Projects
Scientific Filmmaking

Scientific Filmmaking

Overview

Community-Driven Film Production for Scientific Stimuli Creation
📅 Dec 2021 – May 2022
🏛️ University of Skövde, Sweden

Scientific research often requires high-quality yet ecologically valid stimuli for studying real-world behavior. Existing datasets are often limited by artificial settings or lack of interaction patterns. This project aimed to create naturalistic, multimodal, and scenario-based stimuli with controlled variations of interaction patterns while preserving narrative coherence. This community-driven initiative produced 27 film-like scenarios across 9 core story contexts, with each story enacted in 3 variations totaling 80+ minutes of naturalistic human interaction scenarios for experimental research.

Production Team

The project was coordinated by Vipul and involved 22 volunteers—including University of Skövde students, colleagues, and local residents—many with theater or production experience. Teams self-organized by expertise, covering roles like acting, writing, and directing to ensure balanced, skill-driven collaboration.

Filming Setup

  • 12 locations across University of Skövde campus and surrounding areas
  • Scene diversity: 1 night; 2 daytime outdoor; and 9 indoor scenes with controlled lighting

Creative Process

  • Script Design: Scripts were crafted to incorporate naturalistic interaction cues such as gaze, gestures, and speech. Each story was developed in three variations, enabling controlled manipulation of these cues.
  • Rehearsal Protocol: Cue variations were refined through iterative rehearsals with the team. Actors were allowed limited adaptive behavior as long as the core narrative remained intact.
  • Robot Integration: A Furhat robot was pre-programmed using its SDK for one Scene. A dedicated volunteer was assigned to trigger the robot’s responses live during filming.

Contributions

  • 27-scene stimulus set with controlled visuoauditory variations
  • Dataset features:
    • 9 core story contexts × 3 variations (80+ minutes runtime )
    • Categorized interaction cues (general + context-locked)

Impact & Collaborative Spirit

  • Enables research in Interaction dynamics (gaze patterns, speech acts, gestures), Social and joint attention mechanisms

  • Volunteers contributed pro bono as a community-driven filming initiative:

    • Managed all aspects: writing, direction, acting, and production
    • Enacted 31 distinct characters across different settings
    • Demonstrated how grassroots collaboration yields research-grade outputs

Project Outcomes

📚 See Dataset Publication
💾 Dataset Webpage

Collaboration Opportunities

Open to collaboration or discussion on stimuli, filming setup, or future directions. Happy to exchange ideas and explore new perspectives.