Me and My Shadow Experimental Motion Capture Short
Me and My Shadow, the experimental motion capture short film I made with some friends, Centroid and Lighthouse Arts, is now complete. Here it is, you may want to watch it twice.
The experiment was to use motion capture in a slightly different way from its typical use. Here we combine two shoots – the characters and the shadows, into one scene, to tell two sides of the same story. Motion capture was particularly useful here. As no faces are visible, body language communicates emotion. Achieving natural, very human body language was best achieved by getting strong emotional performances from actors, rather than animating characters and trying to replicate body language. By developing performances with actors in a similar way to a traditional drama, we were able to find action that was didn’t just work technically, but emotionally “felt right”.