Director Content
Resume:
Lewis
Francis
H.
Lewis Francis, Jr.
Falls Church, Va. 22046
*****@************.***
[]
[]
(case studies)
résumé
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Type CD-ROM
Title Beyond
the Wall: Stories Behind the Vietnam Wall
Description:
goal A
multimedia virtual tour of the Vietnam War Memorial; history of the
war and the memorial, an interactive database of names, personal stories
told through the photos, movies, recordings, and writings of those
whose names are engraved on the wall and the families and friends
they left behind.
Awards NewMedia
Invision Awards (Gold Award, Award of Excellence, Best of
Show)International
Winter Consumer Electronics Show (Innovations '96 Award Winner)Macromedia
UCON People's Choice (Gold Medal: Education)New
York Festivals:International Competition for Interactive Multimedia
(Gold Medal: Social Studies)MacWorld
(Top 10 CDs of the Year)Family
Channel and USA Today (Seal of Quality)
Features QuickTime
video, audio, database names search, printing, installation
Involvement Lead
Programmer, Technical Lead
Tasks Director
Programming; defined platform specs and dev standards, performed compression
tests, batch image processing, minor bitmap, video and audio editing,
CDR optimization and burn, QA.
Tools
I used Macromedia
Director 4.0x, SoundEdit 16 II; Equilibrium Debabelizer; Adobe Photoshop,
Premiere; MovieAnalyzer, Hypercard, QuikTopix,
Programming
Comments
Project
was targeted for 8-bit displays but the Mac version of Director
4 allowed higher color-depths, which along with the Mac's higher
CD-ROM throughput made the video experience much better for those
users (interestingly, the Peoples Choice award was based on the
PC version of the CD on display at the UCON). Custom 8-bit Superpalettes
were created with Debabelizer for each section.
XObjects:
A custom database and xObject/DLL was created in-house to allow
searching the list of soldiers who are memorialized on the Wall.
PrintOMatic was used to print out search results and Wall panel
placement. The Mac version used a cool xObject called GammaFade
that allowed fade-to/from-black effects on 16 and 32-bit machines
by fading gamma tables. Additional xObject/DLLs were used to fix
QT/palette conflicts, detect the version of QuickTime, the presence
of virtual memory, and to handle various file management tasks (for
the handling of retrieved database records).
The
cross-platform multimedia CD-ROM development solutions developed
in this project were to be used on all subsequent titles, specifically
the Launcher Strategy, environmental adaptation and video encoding
standards.
Type Web
site
Title National
Geographic Online
Description:
goal The
team was tasked with guiding National Geographic's effort to put
a web face to their world class content. The site architecture would
be designed in such a way to allow the client to maintain a base
of features, but to easily sub out and integrate specific components
of the site, called Content Modules, to various development firms.
Awards Software
and Information Industry Association, 1997(Codie Award:
Best World Wide Web Site )Family
Channel and USA Today, 1996 (Seal of Quality)
Internet Professional Publishers' Association, 1996 (Award
for Design Excellence)
Features
1000
page site at launch. Content modules showcased richmedia content.
Database managed and scheduled content. Site search with relevancy
ranking. Custom content management tools, Real audio streams.
Involvement Senior
Technical Director, Technical Director
Tasks Primary
technical point of contact between our team, National Geographic,
and NGS' partners and contractors. Research and educate the team
and client on the web environment and limitations thereof. Participated
in information architecture, site and database design sessions,
worked with client to define platform specs and dev standards, managed
programmers, QA, troubleshooting and bug fixes.
Tools
I used Text
editors, Real Audio server and compression tools, Equilibrium Debabelizer;
Adobe Photoshop, Telnet, ftp, SKey, Netscape Enterprise Server,
various browsers.
Programming
Comments
An
acknowledged leader in it's own field, the client needed help in
mapping it's high standards and experience into the new world
of online media; driving research into what was possible and practical
with web and streaming media technologies of the day. The first
drafts of what became the Magnet Interactive Styleguide and Technical
Reference documents were a result of this research.
