with his fist. Didn't I know that the wolves were the stars of the
shoot? The crew peed in the bush that day.
I learned that it's best to film certain animals away from the
shooting crew whenever possible!
So, I was only too happy to head to a private "Wolf Ranch" for
a photogrammetry-only shoot of the superstar Direwolves for
Game of Thrones S8.
This was something that had been done in Alberta since the
start of the series but I hadn't been a part of until then. The
shooting crew included myself, a local genny op, crafty and a
group of three or four young techs from Clear Angle Studios
out of Georgia. They set up their 180+ DSLR camera array in a
near 360-degrees grid inside a tent in the interior of a quonset
somewhere in rural Alberta.
Quite a setup technically, but it was done in a fairly small, simple
space. I had never seen that before, until I realized that I had been
aware of the approach from the video game industry, specifically
sports games which use the actual likeness, movement &
mannerisms of professional athletes in the game.
I really didn't do much on that week-long project compared to
most jobs. It wasn't the new shooting technology that was the
reason for that. As an LM, I was essential to the process, but just
utilized more as a location liaison.
Does this make me worry about film crew job security in an
age of high-tech production techniques? Well, if the tech didn't
Fortress Mountain, Alberta, Canada
*VFX Tech Terms
Photogrammetry is the art and science of extracting
3D information from photographs using a DSLR camera.
The process involves taking overlapping photographs of
an object, structure or space, and converting them into
2D or 3D digital models.
LiDAR
Standing for "Light Detection and Ranging" or "Laser
Imaging, Detection, and Ranging," a popular remote
sensing method used for measuring the exact distance
of an object on the earth's surface. A LiDAR instrument
principally consists of a laser, a scanner, and a specialized
GPS receiver
LiDAR is sometimes called 3D laser scanning, a special
combination of a 3D scanning and laser scanning.
3D Scanning
Using a laser or white light to capture a physical object's
exact size and shape to create a digital three-dimensional
model to quickly generate highly accurate point clouds.
Point Cloud is a set of data points in space with
coordinates representing a 3D shape or object. Generally
produced by 3D or photogrammetry software, which
measures many points on the external surfaces of
objects around them.
