Essay Plan

So I have a more official Essay Plan at this stage:

1. History of Matte Painting -

2. Case Studies - Interviews with Matte Painters

3. Technicals of actual Painting and why this is important to Matte Painting, the argument of artistry in a Matte Painter.

4. Theory in the success of a Matte Painting, how you don't want to notice them they should be incognito, because of immersion, the uncanny blah.

5. Write up of Practical investigation how each of these chapters were important in practical.



So Chapter 1 History of Matte Painting, I think it will be quite difficult to be critical rather than re churning what I've read, also there's a lot in the history, as you've seen from the Norman Dawn blog post, I want this to be between 1,000 to 1,500 words, but I need to make sure I include all the important bits. Even if it's not in complete detail I need to be critical and make good decisions about what is the most important parts to this essay the practical work and why it's important to the history of Matte Painting.

So I've broken this chapter up:
1. defining movie matte painting and why it originated (so cost and artistic reasons)
2. a bit of history on Norman Dawn, the estate agent thing is the most important, maybe the patenting thing, maybe not. The fact that it was inspired by theater and also used in still photography. a little about california missions and the churches, because it's not only for making post apocalyptic and dystopian worlds, you make ordinary things look ordinary and that's magic too. Making the derilict whole again.
3. Film traditional techniques, the fact that negative on negative to get two strips of film to composite together, laborious
4. rise of digital, programs like after effects composite much faster than reprocessing film stock. Photoshop also digital painting, 3D CG techniques.

Should I put key Matte's through time? Maybe I'll just do this in a blog post, to show I've looked at all the different Matte Paintings rather than in my dissertation, I should probably ask at the next tutorial.

Norman O. Dawn

Norman O. Dawn (1884-1975) is pretty much in every single book that says anything about Matte Painting, he's like the rockstar of the field. Quite literally in The Invisible Art... it discusses the start of his career in Paris. (I like also how it uses this sentence: Dawn was the lone wolf who did it all: camera work, writing, producing, directing, trick work. Like the best, he devoted his life to the "one eyed monster," as the almighty movie camera was known in early lingo.")

"I have some amazing memories to tell you - about a time and place now lost in the dark shadows of the past." Norman Dawn. ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 29 )

Some sources say Norman Dawn was born in Argentine but both Richard Rickett and and The Invisible art say he was born on a rail road camp in Bolivia near the Argentinian border, Norman's father had been involved building Bolivia's early railroad system. When Norman was 3 months old they had relocated to California, where the main industry was fishing. But Norman's aunt took him to Paris to take art classes to be a painter. ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 30 )

CONTEXT 1890's PARIS
Aubrey Beardsley and Art Noveaux
The Dreyfus Affair - political anti semitism that seperated france into two camps those pro german empire and those against, Dreyfus was charged for ten years but later pardoned after all crimes had been set up, showing the start of the war was coming.
Nicknamed the naughty nineties (Gay nineties in the sense of merriment and frivolity).
Theater was booming, and Thomas edison made the first camera, it was also the first decade where any coronation had been filmed of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Mauve Dye was invented so a lot of clothes were mauve.

Louis and Auguste Lumière, the French "fathers", ushered in the movies as theatrical spectacle. They unveiled the cinematographie system on a bitterly cold day, December 28th, 1895. The setting was the oriental atmosphere of the Indian Salon, a basement theater of the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines, and it marked the first time ever that projected moving pictures played before a paying public. Admission was one franc, but it was reported that out of a seating capacity of 100 only 33 tickets were sold for that historic screening. In the audience was George Méliès. ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 30 )

How freaking amazing is that!! That means in december is 120 years since the very first audience paid to see a projected movie, I hope Hyde Park Picture house capitalises on this. Maybe I'll send them an email see if they will play a french film for it.  And there was only thirty three tickets sold that means it must of been like a Mini Cine screening like at Armley Mills Industrial museum, so amazing. What an era to be alive in. Anyways I digress, it's important that Méliès is mentioned, because he later became a pioneer of trick films and Dawn him. But more on that in a bit. There's another amazing paragraph on Dawn's first trip to Paris and he actually went to go see one of the shows with his aunt.

