Mo-Sys brings CGI avatars to life for Netflix Dance Monsters
Mo-Sys is a world leader in image robotics, virtual production and remote production solutions. With over 25 years’ experience, Mo-Sys holds an enviable position as production partner to high-profile prime time entertainment shows and live sports broadcasts. The Mo-Sys product range spans turnkey LED virtual studio system integration, remote heads and broadcast robotics, mechanical and optical camera tracking for augmented reality and Virtual Production, and on-set visualization.
Dance Monsters Virtual Production
Mo-Sys is proud to announce its involvement with Netflix latest hit Dance Monsters, a powerful heart-warming competition where amateur dancers are disguised as CGI avatars competing to win $250,000. The creative vision behind the show pushed the boundaries of possible and led technology partners to adopt a collaborative, knowledge sharing approach to overcome complex challenges and develop workflow improvements to achieve ambitious goals.
The resulting show successfully pioneers the use of performance capture for dancers, targeted onto avatars for a live audience. The ground-breaking combined use of technology meant contestants could see themselves in real-time as their Monsters, empowering them to push past personal inhibitions and perform with confidence, immersing singers into their character and the overall creative concept.
Mo-Sys deployed VP Pro, its complete solution for virtual production with a full suite of creative tools embedded directly within Unreal Engine for augmented graphics, virtual sets and mixed reality. The team also utilised Mo-Sys’ award-winning StarTracker optical camera tracking to precisely track the position of six moving cameras, and deliver live compositing. The resulting camera and lens data was combined with the Motion Capture data in Mo-Sys VP Pro and Unreal, to render the monsters in AR live on stage.
James Uren, Mo-Sys Technical Director explains: “It has been a real pleasure to work with Lime Pictures on this technically challenging project. The early collaboration across all technology partners to deliver a world-class production has been key to the success of Dance Monsters.”
James adds “A total of six Mo-Sys VP Stations – synchronised on-set Virtual Production rendering carts were used. One for each camera chain and one for recording and backup. Mo-Sys recorded the movement of the cameras, lenses and lights, so the Monsters could be re-rendered at an even higher quality in an automated post-production pipeline.”
Mo-Sys’ VP Stations reveal some impressive production numbers; 856 takes amounting to 20 full days of recordings and 40 million key frames of data. And the result was the ability to have a Live preview of the show with AR ‘monsters’ on a real stage, allowing the production team to film complex camera sequences of dances and interviews, with all data recorded and delivered to post-production to enable an automated re-render pipeline.
Mo-Sys is delighted to learn that Dance Monsters has been nominated for the 2023 Producers Guild of America Innovation Award which recognises production of noteworthy, impactful new media programs that significantly elevate the audiences viewing experience. We wish our friends and colleagues at Lime Pictures every success at the PGA Awards ceremony.
Watch now on Netflix.
