Posibilidades narrativas del documental interactivo: Una mirada desde la perspectiva del usuario

El documental interactivo trae consigo diversos cambios en la forma de narrar historias, desde cómo plasmamos la estructura documental, a la incidencia del usuario en la misma. Estas transformaciones llegan de la mano con nuevas narrativas, ordenes, formas de contar las historias, y el punto más prominente, que es la participación del usuario en el documental. En el siguiente trabajo de investigación se buscó identificar los aportes de la interactividad basados en la percepción del usuario, centrándose en la involucración del usuario y el aumento de información. Para tal fin, se estudió la percepción del usuario delimitando el trabajo a dos documentales con una interfaz temporal y espacial, dado que se considera que son los campos dónde la interactividad interviene más. Para medir la involucración del usuario y la efectividad de estas interfaces, se realizó entrevistas a 10 personas con perfiles diversos con el objetivo de conseguir una apreciación vasta de los diversos aportes de la interactividad. Entre los resultados más relevantes se identificó el nexo entre el diseño de la interfase y los grados de involucración, así como el aumento de información ligado a la combinación de tipos de información.The interactive documentary brings with it several changes in the way we tell stories, from how we shape the documentary structure, to the incidence of the user in it. These transformations go hand in hand with new narratives, orders, ways of telling stories, and the most prominent point, which is the user's participation in the documentary. The following research work sought to identify the contributions of interactivity based on the user's perception, focusing on user involvement and the increase of information. To this end, user perception was studied by limiting the work to two documentaries with a temporal and spatial interface, since it is considered that these are the fields where interactivity intervenes the most. To measure user involvement and the effectiveness of these interfaces, interviews were conducted with 10 people with different profiles in order to obtain a broad appreciation of the various contributions of interactivity. Among the most relevant results, the link between interface design and degrees of involvement was identified, as well as the increase in information linked to the combination of types of information.Tesi

The interactive potential of post-modern film narrative: frequency, order and simultaneity

A considerable number of contemporary films are now using narrative models that allow several adaptations on digital and interactive operating systems. This trend is seen in films such as Memento by Christopher Nolan (2000), Irréversible by Gaspar Noé (2002) and Smoking / No Smoking by Alain Resnais (1993), concerning the chronological organization of their narrative parts – here it is a question of order. Or in films such as Elephant by Gus Van Sant (2003), Groundhog Day by Harold Ramis, 1993 and Rashômon by Akira Kurosawa (1950), for the diegetic repetition – a question of frequency. Or even, in films such as Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson (1999) and Short Cuts by Robert Altman, 1993 which use the idea of expansion or compression of the narrative – a question of simultaneity. To change the accessibility of the cinematographic experience and to constantly re-evaluate the way in which the narrative tool is used, is from now on considered the interactive potential of the contemporary film narrative

The interactive potential of post-modern film narrative. Frequency, Order and Simultaneity.

A considerable number of contemporary films are now using narrative models that allow several adaptations on digital and interactive operating systems. This trend is seen in films such as Memento by Christopher Nolan (2000), Irréversible by Gaspar Noé (2002) and Smoking / No Smoking by Alain Resnais (1993), concerning the chronological organization of their narrative parts – here it is a question of order. Or in films such as Elephant by Gus Van Sant (2003), Groundhog Day by Harold Ramis, 1993 and Rashômon by Akira Kurosawa (1950), for the diegetic repetition – a question of frequency. Or even, in films such as Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson (1999) and Short Cuts by Robert Altman, 1993 which use the idea of expansion or compression of the narrative – a question of simultaneity. To change the accessibility of the cinematographic experience and to constantly re-evaluate the way in which the narrative tool is used, is from now on considered the interactive potential of the contemporary film narrative

