This paper presents a paradigm, called ShapeShifting TV, for the realisation of interactive TV narratives or, more generally, of interactive screen-media narratives. These are productions whose narrations respond on the fly (i.e. in real time) to interaction from active viewers. ShapeShifting TV refers to productions made mainly with prerecorded time-based material, in which variation is achieved by selecting and rearranging atomic elements of content (e.g. video clips) into individual narrations. The aimed quality of the productions (e.g. narrative continuity and aesthetics) is at least that of good traditional linear TV programmes.The artefact which determines the way individual stories unfold, called the narrative space, is authored and tested by experts before the delivery of the programme. However, the adaptation of narrations to input, at delivery time, is automatic. ShapeShifting TV is a generic paradigm; it is neither production nor genre specific. Furthermore, it is not confined to television; it is about screen media in general. ShapeShifting TV is founded on a computational language called Narrative Structure Language (NSL) and is accompanied by a comprehensive software system for authoring and delivery (which implements NSL). These were successfully employed to the creation of a number of ShapeShifting TV productions, which extended genres such as drama, documentary and news with interactivity. This paper defines the ShapeShifting TV paradigm, outlines NSL and the associated software, and presents two ShapeShifting TV productions.

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This paper introduces an evaluated approach to the automatic generation of video narratives from user generated content gathered in a shared repository. In the context of social events, end-users record video material with their personal cameras and upload the content to a common repository. Video narrative techniques, implemented using Narrative Structure Language (NSL) and ShapeShifting Media [Ursu, 2008a], are employed to automatically generate movies recounting the event. Such movies are personalized according to the preferences expressed by each individual end-user, for each individual viewing. This paper describes our prototype narrative system, MyVideos, deployed as a web application, and reports on its evaluation for one specific use case: assembling stories of a school concert by parents, relatives and friends. The evaluations carried out through focus groups, interviews and field trials, in the Netherlands and UK, provided validating results and further insights into this approach.

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