AUTEUR : the application of video semantics and theme representation for automated film editing

This thesis represents a planner based approach to the application of video semantics and theme representation to the automated editing of visual stories at the level of events. The research draws on film theory (in order to define methods to perform automated editing, to model the fundamental units of the image and the conceptual relationships between image, shot and sequence); on narrative and humour theory (to attempt to automatically generate emotion provoking and credible film narrative); and on Artificial Intelligence (planning, story generation, and knowledge representation). The aim of the research is to define techniques to automatically assemble video sequences that realise a given theme, ultimately to be used to assist in the presentation or interpretation of video. This thesis introduces representational structures for the semantic, temporal and relational features of video; representations and strategies to support automated editing, in combination with a simplified model of the film editing process; and representations for narrative structures such as actions, events, and emotional codes. These representations and strategies form the basis of an intelligent prototype system, AUTEUR, which generates humorous, non-verbal video sequences. AUTEUR is also described in this thesis. Für meine Rasselbande Annika, Merlin und Nuredin