Nickelodeon Director's Lab is an "Easy to use" Multimedia Production Studio available for PC CD-ROM. It is suitable for ages from 8+ and appears to be aimed at Nickelodeon viewers more than say a 'professional Director'. The Main progam contains lots of 'Nickelodeon' type animations, colorful graphics and sound effects as you would expect to see on Nickelodeon.
Melissa Joan Hart's part in all this is to provide the "On-Screen Help".
When you first run the program Melissa appears in a pop-up television screen welcoming you to the package,
you are then prompted to fill in your name which later appears in lights as you are the Director.
You then procede into the main program 'room'. Here Melissa appears again telling you a bit about each of
the subsequent rooms that you can procede into. The main room is very colorful and has several animations
like a couch cushion that bounces in the air when you click on it, etc.
The subsequent rooms that you can go into are marked by doors that you can click on to enter, each door
with it's relvant name. These being 'Screening room', 'Sound FX', 'Music Studio', 'Video Suite', 'Title Editor',
'Graphic Studio', and 'Directors Lab'.
Behind each door is basically another room which contains what the
name on it suggests. For example the 'Sound Fx' room contains a mixing table that has various controls to use.
You can either record your own samples or use those provided on the CD (there is a short clip of the Clarissa
Explains It All theme music). All the various rooms have samples which can be loaded. The 'Final' room the
'Directors Lab' is where all the relvant bits can be put together on a sort of time line and then played/run
all together to give a final result like your own little cartoon, video or advert etc.
Going back to Melissa's part, each of the room also contains a 'Help' button that when clicked
on brings up the pop-up tv with Melissa explaining what the room does and how to use the various controls and options in it.
There are a total of nine pieces of audio-visual help from Melissa. These being the initial welcome, the main room
help and a further seven segments of on-screen help in each of the seven subsequent rooms mentioned above.
The audio-visual clips last from about 10 to 60 seconds in length. The pop-up telvision that Melissa appears in is
approximately 3 by 2 inches in size. She is wearing what appears to be a blue denim shirt and only her head and shoulders are visible.
Her hair is long and she is wearing it down.
There is also a small inch high picture of Melissa on the Software box, It only shows the top half of her body and she is
wearing a light pinky white shirt with blue denim overalls. Underneath the words "Featuring On-Screen Help Frpm Video Guide Melissa
Joan Hart of "Clarissa Explains It All"".
For more info see Further info on the Directors Lab from Viacom
The Software is produced by Viacom newmedia and is copyright 1995.
It is available from most major software suppliers.