| In thinking about mobile cinema - various ideas have cropped up, central to all the notion that to watch the cinema one needs to be in motion/moving (be mobile)
(otherwise all we are left with are very small movies shown on very small screens).
So what ideas are about:
Cinema that do not play unless one moves (regardless of physical locations)
Cinema that respond to users GPS position (takes into account users physical location)
Cinema that respond to digital signals (digital compass, Bluetooth, Wireless Ethernet)
Cinema that use cameras as input
As such, the use of the Windows Media Player is somewhat a dead end (unless
one hacks into it to expand its functionality, or spends more time investigating
capabilities) it works simply as a replay device - I cannot see how I
can rely solely on this playback device as a means of making successful
mobile cinema (perhaps others will be more successful). Remember mobility
is key otherwise as said earlier we are left with small movies for small
screens (which is a worthy investigation on its own). I do not mind using
the technology to mock-up ideas and will be doing so for class.
Another point of interest for me is using mobile device as a windows or
new form of spectacles to bring forth new perceptions of realities. So
the device (the Pocket PC, or Tablet PC) disappears or rather becomes
a part of the environment, very much like my own eyeglasses - a seamless
interface to clearer vision. not a solution or medium proper for displaying
mobile cinema.
As nice as it would be to be able to come up with solutions for all the above ideas, or eventually combine them in far more interesting ways. I am simplifying things and focussing my
investigation using the video camera as input to create mobile cinema.
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The idea for the Happenstance Engine comes out of research for Machine Vision as well as Augmented Reality systems. The basis for which is the idea that we can overlay new visual
objects on the real world based on visually tracked patterns. Some examples are as follows
Four frames from an MPEG4
movie showing the AAM Tracker (49 sec. 498KB). - from the AMM research
from the Informatics and Mathematical Modeling Department at the Technical
University of Denmark
  Magic Book (click to view 16,361KB)
from The Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HITLab) at the University of Washington
The Happenstance engines hopes to provide the Mobile cinematographer the ability
to create an array of patterns to which when the camera "finds" these patterns
as one moves around there physical reality will overlay cinema events appropriate to the matched
pattern.
3 Modes of cinema unfolding:
Linear - patterns must be found based on sequential time to reveal story
Non-Linear - when a pattern match is found respective cinema event is displayed
Persistent - when ever a pattern is found no matter how many time (even in
the same frame) cinematic event is overlayed (potentially multiple times)
The User can be given a script of patterns to help guide the narrative or let them discover the patterns and subsequently the events themselves (Happenstance)
Example
Happenstance sees image |
Happenstance verifies pattern match |
Happenstance overlays appropriate image |
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An idea for a narrative based on the Happenstance engine: A memoire of a lost loved one.
Mockups which will be displayed on the PocketPC using the Windows Media player.
Augmented reality: corner.mp4
Pattern matching: hall.mp4
Pattern matching (pattern happenstance): blackboard.mp4
Narrative Title.mp4
Narrative Sequence1.mp4
Narrative Sequence2.mp4
Narrative Sequence3.mp4
Narrative Sequence4.mp4
Narrative Sequence5.mp4
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