Special topics in cinematic storytelling

Lectures: 1 sessions / week, 2 hours / session

Prof. Glorianna Davenport
TA: Barbara Barry

Kevin Brooks, Push Singh, Barbara Barry, Tamiko Thiel, Pattie Maes, Orit Zuckerman, David Gatenby.

Storytelling is widely recognized as a fundamental mode of human communication; it presents a structured representation of action and causality over time and in context. Stories are made and shared using live or recorded media. In the case of recorded media, the process of creating and presenting story can be enhanced and extended using various types of representation, computation, and powerful user interfaces. In this seminar, we present some basic building blocks of story construction and representation. Topics include: a comparison of information and story; representations used in story creation and playout; the author/story/audience interface; past experiments in computer-assisted storytelling systems; and, common-sense as an approach to representing the world. Students will develop their own short stories, scenarios, content, and hands-on experiments in cinematic presentation.

There are four assignments through the course of the semester, culminating in the final project which will be reviewed in the last class. Participation in the seminar and discussion of the readings are also critical to the success of the class.

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