Enhancing believability using affective cinematography

Abstract

This paper presents a system that implements affective camera control based on cinematographic idioms in a virtual world. The purpose of the system is to enhance and clarify emotions and relations between characters by focusing on socially and emotionally important aspects of a setting. Idioms are implemented as state machines that encode information about camera position, lighting and other cinematographic aspects. Cinematography is seen as a believability enhancing technique in itself but can also solve problems related to simultaneously showing multiple characters on a small screen.