On 06.24.2010 and 06.25.2010 we shot video footage for the music visualization application at the Zemeckis Center. We got some excellent footage (I will post some samples soon) and had fun working with all the wonderful dancers.
Music visualization can be successfully used to dramatically enhance the music listening experience by providing a visual pairing that presents aesthetically pleasing imagery, reinforces emotions and moods evoked by the music, and reveals information about the features and structure of the music. The most basic and instinctive visualization of music is dance. Dance is defined as: “moving rhythmically to music, using prescribed or improvised steps and gestures”. I am currently developing my vision of a dance based music visualization for Classical KUSC.
This visualization application will dynamically synchronize stylized dances (dancer silhouettes on a variety of backgrounds) to music to create the effect that a dancer is dancing to the user’s music selection. We have recorded video footage against a green screen of professional dancers in a variety of dance styles including hip hop, break dancing, classical Indian, Brazilian, salsa, African and bollywood. For each dancer, we have recorded a set of dance sequences of varying lengths. These sequences will be chained together in different combinations to create a variety of dances. These dances can potentially be paired with any piece of music. A dance will be synchronized to a piece of music by compressing and contracting portions of the video to align the underlying beats of the dance to that of the music.
I have the pleasure to be working with some brilliant and dedicated USC collaborators:
Michael Annetta (grad student – MFA in Interactive Media)
Ravi Nitin Balajee (grad student – MS in Electrical Engineering)
Elaine Chew (faculty member – Industrial and Systems Engineering)
Andreas Kratky (faculty member – School of Cinematic Arts)
James Taylor (grad student – MFA in Interactive Media)