House of Moves captures dancers from Black Eyed Peas 'Boom Boom Pow'

Los Angeles, CA (June 1, 2009)—Vicon House of Moves recently provided motion capture services for the Black Eyed Peas’ high impact “Boom Boom Pow” music video. Directed by Motion Theory’s Mathew Cullen and Mark Kudsi, the promo features a troupe of perfectly synchronized CG dancers that were animated based on performances captured on the newly constructed Vicon House of Moves (HOM) soundstage.

“Working at HOM was a fairly intuitive and a very streamlined process. We had instant feedback after every take, which made it very easy to direct and make adjustments,” said Kudsi. “HOM also provided us with footage from the capture session that proved to be extremely helpful throughout the editorial process. We were able to incorporate placeholders of our session the very next day into our edit.”

The video embodies the supersonic energy of the track with rapid-fire cuts of dancers and of the hip hop group as they transform into their digital doppelgangers. Several sequences feature transformer-like shapes that pulsate to the beat as they multiply, divide and morph into groups of CG dancers.

“Since the dancers acted as catalysts for this change, it was important for us to have total control of how they looked and transformed in the video. They needed to have a human feel so it was important to capture the details of their movement in a realistic manner,” explained Kudsi. “The use of mo-cap for this project was necessary in accomplishing our creative vision. Mo-cap also gave us the flexibility to quickly try several different iterations of choreography that we wouldn’t have had the time for, had we done everything by hand.”

Motion Theory spent one day shooting two dancers on the newest of House of Moves’ two custom designed motion capture stages. The new stage features soundproof walls and a scalable truss system that can allow for facial, body and finger or full-performance capture. The stage is also equipped to record professional-quality audio during capture into a single time code synced performance.

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