Awesome Video “Inori Prayer” Illustrates The Power of Face Mapping

Face mapping performances are exciting to watch. The stories created by applying “digital make-up” is revealed on living canvases, such as actors, dancers or singers. That said, their movements are pretty limited, having to sit still and carefully alternate gestures so they do not disturb the face tracking process. Now, thanks to ultra high speed sensing, a team of creatives managed to overcome those limitations and deliver INORI – PRAYER, a performance hard to forget #softwaremagic

Nobumichi Asai teamed up with production company TOKYO, dancers AyaBambi and the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory at the University of Tokyo to unveil the real power of face mapping. TOKYO proposed a soundtrack theme related to “life” while technical director Asai and CG director Shingo Abe (WOW) took the concept and played with it in the programming stage. The result was a reference to the effects of radioactivity, which too often brings ‘death’, ‘suffering’, and ‘sadness’. But after it, the ‘opportunity’ to overcome those things arises. 

The result is a mix of black tears trickling down the women’s faces, followed by skulls and words. The video is quite impressive from a technical point of view. They’ve managed to turn the experience in a credible performance by using a 1,000fps DynaFlash projector. Plus, their “initial dilemma of speeding up the tracking to the detriment of performance latitude was resolved by the WOW team, Professor Watanabe, and Tomoaki Teshima (EXVISION), who trimmed several milliseconds during a trial and error period […].”

The projected images seem to be engraved on the human skin, enhancing the overall effect:

INORI – PRAYER- from WOW inc on Vimeo.