One night Dawn and Laura crowded with other patrons into a dark room lined with velvet curtains. On the other side of railing a young woman standing in an upright cabinet smiled as a man in black undertakers garb gestured with a cane - and the woman was transformed into a skeleton. A tap of the cane and the shocked audience saw the skeleton change back to youthful flesh and blood. Dawn, marveling, asked laura how this was possible. It's mirrors, child," she replied.
( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 31 ) - but the book references an unpublished essay that the AFI holds: Dawn, N, The Seeds of Manipulation, unpublished essay, American Film Institute Collection, p. 1.

I tried to get hold of this essay through the AFI's website but to no avail I'll write down to ask the librarian if it's possible to access any other way.  So in this time Norman Dawn went back to America and Méliès went on to use and develop trick techniques with the rise of stop motion and multiple exposures in Cinderella (1899) and The one man band (1900) demonstrating that moving image could do more than record realism.
Parkinson, D (2012). 100 Ideas that changed Film. London: Laurence King Publishing. p44.

Dawn had always been fascinated with creating illusions. The year before his first trip to paris, on his twelfth birthday, his aunt had given him a camera obscura. [img above]. "To me it was really the beginning of what I did in Cinematography," Dawn recalled, "that is combining two or more real scenes into a composite." ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 31 ) -Judi Hoffman, The Norman O. Dawn Collection of Cinematic Effects. The library chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin vol 20. no. 3 1990 pg 100

It is noted that dawn went back to Paris and met Méliès on one of his trips before going to back to LA to work for an engraving company working as a still photographer.

Where among other things, he took photographs of properties for sale. In 1905, Dawn's boss showed the young photographer how to improve the desirability of a site by obscuring or amending unsightly aspects with a few well place dabs of oil paint on a sheet of glass positioned in front of the camera. 

Although stills photographers had used this method to improve there shots for many years, Dawn was probably the first to apply the technique to moving pictures when he made California Missions (1907). The film documented old religious buildings, many of which were in disrepair. By placing a sheet of glass in front of the camera on which columns, roofs and bell towers were painted to align with the real buildings that were visible through the glass, dawn was able to restore the crumbling cloisters to their former glory. 

Rickett, R (2007). Special Effects: The History and Technique. 2nd ed. New York: Billboard Books. Pg 189

This just blows my mind, it's so clever! in an Invisible Art... they give more detail on the situation..

On February 11, 1905, he was assigned to photograph a building whose view was marred by an unattractive light pole. A photoengraver name Max Handschiegl suggested to Dawn that instead of going through a laborious retouching of a photo, he mount a sheet of glass between the camera and building, paint a tree over the offending pole, and photograph glass image and building together. It was an old still-photography trick that predated cinema, but a revelation to Dawn. The boy who had experimented with the camera obscura later explained that what he loved about creating that first glass painted illusion was that 'it was was more like a magician doing something.'

( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 31 ) - this reference here is taken from an Interview with Dawn by Graham Shirley, Los Angeles, CA, January 1972, unpublished used with permission.

If that doesn't amaze you then I'm not impressed. I hope I can create some work that makes me feel like a magician for this project.

 So going back to the magician Méliès, Dawn went to visit his studio, and the theater where Méliès was now putting on sold out theatrical animated shows, with projections, mirrors and illusions. Here Dawn was shown the tricks of the trade, and became buzzing with ideas to convert these tricks to cinema. So on that trip to Paris he bought a camera and a tripod for $650 which his Dad fronted him he also met a New Yorker named Jim Whitney who introduced Dawn to his Uncle, Arthur Lee, the New York Office manager of the Gaumont Film Company. Lee offered to Distribute Dawn's Films back in the states.

However at this time Thomas Edison had patented his camera, through the Edison Manufacturing Company Licences,  monopolising and controlling movie production. This forced independent filmmakers to smuggle over camera's from Europe.

This here is the best part of this whole tale, it doesn't even seem like real life, forget blood diamonds and drugs these guys were rock stars smuggling camera's.

