Vicon celebrates visual effects Oscar win for The Golden Compass

25 February 2008, Oxford UK: Vicon, the developer of Academy Award-winning motion capture systems, is celebrating its involvement in the making of The Golden Compass, which won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, at the 2008 Academy Awards on 24 February.

Nick Bolton, chief executive at Oxford Metrics, said: “This is great news and everyone here is delighted The Golden Compass picked up the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. 2007 was a great year for seeing the best of motion capture at the cinema. From transforming Ray Winstone into Beowulf, to creating the Transformers, right through to the work on The Golden Compass, we’re thrilled to see our technology helping movie makers to create stunning pieces of work.”

Audiomotion, a Vicon customer also based in Oxford, spent two days setting up its studio to begin work on The Golden Compass. It took a further two days to capture all the moves, which included fight sequences between the Tartars and the Gyptians and several moves on board the Gyptian ship, the Noorderlicht.

Mick Morris, Audiomotion’s managing director said: “It was an amazing opportunity to work on the Golden Compass. Out of all of the movies we did last year, there was a particular buzz about this one since we have quite a few Phillip Pullman fans here in the studio. We are very proud to have been associated with this movie and we look forward to the next one.”

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