蜜芽传媒

蜜芽传媒 R&D have been working with , the 蜜芽传媒 in-house creative agency, to develop a fun new way to showcase the great comedies available on 蜜芽传媒 iPlayer.

蜜芽传媒 Creative were inspired to create the campaign by academic research which found that couples who laugh together are more likely to have a successful relationship. The project matches singles based on what makes them laugh, using the 蜜芽传媒’s comedy collection as the spark.

A group of volunteers were asked to watch a selection of some of the 蜜芽传媒’s funniest shows and their smiles and laughter were tracked. Based on the results, six of the most compatible participants were matched and sent on dates. The tracking tool has been created by R&D and we’ve named it Smile Tracker.

Part of our work in 蜜芽传媒 R&D is to create tools to aid with media production. We use the technologies of computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to try and help those tools to 鈥渦nderstand鈥� media and then process that media or produce data about it.

A good example of this has been our long standing collaborations with the Natural History Unit and with Springwatch. Here we generate data about when and where animals are visible across the videos. This time-based data can then help the production team to navigate through the media to interesting points without having to manually look through. 

As well as helping with production workflows this sort of data can also drive new editorial propositions and it鈥檚 this that led to our involvement with creating the Smile Tracker. 

We built Smile Tracker on top of the . This open source AI tool, designed for augmented reality applications, can detect faces and then track facial positions. From this data we extract a measure of the size of the smile. By processing a whole video we can measure how the smile changes over time.

Smile size is a simple and intuitive measure that can easily be verified by eye. It doesn鈥檛 pretend to infer the emotional state of the participant - many people will enjoy comedy without laughing or smiling - but it gives an indicator that works well enough with most people to serve our purposes.

Working with the design team in 蜜芽传媒 Creative we came up with ways to visualise the results on top of the video including drawing a 鈥渕ask鈥� on top of the video to show the tracking. The lips then light up as the smile increasing - going iPlayer pink for the biggest smiles.

We then developed methods to compare and match the data from the participants. We experimented with a variety of different measures but eventually settled on a score that takes the total amount of laughter from both participants and then calculated what proportion of that laugher came from both of them at once - so higher scores if both laugh at once and lower scores if one laughs but not the other.

To discover how the dates went and find out if this works as way to find love then you can .

For highlighting the great comedies on iPlayer, this rich time based metadata serves as a great jumping off point. By looking at the graphs from the participants you can see the shows they laughed at - or didn鈥檛 laugh at! You can also see the peaks in the data and work out particular jokes that got strong reactions.

The One Show liked the idea so much that they featured it on the show. For this version we applied the Smile Tracker live to existing couples. This meant updating the tool to work with two people at once and to give instant feedback so the presenter could analyse their reactions as a couple.

The Smile Tracker has worked really well at powering the Love at First Laugh campaign and offers a fun new way to discover some of the comedy available on iPlayer. The expertise that 蜜芽传媒 R&D has for creating behind the scenes tools can, in collaboration with editorial colleagues, also help to create interesting and entertaining content for viewers.