I have decided to do my COP3 Module on the niche subject of Matte Painting this presentation covered the following topics:
As you can tell by these guides, this is just the initial stage of my journey and I am still inconclusive on my essay chapter plan and my practical work and where it is going and was in need of much guidance.
My initial research over the summer consisted of reading books that were mainly about special effects as there weren't many about just Matte Painting. Although I did find a couple. See my bibliography below of things I have looked at over summer. Although I haven't looked at all of them there's a few on there that I haven't got round to reading yet.
The reoccurring theme that came out of these books was the origin of matte painting comes from a man called Norman O Dawn. Now I've read several bibliographies on him but the most interesting state that before he made films he worked for an estate agents that use to take pictures of houses and they'd improve the pictures by putting a piece of glass in front of the houses and improving the scene by painting over garbage bins or making the garden in bloom very sneaky! But when he got into film he used this technique to improve the films! I also learnt a lot about the technical specifics of matte painting and travelling matte's, but I've decided to do book reviews and article reviews to condense my thoughts on each one in my blog from this presentation so it'll make it easier to write down academically and triangulate thought after I've written down my opinions on them.
As well as reading up on Matte Paintings and the history of and other special effects (to make sure I chose the right one) I also looked into my favourite paintings, and oh boy is there so many!
The one above and the one below are both taken from the film Dick Tracey (1990)
What I like best about these painting's is the colour schemes of them. How they aren't super realistic but they fit the live action of the film because of the colour grading of the film.
The matte painting above is literally like 5% live actions, you see the car on the left there's a slight figure in front that walks across the street and that's all that's not part of the live action. Again I really like how the matte painting isn't photorealistic but it still gives a life-like essence of this world.
This Matte Painting is from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, what I learnt is that the seventies was the peak of matte paintings and they used to have big teams working on them to get the completed faster, with big wigs such as Peter Ellenshaw and Frank Ozra being big in the industry of the time. This one is very photorealistic for my liking, but I really like trees. I also like how it has the artist with the seventies hair.
This Matte Painting is taken from an Alfred Hitchcock film, The Paradine Case (1948), it amazes me how many films of his have matte painting's in because it's not obvious at all. I was also really inspired by Gone with the Wind:
Probably the grand-daddy of all matte painting showcases, Gone With The Wind set something of a record in 1939 for the sheer number of matte shots. Reputedly over 100 mattes, though I’ve never spotted any more than around half that number myself. Jack Cosgrove was chief matte artist and in charge of all special photographic effects on GwtW, as well as most of producer David O. Selznick’s other productions. A mammoth undertaking with four artists painting full-time on the show to bring forth Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Old South’ - essentially without ever leaving Hollywood. Staggering, not just for the volume of trick shots but for the fact that the film was shot in 3-strip Technicolor – itself a massive and cumbersome technique – with the majority of the mattes photographed and married up straight onto original negative – a highly risky undertaking at the best of times let alone the early years of three-strip colour negative. Many of the mattes employed numerous elements such as miniatures, foreground paintings and projection inlays to expand the visuals.
Probably the grand-daddy of all matte painting showcases, Gone With The Wind set something of a record in 1939 for the sheer number of matte shots. Reputedly over 100 mattes, though I’ve never spotted any more than around half that number myself. Jack Cosgrove was chief matte artist and in charge of all special photographic effects on GwtW, as well as most of producer David O. Selznick’s other productions. A mammoth undertaking with four artists painting full-time on the show to bring forth Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Old South’ - essentially without ever leaving Hollywood. Staggering, not just for the volume of trick shots but for the fact that the film was shot in 3-strip Technicolor – itself a massive and cumbersome technique – with the majority of the mattes photographed and married up straight onto original negative – a highly risky undertaking at the best of times let alone the early years of three-strip colour negative. Many of the mattes employed numerous elements such as miniatures, foreground paintings and projection inlays to expand the visuals.
http://www.shadowlocked.com/201205272603/lists/the-fifty-greatest-matte-paintings-of-all-time/page-2-of-2.html
I love that even the guy who wrote this article didn't recognise half the matte paintings or miniatures in Gone with the Wind.
With this Matte Painting I chose it because it has painted smoke that moves during the sequence and the god rays flutter. It's these special effects that I spoke about in my proposal that I think I could get carried away with. Although I do wish to investigate them as well, I don't want to get carried away by that. Like I know I want to look into oil on glass matte painting but I also want to try oil on glass animation but I don't want to get carried away with it but maybe it could be a PPP thing at the same time.
Finally I included this matte painting in the presentation, because not only is it from a TV show but it's a digital matte painting and i think it'd be good to look at these two because realistically there isn't work for traditional matte painters, it's the digital ones that are making the money, but maybe there's a way to harbour these traditional skills infused with modern technology so maybe that's something I should look at too.
This is literally my only thoughts on my practical work so far I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just going to roll with it. I'm more worried about the writing at this stage.
I think this is pretty self explanatory, upon reflecting on my feedback below, I will also revise the proposal for the next tutorial so that I can think about the audience and answer the proposed questions there.
The General Feedback:
Art of Pinewood film covers Matte Painting could use this for research.
A detailed account of how traditional matte painting was composited?
How to take traditional techniques - composite not too dis similar but with modern technology, how will you infuse the two?
ILM - Digital Domain
DVD extra's on matte paintings. Bringing them alive with smoke and lights.
Who is the audience?
Literature Review of Books on COP Blog to make it easier to academically write.
I felt a little bit disappointed by the presentation because I was kind of hoping that I would get a bit more bounce off people regarding my practical, but I guess I need to come up with some ideas first. I guess I will just wait and see what happens with that.
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