Small or medium-scale focused research project (STREP) proposal
ICT Call 3
FP7-ICT-2007-3
Authoring and Directing Real-time InterActive New-media

ADRIAN

Small or medium scale focused research project (STREP)
Date of preparation: 30 march 2008
Version number (optional): 01

Work programme topic addressed 
(if more than one, indicate their order of importance to the project. The main (first) objective must be one included in this call)
(a) Advanced Authoring 

Name of the coordinating person: Vincenzo Lombardo
e-mail: vincenzo@vrmmp.it
fax: 011-5697239

Participant no. *	Participant organisation name	Part. short name	Country	
1 (Coordinator)	Virtual Reality & Multi Media Park	VRMMP	Italy	
2	Università di Torino	UniTO	Italy	
3				
4				
5				
3				

*Please use the same participant numbering as that used in Proposal submission forms A2

Proposal abstract [max 2000 characters, now 2765 characters]
(copied from Part A, if not in English include an English translation)

The combination of new media (intended in the loose sense of being computer-based) and storytelling (one of the major means for conveying information and raise emotions) has imposed a serious thinking about the narrative enterprise today. Especially, the major innovation brought about by new media, namely interactivity with the user, conflict with the authorial control over story advancement. 
To this day, there are no success cases of interactive storytelling over the general audiences, if we exclude the case of videogames, where narration is poor and superficial because of the paradigm orientation to real-time simulation of user live-action (it is said that videogames treat “plot as a mere pretext for the exercise of physical skills, problem-solving ability, and for the adrenaline rush of competitive action”). 
The models proposed in the scientific literature and in previous projects for supporting storytelling authoring are mostly plot-based; formal models and architectures are derived from computer science practice for information flow and organization, and are hardly applicable to authors’ practice, traditionally based upon values that characters in the story put at stake or emotionally engaging situations enacted by characters. 
The method pursued by the ADRIAN project is to provide a character-centred perspective on the storytelling process, i.e. along a dimension that is orthogonal to the plot and that can be effectively supported by the technical developments in the fields of intelligent agents and semantic annotation. 
Within the story, plot development occurs through changes in characters, brought about by their participation in the incidents of a scene.  The result of the interaction among characters as well as with the user within a scene is a change in some aspects of the characters.  This is dependent on the state of the character when s/he enters the scene as well as on the other characters present in the scene. So, though we believe that the authoring support along the plot dimension is desirable, we claim that it is premature to provide authors with diagrammatic structures they are not familiar with and we aim at providing a support based on a semi-formal model oriented to characters’ behaviours and changes within a story. 
In order to achieve this, we will determine a number of basic character traits; these traits will be conceived by taking into account the requirement of the narrative advancements, such as the level of determination or closeness to reaching her/his goal; then we develop an appropriate level of complexity description language and reasoning framework.  These will be used in authoring tools for managing the complexity of potential encounters of characters in a scene.  The system will be able to reason about potential behaviours of each character, based on the current traits and suggest possible next steps for story advancement.
The approach and authoring environment will be developed closely in conjunction with and evaluated in the facilities of the production partners. The solutions provided by the environment will support authors in finding credible story advancements though the user’s interventions through interactivity. 
ADRIAN will provide high-level authoring support for cross-platform, storytelling-based media productions.  It will support linear and interactive narratives on different platforms, such as games, TV programs and web sites.  

[Abstract from Lynda]
ADRIAN will provide high-level authoring support for cross-platform, storytelling-based media productions.  It will support linear and interactive narratives on different platforms, such as games, TV programs and web sites.  The approach differs from existing plot-based approaches by providing a character-centred perspective on the storytelling process.

Within the story, plot development occurs through changes in characters, brought about by their participation in incidents involving one or more characters in a scene.  The result of the interaction among characters within a scene is a change in some aspect of the characters.  This is dependent on the state of the character when s/he enters the scene as well as on the other characters present in the scene.  This is in turn dependent on which scenes each character has already encountered.

The character-centred approach supports a richer, more believable experience, where a character does more than follow a pre-set plot. Instead, characters behave and change in different ways depending on the order in which scenes are encountered. 

In order to achieve this, we will determine a number of basic character traits, such as the level of determination or closeness to reaching her/his goal, and develop an appropriate level of complexity description language and reasoning framework. These will be used in authoring tools for managing the complexity of potential encounters of characters in a scene.  The system will be able to reason about potential behaviours of each character, based on the current traits and suggest possible next steps for story advancement.

