Enzo’s Monday Motion #31: Motion Tracking

In essence motion tracking is nothing more than adding a perfectly blended layer on top of your live action footage. This technique is older than you might think. Already in the 1930’s Ray Harryhausen pioneered with his famous fighting skeletons. Let’s focus on the more recent ones and their benefit.

The typical one

When people think of motion tracking they often have the futuristic user interface in mind shown in blockbusters like Iron Man or the Minority Report. For the app Push it’s no different. The added motion accentuates the lingering presence of the app, gathering every possible data of your work out. A good example of making the product more sophisticated and smarter than it actually is.

The arty version

Motion tracking isn’t exclusively for feature films. With smarter software it’s not anymore that painstaking frame-by-frame production technique. Therefor we see it also popping up in artsy video’s like the award winning Etereas.

Cell Style

Style is another stereotype that needs to be tackled. The next two motion pieces show that there’s more than techy UI as a added motion layer. Continuing in the dance scene I give you ‘Opposing Forces’. The cell animated dust particles accentuate the rougher style and gives the dancer a comic super-hero kinda look.

All in

It’s a matter of taste, but the motion track layer can also completely overtake the live action footage. Saatchi & Saatchi delivered a rather unexpected commercial for the bank HSBC. It’s hard to forget this one quickly, so for that mission succeeded.

Real time

In all of the previous examples the second layer was added in post production. The tracking software has improved so much that we can add real time motion. A team of Japanese developers created this real time face projection video. The beginning of the next phase.

Also Adobe After effects hasn’t been sitting still on the face tracking department. This fun feature had a great upgrade which makes it easy to use. For me the biggest win is that we skip from a reactive tool in post production, to a intuitive starting point.