Dawn's new friend Arthur Lee was among them. Lee warned Dawn that if he was caught taking his new Debrie Camera back to the States, the powerful, warring interests could have him thrown in jail. Undaunted, Dawn safely smuggled his goods home, steering clear of lurking spies thanks to André Debrie (the camera maker), who booked passage for him on an English freighter to New Orleans. "There was always spies in Paris," Dawn Recalled, " Whether you bought diamonds, Kodaks (camera, or film), or anything. These fellows made a living just informing the customs people in New York... I wouldn't have had the sense [to smuggle] alone, But André Debrie was anxious to get his cameras out and all over the United States where the money and the independent [film] people were...." ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 33 )

There's quite a lot more on Dawn, but I just wanted to get you to this paragraph because I loved it, I read it and loved it so much I had to instagram a picture of it.  So I shall just summarise the rest of Dawn's life, although there are several more super fascinating stories, I 100% recommend this book on the Invisible art on Matte Painting, even though it's written with a dramatic flare it's definitely a page turner.

So Dawn went back to America and went on to make his first film in 1907 called California Missions, the locations he used in this film were derelict religious sites, and there was something like 33 Matte shots in it with glass in front of the camera (my next blog post is going to be on the technicalities of traditional matte painting). Arthur Lee paid him $150 for this film and introduced him to whole host of contacts. He met one guy who hired him to travel and film, and then several years later he was hired full time at Universal as a cameraman. Most cameramen were paid $25 a week, due to Dawn's skillset he was paid $100 a week. He worked there for five years, then bought his own camera and went solo, there's so many more details I want to tell you, but I don't want it to be waffle, there's a great tale in his life about how he worked with one director who didn't want any fake shots, and Dawn was like okay but it won't look fake, and insisted on building a ridiculous amount of sets at great cost and then when the movie bombed that's when the era of Matte Painting really kicked in and at this point there was loads of people in on the game.

He ended up falling out with a lot of the big wigs in hollywood because of a grand court case because he patented Matte Painting and then tried suing someone when they did it, and then his boss offered him very little money for the patent, and then he continued with the negative matte painting technique  (see technicalities of matte painting blog up next) he'd been using for twenty years and some young fellow put a patent on that even though he'd been using it for twenty years, so he got out of hollywood and went to work in Australia. Even though he was always in the right the press and people like american cinematographer portrayed him in a bad light. But he used the money from the guy who bought the patent to buy sound equipment and made Australia's first ever talkie, 'Show Girl's Luck.'

I think it's also important to note that in all sources it's noted how Dawn and other film makers were really infuriated by the limitations of the technology of the time they always wanted to do more effects and show more and tell bigger and grander stories, so all them were constantly pioneering new ways for artistic reasons this drive pushed them and is probably why the special effects industry developed so fast.

I'm going to leave the exotic tale of Norman Dawn there, it's safe to say I have a massive envy of his talent and what he's done for this industry and I wish I could listen to the interviews and stuff but he's very enigmatic to research into. There's so much information in just these two sources though, but I don't want my dissertation to be a spooning of information that somebody's already written, so I'll have to choose carefully what to put into the history of Matte Painting chapter.

The Preface

The preface of The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting, has the most amazing quote. However I don't think it will really fit into my dissertation so I'm just going to explain it's amazingness here.

"The most primitive films were shot against a painted backcloth. Nobody minded even when the backcloth flapped in the wind. Audiences suspended their dis-belief, as they were accustomed to do in the theater.
  Amazingly quickly, cameramen and designers caught on to the trick of matte painting. I remember seeing a silent film set in the seventeenth century called The Spanish Dancer (1923). I was amazed that the producers, Famous Players-Lasy, would pay for a huge castle to be constructed for just one shot. The castle was utterly convincing, but I found out years later it had been painted on glass. The camera dispenses with the third dimension, so a painting a few feet from the lens can, if the artist and the cameraman are skillful enough, look like a towering edifice hundreds of yards away. Over the years, I became skillful in spotting these glass shots, or so I thought.
  Quite recently, though, I searched for a location that turned out to be another of these brilliant tricks.
  I have immense admiration for the technicians who enlarged the scope of the motion picture. This book tells there story, and it is a work of enormous importance for film history. For years the practitioners of the invisible art fought hard for it to remain a closely guarded secret. "If you give these tricks away the whole illusion will be lost," they would protest.
  Well we have had decades of learning how films are made and how the tricks are done. It hasn't destroyed the illusion - if anything it has enhanced the moviegoing experience.
  Craig Barron based this book on interviews he filmed nearly twenty years ago, working with Mark Vaz, has created a treasure house of material. For how the flapping back cloth led to CGI is one the of the most fascinating stories of the last century."

