Mean(csi)

Preamble

The original idea came from wanted to make an abstraction of an action movie. The pacing and intensity of movement would be the same but the image would not be photo-realalistic. Can an abstraction give the same sense of intensity as an action movie? I'm starting with CSI episodes are a smaller project to cut my teeth on.

Hypothesis

There is a common style of pacing in CSI episodes. If this hypothesis is supported then an abstraction of that which is common between episodes will inform a time-based composition. If the null hypothesis is supported then the pacing from a single episode will be used to inform a time-based composition.

Methods

• Initial Observations

• Early Results

• DataPlots

• Sonification

• Visualizations

• Software

Conclusion

Both autocorrelation and crosscorrelation yeilded some qualitatively interesting data. There does seem to be some periodic element to the CSI episodes in themselves, but it is unclear if those elements are shared. With the data I have I am only able to support the null hypothesis that there is no periodic element that is shared between episodes.

Future Work

On the qualitiative side there is lots of potencial for using the collecting pacing data to create interesting representations of the data. This will be the primary evolution of the project.

On the quantitiative side using ARIMA models and FFT should give a little more information of the nature of the pacing of the episodes and if there is any correlation accross episodes. At best I believe there is some grid of timing used in the editing of CSI episodes but these may actually be shared by other television programs. If I am able to find such a grid then I would compare that to other TV programs and a noise sample to make sure that grid is due to the CSI program, rather than than due to the DVD encoding process, or the video signal itself.