The Friends of Mr. Cairo
Senior Thesis
An exploration in music video creation, motion capture performance, working with child actors, and virtual production.
"The Friends of Mr. Cairo" is a 12 minute long song produced by Jon Anderson of YES and Vangelis, two powerhouse musicians responsible for a few of the nostalgic sounds that came out of the 80s. The song, which tells the story of gangersterism in the first half of the 20th century, makes reference to classics such as "The Maltese Falcon," "Citizen Kane," "The Thief of Baghdad," and "Casablanca."
The original music video has aged charmingly. It only uses four minutes of the original song.
Inspired by a story told by my father, my vision for this music video would be much different than the one produced by Polydor. During a blizzard in late January of 2014, my dad and I made the journey up to Fort Wayne, Indiana, from Louisville so that I could take part in a choir competition. On the way up, driving through the night after work, dad popped this song on the radio, and he told me the story of the first time he heard it. As snow blew across the empty highway, Vangelis' synth set the tone.
October 1987. My father, a nerdy little kid, is sitting alone on a school bus en route to Washington, DC. Lost in his own world, he sat with his Walkman on and a stack of comic books at his side. A seat in front of him was his middle school crush- the one that made you kick your feet a little bit. Behind him, his bully. They ogled at each other- and the bully picked on them- during that journey as "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" played over his cassette.
Drawing inspiration from this story, I decided to recreate the music video, immersing the audience in a scene where a young boy envisions himself as the protagonist, his crush as the love interest, and the bully as the antagonist, aligning with each movie reference in the song. These rapid flashbacks, inspired by classic films and the comic books in his hand, would utilize virtual production and motion capture. This approach enables our Humphrey Bogart-inspired protagonist to perform thrilling stunts safely. These virtual 1:1 reprentations needed a space to interact with- leading me to create virtual sets, like the one pictured above.
Actors were scanned in using Unreal Engine's "Metahuman" plugin, and their performances captured using the iPhone's FaceID Lidar Scanner. The FaceID sensor scans over 30,000 facial points instantaneously, making it the perfect tool for low-budget motion capture.
On day one of live-action shooting, I was kindly lent a full-length bus by UTS Transportation. I instructed the crew to assist me in blocking light from the windows. In this test footage, it is noticeable, but in the final product (released fall 2024), these windows will be rotoscoped out and an Unreal Engine generated alpha-layer will be inserted in.