I love how this quote starts off, this is essentially the optime of matte painting, the fact that how it's developed means the audience no longer needs to suspend it's disbelief like they do in theater. The fact that they can watch a film and be there without any crudeness it's a transportation from real life. That is the essence of what I want my practical work to be. Now I think the whole back cloth part is a bit extreme because the book doesn't mention any back cloths, it jumps straight into glass matte paintings. And also the ending although very poetic and grand is very long winded and american, in my opinion why is why I'm not going to use it, I might use the bit about theater suspending disbelief but I think I'll try find a better quote than this. This whole thing with the back cloth though led me to look at series of books regarding theater and set design, which is why I've included them in my bibliography.

There was this one book about architecture in film, which I found really really fascinating, because last year I read a book called Eyes of the Skin, which was super heavy going but was about architecture in general, so I thought this developed on from this nicely. But I think it goes off topic from Matte Painting. Because although it looks at it a bit like the extension of cityscapes through matte painting, it didn't really cover what I wanted to know more about. I was expecting it to discuss the fact that in the studio's they would build one level of a set and then extend it with a matte painting. I've only read of this once in richard rickett's special effects book and I didn't want to have that as the bible of my dissertation. Although it is the most amazing book. I love it so much. However what did fascinate me was this section.

Film Architecture, Set designs from metropolis to Blade Runner.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 1920.

A murder becomes visible - as a play of shadows on a fray wall. And shows once again how something imagined is more horrible than anything shown. No cinema can compete with our imagination. That the scream of a raped woman can be heard, really heard (if one has ears!) in this film - shall always be remembered about it. - Kurt Tucholsky 1920.

pg 50
In January and February 1919, during the days of the Spartacist revolt in Berlin, the as yet unknown screen writers Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz wrote the script for Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. In April 1919, they submitted the screenplay to the producer Erich Pommer, head of the Decla film company. The production of the film, based on a revised version of the script, began in october 1919. The hero, Francis, tells a friend the story of Dr Caligari, who displays the sleepwalking Cesare in a “cabinet” at the fair in Holstenwall. A series of murders begins in the city. The sleuthing Francis finally exposes Dr. Caligari as the criminal who misuses the sleepwalking Cesare to do the murders. Caligari escapes and disappears into an insane asylum, eventually turning out to be it’s director. But instead of a morbid play on the tale is eventually revealed as a sick fantasy of the narrating hero. All the characters in his story turn up again at the end in the asylum’s inner courtyard, the only structure in the film that displays conventional architectural elements. In Germany the film was criticised by many for disavowing the Art of Expressionism as the deranged fantasy of a lunatic. After the war, Siegfried Kracauer and Lotte Eisner used this argument to link the film to subsequent art criticism of the National Socialists. Kurt Tucholsky was fascinated by the “completely unreal dream world” of this film, in which he saw the poetic power of the medium at work. For him, almost completely suppressing realistic representation meant an enormous enrichment of film’s suggestive design potential. Caligari’s architectural realisation by the set designers Walter Reimann, Hermann Warm, and Walter Rohrig lends it a definitive design principle throughout. A total of 33 different sets were used. The painted views, which distort the site of the action in perspective and tip them off balance, give the sets a claustrophobic atmosphere in which the actors move like ghosts. The walls of the city streets are covered with enigmatic graffiti. The specifications for the decor determined the camera work and lighting as well. Shadows painted on scenery produced the contrast between light and dark, while the usually static and neutral camera opened up the sites of the action from the front. Apart from the obvious artificiality of the sets was programmatic in a more general sense. Reimann felt strongly that the film should not try to imitate reality through the simple means of stagecraft. He repeatedly pointed out the distinct differences between actual architecture and the film sets and insisted that should the term ‘film architecture’ should be replaced by ‘film painting’. “In no way are film sets architecture! . . . The film, the art of ‘optical’ illusion, needs utopia. It needs a set that is a utopian space, simulating the atmosphere of a space for the imagination” (Reimann 1926). Only very few of Reimann’s sets have survived; they are now scattered over four different archives in Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Los Angeles. Warm provided sketches and a number of models for a retrospective exhibition at the Siftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin in 1963. No other film exerted as much economic and aesthetic influence of the cinematography of the early Weimar Republic as Caligari. Even though the Expressionist film boom following on it’s success subsided quickly, this film nonetheless opened up new export markets for the German film industry.P.L 

