DirectorNotation

Abstract

DirectorNotation (DN) is a symbolic language intended to express the content of film (motion pictures), much as notes provide a language for the writing of music. It thus constitutes a new approach to the creative process of filmmaking. Musicians, and also choreographers, have long been able to express their creative choices using logical symbolic structures (music notation and dance notation), yet those working in the movie industry have to rely on cartoons and verbal description. Development of a successful notation becomes appropriate today because of its dependence upon the parallel development of effective notation-based software tools such as visualisation (automatic animated storyboard generation), production budget estimation, and automated rough editing of dailies. Directors maintain complete control of their creative decisions when using DN. It is an artistic language supported by technical tools for planning and analysis. The notation is not merely a graphical user interface for these tools, and the tools are never intended to make decisions for the director. This article introduces DN, argues its great cultural significance, provides market research results showing directors' interest in using it, and reports on two controlled experiments confirming its effectiveness-including its usability in a practical context and its ability to represent and communicate the necessary information. ACM Reference Format:Yannopoulos, A. 2013. DirectorNotation: Artistic and technological system for professional film directing. ACM J. Comput. Cult.

Ontology-Driven Interactive Visualization of Film Production Complexity Using a Visual Language

“…In order to gather feedback from both perspectives, the evaluation was organized in two parts. The usefulness of DN, as a director's tool, has already been confirmed by extensive empirical evidence (Yannopoulos, 2013). In the first part of the current evaluation, the director's feedback was solicited through a structured questionnaire (see Figure 10), in order to investigate the PCV's effect on the film planning process from the production perspective (e.g., does it prepare the director for subsequent discussions with the producer?).…”

“…DirectorNotation (DN) is a visual symbolic notation system designed to express film content, much as music notes provide a symbolic language for writing music. It thus constitutes a new approach to the creative process of filmmaking (Yannopoulos, 2013). DN was developed in the context of the ANSWER project, and the main objective was to create a language that will serve both an artistic and a technical purpose.…”

“…DN was developed in the context of the ANSWER project, and the main objective was to create a language that will serve both an artistic and a technical purpose. At the artistic level, DN is an expressive language; an analytical tool through which a director can record a complete description of his/her creative choices in a visual symbolic structured form, and "at least in the same detail and depth compared to traditional tools" (Yannopoulos, 2013). Moreover, DN is machine-processable by design, and so it can be utilized as the basis for the development of software tools to support the director's pre-visualization of his/her intention, communication with the production team or analysis of the creative process.…”

“…For instance, Jung et al (2010) describe a tool for automated 3D storyboarding based on DN and X3D. Extensive empirical evidence provided by Yannopoulos (2013) concretely demonstrates the value of DN both as an artistic system assisting the director's workflow and thought processes, and as a representation mechanism enabling software tools to process information that was previously not recorded. For all the above reasons, DN is employed for data input in order to address the information needs discussed in Background and Requirement Analysis.…”

“…• FilmProdViz is built upon a visual language called DirectorNotation (DN). DN is a visual symbolic notation system which enables the director to thoroughly record his/her creative choices in an intuitive and artistically meaningful way (Yannopoulos, 2013). As DN is machine-processable by design, the visual notation of the director's artistic choices in DN terms (henceforth "DN text") is utilized as system input.…”