To start off, this was a very long week of work. I spent a portion of Monday and Tuesday re-writing and defining the narration for the movie and then recording the parts over again. Due to a minor “operator induced error” I had to re-record the audio files for each of the sections of the movie. It took me longer than I expected to do this because I had forgotten how to do some of the final mixdown and outputing the recorded tracks to a master and then down to CD on my Yamaha AW16G digital recording studio. It has been about six years since I have done any recording.

While I am not fully satisfied with the audio tracks for the movie, it is at least a decent representation of what I wanted to produce. If I can find the time, I would like to refine, shorten and re-record the narration and mix in the sound track music all into a single file. This would simplify some of the file management issues related various MP3, .WAV and other sound file formats used to build this movie.

I need to let the movie sit for a few days before working on any final revisions. I am not certain that I will have time to fully address the sound issues. I will, however, be sure to:

1.    input typographical and grammatical corrections
2. make final alignment and animation checks
3. add some subtle, dynamic graphical elements to the background “stage” to help the vieable area not see so static
4. add some pictures of products and parts made from composites
5. enable viewing of sample PDF and hypertext links
6. and maybe add  STOP/START/PAUSE functions

Despite more than 100 hours into this project, I am finding that I would like to keep taking this movie thing to new levels. I have still plent to learn about the extent to which the tools and programmable functions available in the Adobe Flash software environment. As I learn more, the new functions and tools continue to open up new opportunities to refine and expand the project concept. With some extra imagination, the bones of the V5 product portfolio video could be evolved into something very professional looking.  Despite all my hard work, I know that the final project will be somewhat constrained by my limited time and comfortability with the Adobe Flash CS4 software suite…but it is a good stepping stone to a “professional” product.

I think after this class is over, I will have some of the people in my office help brain storm about more ways to liven up and improve the video. I think that a version 8 or 9 would be ready to display to the general public.

Looking forward to this week, I have set up my sound recording equipment so that I can make clean recordings of the narrations that tracks along with the video. I already included three earlier narrative files, but there is a lot of background static and the tempo of the recordings seemed to slow. In preparing for the re-recording I have shorted the narratives and properly sound checked my equipment. I expect to have the recordings completed by the end of Monday.

Following the recording sessions, I will then have to go back to my movie file. First I will need to re-insert the new and improved wav files into the Flash file. The next challenge will be to re-sinque the animation and play lenth of the movie to match the timing of the narration. This should not be hard, but will be time consuming – probably needing another 6 hours of time on the computer.

On a slightly different note, my instructor for the MKT300 class that I am taking along side the TWC 421 course has asked me to to a presentation about the considerations that go into developing pricing schedules for CMR’s products and services. I am planning to showing the video to the class as a primer to the rest of my topic. I hope to get some class feedback to aid in any final revisions to the movie before I turn it in for this class.

In considering the impact of my design choices, along with the needs of my audience (which are potentially much greater than experienced composites show attendees), time constraints and evolving technical ability) I have made some modifications to my overall plans. The original intent for this project was intended to be a portfolio of my professional work. After considering “what” and “how” the document would be used, the projects focus shifted slightly more towards a promotional video for the company. After further consideration, I began to try and incorporate content to help a person who is not familiar with the composites industry also and reduce the overall visual density expressed in the second version of the video. For the sake of simplicity and ease-of-use, I have decided that additional resources and work examples should be made available only at the end of video.

My current plan is to use create the video as a virtual tour of Composite Market Reports. The video starts with some company tag line, followed by a “about us” section that describes CMR’s specialty focus and main products & services. As part of the narration, I present myself as the tour host describing my experience and qualifications. The next sections are to:

• Explore the newsletters (Advanced Composites Monthly and Composites Industry Monthly). This section is describe the newsletters, focused content and provide some visual examples from recent issues. Total run time: 1 minutes
• Describe the range of expertise and topics that could be used to provide customized consulting and composites education/services. Total run time: 30 seconds.
• Explore CMR’s “Opportunity Series” and “Outlook Series” of multi-client market research reports. Total run time: 30 seconds.
• Close with a brief summary of CMR and provide linked examples/samples of newsletters, presentations, articles, reports.

Now that I have solidified some of the basic skills for drawing and introducing simple animation to the document, I am confident that building the rest of the Flash movie will come together quickly – hopefully with a all-inclusive V4 ready by this coming Sunday (week 12 of the class).