pg52

Together the three fellas continued this aesthetic with a follow up film entitled Genuine - Die Tragodie wines seltsamen Hauses (Genuine - the Tragedy of a Strange House). The thing that most interests me about these films are the set designs by Cesar Klein.
Contemporary critiques commented extensively on the set designer’s efforts. Like Caligari, Genuine was made exclusively in the studio. Here, too, the artificially of the architecture was emphasised to stress the alien , synthetic psychological world of the plot. However, there is less use than in Caligari of spatial depth, sequences of movement and various lighting conditions, substituting instead a more two dimensional treatment of the floor, walls and ceiling. As we know from Cesar Klein’s preliminary drawings, the lively expressionist sets were designed in powerful colours. And although he experimented with a number of sketches in black and white, he could not prevent the sets from appearing over done and disjointed to a number of critics. “The paintings by Cesar Klein may testify to new expressive responsibilities, but their much too rich imagination obscures the clarity of the image in a splendid confusion of decor and costumes . . . with it’s artificially bizarre audacity, this presentation suffocated the emotion the actor made one feel.” wrote a contemporary critic (“Genuine,” Der Kinematograph, 1920?. For the development and discussion of expressionist film and it’s attempt to reprint psychological space, Genuine is an important counterpart to Caligari. Because of the lack of framing narrative, there was no opportunity here to write of the expressionist decor as the vision of someone mentally ill. Conservative critics doubted the expressionism was justified in such a case.(Jgh.1920); others claimed that Genuine stood at the beginning of a new epoch in artistic film making. (A.F. 1920).
Genuine lives in a subterranean glass house filled with magic trees, the splendour of glittering mirrors, luxurious beds, strange furnishings. The house itself has extensive halls, quiet enclosed gardens, dark rooms full of knik knaks, and exotic curio . . . The town is a dream town filmed with curious boutiques, narrow little lanes, rough people. Around the town there is a magical forest , , , This forest is a masterpiece one would like to own as a painting, and at the same time utterly characteristic of what Weine actually wants . . . Weine creates a forest out of cardboard and canvas he does without nature because he wants to create a fairytale , and thus he achieves a strength of atmosphere even beyond the best works by Schwind [the nineteenth century romantic painter Moritz Von Schwind]. We have here the first poet who gives film style the first maestro who masters the material fully. [A.F. 1920]

pg 58

After reading these few pages, I had to watch these films, and they are bizarre and eccentric but also amazing at the same time. But it is more focused on set design. But the amount of paint that went onto the sets is incredible so weird. I loved it. The designs and so on reminded of Noel Fielding and the mighty boosh. And at that kind of fun element, I bet they had so much fun making it. This kind of goes off topic completely from matte painting, the only way i could link it is if you built a set and instead of painting the set you painted glass panels in front the set had the set all white and had the comedy sketch move in between the panels. Kept the same set and just changed the glass panels, you would need massive glass panels though. I can see that working in a Mighty Boosh esque manner. I might plot this out as an idea. Either giant glass panels you could use to do the effect in camera or you could not do that and instead put them in after, but then you'd have to green screen the characters which might be a farce. 

