04
CAPTURE / 04 — AERIAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY
Drone Photogrammetry & Aerial LiDAR
FAA-licensed UAS crews capture the environments you can’t reach from the ground: terrain, backlots, city blocks, and inaccessible structures — all in production-ready detail, registered and delivered to your pipeline.
[ FAA PART 107 / APPROVED BY ALL MAJOR STUDIOS / NATIONWIDE ]
SRC / AERIAL SOLVE / TEXTURED AT REAL-WORLD SCALE
- Part 107FAA-certified remote pilots on every flight
- All major studiosApproved to fly on their productions
- Airports & state parksFlown in controlled and permitted sites with a clean record
- Thousands of acresCaptured for feature films, video games, and premium series
- 21 creditsFilm and TV productions captured from the air
WHAT IT IS
Capture at a scale no tripod reaches.
Some environments are simply too large, too tall, or too dangerous to scan from the ground — an entire backlot, a stretch of terrain, a rooftop, a facade several stories up, a location you can only access from the air. Aerial photogrammetry turns hundreds of overlapping drone images into an accurate, textured 3D reconstruction with real-world scale, so your set extension, environment, and layout teams have a faithful digital version of the real place.
It pairs naturally with ground-based set and location scanning: we capture the wide environment from above and stitch it to the detailed ground scans, giving you one continuous dataset from the skyline down to the props on set.
FIG.04 / UAS IN FLIGHT — LARGE-AREA CAPTURE
WHAT WE FLY FOR
Where drone capture earns its place.
- Set extensionsThe real location, to scale, so digital set extensions match what was shot.
- Backlots & stagesWhole backlots and exterior sets captured in one pass for layout and VFX.
- Terrain & landscapesCanyons, fields, and coastline for environment builds and previs.
- Rooftops & facadesTall or unsafe structures captured without lifts or rope access.
- Virtual productionReal places rebuilt as environments for LED volumes.
- Stadiums & venuesLarge venues captured top to bottom for crowd and set work.
Not a film or TV job? The same crews fly construction, real estate, and facility sites through our enterprise & survey work.
HOW SCANABLE DOES IT
Licensed pilots, planned flights, clean reconstructions.
- 01 / SITESend the addressTell us the location, the dates, and what the data is for.
- 02 / CLEARWe clear the airspaceWe check the airspace and request any FAA authorization or site permit before the day.
- 03 / FLYWe fly the sitePlanned, overlapping flights for full coverage, around the shoot schedule.
- 04 / DELIVERYou get clean dataRegistered point clouds, meshes, and orthomosaics, to real-world scale.
Our crews fly under FAA Part 107 licensing and plan each mission around the site’s airspace, obstacles, and lighting. We fly structured overlapping flight paths for full coverage, then process the imagery into registered point clouds and textured meshes at real-world scale, cleaned of the noise and drift that make raw drone reconstructions hard to use. The result drops into the same coordinate space as your ground scans.
Crews mobilize from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, and Houston to any location in the country. If your environment is on the far side of a state line, we bring the aircraft and the licensing to it.
[ PART 107 PILOTS / OVERLAPPING FLIGHT PATHS / REGISTERED MESH / REAL-WORLD SCALE ]
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
The environment, to scale.
- Aerial point cloudsRegistered, real-world scale, cleaned of flight noise.
- Textured meshesTerrain and structure reconstructions for set extension.
- OrthomosaicsHigh-resolution top-down reference and elevation data on request.
- Ground-scan alignmentStitched to your set and location data in one coordinate space.
FAQ
Drone capture questions
Are your drone pilots licensed?
Yes. Every flight is flown by an FAA Part 107 certified remote pilot. Our UAS work is led by Ty Taylor, SCANable’s Director of UAS Operations, and flown by our own crew — not subcontracted.
Can you fly near airports or in controlled airspace?
Yes. We have flown near airports and in state parks for productions, with a clean track record. We check the airspace for every site when we plan the mission, and where a site needs FAA authorization or a permit, we request it before the flight day. Send us the address early so there is time to clear it.
Are you approved to fly for the studios?
Yes. SCANable is approved to fly for all of the major studios, so our crews can be cleared onto a production without a new vendor review from scratch.
Do you fly LiDAR as well as photogrammetry?
Yes. Our UAS team runs both aerial photogrammetry and aerial LiDAR, and we pick the sensor for the job. Photogrammetry gives you the look and the texture; LiDAR gives you dense, accurate geometry, including ground under trees.
How large an area can you capture?
Anything from a single rooftop or facade to a full backlot, a stadium, or a long stretch of terrain. We have captured thousands of acres for feature films, video games, and premium series. Large sites are flown as several planned flights and joined into one dataset at real-world scale.
Can you combine aerial capture with ground scans?
Yes, and it is how most of our location work is done. We fly the wide environment and scan the detail from the ground, then register both into one coordinate space, so the skyline and the props on set line up.
How much does aerial capture cost?
It depends on the size of the site, the airspace, where it is, and what you need delivered. Send us the address and what the data is for, and we will plan the flight and quote it.
What do you deliver?
That depends on the pipeline you are handing it to — we scope deliverables with your VFX vendor before the shoot so the data lands in a form your team can use on day one, not after a conversion pass.
Where do you operate?
We are US-based with people and equipment across six cities — Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, and Houston — and we travel to wherever production is shooting.
Do you handle NDAs and secure delivery?
Yes. Almost everything we shoot is under NDA — unreleased titles, talent likenesses, and production designs. We work under production NDAs as standard practice and treat likeness data accordingly.
Are there film incentives that cover this work?
In many states, yes — scanning services performed in-state can qualify as production spend. We maintain a state-by-state incentive reference on this site, and we can position a capture day to sit inside the qualifying window.
RELATED SERVICES
DEPLOY ANYWHERE
Capture the whole location from the air.
Tell us the site and the airspace, and we’ll plan a flight. Licensed crews mobilize nationwide.