Around the World In VFX: The Real-World Journeys behind Iconic Scenes

This summer, audiences have been transported to dragon-filled mountain ranges, Hawaiian beaches, F1 race tracks and the post-apocalyptic English countryside.

At Clear Angle Studios, we’re privileged to play a role in these productions. We traverse the globe with cameras, LiDAR scanners; drones; character and prop scanning systems, and helicopters, to capture the geometry and textures of real-world environments, as well as the characters and props found within them. VFX teams use our scan data to create digital worlds in which CG elements interact naturally with their surroundings.

In my role as Founder and Director, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the globe to capture a wide variety of environments for iconic movie scenes. As the team has grown, our international technicians have had many more stories to tell — here are the tales of some of our favorite recent expeditions.

The Faroe Islands, Iceland and the Scottish Highlands

Last month saw the release of Universal’s Studios How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake, with soaring oceanic and mountain vistas for the flightpaths of the dragons. The basis for these environments were the Faroe Islands, Iceland and the Scottish Highlands. To enable the VFX teams at Framestore to create exhilarating digital landscapes, highly detailed scan data was needed — which meant we got to go on an adventure…

Equipped with high megapixel DSLRs, the experience of years of scanning, and a load of adrenaline, we sat in the helicopter, taking thousands of high-resolution photographs from the air. This approach allowed us to document every crag, cliff and valley from multiple angles, in order to generate detailed 3D textured geometry of the terrain. The resulting photogrammetry data could then be used by the film’s VFX team, to augment the environment with CG elements where needed.

Wadi Rum, Jordan

While much of our hands-on scanning sees us up in the air, our team also works from the ground. For Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, the team travelled across continents with all our equipment, eventually setting up base in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan.

With the sheer scale of the desert, our drone specialists were tasked with flying over vast stretches of sand, capturing the sweeping geology from above, while other technicians captured data from the ground with long LiDAR scanners.

The desert, however, had its own agenda. With daily sandstorms to contend with, our on-location team had to stay versatile to the conditions, even personally flying out new equipment when the sand overwhelmed our gear. In a location as remote as this, couriers aren’t available, so we found solutions that required a personal touch. At least the sand worms were added in post…

Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi

When my co-founder Chris Friend and I first started Clear Angle Studios in 2013, we personally scanned the environments, props, and characters on set. However as the business has grown, so too has our amazing team. One of the greatest joys I have as Director is being able to give the crew opportunities to visit locations that matter to them personally. That was certainly the case with scanning for F1, as our talented technicians (many of them huge motorsport fans) stepped onto iconic tracks to capture every bump and turn.

For this production, Clear Angle Studios was tasked to scan the various F1 circuits featured throughout the film. At each circuit, we combined terrestrial LiDAR scans and high resolution drone photogrammetry into a single detailed textured 3D model for the VFX teams to use. For our motorsport-loving team, capturing scans at the Grand Prix was a thrilling bonus, allowing them to soak in the F1 environments at the very heart of the sport. From Silverstone to Las Vegas, it was truly a global undertaking.

Global Studio Offices

Clear Angle Studio’s HQ is at Pinewood Studios in London, which has played host to James Bond, Disney, Marvel and Lucasfilm and hundreds of other productions over the years, and is also where our team carries out a huge volume of scanning work, be it character or prop scans inside our HQ, or LiDAR scans of interior and exterior purpose-built sets.

Our North American offices in L.A., Atlanta and Vancouver also play host to more of our brilliant team.

While our work often takes us on global adventures, some of the most iconic cinematic universes are built just steps from our own front door. There’s something uniquely inspiring about the way film transforms simple sound stages and backlots into entire worlds for audiences to enjoy.

We count ourselves lucky to be working in such a creative space, amongst some of the top filmmakers of our generation. Wherever in the world Clear Angle Studios’ crew are, we know we’re going to be having fun helping bring these amazing projects to life.

Clear Angle Studios is a leading 3D capture and processing company servicing the film and TV industries from their offices in London, Atlanta, Vancouver, Athens, Cape Town and Budapest. Learn more at clearanglestudios.co.uk.