I saw this from september issue of creative review and to do this they sandwiched the model between painted sheets of glass, which is kind of the same effect. Although of course it's pertinent to remember that glass in still photo's has been going for a long long time a lot longer than films have been made. I think this brings me nicely onto Norman Dawn, my next blog post, who is supposedly the first ever guy to make a matte painting. I've found out so much about him, I think it would be a shame not to share this information with you, but I'm only going to discuss the history of matte painting in 1,000 and I could probably waffle on about Norman O Dawn for at least 9,000 so I'll do my next blog post on him. Also I'll come back to the first book the Legends of Movie Matte Painting as I get further into discussing the route of my project. As for the books of architecture and set design I really just wanted to mention them briefly and stem off this first idea of practical and my thought process behind it. I need to get a few ideas down on paper at this stage and this is the first one I had, so I'll come back to it and develop it and draw it out when I come to present all my ideas.

Special Effects The History and Technique by Richard Rickett

This book is by far one of the best books I have read. I discovered it over the summer in the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne and just fell in love with. The knowledge it shares on the technical aspects of traditional Matte Painting the revoloution of technology and how this influence and changed the scene of Matte Painters who then needed to be more computer technicians rather than artists, and then the introduction of 3D animation and how that affected Matte Painting. It's quite different to The invisible Art of Matte Painting because it focuses much more on the specifics in a more condensed fashion as it's only covered over a few chapters. I think this book would be really good to paraphrase in the historical chapter of my dissertation.

COP 3: Tutorial 1

Issues Discussed at the Tutorial:

- Matte Paintings: Traditional / Digital

- History of Matte Paintings - Norman Dawn etc.

- Case Studies - Rob Crabb, Dave??

- Technical Aspect of Painting

[Theory]
- Immersion
- Realism
- Uncanny

Films to expand on as examples: Blade Runner / Dick Tracey / Gone With the Wind.

- Look at Cine FX and American Cinematographer

Student Action

- Primary Research - Interview Questions.
Formulate Questions and Email Matte Painters so you start getting a response in the next few weeks.

-Write up the Historical Overview.

- Practically What are you going to do? Think about much more.

Methodology

Methodologies & Critical Analysis

40% Is Methodology and Critical Analysis, is being critical with reasoned thinking.

Every Research Project needs a Methodology.

Evidence that you have reflected critically on various research methods. It’s more than a research plan, you need to think critically on it. Why is that path the most appropriate? 

Every Methodology is Unique.

Palsgrave Study Skills  - Methodology Online

What kind of Methods are you going to use? Qualitative or Quantitive? What do you think your methods will enable you to discover?

What might they prevent you from discovering?

What sort of problems do you envisage in setting up these methods?

What are their benefits?

What will you need to do to ensure they gather useful data?

You May Include (Probably should include)

• Literature Reviews
• Questionnaires (Large numbers of people answering questions)
• Interviews (Be care might be Bias?) 
• Sketchbooks, Critical Diaries, Reflective Logs

Outline your Methodology at the Start, in the introduction of the dissertation. What are you not focusing on? Why? Justify.

Define the Audience. 

Regarding the question of the dissertation, what do you want to say? What’s the point of the project?

Have a central argument, stop it going wooly!

Find evidence to back up the argument, and that contradicts it, triangulation.

Do you need more evidence? Where else do I need to look for more evidence? Is it clear and logical?

Use multiple ideas at one subject. Use a mixture of citation styles, ranging from block quotes, paraphrased sections and interwoven small quotes. Evaluate every source, always critical.

My Methodology:

So I basically see this as my essay plan, so I'm not going to go down the questionnaire route, this is because Matte Painting is so niche I think it would be difficult to ask a large enough group of people to get a reasonable an unbiased response. Instead I am going to interview current Matte Painters in industry to see how they feel about traditional Matte Painting, how much work is available to them with it being so niche, the use of the technical aspects of painting by asking about there background how they got to where they are today, and so on.

