[CS] TODAY at Noon: CS Wednesday Noon Talk is: Job talk March 13 by Asst. Prof. Computer Science & Game Design candidate William Bares, Ph.D.

[Paula Harmon]

Wednesday, March 13, Noon, ASH Lobby

William Bares, Ph.D.
Candidate for Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Game Design

Talk Title: *Fear not the zombies! Or, Cinematography by Human-Computer 
Dialog*

Abstract:  What if a movie camera could learn about cinematography while 
an expert human filmmaker operates the camera?  Could that same movie 
camera, now in the hands of a novice, offer the novice filmmaker 
suggestions on composition and editing in the style learned from the expert?
This colloquium explores these questions by presenting a novel 
cinematography assistant embodied in a portable touch screen equipped 
with motion-sensors that is used to move and aim a camera in a 
computer-generated world.  As a filmmaker lines up shots by turning and 
moving the portable screen as if it were a camera viewfinder, the 
assistant automatically analyzes shot properties and transitions between 
shots to formulate a continually evolving model of the filmmaker's 
editing style.  In preparing to film the next shot, the filmmaker can 
request suggestions presented as a palette of distinct shot angles and 
distances from which to begin the next shot.  The assistant computes 
suggested shots so that they reflect established practices of continuity 
such as not "crossing the line" and matching eye looks of interacting 
characters.  Suggested shots also reflect the user's past editing 
tendencies when cutting from one shot to the next.  The filmmaker 
selects a suggestion by touching its image in the palette of suggestions 
and is instantly transported into the suggested shot. Then, the 
filmmaker can either accept the suggested shot as-is, ignore it to 
compose his or her own, or modify it by moving or turning the portable 
touch-screen.
Future directions of work invite participation by anyone having an 
interest in film, animation, artificial intelligence, and interfaces for 
games, new media, graphical simulations, or learning environments.

Biographical Statement: William Bares enjoys making connections between 
the arts and technology in teaching, research, and community engagement.
He envisions future games and interactive media experiences that take 
place in real-world spaces in which human players and avatars interact 
through speech, motion, and gestures.  His current research seeks to 
develop methods to augment the creativity and productivity of 
cinematographers.  He earned his Ph.D. at North Carolina State 
University while studying with the interdisciplinary IntelliMedia 
Initiative which creates intelligent virtual 3d learning environments.  
He has been an invited researcher at INRIA (Rennes, France) and most 
recently at the Games and Playable Media Group at UC Santa Cruz.  He is 
currently a faculty member in Computer Science at Millsaps College.
-- 
CBD to-do list updated and attached Paula Harmon, Administrative Assistant
School of Cognitive Science
Hampshire College
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002
phone: 413.559.5502
fax: 413.559.5438
http://cs.hampshire.edu
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