Contour: Creating a Volumetric Short Film for WOW Inc

WOW Inc commemorates 25 years of creative innovation with a bold short film.

Produced as part of WOW Inc’s 25th Anniversary Exhibition Project, ‘Contour’ combines volumetric capture, stunning visual design by award-winning duo Ryo Kitabatake and Takuma Sasaki, and music by acclaimed producer Max Cooper.

Capturing Contour

Dimension is passionate about creative collaborations that push innovation and creativity to advance volumetric filmmaking, and ‘Contour’ is the latest exciting, avant-garde example of this. 

Through the use of bold colours, contrasts and beautifully detailed scenes, Contour depicts and explores human life in the ever-changing, fluctuating and demanding world in which we live… a modern life full of information overload and complicated relationships with people and the world.

End-to-end collaboration

Dimension was approached by WOW Inc. to collaborate on their stunning short film using 4k volumetric capture shot on Polymotion Stage.  

Ensuring WOW had complete creative freedom to work with the volumetric assets we created artistic lighting through the use of colour gels which filled the capture space with light to provide directional orange and blue hues.

We also used optical motion capture to extract skeletal data from the performances to support the post-production and VFX team.

An incredibly talented team

Contour premiered on YouTube on 30 July 2021 and was handpicked as a Vimeo Staff Pick upon release, marking it as one of the best short films on the internet.

Ryo Kitabatake, director, WOW Inc, commented: "We were very lucky to have the chance to work with Dimension and push the limit of expression in the film using volumetric capture. We really appreciate the effort made to create a realistic digital human that went beyond our expectations. It was a thrilling and fun project. Thank you all!" 

Max Cooper, music and sound design, commented: "I love the project. Big thanks to everyone at Wow Japan and Dimension Studio for getting me involved. It was a pleasure working with you all."