Ed Sheeran, Chance the Rapper, and PnB Rock have collaborated with video director Ryan Staake to create a fascinating music video for their song Cross Me. The video combines motion capture and computer-generated extras to paint an interesting, colorful world. That’s dancer Courtney Scarr in the motion capture suit. The musical artists only appear in the video as avatars, but the varying worlds in the video are really fun to watch. Inspired by the song’s lyrics, the music video is a mind-bending look into the relationship between illusion and reality. 

Director Ryan Staake hired digital production company MPC to create the video. Thinking outside the box, they used video gaming tools like Unreal to generate visual worlds in much less time than you would expect. The production even used iPhones for some of the facial motion capture which let them work more quickly than facial tracking dots would.

“We were tasked with going from nothing to the finished edit in 3.5 weeks without any pre-production time – which is unfathomable for a project of this scale and this creative ambition. We pulled on every tool in our armory and used groundbreaking and bespoke technology to meet this otherwise unachievable timeline. Without the incredible talent, technical ability and scale of MPC, it would have been impossible to pull off something so bold in such a short time.”

– Luke Rafferty, Head of Production, MPC

You can see all of Ed Sheeran’s videos on his YouTube channel.