The Case for Electronic Script-Based Collaboration

Modern media production workflows involve specialized teams operating during different phases of the production process in different locations. The media themselves are digital but managed by singular media asset management systems in each location. Due to structural gaps in the overall flow of metadata, collaboration relies on informal methods. As a result, individual media fragments are hard to retrieve, reuse of content is expensive, and the overall production cost is inflated. The key to solving this problem is to enable concurrency and systematic interaction between the story-editing and the actual production processes. This will reduce production cycle time, minimize time to market, and have a positive influence on overall production cost. An electronic embodiment of the script, the most canonic description of the content in the form of a scenario or a rundown, plays an essential role in the overall orchestration. By definition, the script contains all essential information to accurately describe the content. By mapping audiovisual media with the story elements and by subsequently embedding the essential metadata in the files, content becomes consistently manageable throughout the entire process and beyond. This paper discusses the key characteristics of a collaborative workflow, the underlying architecture, and the design requirements of an electronic script that can be used to integrate the workflow.

Print ISSN

1545-0279

Electronic ISSN

2160-2492

Published

2014-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/j18468