And, reveal!
Ah! Oh my God!
Oh my God
Yeah!
I've done a lot of different television shows in my life.
This has taken it to a whole other level.
Oh my God, this is amazing.
The technology really allows for
a different type of storytelling
within this TV medium.
It allows these performers to step outside of,
in some instances being very shy,
or being judged on their appearances.
The tech gives the producers of the show
the chance to allow these performers to
really just go for it without any fear.
We discussed that in this day and age,
could we make a show where it was about your talent?
Could we do this using the mo-cap suits?
and could we turn people into something
that wasn't themselves
and could they be judged purely on their dancing?
So it seemed like a good idea on paper
and then we had to go, “Can we make it?”
Welcome to Dance Monsters!
So the whole experience filming this is interesting, right?
Because we do have an audience and we've got the panel,
but I'm on stage by myself for hours.
Did you like what Peaches served up? Because I definitely did.
You can feel it when they dance, like,
you know who really wants to win this competition
because they give it their all.
And that's the feeling that I love as a judge, like, you know,
I know that from competing and from performing,
that when you have to lay it all out there on the line,
that's when you get the best out of yourself.
This is what I love about Dance Monsters, right?
Not only do we get you guys
dancing as monsters and expressing yourself as these furry
characters and still hitting us right in the feels,
you really made me want to dance
and that's one of the most important things with performance
You know, I wanted to get up there and dance with you.
I think the technology where it is today really does allow for the
dancer's performance to come out.
I think the performers themselves also benefit from this.
Running things like the magic mirror
giving them a chance to really
refine the dance for the monster
and having that in real time for them is a massive advantage.
Hey, fine lads, are you ready for some dancing?
So in the mo-cap studio, as you've probably seen the stage is taped out
so we know exactly the parameters of what we're allowed to be in.
For the dancers,
they're not allowed to step out of that.
For backing dancers for example,
it's even harder for them
cause when they're on actual stage in the live studio,
the dance monster isn't actually
on the stage with them.
So it's very much a technical minefield of what could go wrong.
But hopefully we've done it right.
It's been a long process
and it's been
a learning process at every turn along the way
because there wasn't technology that just meant you could do it.
And so it was trying out different suppliers and different technologies
and working out how we could try and stick them together.
Things that aren't possible suddenly are possible because
people are in a room together and can just make it work.
So we're taking technology that already exists,
but we're putting it together in such a way in the unscripted space.
It's a very, very complicated system that we have here.
We have one of these VP stations for every camera,
and that is rendering a monster onto the video background,
but it has to render it in exactly the right place
otherwise when the camera moves,
the monster would appear to slide backwards and forwards on the stage.
This is camera two.
There's five cameras that can see the monster on stage
and all of those cameras
we need to track their position very precisely
and their lens very precisely
so that we can put the monster in exactly the right place on the stage.
Once you get your head round it,
I think it's one of the most impressive
bits of technology you can ever work with being a director.
This is a whole new thing for everyone, including us,
but trying to bring the TV side and the technical side together
in the space of time that we’ve got
in the environment that we've got,
everyone's quite excited about it. I mean,
they are super long days yet I think everyone feels like, you know,
we achieved this together.
One of the reasons I was always so keen to do this show
is because we're really pushing that envelope of technology and
it's a tough record every single time we do this show, it’s tough
but I know that when it all comes together at the end,
we are making something that nobody else is.