Master of Science, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, August 1998.

Current digital tools for cinema have been cast in the same mold as their analog equivalents. The computational medium promises more: to expand expression beyond the physical edge of the film frame.

In traditional film, the camera constrains how light falls onto the film, but not how you tell a story. In the computer, if authors rely on tools built by others, the tool builder determines the vocabulary that authors use to tell their stories. However, if authors build their own tools, they access the entire vocabulary of expression that the computational medium provides.

This thesis presents ActiveStories -- interactive stories that express the author's intention in computational forms. The stories illustrate novel, dynamic representations of narrative and author's intention. ActiveStories puts viewers into the story, giving them dynamic, interactive control over the content, while the author's intention is expressed in the process of watching.

Get the entire thesis in PDF form (5.3 MB).