While planning the shoot of the official Tycho see music video, we saw an opportunity for shooting the band performance footage. In the detailed second to second script for the official video we needed less than a minute of band footage. Instead of keeping to the script for those scenes we decided to shoot the entire song. We shot about a dozen full length takes of the band with a modified RED Epic camera.
THE FILM TECHNIQUE
We started experimenting with infrared lighting and discovered that the IR emitter in the Microsoft Kinect projected a starfield-like dot pattern not unlike what a 3D render of point cloud data looks like.. Captured with our full spectrum camera it became photographic, where fields of bokeh and shimmering discs reveal multiple layers of shape and form.. In addition, some of the lens flares we were able to make with the Kinect are unlike anything we've ever seen before - creating super dense moire patterns and 3D-like caustic inversions of lens geometry.
The set in which we shot the Performance was totally dark, aside from a red laser as our backdrop - we could not see anything except while looking through the cameras viewfinder. Operating a camera in this situation was like a real manifestation of virtual reality. The band also couldn’t see each other and couldn’t tell who or what the camera was looking at - which ultimately made the performance feel very raw and unhindered.. The visual results tie perfectly with the concept of ’See’ in which we always seem to reveal new worlds that are beyond our terrestrial abilities of sight..