The approach and authoring environment will be developed closely in conjunction with and evaluated in the facilities of the production partners.

Table of contents

Section 1: Scientific and/or technical quality, relevant to the topics addressed by the call 
(Recommended length for the whole of Section 1 – twenty pages not including the Gantt chart, Pert diagram or tables 1.3a-e)

1.1	Concept and objectives [8/10 pages, now 5]
Explain the concept of your project. What are the main ideas that led you to propose this work?
Describe in detail the S&T objectives. Show how they relate to the topics addressed by the call, which you should explicitly identify. The objectives should be those achievable within the project, not through subsequent development. They should be stated in a measurable and verifiable form, including through the milestones that will be indicated under section 1.3 below.

[Explain the concept of your project.]

The ADRIAN project is about providing high-level support for storytelling-based media production. The goal is to implement a software tool that can support authors in the storytelling process by assuming a character-centred perspective. Characters are the “flesh and blood” of a story (compare it with the abstractness of the plot diagram): it is characters’ emotional state that goes unbalanced at the beginning a story, it is characters’ values that are put at stake for making the story proceed, it is characters who make a story advance through their behaviour within the local situations during the story development. The authoring support tools will be built upon a model of the characters’ traits that are of interest in the narrative realm and will implement a reasoning framework over such traits for suggesting the author characters’ behaviours that are plausible for the state of affairs in a scene. In order to make the tool friendly for the author, it will be equipped with a graphical interface, based on feature selection, that the author can use to build characters from a basic set of traits. 
ADRIAN departs from previous plot-driven approaches to the support of storytelling by providing a character-centred perspective that is more in the author’s concerns. This perspective is common to both traditional and interactive storytelling, and allows the sharing of characters’ notions at a conceptual as well as the implementation level. The ADRIAN project approach is not to try to be comprehensive in the support to the storytelling process, but to only address the character part of the whole, leaving plot, events, time, and space for further work. 

[What are the main ideas that led you to propose this work?]

The interest for a tool such as the one proposed in the ADRIAN project raises from two considerations: the first is that there is a general growing interest for storytelling-based media and several attempts to produce linear and interactive stories for the digital media, so there is a need for supporting authors in conceiving believable stories; the second is that the models proposed to support the creation of stories in digital media, which include interactivity, seems to rely more upon abstract schemata derived from the computer science practice than the storytelling author’s practice. We address these two issues in the next sections. 

Growing interest for storytelling-based media

Interactive storytelling- (or drama-, narrative-) based media (Esslin 1987), which involve characters performing live actions according to some plot, are becoming increasingly more pervasive. Examples include widely distributed media products, such as role-playing games (referring to Dungeons and Dragons paradigm, 1974) and virtual assistants’ adaptive presentations (e.g., Carletto the spider (Damiano et al. 2006, in press)), as well as experimental projects, such as interactive fictional TV series (e.g., Accidental Lovers from Finnish TV within NM2 project), cinema movies used as an interface (e.g., Late fragments from National Film Board of Canada), and interactive drama (e.g., Façade (Mateas, Stern 2003), http://www.interactivestory.net). 
All these projects refer to very different products, though the storytelling enterprise can be much wider. (Ryan 2006) classifies four types of approaches to digital narrative. The practical approach accounts for keeping and disseminating personal stories (stories from people’s lives) not controlled by a professional author; its typical usage is for preservation of cultural memories or for education purposes. The metaphorical approach seeks inspiration from narrative concepts to develop computer applications that aim at producing an engaging communication with the users through the use of a narrative interface; these are typically simplistic narrative scenarios that are useful for presenting some non familiar environment to novices. In these two approaches the requirements to the storytelling part are not compelling, and standard software environments are enough to cope with the development issues. The expansionist approach challenges the traditional categories set up since Aristotle of stories in a fixed sequence, with a definite beginning and ending and a strong unity of action through a plot, a characterization, and a setting, by considering narrative mutable under the influences from culture, epoch and technological innovations. This approach would typically accommodate interactivity into linear plot, though it is hard to accept stories with iteration, fuzzy logic control and open structures; in these cases we have an avant-garde form of writing practice that seems far from storytelling. Finally, the traditionalist approach pursues a more difficult goal of “fulfilling the relatively rigid demands of narrative form and meaning” (Ryan 2006, p. xvii). The examples mentioned above are only a few examples of the traditionalist approach, with scholars and developers perfectly aware that current results cannot compete with the productivity of traditional media, such as film, drama or literature. Here the Aristotelian poetics holds to a great extent, with authors that try to deal with interactivity within the limits offered by the plot. In Accidental lovers the control offered to the audience is to suggest possible evolutions of the story in a TV series where the protagonists are two odd lovers (a very young guy and an old woman); Carletto the spider, is a dramatic guide that organizes a monologue about a historical site according to a structure that is built in real time following the motion of the visitors; Late fragments is an interactive film with three independent storylines on three different characters, and the viewer can click anywhere on the screen to jump across storylines or to focus on a specific storyline of interest; Façade is a  interactive drama where the spectator is a character participating in a drama with other two characters through a natural language and limited gestural interface, with a plot that forces the two controlled characters to behave in ways that lead to an end. 
Another particularly active area is the storytelling that “emerges” from the development of “believable” characters in AI research [REFs]: this type of storytelling is called “emergent” because the algorithms and knowledge representation at the base of the characters 

