Burberry Gets Creative with Clones & Advanced Moco Techniques
CASE STUDY
No stranger to ambitious video campaigns, the creative team over at Burberry took on a new exhilarating video concept for their popular TikTok channel. Their imaginative idea featured clones and dynamic camera movements for a collection of TikTok videos, that involved some challenging motion control and clever pre-visualisation work.
Project Overview
To bring their vision to life, the iconic fashion house sought out the expertise of MrMoco Rentals. The goal was to take viewers on a captivating journey, while the camera smoothly and dynamically glides through and around a London Black cab, utilising clones of the talent for a multidimensional performance. The collaboration was a match made in London, and the end result serves as a testament to the power of a creative idea when combined with motion control.
“There are many complexities in a shoot this ambitious, but at all times I was made to feel that anything was possible, thanks to such talented and committed collaborators.”
Burberry
The Challenge
Creating the final video series, which involved cloned subjects, presented several challenges, such as executing precise moco movements and post-production layering. Director and Video Post-Production Lead, Rob Norman, understood the need for precision engineering to ensure the shots were precisely repeatable so the 20+ passes could be seamlessly stitched together to achieve maximal movement. There was also the also added challenge of filming all these takes at sunset in Winter!
“My favourite shoots are the ones that invite ideas with open collaboration – and this was a dream example. I feel attempting something like this was only made possible with a great 1st AD (thanks Jess Horne) great casting and all the crew who really rallied together for this. I’m certainly very proud of the piece and its success is the culmination of great technology, kind masterful crew, slick performance and stunning VFX work.”
Burberry
THE SOLUTION
To overcome the challenges in creating the final video series, Rob Norman used Unreal Engine to pre-visualise the video before meeting with the MrMoco Rentals Team. Working with DOP Ben Marshall, they utilised a CGI London taxi model and metahumans to create the move and added a photogrammetry scan of the location. The pre-visualisation was then exported to the MrMoco Rentals team as a .FBX file format and ingested into MAYA. SIMUL8 was then used to re-animate and solve the move within the system and space limitations.
Once the moves were created and imported into Flair, using the Bolt X with a Sony Venice and 12 metres of track, all shots could be repeated with different actor motions and marks and then composited all the instances together to create a piece full of clones.
Directed by – @robenorm
Creative Direction by – @di_lucca @inter_sexy
Produced by – @henriettahitchcock
DOP – @benmarshall.dop
1st AD – @jesscar_h
Styling – @melktong
Edited by – @aoife_magennis
Post Producer – @dommanderson
Digital creative (and robot believer) – @_elsalparker
Moco 🦾 – @mrmoco1
Moco Operator – Nigel Permane
Moco Operator – James Gillett
1st Ac – @nowthenpete
Camera Operator – Ed Andrews
2nd AC – Jack Ainsworth
Gaffer – @jimagnewlighting
Spark – Will Jensen
Spark – Christian Hayes
Spark – Charlie Manning Walker
Spark – Harry Gay
Rigger – Steven Daly
Rigger – Micheal Lee Frost
DIT – @nelsonoliver_dit
Playback – Alex James-Saleh
VFX @thehotspring
Previs, Grade & Post Lead – @robenorm
Sound design – @benbrannanaudio