Interaction and Expressivity in Video Games: Harnessing the Rhetoric of Film

The film-maker uses the camera and editing creatively, not simply to present the action of the film but also to set up a particular relation between the action and the viewer. In 3D video games with action controlled by the player, the pseudo camera is usually less creatively controlled and has less effect on the player’s appreciation of and engagement with the game. This paper discusses methods of controlling games by easy and intuitive interfaces and use of an automated virtual camera to increase the appeal of games for users

The Forking Paths revisited: experimenting on interactive film

Based on the triad film-interactivity-experimentation, the applied research project The Forking Paths, developed at the Centre for Research in Arts and Communication (CIAC), endeavours to find alternative narrative forms in the field of Cinema and, more specifically, in the subfield of Interactive Cinema. The films in the project The Forking Paths invest in the interconnectivity between the film narrative and the viewer, who is given the possibility to be more active and engaged. At same time, the films undertake a research on the development of audio-visual language. The project is available at an online platform, which aims to foster the creation and web hosting of other Interactive Cinema projects in its different variables. This article focusses on the three films completed up to the moment: Haze, The Book of the Dead, and Waltz.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Lightweight Intelligent Virtual Cinematography System for Machinima Production

Machinima is a low-cost alternative to full production filmmaking. However, creating quality cinematic visualizations with existing machinima techniques still requires a high degree of talent and effort. We introduce a lightweight artificial intelligence system, Cambot, that can be used to assist in machinima production. Cambot takes a script as input and produces a cinematic visualization. Unlike other virtual cinematography systems, Cambot favors an offline algorithm coupled with an extensible library of specific modular and reusable facets of cinematic knowledge. One of the advantages of this approach to virtual cinematography is a tight coordination between the positions and movements of the camera and the actors

Symbolic Activities in Virtual Spaces

This paper presents an approach to combine concepts ofsymbolic acting and virtual storytelling with the support ofcooperative processes. We will motivate why symboliclanguages are relevant in the social context of awarenessapplications. We will describe different symbolicpresentations and illustrate their application in three differentprototypes

Intelligent Camera Control Using Behavior Trees

Automatic camera systems produce very basic animations for virtual worlds. Users often view environments through two types of cameras: a camera that they control manually, or a very basic automatic camera that follows their character, minimizing occlusions. Real cinematography features much more variety producing more robust stories. Cameras shoot establishing shots, close-ups, tracking shots, and bird’s eye views to enrich a narrative. Camera techniques such as zoom, focus, and depth of field contribute to framing a particular shot. We present an intelligent camera system that automatically positions, pans, tilts, zooms, and tracks events occurring in real-time while obeying traditional standards of cinematography. We design behavior trees that describe how a single intelligent camera might behave from low-level narrative elements assigned by “smart events”. Camera actions are formed by hierarchically arranging behavior sub-trees encapsulating nodes that control specific camera semantics. This approach is more modular and particularly reusable for quickly creating complex camera styles and transitions rather then focusing only on visibility. Additionally, our user interface allows a director to provide further camera instructions, such as prioritizing one event over another, drawing a path for the camera to follow, and adjusting camera settings on the fly.We demonstrate our method by placing multiple intelligent cameras in a complicated world with several events and storylines, and illustrate how to produce a well-shot “documentary” of the events constructed in real-time

Generic Drone Control Platform for Autonomous Capture of Cinema Scenes

The movie industry has been using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as a new tool to produce more and more complex and aesthetic camera shots. However, the shooting process currently rely on manual control of the drones which makes it difficult and sometimes inconvenient to work with. In this paper we address the lack of autonomous system to operate generic rotary-wing drones for shooting purposes. We propose a global control architecture based on a high-level generic API used by many UAV. Our solution integrates a compound and coupled model of a generic rotary-wing drone and a Full State Feedback strategy. To address the specific task of capturing cinema scenes, we combine the control architecture with an automatic camera path planning approach that encompasses cinematographic techniques. The possibilities offered by our system are demonstrated through a series of experiments