To Create Lupita Nyong’o’s Maz Kanata Scene in the Oscar-Nominated Lucasfilm Blockbuster, Audiomotion Studios Used Vicon Cameras and Software
In a pivotal moment in Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the CGI character Maz Kanata, played by Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o, shows up just in time to give the Rebels a vital piece of information. Although Maz’s appearance is brief, the complex shoot involved creating a temporary, studio-grade motion capture stage inside the famed Pinewood Studios. To complete this task, Lucasfilm turned to Audiomotion and its Vicon system.
The Maz shoot was a small piece of a major multi-million dollar production that spanned multiple continents, involved more than a dozen visual effects studios and utilized countless VFX specialists. However, the firm December 2017 release date set long before production even began made staying on schedule absolutely vital. To this end, rather than attempting to find time to send the cast and crew to a fixed mocap studio, Audiomotion brought in 30 Vicon cameras to Pinewood. This ensured the actors, mocap specialists and director Rian Johnson could all be involved without taking them away from the rest of the production.
“With a film that has as many moving parts as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it’s not always practical, or even realistic for the cast and crew to come to us, so we need to be flexible,” said Brian Mitchell, Managing Director of Audiomotion. “We’ve been using Vicon cameras for around 20 years now, and they make it possible for us to capture professional, high-quality mocap footage almost anywhere.”