is more abstract like intangibles such as technology and methodology. Trademark though is for protecting logos company names, mottos, etc.

One of the main issues users tend to neglect is when using somebody else’s multimedia project. Before touching anything that doesn’t belong to you, you must first obtain permission from the owner of the copyright. If you fail to do this, you may find yourself being sued for copyright infringement. This is a serious matter as the consequences are taken seriously by the court of law.

In the area of ownership, let’s say you have a friend who’s creating a multimedia project but at the last minute you also contribute to it. In the law, you may have the copyright ownership of a joint ownership. However, if you’re under the category of “work made for hire”, as an employee what ever you do belongs to the employer if the work fits the requirement. Nevertheless, to meet the definition of a work made for hire, several factors must be weighed to determine whether the individual is legally an employee of an independent contractor.

Some of the things that fall into the work made for hire category are works that are part of a motion picture or other AV work, translations and supplementary works. For example, the English subtitles you see in a Chinese drama TV series doesn’t involve rights belonging to the subtitle editor. As for an independent contractor, the copyright ownership work solely belongs to the person unless the work is specially ordered or commissioned for use and qualifies as a work made for hire, in which case the copyright belongs to the entity commissioning the work.

When developing a project, it is wise to obtain rights and take precautions first just in case you get tied up in law issues you don’t wish to be in. You may be able to negotiate outright ownership of copyrighted material. If the owner still doesn’t want to give up or sell ownership rights, you’re still entitled to licensing the rights to use the materials.

week 8 -sarah,daniel,samuel

In order to create a multimedia project, the developer needs to follow a series of steps from the Idea Analysis till the Delivery stage. This is to ensure that the project or material results in good quality due to careful planning and taking strategic measures throughout the process.

Idea Analysis is the first step to developing any multimedia project. This is where you write your idea down on paper, and decide on the purpose and message of your project. You will need to and weigh the cost and measures it will take in order to make your idea a success. There must be a balance between purpose and feasibility which can be done by increasing or decreasing multimedia elements depending on what is relevant to the project at hand.

You will need to think about the content materials and hardware that is needed and how you may obtain them if you don’t already have them. Research is needed to check if your idea is original or if it has already been used in the multimedia market. How big your project is will determine the amount of space you will need in order to store your raw material and later on the finished product. Necessary time and money are also important factors to consider before continuing your project.

Pre-development stage is where you take your details to the next step. Define your project goals specifically and each skill needed to make it attainable. Then a content outline needs to be sketched or written out. This provides a guideline for you to follow as you develop your project further in case you forget any important ideas, or it could help inspire new ones along the way. A strategic positioning and marketing plan is needed in order to place your multimedia project in the correct target market. Create your prototype on paper so that a visible outline or illustration of your project is available for viewing when dealing with sales and marketing people.

Prototype development makes itself as the next stage for creating the concept of the project. For starters, creating screen mock-ups just to get the rough idea of the overview of how your project is going to look like. Similarly to creating a skeleton of a website, designing the content map will guide users in navigating themselves through the multimedia project and interacting with the option tools available. When designing human interface, consider making a layout that is not cluttered and user friendly. When developing the content messages of your project, ensure that you text is grammatically correct, straightforward and easy to understand. Finally test the prototype that you have done in order to troubleshoot. This trial and error process is necessary at every stage at save you the trouble of correcting error in the long run.

Alpha development is the stage where you draw out your storyboard and flowcharts in detail. Include the finalized story scripts as well. Graphic art should be chosen to suit the idea and concept of the project. It plays an important part in giving the overall feel of the project to appeal to your target market. Including sound and video in your project will enhance usability and optimize the options for interaction. For example, if it’s an educational multimedia project, a video tutorial would explain your content better than just an audio player and will be more interesting than text because it allows demonstrations. In the process of putting all these elements together, you might face minor technical problems. Solve all technical problems and test prototype once again before moving to the next stage.

Beta development is one step before the final delivery stage. Your project is sent out to a limited list of users who will test your program or project in case you might have missed out any details. Your project should be usable on the proposed delivery platform. In testing the program, respond to bug reports from the computer. Analyze the scripting code error and fix it. You should also prepare a user document to make your program user-friendly. This can be in a hardcopy format of a program manual, or a softcopy document made available in the file. Design the packaging for your project according to what is suitable. Create a range of varied gold candidates of your project so that one may be chosen as the gold master copy. Once that is done, inform PR personnel so a press release may be written to launch your new program or project.

Delivery is the final stage where you prepare technical support for your project in case of any malfunctions. Install a sales team to support your launch and make replicates of your gold master copy. Hold launch seminars to further promote the newly launched program. Finally, arrange to ship your products to various companies who have requested it.

week 9 -canaan,alvin,sim pin

How will the content be delivered?
User need to gain authorized rights to public display to multimedia content that owned by another party, this rights come in terms of the method to deliver the content in what media and what way the user want it to be display.