Some additional things that I am considering for the preparation of the final version are:

• MOST IMPORTANTLY – the sound quality of my recorded narration is very poor. While the use of desktop/laptop microphone and recording is convenient, there is a lot of distracting static in the recording. I will need to get out some of music recording equipment to re-record the narration.
• The default mode for Flash movies in the CS4 Pro suite is to run frames at a rate of 24 fps. The animation looks a little choppy for a “movie” so I am thinking of re-re-redeveloping the moving to accomodate 60 fps – so that the animation looks very smooth. One of the drawbacks is that saving and testing the movies is getting progressively longer (10-15 minutes). I believe this is largely a function of the online user license I have for the CS4 Pro software and how it functions through the ASU MyApps service.
• I have been designing the movie to play in a 800 X 600 pixel space. Even with the massive reduction in text used in the video, some of the elements still come out a little too small to read easily. Most targeted audience members and many secondary audience members are now operating on systems that can use much larger viewable sizes. I am considering perhaps a slight redesign to increase the resolution to 1024 X 800 pixels…or something close to that.
• I am also thinking about adding a sound track to the movie. Having been a recording artist, with my own digital recording equipment, I have a number of appropriate “instrumental” pieces that could be appropriate in the background.

This weekend, I put in another 2 hours of studying books and 6 hours building elements for the movie. Right now, the draft version runs about 275 frames…which I need to refine and time out to about 5 minutes. The movie as it stands represents a revised storyboard and prototype of what the finished project is leading to.

I am traveling for the first half of this week and will not get much opportunity to work on this again until next weekend, however, I plan to start refining some of the timeline issues and start to incorporate some of the movement and audio effects into the document.

I did some looking on Amazon.com to see what kind of books might be available. For the cost of I typical college text, I should be able to pick up a small combination of titles that will provide guides for the basics and resources for some of the ActionScript 3.0 that I will be incorporating into the portfolio design.  I am going down to the bookstore Monday to pick out a couple of items. Since I am confident of the utility of this program towards my job, I should be able to justify them as a business expense…at the end of the semester.

     Learning the Flash program took up most of Saturday’s efforts, where I came to a small impasse. The tutorial software that I was following, with a total of 11:35 hours of instruction/demo, only allowed me to view the first few hours for free. This was enough to understand how to start a flash file and use the basic drawing and shape creation features. Time well spent. However, I then needed to find some additional assistance because of the licensed version of the CS4 Software than I am using (through MyApps on the ASU server) does not include any access to help topics or tutorials.

     I found a couple of other tutorials that showed how to combine drawings and text into unifed elements that can be used throughout the document (aka “symbols”), how to incorporate some basic animation, music, creating buttons, some of the basics of Flash scripting and then testing and publishing the “movie.” I believe that borrowing or purchasing a book on that subject would be very helpful to incorporate more advanced features and functions – though probably not that necessary for this portfolio project.

     After going through the process of creating the movie put together in the video tutorials, I was able to put together a basic flash movie that incorporates some of the basic starting materials and a start button.

     For this coming week, not only are there some non-project related  activities to complete, I plan on pursuing the following topics:

• pictures and videos
• more scripting options to enable the opening of support topics, examples, and other details without stopping the movie
• explore more on the topic of movement creating movement, motion presets, 3-D rotation, and use of visual effects.

     As I get more comfortable with the range of capabilities and features, I think that I am going to probably have to revise my storyboard a couple more times. I also need to address how I add functionality without interrupting the main portfolio. My initial thoughts are to create a “console” that the movie plays within. This could allow access to additional information available at different portions of the movie and perhaps options for rewinding, fast forwarding. Target resolution for different monitor settings might also be useful feature…but that maybe reaching to far at this point?

• to complete the storyboarding exercise that was not completed last week;
• research web animation (Flash technology);
• and build a prototype of the professional portfolio for my work.

In developing an initial storyboard for the portfolio, I was trying to imagine the context in which I expect this document to be use: 1) at an exhibit booth at a trade convention or meeting 2) as promotion content available through my company’s website (www.compositemarketreports.com). I started roughing-out what type of content needed to be presented to make the project work – the typical introduction, examples of signficant projects, publications that I have authored or co-authored.

After completing a rough organizational chart of how to group this information it was time to get a handle how to handle the animation and dynamic aspects of the project. I already new that I wanted the portfolio to be viewable view a Internet browser. Considering that I imagined the audience viewing the portfolio for perhaps no more than 10 minutes, and likely much less, a lot needs to happen to provide a good understanding of the type of work and and capabilities they could have access to as a client of or in partnership with CMR. Being a regular user of the Internet, I have had to download Flash content players in order to view a number of websites and content. When I was researching animation technologies that can be used to enhance websites I found out that Flash was one of the most popular was of creating that content.

