Visionary pre-visualization boutique Edit1, led by company President Michael Zimbard, has become the first studio in New York to offer state-of-the-art “inertial” motion capture (or as the studio refers to it — “InMoCa”). The InMoCa technology provides tremendous advantages over more traditional “optical” motion capture.
“Like most pre-vis studios, we’ve been working with mocap for years,” Zimbard says. “We pride ourselves on not following trends, but rather setting them, and when we learned about inertial motion capture and the impact it could have on our client’s work, we knew we wanted to make the investment and be the first company in the New York market to offer it.”
Manufactured by Netherlands-based Xsens and already used extensively in Hollywood (“Ted,” “X-Men First Class,” “Paul,” “John Carter,” among others), inertial mocap offers an array of advantages over traditional mocap. One of the biggest advantages is that it doesn’t tie you to a mocap studio, but allows you the flexibility to capture performances literally anywhere – in the newly redesigned Edit 1 studio, on their beautiful outdoor patio or even onsite in an agency creative director’s office.
“Not having to be tied to a greenscreen stage opens up so many creative possibilities that it almost seemed too good to be true,” Mike Donavan, Edit1’s Executive Producer, says. “This technology is changing the way we do things and offering clients more options and faster turnaround on their projects than ever imagined.” The motion capture data is transmitted directly from the sensors on the Lycra suit into a laptop computer with no cameras, allowing for a more accurate performance capture in significantly less time.
Clients are already reaping the benefits of InMoCa. Since its incorporation into the Edit1 pipeline, the system has become an integral part of every project, including a recent series of spots for JWT New York and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
“The goal behind all of our recent development is to both leverage technology to make the process better for our clients, and give our team more time to focus on the creative aspects of a job and less time negotiating technical hurdles,” Zimbard notes. “We pride ourselves as leaders in the evolution of the previs industry and see InMoCa as a game-changer.”
