Gaze-guided viewing of interactive movies

The idea of gaze-interactive movies is illustrated by a simple example movie that unfolds nondeterministically via an analysis of the interest of the viewer measured by the interpreted input from an eye tracker. We demonstrate how the amount of relative attention paid to key subjects of narrative importance may guide the outcome of a narrative branching. An experiment was conducted to test the operation of gaze guided film. The experiment involved 11 subjects influencing a two-minute film clip by gaze in two scenarios. In the first case subjects were aware that gaze could be used to control the narrative, and in the second case the subjects were unaware of this control. The outcome was found to be quite uniform across subjects, and it was not influenced by repetitions or by knowledge about the control option. Comments from the aware users indicated that they were looking for confirmation of gaze selections from the system. Thus, non-intrusive feedback seems to be fundamental for a successful gaze-interactive media. We suggest a range of discrete audio and visual effects that may serve this purpose and present some narrative control principles.