We share our experiences with integrating motion capture recordings in speech and dialogue research by describing (1) Spontal, a large project collecting 60 hours of video, audio and motion capture spontaneous dialogues, is described with special attention to motion capture and its pitfalls; (2) a tutorial where we use motion capture, speech synthesis and an animated talking head to allow students to create an active listener; and (3) brief preliminary results in the form of visualizations of motion capture data over time in a Spontal dialogue. We hope that given the lack of writings on the use of motion capture for speech research, these accounts will prove inspirational and informative.