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This thesis explores techniques for synthesizing crowds from imagery. Synthetic photorealistic crowds are desirable for cinematic gaming, special effects and architectural visualization. While motion captured-based techniques for the animation and control of crowds have been well-studied in computer graphics, the resulting control rig sequences require a laborious model-based graphics pipeline to render photorealistic videos of crowds. Over the past ten years, data-driven techniques for rendering imagery of complex phenomena have become a popular alternative to model-based graphics. This popularity is due in large part to difficulties in constructing the sufficiently-detailed models that are required to achieve photorealism. A dynamic crowd of humans is an extremely challenging example of such phenomena. Example-based synthesis methods such as video textures are an appealing alternative, but current techniques are unable to handle new challenges posed by crowds. This thesis describes how to synthesize video-based crowds by explicitly segmenting pedestrians from input videos of natural crowds and optimally placing them into an output video while satisfying environmental constraints imposed by the scene. There are three key challenges. First, the crowd layout of segmented videos must satisfy constraints imposed by environmental and crowd obstacles. This thesis addresses four types of environmental constraints: (a) ground planes in the scene which are valid for crowd traversal, such as sidewalks, (b) spatial regions of these planes where crowds may enter and exit the scene, (c) static obstacles, such as mailboxes and walls of a building, and (d) dynamic obstacles such as individuals and groups of individuals. Second, pedestrians and groups of pedestrians should be segmented from the input video with no artifacts and minimal interaction time. This is challenging in real world scenes due to significant appearance changes while traveling through the scene. Third, segmented pedestrian videos may not have enough frames or the right shape to compose a path from an artist-defined entrance to exit. Plausible temporal transitions between segmented pedestrians are therefore needed but they are difficult to identify and synthesize due to complex self occlusions. We present a novel algorithm for composing video billboards, represented by crowd tubes, to form a crowd while avoiding collisions between static and dynamic obstacles. Crowd tubes are represented in the scene using a temporal sequence of circles planted in the calibrated ground plane. The approach consists of representing crowd tube samples and constraint violations with a conflict graph. The maximal independent set yields a dense crowd composition. We present a prototype system for the capture, analysis, synthesis and control of video-based crowds. Several results demonstrate the system's ability to generate videos of crowds which exhibit a variety of natural behaviors.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-249).

The ability to track articulated human motion in video sequences is essential for applications ranging from biometrics, virtual reality, human-computer interfaces and surveillance. The work presented in this thesis focuses on tracking and analysing human motion in terms of MPEG-4 Body Animation Parameters, in the context of a model-based coding scheme. Model-based coding has emerged as a potential technique for very low bit-rate video compression. This study emphasises motion reconstruction rather than photorealistic human body modelling, consequently a 3-D skeleton with 31 degrees-of-freedom was used to model the human body. Compression is achieved by analysing the input images in terms of the known 3-D model and extracting parameters that describe the relative pose of each segment. These parameters are transmitted to the decoder which synthesises the output by transforming the default model into the correct posture. The problem comprises two main aspects: 3-D human motion capture and pose description. The goal of the 3-D human motion capture component is to generate 3-D locations of key joints on the human body without the use of special markers or sensors placed on the subject. The input sequence is acquired by three synchronised and calibrated CCD cameras. Digital image matching techniques including cross-correlation and least squares matching are used to find spatial correspondences between the multiple views as well as temporal correspondences in subsequent frames with sub-pixel accuracy. The tracking algorithm automates the matching process examining each matching result and adaptively modifying matching parameters. Key points must be manually selected in the first frame, following which the tracking commences without the intervention of the user, employing the recovered 3-D motion of the skeleton model for prediction of future states. Epipolar geometry is exploited to verify spatial correspondences in each frame before the 3-D locations of all joints are computed through triangulation to construct the 3-D skeleton. The pose of the skeleton is described by the MPEG-4 Body Animation Parameters. The subject's motion is reconstructed by applying the animation parameters to a simplified version of the default MPEG-4 skeleton. The tracking algorithm may be adapted to 2-D tracking in monocular sequences. An example of 2-D tracking of facial expressions demonstrates the flexibility of the algorithm. Further results involving tracking separate body parts demonstrate the advantage of multiple views and the benefit of camera calibration, which simplifies the generation of 3-D trajectories and the estimation of epipolar geometry. The overall system is tested on a walking sequence where full body motion capture is performed and all 31 degrees-of freedom of the tracked model are extracted. Results show adequate motion reconstruction (i.e. convincing to most human observers), with slight deviations due to lack of knowledge of the volumetric property of the human body. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

