A Virtual Director Inspired by Real Directors

Automatically computing a cinematographically consistent sequence of shots over a set of actions occurring in a 3D world is a complex task that requires not only the computation of appropriate shots (viewpoints) and appropriate transitions between shots (cuts), but more importantly the ability to encode and reproduce elements of cinematographic style that exist in real movies. In this paper, we propose an expressive automated cinematography model that learns some elements of style from real movies and reproduces them in synthetic movies. The model relies on a Hidden Markov Model representation of the editing process. The proposed model is more general than existing representations that encode cinematographic idioms and proves to be more expressive in the possible variations of style it offers.