Even longer than I’ve been a filmmaker, I’ve been a web designer. For the last ten years, I’ve been involved in web creation in nearly every capacity.
I remember when Macromedia first released Dreamweaver and I remember just how exciting it was for webmasters and web designers. Suddenly there was a web design tool that would allow you to design quickly in either graphic or code layout. Not only that, but unlike Pagemill or Microsoft’s Front Page, Dreamweaver wouldn’t gunk up your code with a bunch of crap you didn’t want or didn’t need. In the dawn of web design, that was a huge thing.
At the same time, Macromedia had recently made waves for releasing a program designed to create vector-based motion content on the web called Flash. Pundits were claiming it could change the way people looked at things on the web.
Now, some eight years later, Dreamweaver has become the gold standard for web design and Flash defines the way virtually every film’s website displays its content on the web. Combining the power of these two packages along with a few other programs, Adobe (who now owns Macromedia) presents us with Macromedia Studio 8.
In the world of low-budget filmmaking, designing a good website for your film can be the difference between getting noticed and getting ignored. In fact, earlier this year, a microfilm got noticed by one of the agents at the William Morris Agency specifically because of their professional Flash-based website and, after watching the film, that agent successfully championed the film to the Sundance Film Festival.
With that said, let’s take a look at what all is in Studio 8, what improvements there are to be found, and how it all boils down.
Ease of Use
While none of the programs in this suite are as complicated to use as many high-end compositing or special effects tools, they are still professional programs and have a pretty steep learning curve. I’ve been using most of these products for the better part of a decade and am still learning stuff about them. While they have added some rather nice starter pages in Dreamweaver 8 (which I get into in the Depth of Options section), at least, there is still a lot of stuff in all of these programs that’s going to take awhile to learn.
As such, if you are new to these programs, then I would highly advise you to look at one of the training solutions out there, such as the Total Training DVD series or Hands On-Training from Peachpit Press, for getting yourself up to speed. (You can read the review of Total Training for Dreamweaver 8 and Total Training for Flash Professional 8 in this issue.)