I-Views, a storymaking community of, by and for the audience

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-79).This thesis presents I-Views, a system that permits individuals to use published, communally owned media clips to author narratives by assembling clips, and to build communities of similar interests based on comparing these narratives. To facilitate sharing of on-line motion pictures and initiate conversations among storytellers/re-tellers and audiences, I-Views allows widely distributed groups of people to view, edit, compare, evaluate and discuss video material over the Internet. There are two types of tools: web-based video studio tools and virtual community building tools. The former allows the user to view, select, save, re-sequence and publish video clips; while the latter allows the user to initiate dialogues by matching common interests and assumptions and build virtual communities around stories. By offering shared authorship, tools and virtual environments, I-Views demonstrates new story forms such as "Sharable Documentary." Currently, we are evaluating the prototype system using video footage documenting the Junior Summit '98, which is a cross-cultural, cross-geographical and multi-language project involving numerous people, including thousands of children, Junior Summit staff, sponsors, Media Lab faculty and students. Specifically, an international group of filmmakers including four junior filmmakers have contributed more than one hundred hours of footage shot. The current video database includes eighty streaming video clips selected from the footage shot.by Pengkai Pan.S.M

Everyday Mediated Storytelling

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-110).Personal stories make our experiences memorable over time. Transforming our fragmentary memories into shareable narratives helps us to understand and communicate who we are as individual and social beings. This thesis presents 'Everyday Mediated Storytelling', a model of the casual storyteller's process of capturing, creating and sharing personal mediated narratives. The purpose of this model is to better support rich-media storytelling through systems that enable storytellers to engage with personal media in a reflective, meaningful and shareable process. Based on the Everyday Mediated Storytelling model, an online authoring and publishing application for creating everyday rich-media narratives named 'Confectionary' was developed. Confectionary provides the storyteller with a spatial storytelling environment that encourages creativity and experimentation, supports a wide variety of storymaking styles, provides novel wayfinding strategies for story discovery and enables the audience to actively and broadly interpret personal rich-media stories. As a spatial storytelling environment, Confectionary reduces cognitive overload on the storyteller by making it easy to begin authoring, supports a wide variety of storymaking strategies and styles and enables the audience to engage in reflective dialogs through multiple active feedback modes.(cont.) Results from a comparative evaluation with other current best practice within the context of online media and story sharing applications indicate that a spatial authoring and publishing application is more enjoyable to use, better facilitates the process of beginning to tell stories and is easier to navigate and explore. Quantitative and qualitative results from a lengthy study with a group of committed users signify the success of the system as an engaging everyday tool for personal storytelling that stimulated self-reflection and broadened the scope of media capture techniques and storytelling strategies demonstrated by its users. Critical lessons were learned about methodology and system design for rich-media personal storytelling. The model, methodology, and system presented in this thesis provide a basis for understanding how we move fluidly between our direct experiences, our cognitive and emotional reflections and our storied representations and interpretations. This thesis also demonstrates how a spatial everyday authoring and publishing application advances the digital storytelling process from one of collective anthology to one of storied reflection.by Aisling Geraldine Mary Kelliher.Ph.D

Toward media collection-based storytelling

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-118).Life is filled with stories. Modern technologies enable us to document and share life events with various kinds of media, such as photos, videos, etc. But people still find it time-consuming to select and arrange media fragments to create coherent and engaging narratives. This thesis proposes a novel storytelling system called Storied Navigation, which lets users assemble a sequence of video clips based on their roles in telling a story, rather than solely by explicit start and end times. Storied Navigation uses textual annotations expressed in unconstrained natural language, using parsing and Commonsense reasoning to deduce possible connections between the narrative intent of the storyteller, and descriptions of events and characters in the video. It helps users increase their familiarity with a documentary video corpus. It helps them develop story threads by prompting them with recommendations of alternatives as well as possible continuations for each selected video clip. We view it as a promising first step towards transforming today's fragmented media production experience into an enjoyable, integrated storytelling activity.Edward Yu-Te Chen.S.M

