Insight: An annotation tool and format for film analysis

International audienceA multitude of annotation tools and annotation formatsfor the analysis of audiovisual documents are availableand address a wide range of tasks (see Elan [SW08] andAnvil [Kip10]). Existing approaches however remain restrictedin the visual elements they can annotate on thescreen: for example annotating on-screen arrangements ofcharacters so as to evaluate continuity editing over shots isproblematic with most annotation tools and languages. Itwould indeed be beneficial to have an annotation tool dedicatedto filmic studies with a format that would be able tonot only provide insight in analytical approaches, but alsoto support generative approaches, such as reproducing framingsand shot sequences in 3D environments from annotatedexamples of real movies (in a way similar to [RGB13] yetwith a more precise annotations). In this paper, we proposean annotation language broadly suited to analytical and generativecinematography systems. The language observes theaxes of timing, spatial composition, hierarchical film structure,and link to contextual elements in the film