At Clear Angle Studios we’re big fans of our planet’s natural landscapes and urban wonders. When we’re not scanning faces, bodies, and props, many of our team can be found out in the field capturing Earth’s most incredible locations. Whether we’re taking a LiDAR rig deep into a cave network, or heading to the skies to capture a monstrously massive desert, our team makes it their mission to capture the landscape in the most accurate way possible.
But there’s something deeper going on, too, with many famous media pieces becoming renowned not just for their story but also for the iconic environments they are set in. They remind us how important and incredible our world is – and how it’s worth looking after. That’s so often on the minds of our team when they’re out on location. A passion for supporting creative storytellers is why we go – but when we’re there, a love and respect for our planet’s environments only increases our devotion to authenticity.
With all that in mind, we wanted to share the most incredible locations we’ve ever captured, and why they matter.
OAHU, HAWAII – LILO & STITCH
For the 2025 live-action remake of Disney’s beloved Lilo & Stitch, we set off to Oahu island to capture one of the planet’s most beautiful islands. If you imagine Hawaii, those visions of sweeping beaches and ecologically vibrant forests that come to mind might very likely be indirectly inspired by Oahu. And with Lilo & Stich being a film significantly focused on the people, culture, and ecology of Hawaii, it needed to offer a deeply authentic representation of its setting. As we’d done when working on Aquaman 2, we took our rigs to Oahu, capturing perhaps the most distractingly stunning place we’ve ever had the pleasure of shooting.
FORTRESS MOUNTAIN, ALBERTA – THE LAST OF US, SEASON 2
If you’re looking for a grand, awesome, somewhat intimidating landscape that supports a remarkable variety of wildlife, Alberta’s Fortress Mountain delivers and then some. The subarctic 9,843 ft peak brings immense beauty and terrifying natural power in equal measure, making it ideal for the vision of The Last of Us TV show’s second series. Never one to be intimidated by a harsh, inhospitable environment, we set off to the location along with our trusty rig to capture both the cast in action and the location for the show’s Jackson, Wyoming survivor community.
RIALTO BRIDGE, VENICE – SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
At Clear Angle we adore urban beauty too, and if anywhere on Earth brings that, it’s Venice. As the oldest of four bridges that pass over the Grand Canal in the Italian city, Rialto is among Venice’s most beautiful and iconic locations; something that made it deeply appealing to the team behind the 2019 movie Spider-Man: Far From Home. As such, our scanning specialists were sent to capture the bridge and its surrounding area in absolute detail, giving the film’s production team a model which villain Hydro-Man could blow to pieces – without actually damaging one of the world’s most cherished landmarks.
THE DOLOMITES – SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
For Solo’s powerfully dramatic train heist scene, the film’s production crew needed a model of a vast swathe of northeastern Italy’s famously savage Dolomites mountain rage. A LiDAR scanner on the ground didn’t quite bring the needed punch. As a result, our aerial team took to the skies in a helicopter equipped with a high megapixel DSLR and a mission to capture everything that the filmmakers needed for what became perhaps the movie’s most celebrated scene – where the Dolomites stood in for the mountains of planet Vandor, and reminded us all what a profoundly special location they are.
WADI RUM, JORDAN – DUNE: PART TWO
The clue is there in the name. Dune 2 has a lot of desert scenes. The production crew opted to use the Jordanian Wadi Rum desert – a UNESCO heritage site also known as ‘The Valley of the Moon’. Known for its deep red sand and looming sandstone cliffs, Wadi Rum absolutely feels like an otherworldly place far, far from Earth, making it ideal for Dune 2’s eerie, even unsettling tone. As such, our team was dispatched to Wadi Rum to scan huge areas, often using scanner drones to reach some of the more inaccessible and unusual landscape details.
LONDON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM – MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FINAL RECKONING
For all the wonders and curiosities on display at London’s Natural History Museum, when you visit in person it’s hard not to be distracted by the building’s majestic detail. The central hall alone is so iconic it is a regular location used across films, TV, and video games. The team behind the recent Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning movie needed a fresh, highly detailed model of much of the museum, freeing them up to be wildly creative without damaging the real location – though Mr Cruise was spotted at the real thing, performing in scenes to be blended with the model we provided.
Visiting and working in those locations is a remarkable privilege. They are a reminder of the value of the world that surrounds us – both in terms of stunning natural spaces, and culturally vital urban landmarks. Our home planet can inspire and inform an amazing variety of media across real and fictional worlds.