Tutorial > View the completed movie

View the completed movie

Before you start to work on your own movie, view a completed version of the tutorial to get an idea of what you'll create. Additionally, the completed tutorial lets you examine the Timeline, Movie Explorer, Library window, and Stage to understand authoring practices.

1 In your Flash 5 application folder, open Tutorial > Finished.
2 Select the Kite.swf file and drag it to an open browser window.
Flash movies in the authoring environment have the FLA extension. A movie exported as a Flash Player movie has the SWF extension.
3 Click one of the Select a Kite buttons.
Notice that a sound plays when you click the button, and the selected kite appears.
4 Click one of the Select a Color buttons.
Notice how the kite changes to match the color you selected.
5 Click the Fly It! button.
Listen to the sound and watch the animation.
Notice that the invoice, a movie clip symbol, is tailored to the kite and color you selected.
A movie clip is a smaller movie that plays within the main Flash movie.
6 To start the movie again, you can click the Back button.
7 When you finish viewing the SWF file, you can either close the window or leave it open to serve as a reference.


 
Analyze the Kite.fla file

It's helpful to analyze the completed FLA file to determine just how the author put the file together. There are a variety of ways to approach this analysis. In this tutorial, you will analyze the file by completing the following steps:

1 In Flash, choose File > Open. Navigate to the Flash application folder and open Tutorial/Finished/Kite.fla.
You now see the completed tutorial movie in the authoring environment.
2 To see more of the Stage and Timeline, choose Window > Close All Panels.
3 To resize the Timeline and Stage, drag the bar that separates the Stage from the Timeline up and down. Scroll around the Timeline to see how the layers are organized.
4 As you learned in the Animation lesson, a keyframe is a frame where you define changes in animation. As you scroll around the Timeline, note which layers and frames have keyframes.
Beginning and intermediate keyframes appear as solid circles, while ending keyframes appear as small outlined rectangles.
5 To view labels the author created that indicate segments of the movie, scan the labels layer, which is the first layer in the Timeline.
In addition to using labels to create and identify movie segments, you can use labels for navigation by specifying that the playhead move to the first frame of a specific label when the user clicks a button. You'll learn more about labels and navigation later in the tutorial.
6 Look at the next layer down, which is the actions layer.
The actions layer indicates frames where ActionScript, the Flash scripting language, is included in the movie.
Each lowercase a that you see in a frame represents ActionScript.
7 Select the playhead and drag it slowly across the frames.
Watch how changes in action on the Stage correspond to changes in the Timeline. Notice, however, that as you drag the playhead, the movie plays sequentially instead of playing as it appears to users. Navigation implemented with ActionScript in the movie lets users jump to specific frames rather than moving sequentially through the Timeline.


 
Use the Movie Explorer

The Movie Explorer assists you with arranging, locating, and editing media and is most beneficial when you're working on a movie with numerous assets. With its hierarchical tree structure, the Movie Explorer provides insight into the organization and flow of a movie, which is especially useful when you work with a movie authored by someone else.

1 If the Movie Explorer is not already open, choose Window > Movie Explorer or click the Movie Explorer button in the Launcher bar.
2 If necessary, make the Movie Explorer larger (drag the lower right corner of the window) to view the tree structure in the pane.
The Movie Explorer filtering buttons display or hide information.
3 Click the triangle in the upper right of the Movie Explorer, and in the pop-up menu that appears, verify that Show Movie Elements and Show Symbol Definitions are selected.
4 Along the top left of the Movie Explorer window, verify that the only filtering buttons selected are Show Text; Show Buttons, Movie Clips, and Graphics; and Show ActionScripts.
5 Scroll through the list to view some of the assets included in the movie, and to see their relationship to other assets.
If you scroll to the Rokkaku Kite button, for example, you see that it has ActionScript associated with it. Expand the icon to view the action, which plays a SWF of a rokkaku kite when the user clicks the Rokkaku Kite button.
6 Deselect the Show ActionScripts filtering button and select the Show Frames and Layers filtering button.
7 Scroll up to the top of the Movie Explorer. Under the labels layer, double-click Frame 43 (rokkaku) to move the playhead in the Timeline to the first frame of the rokkaku label.
Panels associated with the frame will also appear.
To view an item listed in the hierarchical tree, you double-click the corresponding icon. If you double-click a frame icon, the playhead moves to that frame in the Timeline. If you double-click another icon type, the associated panel appears, allowing you to view or change asset properties.
8 Deselect the Show Frames and Layers filtering button.
9 In the Find text box, type rokkaku kite BUTTON.
The Movie Explorer displays the search results.
10 Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the first Rokkaku Kite button icon on the list and select Find in Library from the pop-up menu at the upper right corner of the Movie Explorer.
Find in Library opens the library, if it's not already open, and highlights the symbol in the Library window.
The library contains and organizes assets in your movie.
11 Close the Movie Explorer.
12 To close the movie, choose File > Close.
If you've made changes to the movie, do not save them.


 
Open the starting file

Now you're ready to create your own version of the tutorial movie.

1 Choose File > Open.
2 In the Flash application folder, browse to and open Tutorial/My_kite/MyKite.fla.
You see a partially completed tutorial movie.
3 Choose File > Save As and save the movie with a new name, in the same folder as MyKite.fla.
By making a copy of the file, you allow yourself or another user to complete the tutorial again using MyKite.fla.
4 If the Library window isn't open, choose Window > Library.

Note: As you complete the tutorial, remember to save your work frequently.