Still On Music Video / Interactive Installation
Here’s the story:
One weekend in September, 2015, a bunch of brave friends and strangers took automated “dance lessons” from a computer at Space_145 art gallery in Las Vegas.
After pressing a blue arcade button in the middle of the room, each user was greeted by a friendly CPU dance instructor who appeared on the screen in front of them. The CPU gave them one task: follow along with the the robot instructor on the screen.
As users went through their dance lesson, the room lights dimmed and the wall behind them (including the user’s body) filled with projected visuals.
All of these lessons were video recorded and then stitched together to create a music video composed of a bunch of strangers dancing in sync… all being covered by, and interacting with, synchronized projected visuals.
All visuals are projections captured in camera.
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Here’s a little info on the process for my fellow AV nerds:
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Pre-Production
Initial idea: I wanted to make an installation for a new song called “Still On"…then it became a projection mapped CPU-lead dance installation…then I realized I could automate everything with one button, film the experience, and make a bunch of strangers look like they are dancing in sync to projected visuals in a music video.
Figured out real world to pixel dimensions and created an After Effects template:
Broke song into measures and plotted out dances moves per zone in a spreadsheet:
Storyboard each section:
CONTENT CREATION
Built content for dancer silhouettes and background using:
After Effects
Cinema 4D (mainly for X-Particles animations)
Filmed “dance moves” for lessons using:
Kinect with Synapse and Tryplex Toolkit
Quartz Composer
Syphon Recorder
Created dance lesson videos for users to follow based on spreadsheet and zone content.
Composited corresponding projection and dance lesson content into single video for playback/mapping (16 total)
AV SYSTEM CREATION
Hardware:
MacBook Pro Retina: ran everything
Short throw Optoma 3,000 lumen projector: all projected visuals
GoPro Hero 4 Black: filmed everything
Kinect: found silhouette mask of users
External monitor: dance lesson playback
Makey Makey attached to an arcade button in a box: triggered everything
Cheap computer speakers for audio playback
2 MIDI dimmers for lights
Custom light boxes made by onefortythree
Software:
Ableton Live: main controller and timeline for video, lights, camera, and quartz composer patches
Resolume Area: mapping and AV playback for dance lessons and projected visuals
Synapse: Kinect silhouette detection
Quartz Composer: Composited Kinect silhouettes and triggered motion generated particle patches (1024 Architecture’s Particle Warfare plugin is awesome)
Syphon: video piping between programs
Camera Control for GoPro: Controlled GoPro functions from OS X (oh really?)
ControllerMate: Converted keystrokes to mouse clicks and MIDI notes
OTHER STUFF
A large plastic storage unit to house everything
Molding to frame projection area
A 39” diameter x 3” deep foam circle
POST-PRODUCTION
Selected 64 total takes out of 80
Converted GoPro footage with fish-eye lens correction
After Effects party:
Warped/cropped footage to fit my template
Pulled every 3rd take from dance lesson videos using sliced up pre-comps in After Effects
Arranged takes based on their dance lesson label and pre-determined position on screen (my spreadsheet was a huge help here)
Created 4 full runs of the music video (each used 4 groups of 4 dancers)
Selected my favorite takes from the 4 full runs
Final edits
Slight color correction
Render!
