Friday, February 05, 2016
So, just how was that Chemical Brothers video made?
fxguide: As far as VFX challenges go, the latest Chemical Brothers promo Wide Open (feat. Beck) is a doozy - a woman dances around a warehouse space as parts of her body are revealed as 3D-printed lattice constructions - in one four and a half minute shot. That’s right, one shot. If matching the dance performance with see-through body parts wasn’t hard enough, the effect had to last almost 6,800 frames.
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6 comments:
This is a beautiful and exciting video. I really appreciate how the video is still focused on the dancer Sonoya Mizuno movements, instead of using the special effects production as the only interesting focus. The effects were instead implemented as an extremely engaging sort of costume design which greatly enhanced the piece and added to its message, helping to communicate the story she was trying to tell. Watching her transformation throughout the video is quite unsettling to say the least. The realism in the movements of her “see-through” body parts keeps your mind guessing. The hyper-realistic warehouse setting and honest-feeling camera work (the significance of doing a single-take video) provides contrast with the effects (and I am definitely a fan of the moment when we see the woman’s reflection in the mirror, showing us that our perspective is also her own, or vice-versa). Once Mizuno’s face is transformed, we are forced to take her message from her movements alone, as we can no longer look to her facial expression for familiar communication. This really emphasized to me how even in a dance-piece I was subconsciously relying on Mizuno’s face for cues.
Seeing the behind-the-scenes production of this video is very cool. It’s crazy how much work and how many steps the footage and modeling goes through to create the final product. I think this is an awesome example of using cutting-edge technology to enrich existing performance mediums.
The technology used to make this looks incredible. I know it is pretty much just your typical CGI but I have never seen CGI where an image was half real half CGI. There video is absolutely flawless. The integration of real footage and CGI is really cool and I am sure this idea will be used in the future. Other than the technology, what I think is so cool is how there are two takes that are the exact same, one with the dancer, one without. The reason for this is because they need a full view of the warehouse because a CGI element is see through and what we see through it must fit in with everything else we so so we need footage of the whole frame from every angle that is used in the final video. I can’t say that working on a video like this or doing computer animation or editing film work is anything I have a desire to participate in down the road, but I have a lot of respect for the skill required and passion that was put into this video and videos like it.
This is so fascinating and is a tribute to how far CGI has come. As each body part transforms into the see through material it’s so seamless and each body part flows completely with the dancer without really looking like it wasn't part of her. And the shadow play with it was so amazing I couldn't stop staring at them. It grounded the see-through aspect in reality in a way that no high-resolution could do. I didn't really appreciate that it was done in one clean take until I was reading the actual article and saw all the issues they had to deal with from sunlight changing to framing the dancer so the morphs of her limbs would be smooth. They also modeled the look of the lattice after a pattern that ultimately could have been printed on a 3D printer and even used a slightly striated pattern to it to make it look like something that could actually be real with our technology. You could print out the CG form of the dancer and get a lovely little sculpture. That added thought made the video all that more believable in a sci-fi way.
I think this article says something of what can happen when we decide to do something really hard not to prove ourselves wrong or to "shoot for the moon and land among the stars," but because we know we will do it. So often in theatre we get into the mindset of "well, we'll try" or - even worse - "that's impossible, let's not bother to try." What happened to just deciding that we were going to make things happen? It's not that the producers of these effects weren't practical about the process. They knew it would be a challenge, they hired loads of people and spent lots of money (not just because they wanted to but because that was literally the only way), and they made the artists adjust their original idea to set the video in a warehouse. But they still did it. They didn't need a similar, parallel past experience to tell them that it was possible or an at-least-we-tried attitude - they just did the thing. And the thing is awesome. More than awesome - it's kind of revolutionary. Just imagine this technology applied to a feature length action movie, or the like. And then do it. Just do the thing.
The attention to detail in this video is astounding. Everything flows smoothly and at no point does the CGI come off as having any errors in its creation. It is perhaps the moment in the mirror that is the most exciting (in my opinion). The dancer turns to face her reflection, (the reflections movements match perfectly with her own) and the camera rotates around the dancer. Obviously in the rotation the camara must have filmed itself. However, the camara was replaced with the image of an intact dancer standing behind herself. I think that this one moment adds so much to the meaning of the design, even though we only see it for half a second. Suddenly, this video becomes the dancer watching herself transform into a puppet, I have to wonder if that is their intention. It's simply beautiful.
The rigger is also, obviously, extremely talented. In CGI, the rigger calculates the skeleton and controls the system that allows the animation to move. Realistic human movement is taxing and extremely hard to do correctly. It's just kind of astounding. As always, I apologize for fan-girling.
I think the work produced by this team is absolutely incredible, both as visually stunning artwork, as well as a technical feat in and of itself. I think the process outlined in the article represents an ideal intersection between input from the technical team, and the dancer, Sonoya Mizuno (who, incidentally, was featured in the very successful film "Ex Machina", which contemplated technological advancements, and their implications for the future). I also appreciate the article's candor when it came to the team fetching up against true limitations and obstacles, as in the case of the team's unrealized intent to have the lattice deform. I believe that much of the video's (and, subsequently the creative and technical team's) success is owed to the adaptability of those behind the camera and operating the software necessary to execute these manipulations. I hope the transparency of this team's process inspires more to follow, and utilize the unique technologies required to execute this vision.
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