The introduction of the Product Lifecycle in Audiovisual

Interactive and Immersive productions have a characteristic that more traditional formats do not share.

Software development standards usually define a Product Lifecycle.

Two main phases usually characterize this cycle: the first one is called Develop-ment Phase, and the second is the Release Phase.

Traditional audiovisual works, such as animation and live-action movies, share with this vision only the concept of a development phase, because they see the release as the goal and the end of the production process, after which the only concerns are marketing and distribution.

In software development, the release of a product does not correspond with the end of production; on the contrary, it starts a new production phase characterized by maintaining and updating the program.

Due to their connection to software and hardware technologies, Immersive and Interactive projects share this phase.

Release and maintenance usually involve different aspects, such as the allocation of digital or physical space for the project material or the equipment on the platforms or places that allow the fruition or physical maintenance of hardware involved in the experience.

While talking about the evolution in production, it is essential to highlight how post-release production influences the budgeting and the allocation of profession-als during the stipulation of a contract.

For example, a rough estimation of maintenance costs for an interactive project over a period of four years can go from 2% to 10% of the entire production budget.

The exact expense depends on the characteristics of each project, its interface, and its dependency on external resources⁸

The previous consideration leads to another familiar concept in software devel-opment: the End of Life of a product.

8NFB’s French Interactive Studio producer Louis-Richard Tremblay. Interview. Conducted by Giuseppe La Manna, May 2022

1.3 – The production process for Interactive and Immersive works

This notion does not apply to traditional formats, which after their release, can be watched on different platforms and devices with the only condition of existence of a copy of the content (either digital or physical).

Figure 1.24. Agile production and Life cycle of an Interactive work.

For software, the End of Life implies that it is no longer sold or supported, and therefore discontinued, retired, deprecated, or abandoned.

For Interactive works, it can even mean the total impossibility to access and ex-perience the content, as happened in the case of most Flash-based web works.

The End of Life date of an Interactive project is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration in an early stage of development to be able to allocate, in advance, the necessary financial and professional resources.

Part II

Professionals

Chapter 2

New professionals and new tasks

The audiovisual industry standards developed during the years generated very well-defined jobs and expertise; filmmaking manuals often show the traditional division into departments and the professionals’ hierarchical organization in each production phase. We are used to hearing about directors, producers and all sorts of audiovisual industry workers.

In countries such as the US and Canada, the standardization of cinema profession-als led to the creation of very specific guilds and unions to represent their members in negotiations for wages, benefits, working conditions, royalty payments, and other issues.

However, the changes in the production workflow analyzed in the previous chap-ter implicate evolutions and modifications in the tasks and roles of most figures working on audiovisual content.

First of all, the three content categories seen above are facing a gradual con-tamination from the software development world, not only in their procedures and practices but also in the people involved in the production.

In filmmaking and animation, the increasing importance of virtual technologies requires the introduction of figures such as programmers, virtual artists, 3D mod-elers and new kinds of technicians.

Content Productions need to adapt to the injection of those new figures facing the challenge of merging two worlds that, until now, have worked with totally different methodologies.

While some working figures are being introduced, others are evolving and chang-ing; most of the jobs now tend to be specialized more deeply in a particular field of their work.

It is common to see long end credits in movies where the number of people in digital and virtual departments is really high. It is a symptom of the above trend;

in fact, in those departments, people are specialized in very particular features, such as lighting, texturing, physical simulations and more.

To be precise, the movie industry has already faced the first step of this evo-lution with the introduction of digital technologies, and despite the expectations that such a standardized sector can raise, it has proved itself able to accept and embrace the innovation.

In the following section, I will go through the classical organization of an au-diovisual production crew, focusing on the differences caused by the influences of new technologies, formats, and practices.

To do so, after a brief introduction to the profession from The Complete Guide to Film and Digital Production (Wales [2017]), all the considerations about its changes will be a result of the research interviews with audiovisual professionals conducted at NFB.

2.1 Producer

The Producer is the person on a project responsible for everything: the process, the budget, the people and, ultimately, the final product, whether it be a feature film, documentary, interactive content or installation.

The Producer must have the ultimate vision for what the project needs to be and the ability to communicate it to the director or the creators.

The changes in the industry are not modifying the nature of the Producer’s role;

however, they are facing the challenge of dealing with new experts whose back-grounds differ from traditional audiovisual specialists.

Their new task is to assist and facilitate the communication between those two merging worlds.

To do so, today more than ever, the Producer needs to understand the language of the medium and the technology they want to choose in the production process.

In the past, audiovisual practices were stable and standardized, and the language of the medium was well known. However, as said in the paragraph on flat movies in chapter 1, the real revolution in audiovisual creation is about possibilities: the