Valentijn Visch: Moving Genres

[Lecture in English]

Scientist Valentijn Visch will present results from his research on the functioning of cinematic genre cues.

"When we see a film scene, it usually isn't very hard to tell to which genre the film belongs. However, hardly any research is performed on how the viewer arrives at a genre categorization. The specific effects of genre cues, such as plot, movements, iconography or film style, remain largely unknown. Our research tries to reveal the working of the genre cues that ensue from the actor’s body movements. We aim to identify in a series of experiments using 3-D animated scenes which parameters of actor movement are responsible for what generic and affective viewer impression. We suppose that once these parameters are identified, rendering specific configurations of these will result in a predictable genre and affective impression.
The outcomes of this project can be applied in moving image production and recognition facilities. One can think of implementation in animation software - any animation scene can be turned into a prototypical "sad" or "non-fiction" scene by pushing the "sad" or "non-fiction" button. Although most film or animation directors will make little use of these prototypes. They will probably direct their own specific movements and in the best case differ their movements from our prototypes. We expect our knowledge to be more useful for animators/ designers for whom our prototypes are an addition instead of a substitute - like game- or web-animators. As our movement parameters operate on a very basic level of movement, we will try to apply them on non-character movements, like abstract interface movements, as well. Apart from the described production of affective and generic effects, the outcome of the research can be applied for movement recognition purposes too: digital image filters may be able to recognise and sort image movements to their affective and generic content". (Valentijn Visch)