Production Processes (ADM304)
This is the document for the Production Processes Brief (ADM304). The objective of this document is to compare gathered information from Industry with academic theory with a personal note. Towards the end of this document I will add some thoughts on how methods can be adopted, and used within in real world projects. We are required to read England & Finney, Managing Multimedia 1999 (2nd Edition) Addison Wesley Cadle J. & Yeates D. (Eds) Project Management for Information Systems (3rd Edition), FT/Prentice Hall (Pearson Education), 2001. However I’m unable to get my hands on any academic content within my time frame. To counteract this I have taken a brave move and used Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media as a academic source, this is a document that I have had previous time to overlook. The Language of New Media holds a lot of information relevant to Production Process and I believe it can be put to some good use within this document. Also I will refer to the information gathered from a group meeting with Richard Shearman at Sequence on Tuesday 13th December.
Personal overview of Project Process:
Projects can be scaled up from a simple web banner to an architectural building site. I believe simplicity & structure are the keys to a successful project, complicating the process only results in further complication of the project itself, and usually results in extended dead lines and even project failure. However from recent experiences I have reason to believe the ability to rapidly change and redirect a project can have its advantages and could be looked upon as a project management skill. I have also recently understood the difference between Research and Development (R&D) and Production Process (P&P) and how these two very different methods of development hold hand in hand and more so in my case are constantly in focus.
Planning
From past experience planning is most likely the seed of a successful project, in order to produce a consistent and budgeted project life cycle, planning is most likely the first stage of the production process. Richard Shearman at Sequence, didn’t really relate much towards planning of sequences project’s, but emphasised on getting the information needed to create the plan for the projects. I believe this is due to the work load being 70% web based, this some what lowers the need for the project plan as the projects are in most cases similar on a project to project basis. Monavich stated a very interesting piece of information:
“As a general operation, compositing is a counterpart of selection. Since a typical new media object is put together from elements which come from different Sources, these elements need to be coordinated and adjusted to fit together.
Although the logic of these two operations — selection and compositing — may
suggest that they always follow one another (first select, then composite), in practice their relationship is more interactive.” // Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
The above paragraph is a very good explanation for why we need a project plan, and this is because basically in most cases we have alot of information from a lot of different sources that needs to be collated with budget. This can be seen when looking at the film production, for example we see a film in a linier format that start and finishes, however the film is most likely produced on location bases so lets make a small script to explain.
Character Name: superMe
Script Start
Film Time 00:00:00 = Location One: Desert
Film Time 00.32.00 = Location Two: Forest
Film Time 01:12:00 = Location Three: Desert
Script End
The above basically states there is a character named “superMe” who needs to be at a certain location at specific times “Film Time 00:00:00 = Location”. Looking at the script we can clearly see superMe needs to be at location, Desert at Film Time 00:00:00 and also needs to be at the same location in Film Time 01:12:00. In result to this the needed film (information) would be recorded within the same location regardless to the films actual linier pattern, this will save the money and time by removing the need to move the actors and kit back and forth to the same location twice. So what we end with is the start and the end of a film before the middle, it does seem strange but is logical.
Tracking, evaluation and maintenance
When at sequence I noticed Richard talked about the maintenance of client communication through out the project life cycle. This I believe maybe due to the position Richard holds at sequence, however it did strike me in the impotence of communication with the client. Richard talked about a system where the client is aware of what exactly they are having produced, and at each project phase are required to provide a signature to confirm the stage of the project. Sounds simple but very effective and something I’m going to start using in the near future. I believe project areas can be very large in timescale so the idea of mile stones must be implemented in order to keep the client regularly up to date. Also the ability to provide the client with an uninterruptible line of communication is a very powerful tool. If the client can maintain confidence in the company the company will maintain its clients.
Personal overview of Project Process:
Projects can be scaled up from a simple web banner to an architectural building site. I believe simplicity & structure are the keys to a successful project, complicating the process only results in further complication of the project itself, and usually results in extended dead lines and even project failure. However from recent experiences I have reason to believe the ability to rapidly change and redirect a project can have its advantages and could be looked upon as a project management skill. I have also recently understood the difference between Research and Development (R&D) and Production Process (P&P) and how these two very different methods of development hold hand in hand and more so in my case are constantly in focus.
Planning
From past experience planning is most likely the seed of a successful project, in order to produce a consistent and budgeted project life cycle, planning is most likely the first stage of the production process. Richard Shearman at Sequence, didn’t really relate much towards planning of sequences project’s, but emphasised on getting the information needed to create the plan for the projects. I believe this is due to the work load being 70% web based, this some what lowers the need for the project plan as the projects are in most cases similar on a project to project basis. Monavich stated a very interesting piece of information:
“As a general operation, compositing is a counterpart of selection. Since a typical new media object is put together from elements which come from different Sources, these elements need to be coordinated and adjusted to fit together.
Although the logic of these two operations — selection and compositing — may
suggest that they always follow one another (first select, then composite), in practice their relationship is more interactive.” // Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
The above paragraph is a very good explanation for why we need a project plan, and this is because basically in most cases we have alot of information from a lot of different sources that needs to be collated with budget. This can be seen when looking at the film production, for example we see a film in a linier format that start and finishes, however the film is most likely produced on location bases so lets make a small script to explain.
Character Name: superMe
Script Start
Film Time 00:00:00 = Location One: Desert
Film Time 00.32.00 = Location Two: Forest
Film Time 01:12:00 = Location Three: Desert
Script End
The above basically states there is a character named “superMe” who needs to be at a certain location at specific times “Film Time 00:00:00 = Location”. Looking at the script we can clearly see superMe needs to be at location, Desert at Film Time 00:00:00 and also needs to be at the same location in Film Time 01:12:00. In result to this the needed film (information) would be recorded within the same location regardless to the films actual linier pattern, this will save the money and time by removing the need to move the actors and kit back and forth to the same location twice. So what we end with is the start and the end of a film before the middle, it does seem strange but is logical.
Tracking, evaluation and maintenance
When at sequence I noticed Richard talked about the maintenance of client communication through out the project life cycle. This I believe maybe due to the position Richard holds at sequence, however it did strike me in the impotence of communication with the client. Richard talked about a system where the client is aware of what exactly they are having produced, and at each project phase are required to provide a signature to confirm the stage of the project. Sounds simple but very effective and something I’m going to start using in the near future. I believe project areas can be very large in timescale so the idea of mile stones must be implemented in order to keep the client regularly up to date. Also the ability to provide the client with an uninterruptible line of communication is a very powerful tool. If the client can maintain confidence in the company the company will maintain its clients.
posted by John Robinson at 7:38 pm
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