Dezeen Magazine

Kévin Bray uses 3D scanning to duplicate Gwilym Gold for his Greener World music video

Music: director Kévin Bray used face-tracking and 3D-scanning technology to create digital doubles of musician Gwilym Gold for the video to accompany his Greener World track.

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Bray, who also works as a graphic designer, told Dezeen that the brief for the film was very open, with the only stipulation being that Gold's face needed to be included.

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"You can't imagine how trusting and respectful they have been towards my work," he said. "I am really interested in the value of the physical appearance of the artist in music videos and in pop music in general."

Gold is the main focus on the purposefully lo-fi video, shot in the musician's apartment and, under Bray's direction, kept in its "natural state".

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"This idea of keeping it 'real' has been extended to what Gwilym was wearing, the lighting and so forth," the director said.

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

As the video starts, the musician's face is obscured by digital flames and smoke. The room around him shifts and moves, and the camera pans away and back to show pixels cascading from his face and collecting around him.

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

The room continues to move, and Gold's body is divided into digital layers before his head is draped in digitally-generated plastic sheeting.

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"The way I edited the music video is playing with the backdrop and the stage," Bray told Dezeen.

"Always at the edge of showing precisely how things are working or constructed. You can see what is the original video, what is 3D scanned, what is 3D generated, what is tracked."

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"I tried to make the video almost transparent about the processes," he added. "But this also makes the video more confusing because it involves a lot of layers the audience is not used to seeing."

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

At several points the musician appears to transform into a 3D-printed model of himself, which the camera rotates around.

"For each scene both the singer as well as the environment where he performs have been 3D scanned," said Bray, who only learned how to use 3D scanning and face tracking a week before the shoot. "Scanning a body, by its very nature, is intimate."

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

To create the 3D scans Bray took several photographs, before using photogrammetric processing software to generate 3D models.

As the video draws to a close, the chair Gold is sitting on floats upwards and he fractures into dozens of image fragments that ascend into a green sky. According to Bray, this refers to both the digital constructions of the green screen and the greener world Gold sings about.

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"I decided to not hire a team to shoot the video because I thought that my amateurism in terms of filming, for this particular purpose, could be a strength," Bray explained.

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"By showing my weaknesses behind the camera I was creating a tension and I was amplifying the weaknesses the singer is talking about in his song."

Kévin-Bray 3D-scanning Gwilym Gold Greener World music video

"I guess that's what is disturbing and quite magical at the same time in this project: a post-production process which is quite intricate and detailed, imposed upon footage which is not," he added.

The Greener World track is taken from Gold's album A Paradise, which was released on 21 August 2015.