This new music video for ‘House of Cards’ by Radiohead is quite different. This video wasn’t shot with video cameras or even lights, but with a laser device and some sort of scanner which delivered 3D data.

Two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

So far so good, the cool thing is that is an open source project on Google Code. Even the 3D data was composited with Processing, an open source programming language and environment, to make the final video. You can also download that data and make your own remix and submit it to the YouTube ‘House of Cards’ group. Here is an interactive Flash 3D data visualisation to get you excited.

Here is the making of video: