COMPOSE

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Overview

Compose section is where you, as an author, have the tools to create your own story; and as a reader, have the means to reinterpret other people's story. That is, using the same building materials of an existing or a new movie, you can build, change, recompose or reenact a story in any way you want, infinitely. Further more, you can add new materials to an existing composition (of your own or of someone else's) to create new stories. You can use your own assets, other people's assets or a mix of both assets to build as many variations of movies or stories as you want.

The Compose section is comprised of 3 interface components that operate in 2 editing modes. The 3 interface components are: Asset Bin (on the left of the screen), Preview/Compose Window (on the right of the screen), and Timeline Strip (on the bottom of the screen). See sample screen. The 2 editing modes are "Timeline Editing" (TE) mode and "Scene Composition" (SC) mode.

Conceptually, there are two types of authoring activities in Compose section. One is 'timeline' related called Timeline Editing (TE) and the other is 'scene' related called Scene Composition (SC). In each mode we deal with a different set of building materials: Timeline Assets for timeline editing and Scene Assets for scene composition. Both kinds of assets are stored in the same Asset Bin interface but are contextually accessible depending on the mode (TE or SC) it's in. The 'Timeline Assets' comprise of movie clips and music of various kinds. The 'Scene Assets' comprise of compositional 'objects' (elements) of various natures.

The basic 'Compose' operation is straightforward: You drag thumbnails (of movie clips) from the Asset Bin into Timeline strip to arrange them in the order and the length you want (Timeline Editing). From Timeline strip you double click a scene to access the Compose stage where you can further customize your scenes with user definable elements such as dialog balloon, animation, props, and sound effects (Scene Composition). Lastly, you select a global soundtrack for your movie from the Sound Asset Panel. And that's it, your movie is done and ready for screening!