Digital cinema has provoked a strong response over the last decade, not only from the movie-going public, but also from film theorists. It has re-opened basic theoretical questions about cinematic representations of and reference to reality. / This thesis begins with a critical review of the vast theoretical literature dealing with the digitization of the cinema. Most theorists have come to the conclusion that the cinema is dead because digitization has severed the ties between what we see on the screen and real life. At root, this conclusion is derived from a structuralist, nominalist position prevalent in contemporary film theory. / I argue, instead, that film theory needs to re-address the complex issue of the relationship between image and reality, rather than simply accepting the traditional view. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell's call for a more thorough consideration of realist traditions in film theory, the premise of which is an unquestioned relationship between representation and reality. / The complexity and subtlety of that relationship has been addressed most systematically and fruitfully by Charles Saunders Peirce. Indeed, many structuralist theorists have made reference to Peirce in response to the shortcomings of a semiologically inflected film theory. In the second step of my argument, however, I show that structuralist theory has produced misleading conclusions, since a Peircian semiotics is incommensurable with the structuralist position. In fact, this implicit conflict has led theorists to doubt the real in the digital cinema, rather than investigating the logically necessary continuity of reality and representation, regardless of its technological kind.

This project presents an overview of the entertainment industry's acceptance of women historically within its job market and a changing climate due, in part, to emerging digital technology. Findings suggest the female-disadvantage in procuring a behind-the camera job in the entertainment industry is on the decline. Also, the disparity between the number of women versus men working in this industry appears to be narrowing. New technology seems to be speeding up these processes, due largely in part to its relatively low cost and accessibility. An apparent shift in societal views of gender roles couples with this new technology to help level the career field between men and women in this new media age. This project also serves as a reference guide for individuals seeking to enter a career in the entertainment industry. / Department of Telecommunications

This thesis proposes the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative as a tool for theorising the creation and telling of cinematic stories in a digital environment. As such the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is designed to assist creators of new media narrative to design dramatically compelling screen based stories by drawing from established theories of cinema and emerging theories of new media. In doing so it validates the crucial element of cinematic storytelling in the digital medium, which due to its fragmentary, variable and re-combinatory nature, affords the opportunity for audience interaction. The Poetics of Mosaic Narrative re-asserts the dramatic and cinematic nature of narrative in new media by drawing upon the dramatic theory of Aristotle’s Poetics, the cinematic theories of the 1920s Russian Film Theorists and contemporary Neo-Formalists, the narrative theories of the 1960s French Structuralists, and the scriptwriting theories of contemporary cinema. In particular it focuses on the theory and practice of the prominent new media theorist, Lev Manovich, as a means of investigating and creating a practical poetics. The key element of the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is the expansion of the previously forgotten and undeveloped Russian Formalist concept of cinematurgy which is vital to the successful development of new media storytelling theory and practice. This concept, as originally proposed but not elaborated by Kazansky, encompasses the notion of the creation of cinematic new media narrative as a mosaic – integrally driven by the narrative systems of plot, as well as the cinematic systems of visual style created by the techniques of cinema- montage, cinematography and mise-en-scene.

Exegesis (MA--Art and Design) -- AUT University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (58 leaves : col. ill. ; 22 x 30 cm. + DVD) in City Campus Collection (T 776.6 SHE)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from file title page. Greg M. Smith, committee chair; Matthew Bernstein, Kathy Fuller-Seeley, Jack Boozer, Angelo Restivo, committee members. Electronic text (349 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 4, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 342-348).

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-150). Also available via the Internet.