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Development tracks

Overview

Strategic direction

  • Communication goals
  • Program service objectives
  • Intellectual property guidance

Program management

  • Program block scheduling
  • Identity system and program packaging
  • Web interface development
  • Audience measurement

Content development

  • Asset inventory
  • New program development
  • Rights and permissions

Production services

  • Pre-production
  • Production
  • Post-production

Operations services

  • Stream system maintenance
  • Asset compression and storage
  • Network delivery (on-campus and off-campus servers)

Strategic Direction

Goals and Objectives

Open a New Window Onto Dartmouth for Those At a Distance

  • Raise awareness of full spectrum and breadth of the College and schools, including interesting people and activities. Show what is actually going on here at Dartmouth: A glimpse into the many facets of the experience and Dartmouth people, in class, outside the classroom, and in numerous other venues.
  • Show how what we do makes a difference in the world. Profile the talented and exceptional people here; Dartmouth beneath the surface.
  • Illustrate the academic experience through lab and class experiences, utilizing rich material from faculty and students. Show what interests the well-balanced student has.
  • Support the important stories that are already being told (in print, for example), by adding visual appeal to the storytelling.
  • Represent the physical place — its architecture, the quality of facilities — world-class resources in rural environment.
  • Show Dartmouth people and activities around the world.
  • Present events of the past, which adds lasting value to scholar visits, historical stories.
  • Use integrated Web communications to direct users to other online resources. Provide an environment or context for the event.

Support the Dartmouth Community

  • Create a virtual connection between people — students, faculty and staff, alumni, neighbors, media, and the public — both on- and off-campus. Share existing projects, campus events, and conferences with a wider, at-a-distance audience, including an increasingly international student and alumni population.
  • Encourage people to participate, whether by applying as a student or for a job, or joining a club on campus, or signing up for a course.
  • Connect the College and the community through increased awareness and outreach activities.
  • Provide content for club and association meetings.

Enrich the Campus Experience

  • Contribute to the student experience by delivering multimedia content with other existing online resources for further research.
  • Present meaningful learning moments that happen in informal settings, and which are currently limited to small groups of students.
  • Provide a training opportunity for TV/film students in media production and journalism.
  • Enhance student attendance at events by using trailers for advance marketing.
  • Produce service as a segue to on-demand archive of full-length videos.

Potential Audiences

Students and Alumni

  • Prospective students.
  • Current students.
  • Current parents.
  • Alumni.
  • Donors.

Faculty and Staff

  • Prospective faculty and staff.
  • Professional peer groups and associations.
  • Current faculty and staff.

Public

  • Upper Valley neighbors.
  • Colleagues/peers.
  • General public.
  • News media.
  • Donors.
  • Foundations and corporations.

Define Success

Develop Different Measures for Each Group

  • For example, for admissions recruiting: Applicants credit service as a source of information leading to admission.
  • Alumni participation: Applicants credit service as a source of information leading to participation

Measurements

Quantitative
  • Free subscription model (opt-in registration with e-mail confirmation before access is granted).
  • Vendor statistics, including CUME, AQH.
  • Online feedback: Weblog, e-mail.
  • Web site redirects for more information.
  • Survey: Query successful dissemination of key messages. Full spectrum of Dartmouth experience (cross-disciplinary interest). Perceived quality of service in commercial context. Sustainable — continues to be fresh and vital. Unique, innovative service.
  • Number of student production participants.
  • Number of faculty and staff participants.
  • No complaints about usability. (It works. Technological success.)

Qualitative

  • Anecdotal reports of value received by constituents.
  • Integrated feedback from viewers a key part of the process.

Rights and Permissions

  • Public Webcast is unrestricted, and presenters need to be notified in advance when signing release.
  • For public events, audience permissions are not required. As look and feel becomes more private, however, more permission is needed. At events, there could be a sign notifying the audience where to sit to not be videotaped.
  • Clearly define privacy policy for registration and use of viewing statistics.

Program Service Development

Overarching Themes

Full Spectrum of the Dartmouth Experience

  • Multiple viewpoints.
  • Help fill in the breadth of what’s going on.
  • After many glimpses into what’s going on, the viewer would experience the gestalt of Dartmouth.

Presentation Style

  • Pace: Some fast-paced segments (Discovery/CNN-like) and others slower and more thoughtful (CSPAN-like).
  • Structure: Lecture or video magazine.
  • Continuity: Seamless with segment segues.
  • Quality: Not too slick, but not too raw. People want to see the inspiring moments of everyday life, rather than marketing material.
  • Technique: Show more than tell.
  • Timeliness: Balance quality and quantity.
  • Language: Be sure to avoid hyperbole.

Consistent Environment

  • Package structure: Discrete highlight segments in a continuous stream. Links to complete videos on demand. Segments can be combined thematically for future distribution.
  • Dartmouth news and events, on campus and worldwide.

Topical Continuum

  • Follow up on events later. What happens afterward?

Seamless Environment/Context (Continuity System)

Visual Identity

  • Ubiquitous color palette.
  • Typographic guidelines.
  • Production pacing.
  • Film-style aspect ratio (16:9 letterbox).
  • Consistent wrapper (news, events, weather, this day in Dartmouth history).

