Director movies are interactive multimedia pieces that can include animation, sound, text, digital video, and many other types of media. A movie can be as small and simple as an animated logo or as complex as an online chat room or game.

You’re probably familiar with Director movies in the Shockwave movie format, which play in web browsers. Millions of web users have received the Shockwave player with their computers, browsers, or system software; others have downloaded Shockwave from the Macromedia web site.

The Shockwave player resides on the local computer, where it plays back movies in browsers or as stand-alone applications. A Director movie is a single file that controls all the media that appears while the movie plays. A movie may link to external media or be one of a series of movies that refer to each other.

Director’s interactivity lets the movie respond to events and change in specified ways. Director divides lengths of time into a series of frames, similar to the frames in a celluloid movie.