Support to the creation of stories

[Paradigms of traditional storytelling]
Syd Field
Robert Mc Kee 
Linda Seger
Christopher Vogler 
Dramatica theory and software

Characters and plot are the two orthogonal dimensions along which the storytelling process, be it linear or interactive, develops. Many approaches, such as the ones developed in the previously funded projects InScape and NM2, are mostly plot-driven. 

[Previous projects approaches]
The NM2 project (http://www.ist-nm2.org), has provided a first systematization of new storytelling forms along interactivity issues and production methods axes; the InScape project (http://www.inscapers.com) has defined a process method and a monolithic software tool that encompasses the overall production process of interactive stories through a story planner and editor, a stage editor, and a library of objects to be inserted into the stage, also including script programming capabilities. … EXPAND … 

Conclusions on the project context

The idea is that in the digital media context it is hard to manage storytelling through a strong authorial control of the plot, as in the case of traditional storytelling. The models that have been proposed provide plot architectures that refer to computer science practice and are not suitable for the working methods that are typical of authors. Authors look for situations or characters that can emotionally engage the audience, rather than abstract plot structures that provide a neat and comprehensive organization of the story material. Also, the control of the plot seems too a hard problem to solve for the generic interactive context of new media: the reason seems to lie in the limited models of the users’ cognitive capabilities that we own at the current stage of development. The result is that we cannot profitably take into account the interactive aspects of a story and develop plot structures that can effectively incorporate the interactive component under a strict authorial control of the story development. 

So, the major idea behind the ADRIAN project is to go back to the principal components of the story that authors have in mind when they conceive a story and try to model those components to provide automatic support to authors. Characters represent a suitable departure point from plot-based approaches. Characters are entities that authors deal with and at the same time have received a formal treatment through a number of AI-based approaches to emergent narrative. Characters, with their decisions and actions, which must be believable with respect to what we know from the story up to some point, make the story advances. They have been extensively studied with the goal of producing a proper in some virtual environment [REFs], with the story that possibly emerges from the combination of a few characters’ behaviours. However, they have never been exploited in the perspective of providing support to authors. 

The approach pursued in the ADRIAN project is to model the characters as structured sets of basic traits and   through a modelling of the characters participating in a scene and an automatic engine that can generate the characters

[Describe in detail the S&T objectives.]
[They should be stated in a measurable and verifiable form, including through the milestones that will be indicated under section 1.3 below.]

[Goals and method]
The ADRIAN project departs from these approaches by providing a character-centred perspective on the storytelling process. Characters are pervasive to the authoring practice, which usually posits the creation of characters at an earlier stage with respect to the plot. Centring the project on the character perspective allows to bridging traditional and interactive storytelling forms, and regaining most of the insights provided by traditional scriptwriting and authorial practices (encoded in a number of paradigms [REFs]). The characters’ perspective is exportable across genres and media, while plot/structure, as revealed by the above mentioned projects, is very dependent on specific media products. Characters are the engines that make the story advance through their actions; such actions must be compliant with credible decisions with respect to the character personality and constrained to the plot lines defined by the author; finally, the combination of several characters’ actions have to be coordinated in an individual story. 
Different story paradigms describe characters according to different types of descriptive traits: 
•	change or stability, 
•	role type, ranging from Main Character (Field), Protagonist (McKee) and Hero (Vogler) - which always play the principal part - to Impact Character (Dramatica) - that drives the audience’s alternative reception of the story –, Antagonist (McKee) - that engages in a conflict with the Protagonist -, …,
•	values at stake, for creating unbalanced situations that need to be solved, 
•	intentionality, for moving the course of events through the connections between characters’ motivations and actions,
•	“transformation” (Seger) in characters’ attitudes and emotions, 
•	…
The goal of the ADRIAN project is to support authors in the creation and deployment of characters in the storytelling process: the project will implement a tool that supports the author in the definition of characters according to a number of basic traits, is able to automate reasoning about character traits and simulating character behaviour, and suggests possible solutions to story advancement, with an empirical validation through a few pilot productions.

