All American

All American is a sports drama series inspired by the life of professional American football player Spencer Paysinger, which premiered on The CW on October 10, 2018. Created by April Blair, the series stars Daniel Ezra in the lead role. In March 2022 it was renewed for a fifth season, which premiered on October 10, 2022, and in January 2023 it was renewed for a sixth season, with the show also streaming on Netflix.

SCANable provided 3D scanning for the series, capturing set and location data to support the show’s visual effects and set extension work.

Set extension is a measurement job before it is an art job

An extension is judged entirely at its join. The invented half can be beautiful, but if the line where it meets the practical build does not agree, that line is the only thing the audience sees.

Agreement is not achieved by matching by eye. It is achieved by modeling the digital half outward from a measured point cloud of the physical half, so the two share dimensions rather than approximating each other.

Done that way, the seam falls where the geometry already lines up. Perspective is correct at every camera position, not just the one the extension was designed against, and a change of lens does not require the work to be redone.

Television moves faster than film

A drama series shoots a full season on a schedule that would cover a fraction of a feature. Episodes overlap, directors rotate, and the same standing sets are shot week after week with no time to re-solve anything.

Under that pressure, measured data changes what post can absorb. A location scanned once can be extended in episode three and again in episode eleven without anyone re-deriving its geometry, and a shot added late has reference waiting for it rather than requiring a return visit.

The economics are straightforward. Capture is a fixed, small cost on the shooting schedule. Recovering the same information afterward is an open-ended one.

Scan data serves more departments than VFX

Environment capture is commissioned by visual effects, but it rarely stays there.

Production design uses it to check that a proposed build fits the space it has been assigned. Stunts and camera use it for layout and previsualisation. Locations uses it as a record of condition. Editorial benefits indirectly, because shots that would once have been impossible become achievable.

That breadth is why a measured record of a working set tends to be worth more than the shot list that justified it. See how it is captured under our 3D scanning services, or how the same data supports virtual production workflows.

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