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.