Starting out at 10am on Saturday, I began to research how Flash animation was created. After a couple of wiki pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_animation) I began to search for a free application to build Flash. I found Flash-Creator v1.0 (http://www.downloado.com/FlashCreator-download-6999) – the demo version was free. The application was small and easy to use. I was actually finshed building my second flash animation involving moving type and simple object animation. The Flash movies were very encouraging, however, I tried to save work output and found out that I could not publish a “.swf” files that I could use on a website and the proprietary “.fmo” file contained “DEMO VERSION” overlaid on all of my initial trials.

The solution???? pay for a full version…or use some fo the software applications available through ASU MyApps. From my earlier exploration, I came across Adobe Flash several times as a leading Flash creation and playing suite of software – I already had a version of one of the Flash players installed on all of my computers. ASU’s resources include the lastest version of Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, which has a retail value of something more than $700. After viewing a couple of reviews and introductory videos and capability demos, I have come to the opinion that this is exactly the tool I want to use in building the portfolio.

This also gave me some greater insight into how I want the project to be view – capable to running through all of the main content without any user input, but all for user interaction to stop, back-up, skip forward and explore certain texts, publications and other media content and Internet resources.

This new path requires that I spend the time to learn a new software package that incorporates a wide range of independent skills related to web site design, graphic design, and digital media content creation and management. I had a great deal of difficulty accessing any of the help and how-to tutorials that were in the CS4 Pro software (as licensed through the MyASU resources). So, I found some online tutorials – the one I selected contains more than 11 hours of video instruction and demonstration.

I quickly figured out that I was not going to be able to use the demo software that I initially downloaded to create something that I could post of the class to demonstrate some of the basic Flash functions. To meet the task of completing a project prototype for post to the class discussion boards, I stopped following the tutorials after about two hours. Using the rough storyboard that I drew earlier in the week, I created a four page website that details some of the content that I am trying to work into the portfolio and organize some the content that could be used to build the portfolio. This made for a pretty long day…I uploaded a zip file with my prototype HTML document to the discussion board at about 2am, after working almost straight through the day (did have to eat lunch and dinner and tuck the kids in).

After some correspondence with Prof. Moore, the TWC 421 class  instructor, I am targeting to build a functional flash document that contains the basic content and architecture of the finished volume for a Iteration No. 1. As I am able to develop and expand my ability to develop the Flash content I will had embellishment and “ornamentation.”  The ability to build and rapidly modify this dynamic content should enable some significant refinements between the several iterations leading up to submiting the final project in December.

The effort to learn the Adobe Flash CS4 Professional software suite appears to be an invaluable tool for creating engaging content that I think will revolutize how I write and publish my newsletters, market studies, presentations and seminars. It will be a significant undertaking! I think this could provide me with a significant competitive edge over competing consultants and companies in my field. It certainly will be added as a key skill on my resume at the end of the semester.

1. Refine the document objectives
2. Gather and organize materials
3. Outline the major sections of the portfolio
4. Storyboard the project in preparation of building a prototype…which is scheduled to be completed by Sunday of this week

Due to some time mismanagement, I did not complete the storyboard exercise, however, I was able to make some considerable progress on the first three items on the list.

Part 1: Refining the document objectives

As envisioned, the primary purpose for this portfolio is to serve as informational marketing material that would be used to introduce interested parties to Composite Market Reports, our products and services. The target audience for this portfolio are professionals involved in the production, sale, distribution, manufacturing of composite materials or those interested in understanding the “market situation” for these materials and products (primarily within the financial industries). CMR is a small, family run company included myself, my brother and my mother that has been focused on this market niche continuously since 1973. My father used to be involved in the running of the company but has since retired and has no active involvement in operations. While mentoring under my father, I have learned a great deal about the composites industry – with a special focus on carbon fiber reinforced materials. Marketing and business planning are something that I am learning as I continue my education. As such, CMR does not have a written business plan and limited marketing materials. Over the past seven years, the primary means of marketing and promoting the company have been through my personal interactions with others at trade events. This needs to change in order to secure company growth. The bring the primary objectives of this project into more succinct light, I want this document to do the following:

1. Describe the company in a positive light – we offer a unique knowledge base in a rapidly growing industry that is crucial in the support of military hardware, commercial and private aviation, clean energy generation, sporting goods and a wide range of industrial and recreational products.
2. Showcase are “cash cow” products – two newsletters, Advanced Composites Monthly (focused on aerospace and defense) and Composites Industry Monthly (focused on energy, industrial and recreational/consumer products)
3. Showcase our “star” products – multi-client market research reports and client-specific research and strategic analysis.
4. To a lesser extent, showcase some of the company capabilities that we can provide to clients – graphic design, publishing and document creation/production/editing services .
5. Establish CMR’s and my professional credentials.
6. Establish and interactive, visual document that can be used to promote the company at exhibits in support of our printed and digital materials.

