The Stage window
the central empty window is the Stage window, where the end result of your work is displayed. It's the screen on which Director movies are projected; if you create a self-running piece of software, the Stage window is the universe in which that software will exist. Quite literally, this is where the action is.

What can you do to the Stage? You can change its color and size, and you can reconfigure it in a number of ways to suit the needs of a project. You can change the Stage size of any movie at any time, but each movie can have only one Stage configuration. If you want to your project to incorporate Stages of different shapes and sizes, you'll need to create sevral movies and link them together.

The Cast window
The theatrical metaphor that dubs director's playback screen the Stage continues with the Cast window. Actually, it's here that the metaphor begins to break down: the Cast might more accurately be called the Cst/Scenery/Props/Musical Instrument Department. Essentially, everuthing that goes into a multimedia production can reside in the cast:
  • still graphics (artwork/photo scans)
  • sounds (in digitized form)
  • interface elements (such as buttons and icons)
  • text
  • digital video (quicktime/AVI movies)
  • Animation (gifs/Director film loops)
  • palettes (certain group of colours)
  • other director movies
  • scripts/behaviours.


  • All cast members come into being in one of two ways: You can create them directly in Director, or you can import them from documents by other applications. In either case, unless you specify otherwise, each is automatically assigned a location in the Cast database and given a cast member number (you can also give them names if you like). Once in a Cast, a cast member can be cut, copied, pasted, deleted, relocated, and modified. Any changes made to a cast member are automatically reflected in that cast member's appearance on the Stage. This means, for example, that if a cast member 12 was originally a blue dot and you change it to a red one, all instances of the dot in the Director movie will be changed from blue to red.

    The Score window
    The score window is where the whole project really takes shape. When Director runs a movie, all it's doing --for the most part-- is interpreting the information in the Score and whisking elements on and off the Stage accordingly. For the most part, because it's possible to create commands that overrule Score information (Lingo).



    As you can see, the Score resembles a spreadsheet with lots of individual cells divided into rows and colums. The rows are called channels, the colums are called frames. Each column has a number associated with it, and each channel begins with either a number or a distinctive icon.

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