Dell XPS 13 “In-Flight Entertainment Expert”

Dell’s “In-Flight Entertainment Expert” is a 2016 XPS 13 commercial from production company Smuggler, directed by James Mangold. The spot showcases a laptop designed for in-flight entertainment, pairing 6th-generation Intel Core processors with a virtually borderless display for a more epic on-board viewing experience, with visual effects by The Mill.

SCANable provided 3D scanning of props and actors for the commercial, delivering high-resolution photogrammetric capture that supported The Mill’s CG and visual effects work — measured digital reference that helped blend the spot’s real and computer-generated elements.

Two subject types in one capture window

A spot that puts a person and an object in the same frame asks for two different kinds of capture. A performer is soft, moving and light-sensitive. A prop is rigid, and it can be positioned, rotated and lit for the camera without complaint.

Photogrammetric capture handles both, but the setups are not interchangeable. Camera spacing, exposure, the number of positions and the way the subject is supported all change between a body and a hand-sized object.

Planning for both in a single visit is what keeps a commercial schedule intact, and it is what guarantees the two asset types arrive in the same coordinate space at the same true scale. Cyberscanning covers the human half of that.

Advertising schedules leave no room to go back

Post on a national spot is measured in days, not months. There is rarely a second chance at the talent, and almost never a second chance at the set.

That compresses everything upstream. A capture pass has to be right the first time, complete enough that nobody needs to request a re-shoot, and processed quickly enough to still be useful while the edit is moving.

It also changes where the capture happens. Our Mobile CyberSCAN™ Studios deploy to the production so scanning fits between setups rather than competing with the shoot day for talent time.

Delivering to the vendor’s specification

A scan is only finished when it fits the pipeline receiving it. In practice that means agreed topology, a sensible UV layout, real-world scale, a known up-axis and file naming that matches the vendor’s convention.

Dense photogrammetric meshes and raw point clouds are the starting point, not the deliverable. Our modeling and asset preparation turns them into render-ready geometry a lighting artist or compositor can use without rebuilding anything first.

Agreeing that specification before capture is always faster than reconciling it afterwards.

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