[Show how they relate to the topics addressed by the call, which you should explicitly identify.]
Topic advanced by the call: (a) Advanced Authoring
explore new forms of content, provide enhanced experience
support creative process & experimentation
more interactive, expressive & perceptual content borrowing from:
game technology, virtual environments
computer animation, visualisation, simulation
non-linear narratives, interactive storytelling …
generate metadata as new content is created/captured; 
find reference & inspirational material, remix, share ...
… for professional or personal use

[Authors’ concern]
The specific problem addressed by ADRIAN is the effective support to the author’s task of devising a credible behaviour for a character in a story fragment. 
Traditionally authors split the plot of the story into units at different levels of abstraction (in film and theatre they are usually called acts, sequences and scenes, in decreasing abstraction order). The ADRIAN project focuses on the scene level, i.e. the minimal units that realize a story advancement. For each scene, in fact, the author wants to achieve some dramatic goal, and the characters who take part in the scene must behave in a credible way so that the goal is achieved. Let us consider, e.g., two characters. Dusk is the determinate chief of a partisan commando and has the goal of accomplishing a mission at any cost; Echo is his noble assistant and lets his humanity prevails over mission accomplishment. We can depict two scenarios.
1.	The author states the initial conditions of a scene. Then the system elaborates one step of reasoning starting from the values at stake defined for the characters and proposes to the author some character behaviour. The author selects one of the possible behaviours or gets inspiration from the proposals to yield the actual behaviour for some character. For example, in the case above, the system can propose an event that challenge the mission accomplishment for Dusk and Dusk shows a resolute attitude towards the accomplishment of the mission; Echo must look for some action that lets him prove his generosity towards the human kind that will lead him to abandon (at least temporarily) the mission.
2.	The author states the goal of the scene. Then the system elaborates proper characters’ behaviours that lead to the accomplishment of the goal. For example, in the story above, the author wants the commando to split and leave the assistant Echo apart. The system simulates possible characters behaviours that lead to the split of the commando; the development of the characters behaviours is now constrained by the final result of the scene. The system proposes an event that is compatible for Echo to show his generosity and Dusk to resist in his determination to accomplish the mission. For example, the two discover that in a farm house one civilian is held and tortured by the soldiers; Echo decides to stop over to free the civilian, while Dusk is resolute to accomplish the mission; this leads to the splitting of the commando. So, the author selects one solution among the solutions that are consistent with the definition of characters and the situation at hand in order to make the story advance convincingly toward the dramatic goal he has devised for the scene. 
In the first scenario, we have a lookahead strategy over possible actions that characters can undertake in some contextual conditions set by the author. This situation is typical of the first act in the Hollywood film industry when the author usually presents the characters and sets the stage for the audience to understand the incidents and the climax of the second act. Here we are exploiting the knowledge over the basic traits of the characters (a sort of meta-model). In the second scenario, we have a double constraint on the initial and the final conditions of a scene; so, the actions deliberated by the characters must be compliant with the frame conditions. 
These proposals over characters behaviours can be addressed via a few methods devised in the AI tradition, which have already been employed to some extent in the interactive storytelling research [REF]. The specific concern is for the deliberative components having reference to planning and execution of actions driven by their motivations and goals (Beliefs, Desires and Intentions in the BDI paradigm [Bratman-etal 1987, Rao and Georgeff 1991], logic representations of norms and social rules [Sguros], and personal goals and relations [Gratch 200?], behavioural strategies connected to characters’ emotional response [REF Cavazza]. Usually, such approaches have been geared to the control of characters in the implementation of a “weak” emergent narrative, i.e. a narrative not strictly controlled by an author, but that relies on the characters’ autonomous behaviour for a number of decisions (Mateas and Stern 2003; Cavazza et al. 2007; Aylett et al. 2007). 
The working hypothesis of the ADRIAN project is that it is possible to fill a gap between the author’s work on characters and the automatic control of characters’ behaviours by realizing a tool that supports the author in finding solutions to the story advancement. There are a number of possible scenarios concerning the authors’ work.
•	Abstracting from the example above, the system can provide automatic generation of characters’ behaviours for the author to evaluate the compliance of such behaviours with the goals of the scene or to find inspiration for the story advancement. The system can investigate a limited look ahead over the possibilities offered by a certain state of affairs (otherwise the generation process becomes intractable) and the author can choose, possibly modifying, some solution (system propose mode) or validate authorial solutions with respect to a limited number of characters traits (system dispose mode). 
•	The author can investigate the consequences of adopting a certain cast in a scene: in this case, the author may realize that the way characters are defined is not compatible with certain advancements of the story; for example, this could be the case if the description of the characters is not likely to generate a conflict among them (as posited by McKee [REF]);
•	The system can establish relationships of characters’ decisions onto a high-level description of the plot: in this case the author may specify situation constraints at both a scene, i.e. local, level and a story, i.e. global, level and the system may avoid solutions that prevent some further development; for example, the system may discover that, given a solution, the consequence is that the character comes to possess some information at a very early time, then preventing other developments later. 

