From the start it was quite clear that the Stone video should somehow involve cuddling a statue. Searching the Internet for spare statues resulted in a few options, mostly plastic ones. Did you know you can rent statues? It is expensive though and quite difficult, this was therefore the least favorable option.

The next option was visiting a place where they have statues standing around. A visit to a museum might trip some guards or alarms and result in less favorable press attention. A quick scan of statues in the vicinity resulted in either too big or too small ones. What to do now?

Luckily pictures of statues are plentiful and the iconic Venus of Milo has been pictured in many ways. Clearly some kind of green screen should solve allow someone ‘virtually’ dancing with a statue. But there was another option. Lots of people own Microsoft’s Kinect, but did you know you can hook that device to a PC also?

It does not immediately allow you to do a lot of magic, but there is software that allows you to access the “Background removal” feature of the Kinect. This works by combining the 3D depth information the Kinect can sense with the built-in color camera. Effectively everything in the picture (or recorded video) gets automatic focus on a person in front of the Kinect. All background (and foreground) is removed and voila: The Wim gets the first dance with the Venus of Milo! Enjoy!