Friday 11 December 2009

It's the end of the world as we know it...

We've had a lot of work recently capturing crowd data for feature films. This scene from Roland Emmerich's disaster epic 2012 features our own Mike Hedges and ex-What's Your News cast member Brian Herring performing numerous panic reactions.

The magic of the film making process was slightly unmined for me when I saw that an amazing scene such as this was really just two fellas in lyrca running up and down our volume waving their arms. And Hedges fell over. Several times. He's such a method actor...

Thursday 10 December 2009

A YouTube sensation! (Not the cat playing a piano)

In April 2009, Centroid joined forces with Partizan and MPC to shoot the legendary Evian rollerskating babies commercial, which recieved 24 million hits on YouTube in it's first month!

We covered the volume floor with tongue and groove to give the performers(from Starlight Express) a fast surface to skate on and for a day the studio became a roller disco! Thankfully, leg warmers were banned.

And no, we didn't actually capture babies in rollerskates...



The making of the Evian babies commercial...



Man babies!
The Centroid roller rink
Director Michael Gracey watches the action...

Wednesday 9 December 2009

DJ Centroid feat. MC Mocap

In July 2009, a collection of young ladies and gentlemen visited the studio to get down and generally shake their groove thang for the opening sequence for DJ Hero. (That is how young people speak isn't it?)
We gave them a polished roll of lino, stood back and watched them be offensively athletic, funky and 'street'. At one point someone even said 'yo'.

Directed by Marco Puig for Warp Films, with post production duties going to Framestore, here's the final piece in all it's glory. It is a bit loud though...


poo
Young people and their music...
Then he fell over...

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Ahh...a bit of culture...

The Virtual Cellist was the brainchild of William Todd Jones, who we had previously worked with Centroid on What's Your News? The concept was a fusion of the beautiful music of classical cellist Matthew Barley with visuals of the performance, captured live and applied to various character models. These visuals would be mixed with pre-recorded footage by Yeast Culture VJ Nick Hillel. The performance took place at King's Place in Central London and was also streamed live over the web!