Sound Identity

  • Audio introductions to segments.
  • Voice styling.
  • Music/ambient beds.
  • Audio compression..

Sequencing

  • Select segments to balance topics and pace.

Program Distribution

  • Central Web interface: Live Webcast. Video-on-demand. Podcast lectures. Investigate closed- and open-captioning.
  • Other Web distribution: Research Channel. WGBH Forum.
  • Regional cable television.
  • Public radio syndication.
  • International satellite services: Research Channel on DishTV channel 520.
  • On-campus public displays (plasma screens), see Stanford, Princeton, MIT.
  • DVD – Periodic packages of related segments for target audiences

Promotion

  • Web site.
  • Video introduction.
  • Two-sheet print piece.

Content Development

Development Process

  • Inventory assets for evaluation, using existing materials archive.
  • Develop story concept database; include new development opportunities.
  • Track production assignments.
  • Manage permissions, starting with universal release, with explicit reference to worldwide distribution.

Program Segment Genres

News Features (Mini-documentaries)

  • Highly-produced segments about timely developments.
  • Content researched by Public Affairs editors and reporters.
  • Collaborate with regional and national press.
  • Scripted for video presentation.

The Academic Experience (Faculty/Student Collaboration)

In Class
  • Faculty presentations and demonstrations.
  • Student project reports.
Out of Class
  • Student projects and demonstrations (campus and international).
  • Guests (visiting scholars, performers, faculty) in discussion with students.

Scholarship and Innovation (Current and Historical Research)

Faculty
  • Faculty presentations on the road.
  • Faculty scholarship, including laboratory research, patents, discoveries.
Students
  • Collaborative research by faculty and students with library staff.
  • Student films and thesis presentations.
  • Academic skills and student leader training.
Staff
  • Computing timeline; John Kemeny.
  • Staff seminars.

Dartmouth People (Profiles, In Their Own Words, B-roll, Stills)

  • Faculty
  • Students
  • Staff
  • Alumni – influential alumni in the world today (living history)

Student/Campus Life (Beyond the Classroom)

  • Athletics: play of the week.
  • Student viewpoints (“student on the green”).
  • Student activities. Dartmouth Outing Club. Student talent: performances, poetry.
  • Arts and culture: upcoming events, Hop, Hood, etc.
  • Campus tours by students (Rough Guide-style).
  • A day in the life (one hour per three-minute segment with four students).

Public Event Highlights

  • News conference excerpts.
  • Montgomery Fellows (general).
  • Jones seminar (engineering).
  • Dickey Center (international).

Dartmouth Past

  • Presentations made for Alumni reunion.
  • Important lectures and developments in Dartmouth history.
  • This day in Dartmouth history.

Transition Segments

Environmental Transitions

Visits to campus places with IDs, but no commentary.

  • The plain.
  • The river.
  • The region.
  • College grants.

Topical Transitions

  • Short segments of video material too short to fit in longer segments.

Production and Archival Services

Project Management and Triage

  • An annual service contract — with long-term program planning — would provide consistent personnel and equipment availability.
  • Equipment would automatically be accounted for through overhead on billable hours.

Pre-production

  • Reporting and research to be done by news media specialists.
  • Translation to video medium to be done by video production specialists.

Production

Tiered Production Techniques

Live or Live-to-tape
  • Single-camera live-feed style.
  • Single-camera live-feed, with second camera for inserts in post.
  • Multi-camera switched.
  • Off-campus surcharge.
Film-style/Documentary-style
  • Single-camera ENG style.
  • Multi-camera isolated.
  • Off-campus surcharge.

Post-production

Logging

  • Identify highlight sequences for existing content.
  • Log timing for cutaways (post).
  • Log timing for IDs (post).

Editing

  • Film-style: Short-format mini-documentaries.
  • Live-to-tape: Insert cutaways, add IDs.
  • Integrate wrapper: With live tool or in post-production.

Asset Archiving

  • Enter metadata into Dartmouth Library cataloguing system.
  • Encode asset onto Video Furnace.
  • Provide clients with URLs for access.
  • Research asset availability, as needed.

Operations Management

Asset Encoding

Standards

  • Develop standard recipes for each bandwidth required.
  • Video Furnace support of MPEG4-AVC expected in 2005.
  • MP3 required for Podcasting.

Encoding Stations

  • Jones Media Center. Batch encoding for campus (Video Furnace) and off-campus (AnyStream) distribution.
  • Media Production Group. Custom encoding for campus (Video Furnace) and off campus (Compressor/Cleaner/Squeeze).

Server Storage

  • Video Furnace storage: High-resolution versions for on-campus viewing.
  • QuickTime Streaming Server storage. Lower-resolution for off-campus viewing. MP3 for Podcasting.
    See Academic Computing server discovery report (2/05).
  • Edge-server storage for commodity delivery.

Program Block Assembly

  • Develop sequencing in stand-alone environment.
  • Create blocks in Video Furnace from digitized assets.

Wrapper Integration

  • Add live wrapper elements to stream and re-encode.
  • Transcode to MPEG4.

Live Event Encoding

  • VBrick or Video Furnace encoding to Video Furnace for distribution.

Network Delivery, Including On-demand

  • On-campus — Video Furnace on-demand.
  • Off-campus — Edge servers.

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