There are so many insanely talented creators in the Depthkit community and I love connecting people for brainstorming and knowledge sharing. In this case, I’d like to start a thread for artists interested in using Depthkit to capture dance!
A few questions to get started:
- How to handle the depth range and capture space with a moving subject?
- Best practices for choreographing with depth in mind?
- Thoughts about capturing dance with a green screen set up?
Add more questions, thoughts, and resources below!
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Dis_place is a piece by myself and dancer Kerryn Wise shot entirely with Depthkit. It’s on Viveport here: https://www.viveport.com/5a3f5f38-8493-4aa3-9f56-99902a142014 and itch.io here : Dis_place by Ben Neal (Psicon Lab).
Kerryn and myself have worked several times with dancers using the Kinect V2 and Azures. We’ve opted for a rough around the edges native Depthkit aesthetic so far. Depth range is always a problem, but we have used the device of dancers stepping into and out of range to full effect.
Transitions between DK clips is always a major issue. We often tape out markers on the floor to keep dancers in shot. The Azure Kinect actually restricts movement more due to octagonal lens. For duets we’ve used one dancer in shot and a second mirroring out of shot then pieced the two together in Unity. We’ve had the advantage that our dancers are not asked to move fast or far as hands and heads inevitably get cut off very easily. Avoiding the shadowing effect where a hole appears in a head of body with the hands in front is a constant issue we watch for.
Most of our work has been fairly rough and ready so far but we’re developing ideas more. We’ve shot on location which worked really well (correct lighting for the scene), and in a black dance studio (was a bit too dark at times). Green screen didn’t really help us at all. We also tried some shots on a dolly with dancers walking backwards away and us following with camera on wheels, then recreated the motion in Unity to travel across the space. We’ve done tests with visual effects and multiple cameras but not made lots of progress in that area yet.
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Thank you for sharing @Psicon_Lab!