I have already started reading books, my bibliography is currently quite extensive but there's only five or so I have read cover to cover, as Matte Painting is so niche the rest I have just pulled chapters and quotes from the relevant sections. I have also used the web so far but I really need to get onto the journal aspect of things. See the proposal post for my bibliography, if it has Matte Painting in the title I have read it cover to cover, also it it has special effects it usually has a large section on Matte Painting.

Alot of the special effects books cover the history of Matte Painting, so this will be a smallish chapter in my dissertation and then I really want to look up technical aspects of painting, but I still need to look up books for this, and then a section on the interviews, Then I need to write a bit of theory about why Matte Painting is so successful in films and then I want to go into my practical investigation. In which I still have no idea what I'm doing for. 

Schedule as of Monday 5th October:

So this is my rough schedule, I've worked out if I want to have a completed first draft for the turn it date, I need to have 1,500 words for every tutorial. I think that will be difficult though because I think I will just find it really difficult to start. But I've told myself for the first tutorial I'll try work on the first chapter on the history of matte painting because that's what really inspired me over the summer. I just need to think of way to spin it so it's academic rather that a paraphrasing of what all the books have already said. I've read four or five things that cover Norman O Dawn so I think I'll start of by doing a literary review on each of them on my blog and then I can collate quotes from them or know how I'm going to paraphrase it to make it easier for me to get this done for friday so Annabeth can look over it before my tutorial. I think as long as I get it in before the weekend is over that will be okay but I am working on the weekend so I do need to get it done for then. What I plan on doing from now on is every monday blogging an updated version of my schedule so I can reassess where I am and what I need to do. I think I am very grateful I read so much over the summer because I literally think I'd be having a panic attack now if not, although I do want to keep reading I think because I'm such a slow writer if I don't start now It'll never get done, and this worries me more than the written work. I feel like it's a lot of pressure because it is a third of the degree.

Proposal Questions

What was your subject research at Level 4?

At Level 4 my subject of research was on The Auteur theory. My conclusion was that the Auteur theory is a very romantic notion which may inspire some, but the final definition lies with the British Film institute, the term has a specific cultural and political history, beginning with the politique des auteurs, a manifesto drafted in the 1950s by a group of French film directors and critics who celebrated the role of the director as the 'author' of a film, particularly in the then 'Hollywood studio system'. (BFI, Glossary) These days the Hollywood Studio system isn’t as fundamental to cinemas as it was, today there are many more independent films accessible to a wider public. Auteur filmmaking isn’t just about meeting the criteria defined by Sarris. If a film doesn’t have the technical competence, a signature imprint for audiences to remember, or interior meaning that the audience can relate to in theory it may not be a classical masterpiece remembered in history. Wes Anderson does not need to be classed as an auteur, film makers can just be artists in their own right, his films have the aesthetics, technical ability and leave the audience in awe. Therefore the label is irrelevant. Although the term is used regularly in the industry it remains irrelevant in comparison to being labelled a master. In the end that’s all that matters, one aim’s to be a master not an auteur.

What was your subject research at Level 5?

At Level 5 my subject of research was how animation has developed as a craft, through the fusion of the haptic of traditional techniques and the digital age. I came to the conclusion that it is drawn to be believed that all are crafts, if a person is passionate about drawing, and produces drawn illustrations that is their craft, thus, for animation the same would apply. More often than not the skills intertwine, stop motion films like The Boxtrolls, require the collaboration of many craftsmen; artists who paint and draw in their own right, puppet makers, set designers and animators. Collectively these would still be considered a craft. Furthermore in summary to this essay, collaboration acts a key theme. Focus has not been on those films that have been purely made by traditional techniques or those that have purely been made by CG techniques, the focus is the intertwining and coming together of skills to create something innovative. Because in this modern age there aren’t many films that are created with the sole use of one craft yet all individual roles and techniques are relevant in some way but it is there intertwining that is seen more frequently. Glen Keane is an american animator born in 1954, he has seen technology develop and the industry evolve, who better to quote in conclusion: ‘ I feel whenever technology crosses my path it forces me to become a better artist. What I didn’t what to do is just give up my pencil... I don’t believe that hand drawn animation is over, I feel that with technology it has now been liberated to become much more expressive.’ (Keane, G. 2015) Those who have succeeded have embraced this philosophy with hybrid processes, by making labour intensive traditional techniques, speeding up the process to be affordably slow with crafted results. This development is a constant learning curve in the industry and the hybridity of the processes allows for thousands of combinations to come in the future as the digital age progresses.

