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A tape and book package which seeks to show you the production techniques involved in making a film/TV programme then providing you with simple software to write, design the scenery, compose the music, and animate the characters in an on-screen cartoon which can be transferred to your video recorder.

The detailed, well-illustrated book gives some historical background, the workings of a film camera and film tricks, how TV works and the various activities which go into a programme like production, wardrobe, soundtrack, animation and so on. Very informative.

The software is a compact suite of icon-driven programs which allows you to write your screen captions, draw backgrounds, design sprites, compose and save music, edit all the results together, save to tape, and finally, display your creation. You can employ animated characters, scrolling text, accompanying music, and editaway until you are satisfied with the result. Instructions are also given for saving this onto video tape, but they presume too much in terms of technical knowledge and equipment (you must have a modulator, for example). The result of this is to limit you to what can be held in memory at anyone time, which is not much.

Even so, it's an intriguing package which gives genuine insight and which has much of value in the software, even though it is of limited sophistication in terms of the finished product, something akin to the illustrations which accompany some adventures.

D.M.