Summer 2018

Jia Jun (“Sky”) Chai – Internship from La Rochelle, France, developed motion capture algorithms for movements of characters and cameras in virtual movie sets using the lab’s four-camera Optitrack system.

Alexandra Shope – Data Science student supported by School of Science and Math Summer Research Award.  Alexandra explored machine-learning algorithms including Hidden-Markov Models as applied to filmmaking.  She helped design and test hands-on learning activities that I used in teaching an Honors Summer Institute one-week course for area high school students.

Sarah Sayce – Computer Science Honors student assisted Alexandra in facilitating the Honors Summer Institute one-week course.

Summer 2017

Hosted SC Governor’s School student Yasmin Coker who explored using 3-D animation software to recreate a movie scene.

Hosted exchange internship student Romain Simon from Institute of Technology at University of La Rochelle, France. Romain researched and implemented Python and javascript code prototypes to perform various machine learning methods including clustering of virtual 3-D camera shots based on similarity metrics.

Summer 2016

Hosted Howard Hughes Medical Institute program student Zames Frasier from North Charleston High School. Zames participated in designing a virtual reality game.

Hosted SC Governor’s School student Brennora Cameron. Brennora participated in designing a virtual reality game.

Hosted exchange internship student Julien Triau from Institute of Technology at University of La Rochelle, France. Julien explored existing clustering algorithms to apply to virtual camera compositions and natural language texts.

Summer 2015

Hosted SC Governor’s School student Justin Smith. Justin conducted research to assemble a corpus of examples of critique and analysis of camera shots from film textbooks.

Hosted exchange internship student Jean Cellier from Institute of Technology at University of La Rochelle, France. Jean contributed to javascript coding for a Web-based film education program and explored use of K-Means clustering with an assist from Dr. Brent Munsell.

Spring-fall 2015

Served as outside mentor for Thomas Bennett of Academic Magnet High School. Thomas created a game based on Mars survival.

Summer 2014

Hosted SC Governor’s School student William Blanchett. William worked with a group of CofC undergraduates to help create animated scene content for a Web-based film education program. William is currently a CITA major and Department Ambassador.

Fall 2014-spring 2015

Served as outside mentor for Nancy Fang of Academic Magnet High School. Nancy created a Scratch game that featured different visual portrayals of protagonist by gender and conducted a survey to analyze player perceptions.