The
launch showcase content module, "Silver Bank", featured
a virtual walk-through of the Spanish galleon Concepción.
To ship illustrations designed by Chuck Carter of Myst fame, we
added streaming audio sound effects of sea waves and creaking
timbers. To provide a seamless CD-ROM-like experience, I used
a Real Audio plug-in instance placed in a hidden frame persisting
throughout the walk-through. Users who had the plug-in enjoyed
a true multimedia experience, even across a low-bandwidth connection.
Silver
Bank also featured a treasure hunt game where visitors searched
for coins hidden among the pages of the content module. Users
who found all five coins and had registered were eligible for
a drawing to win one of five actual coins recovered from the wreck
of the Concepción. The game and registration was implemented
in cgi with Python.
Type Enhanced
Web Site
Title Pop-Tarts
'Pop-Trivia'
Description:
goal The
team wanted to provide the poptarts.com visitors an experience as
close as possible to that of a CD-ROM, yet provide for an enjoyable
experience to dial-up users or users with slower machines. The site
was pitched to reach tweens and young adults, ages 12-24, and would
feature a monthly cash award to participants of its Survey and Multiuser
popular culture trivia game.
Awards INTERCOM,
July 2000 (Silver Plaque: Interactive Multimedia - Web Sites)Academy
of Interactive Arts and Sciences, April 2000 (Finalist:
Online Game of the Year)
Features Dual
Flash/HTML broadband interface with graceful degradation. Visitor
selected control over the user experience (Flash, HTML, high or
low-bandwidth versions). Shockwave for Director based multiuser
game interfacing with Macromedia Multiuser Server and a Java servlet
back-end. Shockmachine support of MU game.
Involvement Director
of Media Technologies, Technical Director
Tasks Pitched
degradation plan, multiuser and Shockmachine technologies to team
and client, participated in site and game design sessions, defined
platform specs and dev standards, managed programmers, QA, troubleshooting
and bug fixes.
Tools
I used Macromedia
Director 6.5, 7.x, Multiuser Server, Flash 3 and 4, Dreamweaver,
BBEdit, Javascript / VBScript, Telnet, ftp, custom netLingo debugging
tools, various browsers.
Programming
Comments
To
accomplish the stated goal, we designed a site with multiple levels
of graceful degradation, including plugin detection and fail-back
in both Javascript/VBScript and Director plus a cookie-based method
of storing the users bandwidth and Flash viewing preferences.
Pages were dynamically written out to display either broadband
Flash, dial-up Flash, or HTML for the site interface and content,
and Shockwave for the Survey and Multiuser games. Back-end tools
were built to handle authentication, contestant eligibility (COPPA
compliance) and to manage and deliver the rotating sets of questions,
answers, and scores from our database.
The
Shockwave 6 based Survey collected pop culture question answer
data for later use in the Pop-Trivia game, had a Flash Asset based
interface matching the Flash 3 based web site option, and included
login and a remote-fed Privacy Policy content for easy updating.
The
Shockwave 7 Pop-Trivia multiuser game included all this plus MU
functionality in the "Lounge", where users could fill
out surveys while waiting for other contestants to login, and
the "Studio", where the actual gameplay took place.
Additionally, the Pop-Trivia game needed conditional testing to
detect whether the game was playing in a browser or from within
Shockmachine; if the latter, custom network detection and error
handling was activated.
During
development, an issue arose when AOL changed their proxy system
preventing PC AOL users from playing the game (and AOL users from
downloading Shockwave). With PC AOL 4 or 5 and Shockwave 7.x,
getNetText requests to our back-end failed with a 4152 error if
the returned data was greater than 1024 characters. After
much testing and experimentation, I found that if the query string
itself was greater than or equal to 256 chars, then our data could
be returned as expected. To work around this issue, we first tested
a known file of 1026 characters and if it returned a 4152, we
padded out the query string and requested our actual data. This
allowed a workaround that could be skipped when AOL fixed their
problem and wouldn't affect other systems.
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