[Milestones for verifying the advancement of the project]

Month 6: Survey of the operative techniques existing in the traditional approach to storytelling in digital media for representing characters and simulating their behaviour … A public deliverable with tests over a sample case … 

Month 15: Character's model
…
Month 24: Engine prototype
…
Month 30: Pilot productions
…
Month 36: Final report
…

References
Aarseth, Espen J., Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature, Baltimore, Md. London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Crawford, Chris, Chris Crawford on interactive storytelling, Berkeley, Calif., New Riders Games, 2005. 
ESSLYN 1987 ???
Field, S. (Writer). (1999). Syd Field's Screenwriting Workshop [VHS]. Calabasas, CA: Final Draft Inc.
Field, Syd, The definitive guide to screen writing, London, Ebury Press, 2003.
Glassner, Andrew S.. Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction, AK Peters, 2004.
Hauge, M., & Vogler, C. (Writers), & Mefford, J. (Director). (2003). The Hero's 2 Journeys: Insider Secrets for Uniting the Outer Journey of Plot Structure with the Inner Journey of Character Arc [DVD]. New York: ScreenStyle.com.
Huntley, C. N., & Phillips, M. A. (2004). Dramatica: A New Theory Of Story, Special 10th Anniversary Edition. Glendale, CA: Write Brothers, Inc.
Keir Elam, The Semiotic of Theatre and Drama, London and New York, Methuen, 1980
Laurel, Brenda, Computer as Theatre, Reading MA, Addison Wesley Longman, 1993.
Lavandier, Yves,  La dramaturgie, Cergy: Le clown et l'enfant, 1994.
McKee, R. (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting. New York: HarperCollins.
Miller, Carolyn Handler, Digital storytelling: a creator's guide to interactive entertainment, (Amsterdam, London, Focal Press, 2004. 
Murray, Janet, Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1997.
Polti, Georges, The thirty-six dramatic situations, Boston, The Writer Inc., 1954.
Ryan, Marie-Laure, (edited), Narrative across media: the languages of storytelling, Lincoln, Neb.; London, University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
Ryan, Marie-Laure, Avatars of story, Minneapolis, Minn., University of Minnesota Press, Bristol, University Presses Marketing , 2006.
Seger. L. (1984). Making a Good Script Great. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.
Seger, L. (1990). Creating Unforgettable Characters. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Seger, L. (2003). Advanced Screenwriting: Raising your Script to the Academy Award Level.  Beverly Hills: Silman-James Press
Tierno, Michael, Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters, New York, Hyperion, 2002.
Truby, J. (Writer). (1990). Truby's Story Structure & Advanced Screenwriting [Lecture Workshop]. Santa Monica, CA: Truby's Writers Studio.
Vogler, C. (1998). The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, 2nd Edition. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.
Wardrip Fruin N., Harrigan P., editors,  Second person: role-playing and story in games and playable media, Cambridge, Mass., London, MIT, 2007.

1.2	Progress beyond the state-of-the-art [4/5 pages, now 1]
Describe the state-of-the-art in the area concerned, and the advance that the proposed project would bring about. If applicable, refer to the results of any patent search you might have carried out.

