Friday 12 August 2011

Notable matte painting shots

A matte painting is a corrective representation of a landscape, set, or abroad area that allows filmmakers to actualize the apparition of an ambiance that would contrarily be too big-ticket or absurd to body or visit. Historically, matte painters and blur technicians accept acclimated assorted techniques to amalgamate a matte-painted angel with live-action footage. At its best, depending on the accomplishment levels of the artists and technicians, the aftereffect is "seamless" and creates environments that would contrarily be absurd to film.

Background

Traditionally, matte paintings were fabricated by artists application paints or pastels on ample bedding of bottle for amalgam with the live-action footage.[1] The aboriginal accepted matte painting attempt was fabricated in 1907 by Norman Dawn (ASC), who improvised the crumbling California Missions by painting them on bottle for the cine Missions of California.[2] Notable acceptable matte-painting shots accommodate Dorothy’s access to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu in Citizen Kane, and the acutely bottomless tractor-beam set of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The aboriginal Star Wars documentary anytime fabricated (The Making of Star Wars, directed by Robert Guenette in 1977 for the television) mentioned the address acclimated for the tractor axle arena as actuality a bottle painting.[3]

By the mid-1980s, advancements in computer cartoon programs accustomed matte painters to assignment in the agenda realm. The aboriginal agenda matte attempt was created by painter Chris Evans in 1985 for Young Sherlock Holmes for a arena featuring a computer-graphics (CG) action of a charlatan leaping from a stained-glass window. Evans aboriginal corrective the window in acrylics, again scanned the painting into LucasFilm’s Pixar arrangement for added agenda manipulation. The computer action (another first) attenuated altogether with the agenda matte, article a acceptable matte painting could not accept accomplished

New technologies

Throughout the 1990s, acceptable matte paintings were still in use, but added generally in affiliation with agenda compositing. Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) was the aboriginal blur to use digitally composited live-action footage with a acceptable bottle matte painting that had been photographed and scanned into a computer. It was for the aftermost scene, which took abode on an airport runway.[5] By the end of the decade, the time of hand-painted matte paintings was cartoon to a close, although as backward as 1997 some acceptable paintings were still actuality made, conspicuously Chris Evans’ painting of the Carpathia accomplishment address in James Cameron’s Titanic.[6]

Paint has now been abolished by agenda images created application photo references, 3-D models, and cartoon tablets. Matte painters amalgamate their digitally matte corrective textures aural computer-generated 3-D environments, acceptance for 3-D camera movement.[7] Lighting algorithms acclimated to simulate lighting sources broadcast in ambit in 1995, back radiosity apprehension was activated to blur for the aboriginal time in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. Matte World Agenda collaborated with LightScape to simulate the aberrant bounce-light effect[8] of millions of neon lights of the 70s-era Las Vegas strip.[9] Speedier computer processing times abide to adapt and aggrandize matte painting technologies and techniques.

Notable matte painting shots

The appearance of Skull Island in King Kong.

Mary Poppins gliding over London with her umbrella.

Birds aerial over Bodega Bay, attractive bottomward at the boondocks below, in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

The final arena of the secret, government barn in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The iconic angel of the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968).

The burghal railway band in The Sting.

Views of a destroyed Los Angeles in the 1974 blur Earthquake.

The Death Star's laser adit in Star Wars.

The Starfleet address in Star Trek The Motion Picture.

The appearance of the OCP belfry in RoboCop and added scenes.

The Batty and Deckard hunt arena in Blade Runner.