While these objectives seem fairly straightforward, organizing this into a compelling portfolio is somewhat challenged by a current lack of a formal business and marketing plan. While I have spent a considerable amount of time developing plans for the company, much of this work remains in my head alone. So, While I am building this portfolio I will also be writing and refining many of these essential business tools – starting with company mission and vision statements.

Part 2: Gathering Materials

As discussed earlier, CMR has been in operation since 1973. I have been working (and now hold the primary responsibility for planning, research, writing and editing for all company products) with the company since 1997. My work is primarily organized into four product types:

• The newsletters • Multi- and single-client market research and consultation
• For-pay editorial contributions to industry-specific and financial periodicals
• Lectures and speeches to professional groups and companies.

Obviously some of this work has been better received than others. Some of the work that CMR has become best known for is our understanding of the aircraft/aerospace industries and the wind energy industry, and the global market (end-users and manufacturers) for carbon fiber reinforcements. Some of the specific document will be included in the brief document outline that follows.

Part 3: Outline

To simplify things, the following is a brief outline of the portfolio. I expect that this outline will undergo several revisions as I start to develop the specific text that will make up the portfolio.

     I. Introduction to CMR

• Mission statement: Composite Market Reports strives to provide our clients with essential market awareness and outlooks and personal connections necessary to make essential business planning decisions related to the needs of the “advanced” composites industry.
• Company vision statement: The carbon fiber industry has been without a focused industry-sponsored organization to serve its constituents since 1999. Due to the competitive nature of this industry and issues related to anti-trust litigation, an industry-supported knowledge base providing the type of market visibility is not publically available. CMR is positioned to bridge this gap and help our clients develop the strategic knowledge necessary to plan their business strategies and objectives.
• Company and employee description

     II. Unique Expertise

• Through our newsletters we provide our subscribers the critical market awareness and statistical analysis needed to plan future business activities and strategic positioning. The newsletters provide a cost effective and up-to-date chronicle that is otherwise only available through expensive consultation typically provided by semi-retired industry veterans.
• The magazine articles and contributions to “public awareness” of the composites industry provides a critical promotional service that allows people and organizations to understand the contribution of “advanced composites” to meeting the challenges of modern life and why it is important to business and economic interests.
• Our market research reports and consulting services provide readers with a wide range of specialized information ranging from a “30,000 ft vision” down to the specifics of competitive analysis of competing raw materials, manufacturers and technologies…and using modern computational analysis and tools to create business forecasts that have often proved to be accurate and insightful of challenges and opportunities in a variety of market sectors.
• Our specialized knowledge and skills have industry wide credibility and respect, leading to regular invitations to participate and contribute to expert panel discussions, extended educational seminars, professional/technical presentations.

     III. How Can CMR Help You?

• Subscribe to our regular services to stay abreast of new products, technologies and issues affecting the advanced composites (focused primarily on carbon fiber).
• Gain a better understanding of issues affecting potential business opportunities and decisions through confidential and personalized consultation.
• Promote your business, products and technology to a specific audience of educated decision makers.
• Through our graphic design and publication experience we can create a variety of reports, documents and promotional materials in many customer-designated formats.
• CMR’s company and personnel contact information.

Obviously, there is quite a bit of refinement to develop into this outline in order to appropriate storyboard this portfolio project. I intend for it to be viewable through common Internet browsers. Flash animation or similar technologies remain the key obstacle to overcoming some of the presentational challenges. As a backup, incase developing the necessary skills to incorporate this web animation proves problematic, some of the advanced features in MS PowerPoint may provide a convenient backup. This “fallback,” however, does not have the same universality as web-accessible documents and will continue to be treated as a solution of last resort.

I had originally thought that this document might be a good booster to supplement my resume and CV forms. The more that I think about it, however, the more I am inclined to focus on using this document as marketing material for my company – say perhaps while exhibiting at a convention or conference.

Creating the initial proposal was helpful in trying to pin down what needs to be done and when. Now, I just need to start figuring out which of my work will best serve to achieve those ends