Dreamhive Puts Images to Music for Madonna

The Dreamhive animation studio provided dynamic music video background imagery for Madonna's recent "Hard Candy" world tour, visually backing up two of the singer's latest music hits.

For Madonna's "Hard Candy" world tour and promotional appearances, The Dreamhive created striking animated background imagery for two of Madonna's most popular songs -- "4 Minutes" and "Give it 2 Me". The imagery was then played during Madonna's exciting stage performances of the songs during the Hard Candy promotional and concert tours.

For "4 Minutes," The Dreamhive created footage with a flashing countdown clock that paid homage to Madonna's music video for the song. Using reference images from the original music video, The Dreamhive created a dynamic CGI version of the practical digital countdown clock, which they then rendered using custom real-time shading code. Additionally, The Dreamhive re-created and animated the "black onyx" effect element seen in the music video, and also generated new effect passes that were then composited into live-action footage shot during the original video production.

"It was a terrific and extremely cool experience, to be adding our visual effects into footage from the set of the music video," comments Wes Grandmont III, Senior CG Supervisor at The Dreamhive. The Dreamhive's images mimicked the strong pulse and irresistible hook of the song, and as the images played behind Madonna onstage for the tour, Justin Timberlake then frequently joined the singer for the rest of the "4 Minutes" piece.

For the disco anthem "Give it 2 Me," The Dreamhive created CG laser work that had an evocative, poppy, 80's look and feel, and which combined with a live laser show to create a pulse of green and pink light beams flickering disco-style across the dancing crowd.

The Dreamhive created all of the imagery using Autodesk(R) Maya(R) software, outputting to 1080p resolution for the shows. On the laser creative work, The Dreamhive worked from storyboards of possible laser movement options, and then generated creative variations for use in the live shows.