MAJOR: Assistive Artificial Intelligence to Support Creative Filmmaking in Computer Animation

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This project will explore approaches to artificial intelligence that can support creative digital filmmaking, an extremely rich new form of expression and communication. The most accessible variant of digital filmmaking is "machinima" - cinematic movies created by manipulating avatars in 3D computer game worlds. Due to the allure of cheap, quick, and easy movie making, and the accessibility of high-fidelity graphics through video games technologies, machinima has grown into a mainstream form of creative expression and sharing. However, machinima has a high threshold of entry. This is due only partly to technical tools, which are cheap and easily acquired; digital filmmaking also has a high threshold of skill requirements. In general, creativity is collaborative, with creators often seeking feedback and critique from others. Intelligent systems can also participate in the feedback loop of creative practice by suggesting, autonomously creating, and critiquing digital media.The goal of this research is to reduce the technological and skill barriers to complex, but rich forms of digital expression such as filmmaking, thereby increasing the creative productivity of amateur creators. Its approach is to develop digital media production tools that are instilled with computational models of creative practice and intuitive interfaces informed by empirical studies. The anticipated result is a greater understanding of creative processes involving feedback and critique, models of cognitive and emotive processes in human recipients of creative artifacts, and understanding about the tradeoffs of interface modalities involving intelligent participatory systems. The project is organized around two major, interrelated thrusts: (1) develop cognitive and computational models of feedback and critique as a means toward intelligent systems that participate in creative endeavors; (2) study how the creative abilities of amateur and expert digital filmmakers are affected by production interfaces along dimensions of (a) degree of constraint in cinematic control and (b) modes of intelligent participatory support.It is anticipated that the resultant models and implementations will serve as next-generation creativity support tools to be adopted by the amateur digital filmmaking and machinima communities. By achieving its research goals, this project will demonstrate a technique for lowing the threshold of entry to a form of digital media creation. Lowering the threshold of machinima production, in particular, will open the practice to populations of users historically underrepresented in computing such as women, who are attracted to storytelling but often discouraged by highly technical "hacker" skills. As an expressive form, digital filmmaking is a powerful medium for communication, can be used as a draw to computing, and can be integrated into a wide repertoire of activities including entertainment and education. Resultant models and implementations may also impact the growing practice of previsualization in the movie and television industries. The approach will result in a model for incorporating intelligent creative assistance into other forms of expressive digital media.