Vicon motion capture equipment and support contribute to Sony Pictures Imageworks’ effort on Paramount Pictures’ Beowulf

Los Angeles, CA (December, 12th, 2007)—VICON, developer of Academy Award® winning motion capture technology, provided state-of-the-art motion capture systems and support to Sony Pictures Imageworks on the production of the Paramount Pictures release, Beowulf.

The film is the most ambitious project to date employing VICON motion capture systems, and achieved many ‘firsts’ in filmmaking, including shooting with 200+ cameras, and capturing the movement of over 20 performers simultaneously.

The film centers on the story of the mighty warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) after he destroys the near-invincible demon Grendel (Crispin Glover). Having slayed the monster, Beowulf endures the vengeful wrath of the beast’s mother, played by Angelina Jolie. The film also stars Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn and John Malkovich, and opened in theatres nationwide on November 16.

In order to tell the tale in the style envisioned by Robert Zemeckis, author Neil Gaiman and screenwriter Roger Avary, the director sought out innovative digital storytelling techniques relying on the ingenuity of Imageworks’ effects and animation artists along with VICON motion capture systems.

VICON assisted Imageworks with installation, provided some custom mo-cap processing tools and provided support on set, which featured over 200 VICON MX40+ cameras in a volume capable of capturing a performer’s full facial, body and finger movement, along with various markered props, which included everything from silverware to swords and set pieces.

The stage was outfitted with near-infrared strobe cameras so there was no visible light to distract actors from their performances. This also meant that the onset cameras didn’t see any extra lighting that was put onto the stage to achieve good video reference.

“Working with Imageworks is always a treat as they push the limits of our systems in groundbreaking ways with every new film,” commented Gary Roberts, President, VICON Feature Unit. “In order to accommodate the number of cameras and deliver the data they required, we built a fully scaleable software and hardware architecture and also upgraded all of our 3D reconstruction algorithms to deal with the large number of cameras, markers and actors—and still get great data. This technology has now made its way into our latest Blade software to benefit all VICON motion capture customers.”

In addition, Imageworks developed it’s own proprietary technologies such as EOG (Electro-Oculography) which, along with custom in-house pipeline integration made the mo-cap synchronous with eye movement, audio and video reference. The EOG captures activity of the muscles around the eyes, giving the characters’ facial expressions a lifelike quality. In total, the production shot over 30 days of motion capture.

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