|
|
|
|
| Director MX | |
|
Presentations are tools. They don’t replace good lawyering or preparation. I have seen more video presentations detract from trials than add to them because the lawyers were so preoccupied and dependent on the presentation they forgot their objective — being persuasive. Director MX is a presentation tool based on a movie metaphor. The opening screen is composed of, among other windows, a “stage,” “cast” and “score.” But don’t let that intimidate you; the movie is just your presentation. The cast is simply the collection of design elements — charts, pictures, timelines, deposition testimony, etc. — that will be in your presentation. You can create content in Director, but you will probably import most of it. The stage is where you assemble those elements, and the score is where you determine how, where, when and in what combination the assembled elements will play in your movie. A “sprite” is an instance of cast members on your stage. One method to create sprites is to drag cast members onto the stage or score. After assembling your cast, creating your presentation consists largely of creating sprites. The lingo is half the battle to understanding the program. Lingo is a scripting language that can be used to assign behaviors to buttons (which can be created right on the stage in Director), or to sprites. Director comes with numerous canned Lingo scripts. The tutorial covers Lingo, so you will get an idea of what you are up against. Writing your own script isn’t easy, but it’s not as hard as you might think either. The score contains channels for markers, tempo, transitions, sound, behaviors and sprites. Markers identify fixed locations in the presentation. They can determine the beginning and end of each scene, or mark some other spot to reference in a Lingo script. The first scene might be your first chart; the second scene is a picture of your client; and so forth. The sound channels determine what sound (recorded deposition testimony, narration), if any, is playing during each scene. The presentation and scenes in the presentation contain frames. You can set the number of frames-per-second, which will play in your presentation. You can assign markers, sounds and behaviors to particular frames giving you unparalleled control. What I love about Director is everything is right on the table in front of you. You drag, drop, rearrange and set properties from the elements on the table. Microsoft PowerPoint is a great program and this isn’t a PowerPoint versus Director shootout, but on a superficial level I would compare the underlying concepts of Director and PowerPoint to older versions of Corel WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. In WordPerfect you use Reveal Codes to see what is under the hood. In Director, all the guts are on the table. If you only need the ability to move back and forth among slides of text, charts and timelines, PowerPoint will work for you. However, if you want more control, particularly if your content includes animation, digital video and 3-D modeling, you need Director. The power and control of Director as a presentation tool is awesome, particularly with respect to 3-D modeling. Imagine you have a 3-D architectural plan for your case. You can pan right, left, up, down, rotate a diagram vertically or horizontally, move in or out and reset your image to center. You do this with the cursor keys, or keyboard-defined keys like “F” for move forward and “B” for back off. You can just as easily move through parts of a document for the effect you want. The presentation can be made interactive — that is, you can call up different content depending on user input, making it incredibly useful as a trial tool. If you need 3-D modeling, download the free trial version from Macromedia’s Web site and complete the 3-D tutorial. The tutorial will only take about an hour. You should complete the basic tutorial first so you know what you are doing. The tutorials build on each other. The basic tutorial will take you a couple of hours. The program also comes with two big books. One is a reference and Director tutorial. The other is a Lingo manual. The tutorial will only scratch the surface, but that itch will motivate you to learn more. The presentation can be played in a Shockwave-enabled Web browser or in projector, which plays on your computer as a standalone application. Director doesn’t have to be installed on the computer. Director also can be used to create Web content and to create Web collaboration environments. Director is ported for PC and Mac, including Mac OS X. Director MX features much tighter integration with Macromedia Flash MX. You can directly import Flash content, modify the Flash objects, control Flash object behaviors and even create Flash content in Director. |
Macromedia Inc. Price: $1,199; $399 upgrade from Director 8 or later. Windows 98SE/2000/XP; Mac OS X 10.1 or higher Reviewed by Steven Schmidt, shareholder, director and president of Business & Technology Law, P.C., Albuquerque, N.M. PROS CONS VERDICT |
| Home | | Issue Archive | Resources | About Us | Contact Us | Subscribe | | Subscribers | Advertisers | Updated 05/22/03 |