Mindful documentary

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-92).In the practice of documentary creation, a videographer performs an elaborate balancing act between observing the world, deciding what to record, and understanding the implications of the recorded material, all with respect to her primary goal of story construction. This thesis presents mindful documentary, a model of a videographer's cyclical process of thinking and constructing during a documentary production. The purpose of this model is to better support documentary creation through systems that assist the documentary videographer in discovering new methods of observation, ways of thinking, and novel stories while recording the world. Based on the mindful documentary model, a reflective partnership is established between the videographer and a camera with commonsense reasoning abilities during capture and organization of documentary video collections. Knowledge is solicited from the videographer at the point of capture; it is used to generate narrative or contextual shot suggestions, which provide alternative recording path ideas for the videographer. Thus, the system encourages the videographer to reflect on the story possibilities of a documentary collection during real-time capture. Qualitative results of studies with a group of videographers - including novices and experts - showed a willingness to take suggestions during documentary production and, in some cases, to alter the recording path after reflection on shot possibilities presented by the system. Moreover, suggestions often had increased influence on the recording path if they were not taken as directives but as catalysts, i.e., prompts to expand thinking about the documentary subject rather than explicit shot instructions.(cont.) Critical lessons were learned about methodology and system design for documentary production. As a documentary is built, evidence of what the videographer has learned is represented in the documentary. The model, methodology, and system presented in this thesis provide a basis for understanding how videographers think during documentary construction and how machines with commonsense reasoning resources can serve as creative storytelling partners.by Barbara A. Barry.Ph.D

Mosaic narrative a poetics of cinematic new media narrative

This thesis proposes the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative as a tool for theorising the creation and telling of cinematic stories in a digital environment. As such the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is designed to assist creators of new media narrative to design dramatically compelling screen based stories by drawing from established theories of cinema and emerging theories of new media. In doing so it validates the crucial element of cinematic storytelling in the digital medium, which due to its fragmentary, variable and re-combinatory nature, affords the opportunity for audience interaction. The Poetics of Mosaic Narrative re-asserts the dramatic and cinematic nature of narrative in new media by drawing upon the dramatic theory of Aristotle’s Poetics, the cinematic theories of the 1920s Russian Film Theorists and contemporary Neo-Formalists, the narrative theories of the 1960s French Structuralists, and the scriptwriting theories of contemporary cinema. In particular it focuses on the theory and practice of the prominent new media theorist, Lev Manovich, as a means of investigating and creating a practical poetics. The key element of the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is the expansion of the previously forgotten and undeveloped Russian Formalist concept of cinematurgy which is vital to the successful development of new media storytelling theory and practice. This concept, as originally proposed but not elaborated by Kazansky, encompasses the notion of the creation of cinematic new media narrative as a mosaic – integrally driven by the narrative systems of plot, as well as the cinematic systems of visual style created by the techniques of cinema- montage, cinematography and mise-en-scene

Mobile cinema

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-161).This thesis develops techniques and methods that extend the art and craft of storytelling, and in particular enable the creation of mobile cinema. Stories are always constrained by the medium in which they are told and the mode by which they are delivered to an audience. This dissertation addresses the design of content, systems, and tools that facilitate the emerging type of computational audio-visual narrative that we call mobile cinema. Storytelling in this medium requires temporally and spatially encoded narrative segments that are delivered over a wireless channel to mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. These devices belong to "the audience," individuals who are navigating physical space and interact with local circumstances in the environment. This thesis examines the underlying requirements for coherent mobile narrative and explores two particular challenges which must be solved in order to make a reliable and scalable stream of content for mobile cinema: technology uncertainty (the fact that what the mobile cinema system presents may not be what the creator intends) and participation uncertainty (the fact that what the audience does may not be what the creator expects). The exploration and analysis of these problems involved prototyping two versions of the M-Views system for mobile cinema and three prototype cinematic narratives. Small user studies accompanied each production. The iterative process enabled the author to explore both aspects of uncertainty and to introduce innovations in four key areas to help address these uncertainties: practical location detection, authoring tools designed for mobile channels, responsive story presentation mechanisms, and creative story production strategies.y Pengkai Pan.Ph.D