We provided Virtual Production for political satire starring the legendary Harry Shearer as Donald Trump in another collaboration with our friends at The Electric Lens Co.
Shearer is known for his work on This Is Spinal Tap and The Simpsons but the prolific artist wears many hats, including writer, director and musician, and he regularly releases albums of musical political satire. When it came to his 2020 US election season album, The Many Moods Of Donald Trump, Harry sought a production team who could not only transform him into Trump using motion-capture processes but who could do so remotely while he isolated in LA under Covid19 conditions.
Mod was brought onto the project by ELC to design and produce the virtual production phase of the project, using Unreal Engine (UE4), and to direct and edit the performance capture sessions from Sydney - making it a completely virtual and real-time rendered production.
ELC animated Trump's face to create a video in the tradition of satirical cartooning, using AI tech often associated with 'deep fakes', with the results being dubbed, "Deep Toons".
The Hollywood Reporter cites our work on the project and fxguide provides a deeper dive into our Virtual Production processes.
Mod worked on the two videos that required Trump performance capture, Son In Law and Executive Time. The rest of the albums' clips are lyric videos using a virtual Oval Office set crafted by ELC. The project illustrates the creative potential of real-time music video and comedy.