ANSWER: A Semantic Approach to Film Direction

Abstract

Abstract-In this paper we present ANSWER, an innovative approach to film direction. Here we describe a methodology to semantically model the film domain in a way which is coherent with the director's intent during film production. To achieve this, we are developing a system architecture which will provide the director with the necessary tools and services to author a scene description through intuitive gesture based graphical user interfaces, which will in turn populate the underlying model with a rich set of semantic descriptions. These semantic descriptions will be used to render the scene graphically through animated previsualizations. A director using the ANSWER methodology will be able to understand and assert certain film making decisions before film production begins.

DirectorNotation

“…An additional resource 2 contains a more elementary tutorial, introducing an early version of DN, using a mockup animation and providing detailed explanation-due to its simplicity, it is still a good first introduction to the notation. Results of the ANSWER project, which contributed to the development of DN and prototype DN software, have been documented in Yannopoulos et al [2009]; Beales et al [2009]; Chakravarthy et al [2009]; and Jung et al [2010].…”

A Notation Based Approach to Film Pre-vis

“…It forms the first point of interaction a director will have with the ANSWER technology and methodology. The director starts with a pre-authored film script annotated using MSML (Movie Script Mark-up Language) which has been developed as part of the ANSWER project [1]. MSML enables the tagging of script elements with the use of a higher level schema used to represent the standardized terms used for a film script in the film domain.…”

“…In order to achieve smooth interoperability and correct animations, the asset sizes and miscellaneous properties of them are taken into account when transforming to an external format such as PML (Player Markup Language). 1 The Rule Engine software module generates messages during the distinct actions it takes to check, evaluate and transform users input. These messages are errors (syntax & semantics related) and warnings (semantics related).…”