What research needs to be undertaken into the general and specific contexts of your practice?

I have decided to continue and develop the research I have already undertaken, instead I would like to return to my roots of painting and develop a keen understanding of matte painting. Preferably in a non photo realistic way but I am willing to try it especially when trying out digital matte painting, although I am more keen to stick to oil on glass. In context I will need to research the history of matte painting and specifically the traditional techniques of film processing compare this to the digital techniques and with my creative practice find a way to combine the two to embrace the best of both practices. I would also like to spend some time researching more into the technical side of painting, including, light, pigment, colour theory, and drawing the eye into a focal point, to apply this into the matte paintings and draw attention to the live action of the piece. I would also like to use my contacts in Australia and include a primary source interview on a current matte painter who still uses traditional techniques I would also like to approach other matte painters in industry to get there input on the technique as it is such a niche part of the film and entertainment industry.

What approaches will you take and what processes, methods, materials and tools are to be involved in research into your practice?

• Oil on Glass matte painting
• Acrylic on Canvas matte Painting for a city scape maybe?
• Digital matte painting, not composition though I don’t want to get carried away because I think it could be confused with concept art
• Live action footage to show it’s a matte painting or can I just think about this?
• Light boxes to present the oil on glass matte paintings?
• Photographic Research
• Editing tools like AE and Premier Pro to composite final piece
• Drawing for initial ideas etc

What preparation or investigation do you need to undertake for your creative practice to take place?

So to get started on my creative practice, I would first like to research into the technical aspect of painting so I can apply this to the work. I will also need to find some toughened glass panels, I also need to decide on what they are going to be a part of, if it will be a narrative, what story would be told, I also need to do rough drawings of whatever they are going to be. I also want to explore digital matte painting and this might involve learning new software including Nuke and 3DMaxs. I think it’s going to be really difficult to not get carried away with special effects, because I’d really like to try animated smoking chimneys or something in the matte painting or moving clouds. I think this would work best with the clouds being digital onto of a traditional matte painting. I also really want to try a bit a of oil on glass animation as part of PPP but inspired by this COP study and I think this will be challenging as I don’t want to be swayed off by it.

What research do you need to take regarding on who your creativity is for?

Ultimately my creative practice isn’t for anyone other than for myself and my portfolio. So it would be good to get advice of current matte painters from my mini interviews, and also get advice on turn the oil on glass paintings into light boxes to present in a professional manner.

Perceived problems or difficulties.

The biggest problem I am having is that I do not know how to go about the creative side of work, because I don’t know what subject to do matte paintings on, also should there be a narrative? I have no idea where to begin with this task. Starting is always difficult. I also do not want to make the task too ambitious because I know painting is a slow process but I don’t want to have to little work for the end of the module.

Primary sources of information.

I have a contact in Australia called Xin Li, who although he specialises in Oil on Glass animation but he has also worked on matte paintings in the past so I plan to utilise this connection. I have also already done some research into the industry and current practitioners, including Robb Crabbe, David Edwards and Frank Ozra which I shall also email to see if I can get there voice on the subject.

Secondary Sources

See Bibliography Slide from Presentation.

Initial Presentation and Feedback

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.

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.

So I think this is what I have a vague idea of my chapters and this is providing the basis of the books I've researched and so on, but I don't think I'll know more until after my tutorial. I know that the investigation will definitely have information on traditional and modern methods so that what I definitely think I should cover in the first chapter and I think I should have a rough draft of this for my first tutorial so I know what I'm talking about. Also I made a schedule and I know I need to do 1,500words for each tutorial to make sure I get the first draft in for in December.

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.