Creating Digital Performance Resources
A Guide to Good Practice

Performing Arts Data Service
Guide to Good Practice
Creating Digital Performance Resources

SECTION 3: Digital Resources in Performance Practice.

3.1: IT and the Audio-Visual Theatre Essay
Steve Dixon

Steve Dixon is Head of Performance at the University of Salford, and Co-Director of the Digital Performance Archive. His IT work includes the production of two CD-ROMs documenting and analysing the work of his multimedia theatre company 'The Chameleons Group'. Both CDs are free, and can be obtained by emailing Steve at: S.Dixon@salford.ac.uk

This section aims to offer some help and practical guidance in utilising the audio-visual capabilities of IT to produce materials and teaching aids; to document performing arts practice; and to present research and critical 'writing' in new ways. It is particularly aimed at those who have relatively limited IT skills but are interested in beginning to create materials - the same position I was in when I produced my first CD-ROM. It begins by discussing some general issues to be considered when commencing an IT project, and goes on to use my Chameleons 2 CD-ROM project as a case study to examine some specific methods and techniques, such as the 'audio-visual essay'.

1. Making it Easier

Producing audio-visual IT material is not as difficult or daunting as at first it might seem, and is not out of the reach of anyone, whatever their level of computer skills. For example, although it is clearly helpful to understand what various software and authoring programmes can do, it is by no means essential to know everything about how they work and how to operate them. Where a technical collaborator with the requisite skills can be found (or hired), it is unnecessary to spend weeks (on graphics programmes such as Photoshop) or months (on authoring programmes such as Director) learning how to use all the tools or programming aspects involved.

I often work with students who can use the project collaboration as an assessed element of their course, and this considerably reduces the time I would spend completing all the design and programming work myself. Working in collaboration with technicians has another distinct advantage, just as it has in theatrical production. A theatre director who also attempts to design and build the set, edit the sound master, and rig and plot the lights, may become too bogged down in technical detail and lose sight of the piece as a whole. In the same way, the technical aspects of computer programming can become all-consuming, leading to what has been termed 'analysis paralysis', whereby 'the means become the ends as you forgot what you wanted to get out of the computer and become wrapped up in the process of getting it out'. (Shu 1992: 6)

In my own IT work producing CD-ROMs end electronic web articles, I write the textual material, record and edit all video and audio material (as I already have those skills), assemble stills and video for each section, and make decisions about design concept and navigation. But I leave most of the detailed interface design and programming aspects to technicians and collaborators who have the appropriate skills and experience. There is thus a close analogy with the theatre production model: I act as scriptwriter/ producer/ director preparing the central content and once this is completed, others come in to deal with design and technical operation.

However, whilst in the theatre many aspects of design and stage management necessarily run in parallel with (and develop in relation to) the rehearsal process, in my experience it is advantageous to separate the two broad stages in producing IT materials or producing CD-ROMs. The fundamental advantage is time - and associated costs if you are hiring a designer/programmer. For my first CD-ROM, I completed all my work and knew exactly what I wanted so that when Fraser Durie came in as designer to construct the various icons, 'pages' and hypermedia links, we were able to complete work within four weeks. A specialist programmer was then employed for a further two weeks to complete 'lingo' programming, run tests to locate and eliminate any 'bugs', and produce the master disk.

For the second CD-ROM a different schedule and approach was undertaken following the arrival of a German multimedia student, Thomas Jachmann, for a six month stay to study and complete a project in our Department as part of the Socrates/Erasmus European student exchange programme. Here, the writing of material, editing of video and audio, and (perhaps most crucially) my decision-making took place during the same six month period Thomas worked on the design and programming. This piece-by-piece approach resulted in much wasted time and effort as concepts and ideas about navigation and screen elements were continually revised and changed. As we were both working on small sections of an unfinished piece, we also frequently became bogged down in detail, endlessly tinkering with tiny design elements, and unable to 'step back' and see the wider picture. Nonetheless, this more 'organic' approach did result in a sophisticated and well-designed CD. But the process was not without considerable frustrations, particularly for Thomas who would have much preferred to have had a clear concept, and a completed script and navigation map at the start.

2. Deciding on a Dissemination Format

In commencing a project, deciding on the ideal form to output or disseminate the material is a prime consideration. For conference presentations or teaching materials, it may be adequate to run the material from a hard or floppy disk, for example when using presentation software programmes such as Microsoft PowerPoint. For wider dissemination, when the content is largely text or still-image based, creating World Wide Web pages remains the simplest and cheapest option, with the advantage of global accessibility. Web design software programmes such as Macromedias DreamWeaver and Flash, and Adobe's GoLive (Cyberstudio) have become increasingly flexible and easy to use, and have now overcome the need to learn complex 'html' programming language. Once created, the web pages or website can be also be 'burned' (copied) to CD-ROM, retaining all its hypertextual features (including 'hotlinks' to other websites), to enable use of the material offline.

CD-ROMs currently have a speed advantage over websites since pages load far quicker, but for text and still image projects it is questionable whether this advantage (saving only a few seconds per page or 'click') justifies the move into more costly CD-ROM production - particularly as modem and internet speeds continue to develop. However, the transference of video and, to a lesser extent, audio over the net is generally slower and more problematic, and depends on the speed of the computer and the internet connection of the end-user. CD-ROM (and more recently DVD-ROM) formats therefore offer considerable advantages. Video playback is instant and relatively smooth on CD providing the users computer has fairly basic memory (32 Meg RAM) and processing power (Pentium PC or Power Mac). Conversely, on the same computer, one minute of video may take as long as ten minutes to download from a webpage, depending on the modem connection and internet traffic.

3. Utilising Video in Digital Form

I have produced two theatre-based CD-ROMs that document and analyse productions by The Chameleons Group, a performance research company I direct at the University of Salford (Dixon 1995, 1999). Although the dissemination medium is in digital CD-ROM form, the majority of the original documentation was recorded on videotape. Although we used professional video cameras (Betacam) and editing systems (Avid Media Composer), any video technology format can be adequately used. Nowadays, an excellent option is to use mini digital video cameras which have FireWire, such as the Canon XL1 or Panasonic EZ35, which are light, easy to use, and relatively affordable. FireWire (a Macintosh term) is also called 'i.link' by manufacturers such as Panasonic, or IEEE1394 in much of Europe. It enables you to input the digital video data directly into the computer for editing. A number of excellent editing packages are now on the market to digitally edit video on domestic-specification computers, and for ease and user-friendliness I'd particularly recommend Digital Origin's EditDV for PC or Macintosh, or Apple's FinalCut Pro for Macintosh only in preference to the ever-popular Adobe Premiere. Video takes up a large volume of disk space, so a large computer hard drive is necessary for any ambitious video editing ventures - five minutes of video takes up around one gigabyte of disk space.

Once editing has been completed, 'movies' can be compressed and saved in different formats and at varying resolution qualities and sizes. For my CD-ROMs, we saved the video sequences as QuickTime movies sized at 120 x 180 pixels, and running at 12 frames per second. This is a fairly standard size and specification within the multimedia industry, allowing relatively smooth video playback without taking up large amounts of disk space. At this size and running rate one can fit around ninety minutes of video within the 650 megabyte capacity of a CD-ROM. However, its size is relatively small on the computer screen, and I would suggest increasing pixel/window size and resolution if storage space allows.

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