VideoMaster: Directing Data Videos with Cinematic Narrative

Abstract

Data videos combine animated charts, voiceover, and scene transitions to communicate data insights. However, effective data videos require more than presenting visual facts but demand narrative strategies to engage audiences. Existing automated generation systems express narrative intent mainly through prompts, producing narratively flat videos. We present VideoMaster, a data video generation system that introduces explicit cinematic narrative control: ten film-inspired narrative patterns, VideoSpec (a declarative narrative-state representation), and a two-stage narrative orchestration workflow. A within-subject pilot (N = 6) shows improved engagement (Mdn 5.6 vs. 3.2) and recall (88% vs. 64%) over a narrative-disabled ablation, without reducing perceived credibility.