You ever see some of the stuff people are doing with Kinect, then look at things like Kinect Minute to Win It and feel like Microsoft is doing it wrong? 

That's what it kind of felt like watching the new music video from UK-based team Tim & Joe, also known as Tim Main & Joe Dixon from the production company Colonel Blimp. The duo used a Kinect to create amazing visuals for the dreamy song "Nap On the Bow" by New York-based husband and wife duo New Look. The video appears to be filmed underwater, but its creators— who were kind enough to answer some questions for us over e-mail— say it was anything but. 

OXM: How’d you get the initial idea to use the Xbox 360’s Kinect for the New Look video?

“When we heard the track for 'Nap On The Bow' we immediately thought ‘water world.’ Not so much the film with Kevin Costner (which Tim does love) but more that the video needed to be aquatic themed. We talked through different ideas based on this but one thing that kept on coming back was that it needed to have a digital feel.

"We’d seen videos online which people had created using the Kinect and really liked the lo-fi feel you get from the raw depth data. We especially liked the way the processed images seem to naturally ripple and we were pretty excited to see what we could do by putting that footage into an underwater world.”  

OXM: Did you teach yourselves how to harness the Kinect technology for this kind of thing or did you find someone to help out?

"We worked with a post-production company called Munky. Together with Chris Bristow (from Munky) we researched and tested different ways to capture the data. We looked at forums/videos online until we came up with the best technique for us. There are lots of ways of getting the data and lots of great tutorials and software out there."

OXM: It’s a gorgeous video. Can you describe how you used Kinect's technology to make it and what the general process was? How long did the video take to complete from start to finish?

"The video took about three weeks to complete with a lot of late night pizzas and haribo sessions. The band live in New York so they flew over for a day and we recorded them performing the song individually in a small studio. We recorded the depth data from the Kinect onto a PC as well as video on a regular digital camera. This way we could sync up the footage and then choose the best takes based on the video image.

"We then brought these takes into After Effects where we made the digital versions of the band and began roughly plotting out what we wanted to happen throughout the video. We discovered we could create these really interesting and beautiful 3D still images of the band from the data captured by the Kinect and this led us to our narrative idea - a journey to discover the band as sunken sculptures.

"Based on this basic premise the rest of the process was quite intuitive, we started at the beginning of the song and moved forward until we had a full rough version of the video. Certain shots we knew we wanted - the bubble ring rising up; the shot looking up at the sun through the waters surface and the swirling fish shots were all part of our initial ideas. Others came from experimenting with the Kinect footage in our various software. The long rotating shot at the center of the video for example, came from playing around with camera moves in After Effects.

"We found that as you moved around the Kinect image it would naturally invert itself - we loved the optical illusion this created and so decided to create one long continuous shot to make the most of this effect."

OXM: The video was initially described to me as “seemingly underwater,” so I’m guessing you didn’t do any shooting under water. How did you get that effect?

"None of this was shot underwater, we checked the manufacturer guidelines and the Kinect isn't meant for that type of use. Instead with Chris and also Ryan Passmore (Real Flow) we developed ways to digitally reproduce the feeling of the ocean. With Chris we created particles that looked like the sort of plankton found in the deep and placed them around the space and added shafts of light that stream through the shots.

"We also created crude fish-like creatures and made them flow and swirl giving them life. The coral and sea floor we felt would look the most interesting if we created them with the Kinect. We used a variety of objects, some built from chicken wire and masking tape, others we found around the office - a desk lamp is somewhere in the video, and the sea floor was simply sheets of old bubble wrap strewn around Munky's floor."

OXM: Are you guys gamers at all?

"Chris is an avid gamer, it was his Kinect that we used to create the video. He bought Gears of War 3 whilst we were making the video. Luckily, due to a postal delay it only arrived at the end of the process otherwise we're not sure it'd have got done."

For more photos and details of the making of the video, check out Tim & Joe's site.