A$AP Rocky's new music video for "Helicopter" employs Gaussian splatting for nearly every human performance, capturing volumetric data instead of traditional 2D footage. Director Dan Strait aimed for radical post-production freedom, a goal made feasible by this emerging technique. The team from Evercoast, Grin Machine, and WildCapture executed a complex shoot in Los Angeles.

The production used a 56-camera array to record performers on wires and rigs, generating over 10 terabytes of raw data. This allowed the director to reposition cameras and recombine scenes long after filming, creating surreal visuals grounded in real physical stunts. The workflow resembles simulation more than traditional filming, enabling rapid creative decisions without costly downstream processing.

Final renders were done in Houdini using OctaneRender, which provided crucial relighting capabilities for the splats. This project marks one of the most ambitious real-world deployments of dynamic Gaussian splatting in a major music release, following Rocky's 2023 video that featured NeRFs. It demonstrates how volumetric capture preserves authentic performance while granting unprecedented post-production flexibility.