Storytelling authoring has a long-standing literature in linear narrative and a challenging debate with respect to new media developments. There have been several advancements in the recent years in the areas related to the project. In the following paragraphs we address each area by describing the state of the art as well as the possible advancements brought about by this project. 
[For each section, say how the project will progress with respect to current state of the art]

Plot-driven approaches in Interactive storytelling
Results of previous European projects [NM2 and InScape, others?] 
Interactive storytelling ERASMATRON (Crawford) 

Story paradigms and tools for linear screenplay writing
There exist a number of story paradigms [REFs] that feature differences with respect to character description. 

The linear screenplay writing phase is supported by commercial tools, such as Final Draft (http://www.finaldraft.com/), which helps organizing the material according to audiovisual industry requirements, or Dramatica Pro (http://www.dramatica.com/), which assists the author in creating characters and story plots. Dramatica Pro is also a theory, not only a software tool. 

AI research in plot-driven approaches 
In AI research, the support to writing is mostly confined to the design of the plot, with a particular concern for branching plots, needed to realize interactive systems. The Zocalo framework by the Liquid Narrative Group at the NCSU is based on a technique, called narrative mediation (Saretto-etal 2003), that allows the author to devise a branching plot by accounting for the traceability of the characters' intentions by the audience, in line with the requirements of expressivity posed by Senger (1999). Repositories of abstract plots, based on narratology and semiotics, have been proposed as a tool for helping both human authors and artificial systems  to create effective stories (Theune-etal 2004, Hartmann-etal 2005).

AI on character modelling 
Concerning purely character-based approaches, the dominant paradigm delivered to authors is given by the BDI model of agency, normally augmented with a model of emotions, such as the cognitive theory by Ortony, Clore and Collins. For example, the system described by Aylett (2007) incorporates an agent model, integrated with an affective component specifically aimed at modeling empathy. In the Virtual Storyteller system, the OCC model of emotion is integrated in the deliberative component of the agents, affecting their inclination to goals.
A non BDI-based, yet action-based definition of the characters can be found in Façade, in which the authoring consists mainly in writing complex joint plan that encompass the role of the characters and the user.  The SOAR ognitive architecture has also been exploited to build character-based interactive systems, requiring the author to describe the virtual character in terms of rules that encode the way it reasons and acts.

1.3	S/T methodology and associated work plan [5/7 pages, now 1]
A detailed work plan should be presented, broken down into work packages (WPs) which should follow the logical phases of the implementation of the project, and include consortium management and assessment of progress and results. (Please note that your overall approach to management will be described later, in section 2).

Please present your plans as follows:
i)	Describe the overall strategy of the work plan (Maximum length – one page)
ii)	Show the timing of the different WPs and their components (Gantt chart or similar). 
iii)	Provide a detailed work description broken down into work packages:
•	Work package list (please use table 1.3a);
•	Deliverables list (please use table 1.3b);
•	List of milestones (please use table 1.3c)
•	Description of each work package (please use table 1.3d)
•	Summary effort table (1.3e)
iv)	Provide a graphical presentation of the components showing their interdependencies (Pert diagram or similar)
v)	Describe any significant risks, and associated contingency plans

Note: The number of work packages used must be appropriate to the complexity of the work and the overall value of the proposed project. The planning should be sufficiently detailed to justify the proposed effort and allow progress monitoring by the Commission.

Overall strategy of the work plan [Torino] (1 page) 

The work plan of the project will proceed from the analysis 

In the first six months of the project all the partners will split the survey work on the current approaches to storytelling authoring in both the linear and the interactive cases. The work will be carried out by the research institutions with contributions from the production companies 

Work packages (5 pages, now 0)

•	WP0: Management [VRMMP]
•	WP1: Survey of existing approaches to authors’ methods for characters’ descriptions and biographies and software methods in new media productions [TEESSIDE]
o	T1.1 [CIRMA]: Analysis of a corpus of pre-production material from audiovisual and multimedia industry 
o	T1.2 [TEESSIDE]: Analysis of software approaches storytelling production 
o	T1.3 [CWI]: Identification of features and creation of an ontology for the description of the several approaches 
•	WP2: Devise of the model of characters’ traits in relation to narrative situations (values at stake, beliefs, emotional states) [CIRMA]
o	T2.1: [CIRMA] Complementing the empirically created ontology with literary studies 
o	T2.2: [BBC] Analysis of the user requirements from authors
o	T2.2: [TEESSIDE] Design of the character’s model [TEESSIDE]
o	T2.3 [CIRMA]: Applying model to a selected test set of narrative situations 
•	WP3. Design and implementation of engine [VRMMP]
o	Build a prototype (small case system) for method assessment and interface for characters’ definition (input: characters’ traits ontology) 
o	Define a software architecture for representation multiple characters’ behaviours 
o	Semantic analysis and simulation engines 
o	System interface to existing media production systems (e.g. visualizing system) 
o	Feedback on early versions of the system (for refinement purposes)
•	WP4. Pilot productions [VRMMP]
o	4.1 [SUBMARINE] Description of the production activity that is consistent with the project goal and that can 
o	4.2
•	WP5. Dissemination [VRMMP]
•	WP6. Exploitation [SUBMARINE OR BBC]

Table 1.3 a:	Template -  Work package list

Work package list 

Work package
No	Work package title	Type of activity	Lead 
partic
no.	Lead partic. short name	Person-months	Start
month	End
month5	

								

								

								
								
	TOTAL							

Table 1.3 b:	Template -  Deliverables List

List of Deliverables

Del. no. 	Deliverable name	WP no.	Nature	Dissemi-nation 
level
	Delivery date
(proj.
month)	

						

Table 1.3c Template - List of milestones 

Milestones
Milestones are control points where decisions are needed with regard to the next stage of the project. For example, a milestone may occur when a major result has been achieved, if its successful attainment is a required for the next phase of work. Another example would be a point when the consortium must decide which of several technologies to adopt for further development. 

Milestone number	Milestone name	Work package(s) involved	Expected date 	Means of verification	

					

Table 1.3 d:	Template - Work package description 

Work package description 

Work package number 		Start date or starting event:		
Work package title		
Activity type		
Participant number								
Participant short name								
Person-months per participant								

Objectives 

Description of work (possibly broken down into tasks) and role of partners

Deliverables (brief description) and month of delivery

	

Table 1.3e 	Summary of effort

Summary of effort
A summary of the effort is useful for the evaluators. Please indicate in the table number of person months over the whole duration of the planned work, for each work package by each participant. Identify the work-package leader for each WP by showing the relevant person-month figure in bold.

Partic. no.	Partic. short name	WP1	WP2	WP3	…	Total person months	
1							
2							
3							
etc							
Total							

PERT DIAGRAM 

Section 2.	Implementation [TORINO]
(Recommended length for Section 2.1 - five pages)

2.1	Management structure and procedures
Describe the organisational structure and decision-making mechanisms of the project. Show how they are matched to the complexity and scale of the project.

2.2	Individual participants 
(Maximum length for Section 2.2: one page per participant. However, where two or more departments within an organisation have quite distinct roles within the proposal, one page per department is acceptable.
The maximum length applying to a legal entity composed of several members, each of which is a separate legal entity, is one page per member, provided that the members have quite distinct roles within the proposal.)

For each participant in the proposed project, provide a brief description of the legal entity, the main tasks they have been attributed, and the previous experience relevant to those tasks. Provide also a short profile of the individuals who will be undertaking the work.

[1 page per partner]

BBC 

CIRMA – UNIVERSITY OF TORINO

CWI 

SUBMARINE 

UNIVERSITY OF TEESSIDE

VRMMP

2.3	Consortium as a whole [TORINO]
(No recommended length for Section 2.3 – depends on the size and complexity of the consortium)

Describe how the participants collectively constitute a consortium capable of achieving the project objectives, and how they are suited and are committed to the tasks assigned to them. Show the complementarity between participants. Explain how the composition of the consortium is well-balanced in relation to the objectives of the project.
If appropriate describe the industrial/commercial involvement to ensure exploitation of the results. 

i) Sub-contracting: If any part of the work is to be sub-contracted by the participant responsible for it, describe the work involved and explain why a sub-contract approach has been chosen for it.
ii) Other countries: If a one or more of the participants requesting EU funding is based outside of the EU Member states, Associated countries and the list of International Cooperation Partner Countries, explain in terms of the project’s objectives why such funding would be essential.

The consortium of the ADRIAN project consists of research institutions (CIRMA-University of Torino, CWI-Amsterdam, University of Teesside), two applied research centres (… 

The model of the character’s traits will be developed by the research institutions … these will also 

Software integration

2.4	Resources to be committed [TORINO]
(Recommended length for Section 2.4 – two pages)

Describe how the totality of the necessary resources will be mobilised, including any resources that will complement the EC contribution. Show how the resources will be integrated in a coherent way, and show how the overall financial plan for the project is adequate.