Is that license for a set period of time?
License for copyright is being set for a due date. Once the copyright date come to a due, the particular individual or company cannot publish or use the content of the owner anymore. To use the content again, user need to gain another license to use it for the time to come.

Is the license exclusive or non-exclusive?
License involving copyright in terms of exclusive or not make sure that the owner sells the rights to a party or to others party at the same time. To avoid misunderstanding among the user and owner, agreement is achieved to clarify the copyright issues. When AIG’s associated company- AIA sells the right to Korea government to publish the health assurance project in South Korea by the year 2005. Due to the political position, North Korea government claimed that it is not right as there are the one who already had the right since 2003, however, AIG make a clear statement that this copy right is a non-exclusive to North Korea only.

Do you intend to use the material in its entirety or just a portion of it?
Agreement need to be obtained whether the owner allows how many parts or whole parts of the content being use by the buyers. Buyer need to follow the agreement made to use the multimedia content.

What rights do you need?
This rights including the rights of copying, changing, selling or public display the multimedia content that the buyer had bought. The owner had the authority to state whether the user allows changing their content or not allowing doing so. In 2004, Arsenal F.C. allow the Emirates flight company to display the pictures of their football stars in the plane, however, assuming that Arsenal F.C. allowing them to do whatever they want with the pictures, Emirates display the players pictures by adding Arabian country background and surrounded by few others crew. Arsenal F.C. claimed that they only allow Emirates Flight Company to display the PLAIN player’s picture.

Does the content owner have the authority to assign rights to you?
Owner has the right to assign and stated terms and conditions apply to the content in terms of authority over the user in the whole process of usage.

Will the copyright owner receive remuneration for the license?
The owner will asked for commission payment for their products in term of one shot payment, by sales of the product sold, by percentage of usage and etc.

In what format do you wish to receive the content?
Agreement had to achieve in what method user which to receive the multimedia content. By soft copy, hard copy, advertisement and etc. For examples, In Summer 2006, CNN Company had managed to gain copyright to published NY Yankees baseball team news exclusively by receiving the first hand news daily through person in charge. In this case, CNN receive the content in news form through the necessary methods and ways.

week 9 -adriel,amanda,nicole

For obtaining rights to multimedia contents, the first thing that should be considered is the ways and means to deliver the content. For example, will your content be delivered in a CD-ROM or a web site. The following issue to consider is if the license applied for is for a set of period of time. If so, how long is it? This is important as once the license expires, the right no longer belongs to you if you do not renew it immediately. The next issue is if the license is exclusive or non-exclusive to applicants to these rights. If your content arrangement is done out of the ordinary, it can be an exclusive right only to you. Whereas, some rights obtained are non-exclusive. It is important to know these license right because should there be an infringement done, you have the advantage of gaining compensation.

Do you intent to use the material its entirely? For this, the user must decide if he or she would like to use the copyrighted material entirely or just a small portion of it. As both in comparision, if the user would like to use the material entirely he would pay the payment of the copyright to use it much more higher.

For example, using a full photography of a landscape of the mountain taken by a photographer then the fee paid for the photograph would be higher than the usual fee paid for a small portion.

The rights that the user need is when asking the original user permission to use their copyright item or trademark. This rights includes for own use such as presentation, to reproduce or for reselling. For example, UTAR is being given a permission to reproduce their logo from Nike's global tick. Then, UTAR is able to reproduce their logo without being sued by other counter parties.

The content owner have the authority to assign rights to the new user as the content owner is the sole creator who gives birth to the idea first. This is to avoid being sued by the third party using it without the consent of the first owner or creator.

When negotiating for rights, one also has to take into consideration that there may be additional rights he or she has to obtain before he can use the content. Meaning that there may be other owners of the same content that have rights over it and that should it be utilized by anyone, they also have to be consulted with. Examples would be like using a film or a song. For a movie there are more than one person working on it; there are directors, producers, screenwriters, etc. As such one would have to negotiate not just with the director, but with the producer and screenwriter as well. Same too goes for a song; a singer may be the one to approach but one also has to consider the production house in which the artist or singer was working for as they may also hold rights to the song.

While negotiating, bringing up the issue as to whether the copyright owner will receive payment is also vital. A holder of a copyright may be willing to allow a person to use his/her video,sound,picture, or music but he/she may want something in return. They may want payment by royalty or one time pay but either way things like these must be negotitated and decided before utiliztion.

Lastly, is the matter of which format a person is wanting to receive the content in. Whether a person wants a soft copy or a hard copy is decided and negotiated here.

A person may have peferences as to how he wants his contents to be. He may want a movie that is the original copy of the copyright holder, or picutres in a CD-rom or through websites.