Parallel Worlds Appear in Pioneering Drone-shot Promo

Japanese production company TOKYO and director Kazuma Kitada have created a hauntingly beautiful video for hip hop artist KOJOE's track Day N Nite. The method took eight months to develop and combines a drone, plus camera and OptiTrack motion capture technology that enabled intricate yet organic movements, such as navigating narrow spaces, travelling long distances and making 360 turns.

Aiming to visualise the possibilities and perplexities of the ‘what if?’ moments when making significant life choices, the director created a story centering around a pivotal moment in a man’s life and wanted to take the viewers back and forth in time around that moment and that decision. 

The behind-the-scenes video below, explains the team's process.

Kitada explained: “To capture the notion of parallel worlds, none of the existing shooting methods felt sufficient."

"I came up with the idea of utilising drones as a motion control camera. But the challenge was, how?"

"I teamed up with technical professionals to develop a drone control program from scratch. It’s was a long trial-and-error process that lasted eight months.”

The drone needed to fly the same track repeatedly so team needed to design a program to control it. First they created the camera animation using CG software, then, once on the actual set, they tracked the positions of the drone on Optitrack. "We succeeded in depicting the emotions of a man lost in the maze of dimensions of his life with dynamic camera work and multiple overlays.”