In addition to the costs indicated on form A3 of the proposal, and the effort shown in section 1.3 above, please identify any other major costs (e.g. equipment). Ensure that the figures stated in Part B are consistent with these.

Section 3.	Impact
(Recommended length for the whole of Section 3 – ten pages)

3.1	Expected impacts listed in the work programme
Describe how your project will contribute towards the expected impacts listed in the work programme in relation to the topic or topics in question. Mention the steps that will be needed to bring about these impacts. Explain why this contribution requires a European (rather than a national or local) approach. Indicate how account is taken of other national or international research activities. Mention any assumptions and external factors that may determine whether the impacts will be achieved.

3.2	Dissemination and/or exploitation of project results, and management of intellectual property
Describe the measures you propose for the dissemination and/or exploitation of project results, and the management of knowledge, of intellectual property, and of other innovation-related activities arising from the project.

Section 4.	Ethical Issues
(No recommended length for Section 4 – depends on the number and complexity of the ethical issues involved)

Describe any ethical issues that may arise in their proposal. In particular, you should explain the benefit and burden of their experiments and the effects it may have on the research subject. The following special issues should be taken into account:

Informed consent: When describing issues relating to informed consent, it will be necessary to illustrate an appropriate level of ethical sensitivity, and consider issues of insurance, incidental findings and the consequences of leaving the study.

Data protection issues: Avoid the unnecessary collection and use of personal data.  Identify the source of the data, describing whether it is collected as part of the research or is previously collected data being used.  Consider issues of informed consent for any data being used.  Describe how personal identify of the data is protected.

Use of animals: Where animals are used in research the application of the 3Rs (Replace, Reduce, Refine) must be convincingly addressed.  Numbers of animals should be specified.  State what happens to the animals after the research experiments.

Human embryonic stem cells: Research proposals that will involve human embryonic stem cells (hESC) will have to address all the following specific points:
•	the necessity to use hESC in order to achieve the scientific objectives set forth in the proposal.
•	whether the applicants have taken into account the legislation, regulations, ethical rules and/or codes of conduct in place in the country(ies) where the research using hESC is to take place, including the procedures for obtaining informed consent;
•	the source of the hESC
•	the measures taken to protect personal data, including genetic data, and privacy;
•	the nature of financial inducements, if any.

Identify the countries where research will be undertaken and which ethical committees and regulatory organisations will need to be approached during the life of the project.

Include the Ethical issues table below.  If you indicate YES to any issue, please identify the pages in the proposal where this ethical issue is described. If you are sure that none of the issues apply to your proposal, simply tick the YES box in the last row.

Notes:
1. For further information on ethical issues relevant to ICT, see annex 5 of the Guide for applicants.
2. Only in exceptional cases will additional information be sought for clarification, which means that any ethical review will be performed solely on the basis of the information available in your proposal.

ETHICAL ISSUES TABLE

	YES	PAGE	
Informed Consent			
•	Does the proposal involve children? 			
•	Does the proposal involve patients or persons not able to give consent?			
•	Does the proposal involve adult healthy volunteers?			
•	Does the proposal involve Human Genetic Material?			
•	Does the proposal involve Human biological samples?			
•	Does the proposal involve Human data collection?			
Research on Human embryo/foetus			
•	Does the proposal involve Human Embryos?			
•	Does the proposal involve Human Foetal Tissue / Cells?			
•	Does the proposal involve Human Embryonic Stem Cells?			
Privacy			
•	Does the proposal involve processing of genetic information or personal data (eg. health, sexual lifestyle, ethnicity, political opinion, religious or philosophical conviction)			
•	Does the proposal involve tracking the location or observation of people?			
Research on Animals			
•	Does the proposal involve research on animals?			
•	Are those animals transgenic small laboratory animals?			
•	Are those animals transgenic farm animals?			
•	Are those animals cloned farm animals?			
•	Are those animals non-human primates? 			
Research Involving Developing Countries			
•	Use of local resources (genetic, animal, plant etc)			
•	Impact on local community			
Dual Use 			
•	Research having direct military application 			
•	Research having the potential for terrorist abuse			
ICT Implants			
•	Does the proposal involve clinical trials of ICT implants? 			
I CONFIRM THAT NONE OF THE ABOVE ISSUES APPLY TO MY PROPOSAL