An Interactive Camera Planning System for Automatic Cinematographer

Abstract

Currently most systems capable of performing intelligent camera control use cinematographic idioms or a constraint satisfaction mechanism to determine a sequence of camera configurations for a given animation script. However, an automated cinematography system cannot be made practical without taking idiosyncrasy and the distinct role of each member in a filmmaking team into account. In this paper, we propose an interactive virtual cinematographer model imitating the key functions of a real filmmaking team consisting of three modules: director, photographer, and editor. The system uses parameterized cinematographic idioms in the three modules to determine the best camera configurations for an animation script. The system allows a user to interact with the virtual cinematographer to specify stylistic preferences, which can be carried over to other animation scripts.