USC School of Cinema-Television | Interactive Media Division
CTIN 499 - Special topics : Narrative filmmaking for computational media
Spring 2005
Professor
: Michael Lew
Units : 2
Prerequisites : film/video production or computer programming skills
Schedule : Friday, 12pm - 3pm in CSS G142 (interactive media lab)
Course concept
What
happens when you merge the vision machine (camera) with the Turing machine (computer)
?
As footage is freeing itself from the linearity of the celluloid or tape substrate
and as the medium for displaying moving images starts to have computational
power, the film form is changing. New ways of presenting stories with recorded
media are becoming possible.
In this class we will explore what these possibilities are, study examples of
interactive narrative films, think about the relationship between story and
game and examine the specificities offered by each of these new media (set-top
box, interactive TV, DVD-ROM for game console or home PC, handheld devices).
The time flow is no longer imposed. The viewer can explore the convolutions
of a pre-established story at her own pace. Film comes with code that defines
how to read it.
In computational film, the editor no longer needs to sequence shots on a one-dimensional
timeline ; the editor rather becomes an interaction designer that will place
shots in a multi-dimensional narrative space. Each time, this space will be
traversed to generate a new experience of the same film.
Course
objectives
During this course, we will discover together what is happening to the film
form as the medium becomes computational. Through abundant examples taken both
from linear and interactive films, we will explore the state of the art of computational
cinema, past, present and future. Computational film can be described as a practical
hybridation of film culture and computer culture, at a structural level. Emphasis
will be put toward interactive narration rather than interactive narrative.
We will introduce basic and more advanced concepts in interactive video, database
narrative, post-linear aesthetics, real-time editing, narratology, multimedia semantics. On a parallel track, existing technologies and infrastructure will
be demystified. We will present step-by-step different programming methods,
principles and algorithms on how to combine computer code and camera footage,
accessible to non-programmers; this will lead us to discuss current research
topics such as real-time editing, metadata, information retrieval, media database
annotation.
We will also survey the rapidly changing market and discuss the stakes in the
transformation of the media industry, looking at interactive TV, game consoles,
the future of DVD and MPEG standards, video on demand and broadband internet.
All students will be participating in designing prototypes of cinema of the
future.
Halfway through the semester, students will form teams in order to make a computational
film.
Choosing among six possibles formats for interactive film, each team will write,
shoot or gather media, edit and program their own computational film. For production
and postproduction, students will have access to facilities and resources from
the USC school of Cinema-Television and the Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts.
The USC school of Cinema-Television is the first cinema school to offer a full
course on how to make narrative films for computational media. This class is
open to all USC students.
About improvisational cinema
some interactive cinema links
For any question, please contact Michael Lew.
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