Live Cinema: Designing an Instrument for Cinema Editing as a Live Performance

Michael Lew

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

This paper describes the design of an expressive tangible interface for cinema editing as a live performance. A short survey of live video practices is provided. The Live Cinema instrument is a cross between a musical instrument and a film editing tool, tailored for improvisational control as well as performance presence. Design specifications for the instrument evolved based on several types of observations including: our own performances in which we used a prototype based on available tools; an analysis of performative aspects of contemporary DJ equipment; and an evaluation of organizational aspects of several generations of film editing tools. Our instrument presents the performer with a large canvas where projected images can be grabbed and moved around with both hands simultaneously; the performer also has access to two video drums featuring haptic display to manipulate the shots and cut between streams. The paper ends with a discussion of issues related to the tensions between narrative structure and hands-on control, live and recorded arts and the scoring of improvised films.

Citation

Michael Lew. 2004. Live Cinema: Designing an Instrument for Cinema Editing as a Live Performance. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1176631

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{Lew2004,
 abstract = {This paper describes the design of an expressive tangible interface for cinema editing as a live performance. A short survey of live video practices is provided. The Live Cinema instrument is a cross between a musical instrument and a film editing tool, tailored for improvisational control as well as performance presence. Design specifications for the instrument evolved based on several types of observations including: our own performances in which we used a prototype based on available tools; an analysis of performative aspects of contemporary DJ equipment; and an evaluation of organizational aspects of several generations of film editing tools. Our instrument presents the performer with a large canvas where projected images can be grabbed and moved around with both hands simultaneously; the performer also has access to two video drums featuring haptic display to manipulate the shots and cut between streams. The paper ends with a discussion of issues related to the tensions between narrative structure and hands-on control, live and recorded arts and the scoring of improvised films. },
 address = {Hamamatsu, Japan},
 author = {Lew, Michael},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1176631},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {live cinema, video controller, visual music, DJ, VJ, film editing, tactile interface, two-hand interaction, improvisation, performance, narrative structure.},
 pages = {144--149},
 title = {Live Cinema: Designing an Instrument for Cinema Editing as a Live Performance},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2004/nime2004_144.pdf},
 year = {2004}
}