What Is Photogrammetry?

Photogrammetry is the science of obtaining information about real world physical objects through photographs and making exact measurements of various surface points from the images. The information gathered is used across a wide range of fields, including the film industry.

There are two types of photogrammetry, aerial and terrestrial (close range). With aerial digital photogrammetry, an aircraft is used to take overlapping pictures and videos of a specific area, which is typically used in topographical mapping. With close range digital photogrammetry, images and videos are often taken by hand held cameras and used for 3D modeling of objects, buildings, and scenes.

Both types of photogrammetry are useful in the film industry. 3D movie sets can be created accurately using close range digital photogrammetry while location scouting can be done virtually using aerial photogrammetry. Photogrammetry can also be used to create digital stunt doubles, crowd replication, texture mapping, and even more for filmmaking.

The 1999 drama Fight Club was one of the first productions to use photogrammetry in filmmaking. The film’s director David Fincher wanted to keep movie watchers from being able to see the camera in the reflection of a kitchen stove as it passed over it in the “Kitchen Explosion” scene. Photogrammetry was used to recreate the set by taking hundreds of still photographs over the course of three days of every object in the kitchen so that the entire scene could be reproduced in a photoreal 3D environment. Extreme close up shots of “little things like the tiny gap behind the refrigerator” were taken to allow for some very unique storytelling in Fight Club (source). Photogrammetry was also used in several other scenes through the film. For more info, check out this article on thrillist.com.

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