So apparently you don’t have to have stunning acting skills to ‘act’ for motion capture, but it helps to have some spatial awareness and a knowledge of how to overact, so I’m pretty glad that I ended up being the director for my very first Motion Capture assignment. I’m much more comfortable telling people what to do, although to be honest I kind of do want to suit up and prance around with balls velcroed all over my body.

You DO have to have quite a good imagination when filming for your data, as you are working in a room 24 camera’s and an empty set. It’s all in your head or taped out on the floor.

You can learn more about the AUT Motion Capture Lab here.

 
Here are Jenny and Josh dressed up in the suits practising their tree pose, which is the pose our actors get into at the beginning and end of each scene so we can align the data and eventually target our characters.

As well as capturing the action with the with the motion capture cameras we also use a video camera and to take reference footage. This will make editing easier. I’ll post our reference footage in the blog post with my first edit.