EnterFrame: Cage, Deleuze and Macromedia Director (2002)

on prepareMovie To think about Macromedia Director is to think about a complex and powerful piece of software in the category of authoring. To think critically or theoretically about Director is to think about a philosophical framework and not just a production tool. By surveying the key features of its interface and capabilities with a little help from John Cage and Gilles Deleuze, this article contemplates how Macromedia Director--a digital media authoring veteran at 17 years old--remains an incredibly rich, open site for investigating the benefits, problems and complexities of the media experience. Originally designed in the mid-1980s to facilitate video game authoring (as Videoworks I & II), Director is currently at version 8.5, and includes 3D modelling, pixel-level control of graphics, an object-oriented scripting environment, and streaming media protocols in its feature set. It came of age in the early 1990s when the CD-ROM represented the synergistic effects of microprocessor improvements applied to the management of graphics and sound. This storage medium's message was one of Director announcing that access to a computer's audio, visual and interface resources was no longer the exclusive right of professional programmers. Reflecting this ongoing process of democratization, Director enjoys strong support from a developer community that extends the program's capabilities through Xtras. With extended features such as database management, DVD playback and control of the computer's operating system, Director is approaching the status of a full-fledged application development environment. These third- party enhancements supplement Director's primary tenets: emphasis on artistic as well as commercial applications; continued commitment to its cinema-based production and organizational metaphors; supporting Internet-related media formats; and steady evolution of its scripting language. Beyond animation, slideshows and point-and-click interfaces, Director can be used to create custom Internet browsers, streaming media clients, music sequencers, peer-to-peer applications, and video games that are at least as sophisticated as those from the classic 16-bit era. Though some of these possibilities require supplementary technologies and a certain degree of programming effort, Director is for the most part template free. Its founding (possibly vestigial) metaphor remains movie-making. Speaking of casts, scores and stages implies the crafting of narrative, which is more than a functional arrangement of different media types, or the delivery of content through the most popular channels. It is not just a long history with the program (since It was Videoworks) in educational, artistic and commercial contexts, or a chance to apply postmodern philosophy, that makes me conceive of Director as more than a media processor. To re-think and remember Director now that the Web is the new CD-ROM is to appr ehend a tool that has quietly integrated itself into the fabrics of networked media and data processing that surround us. Though the media is heavily scripted and monitored, Director offers the opportunity to create alternative and critical responses to this experience on its own terms--but not without serious theoretical considerations that must replace the lingering hype of the desktop multimedia revolution. > Movie.Score.Frame Authoring tools are implemented based on one of four organizational approaches that reflect how the author or user is expected to conceive or experience the resulting package of media. They are the slide show, the stack of cards, the circuit-design model and the timeline model. All four approaches bear traces of real-world practices that have imparted some of their aura. The authored slide show (Powerpoint) is widely used (and abused) in corporate America, bureaucratic organizations and scientific communities. …