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Matte photography


GeorgeSelinsky

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I was just watching North by Northwest and I was wondering if matte photography (where an illustration is filmed together with live action) is still done anymore? I saw this done once in camera class but it's been ages and ages and we didn't go through every detail.

 

I was thinking of doing such a shot for my film, possibly. I want to create a new top for a building.

 

Thanks in advance as always,

 

- G.

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Yes, it's done all the time, only most of the "painting" is now done digitally. It's much easier to combine the artwork with the film image in the digital realm. The methods of doing the composite non-digitally are all rather complicated: latent image, optical split-screen, rear or front projection, etc.

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It's much easier to combine the artwork with the film image in the digital realm.

...and probably more expensive I would believe. From what I recall, scanning film and outputting it back is still a very costly thing to do. We're talking several bucks a frame last time I checked.

 

I once saw how the camera had a mounted illustration covering the top, and then the bottom was clear to film the live action - I think this was for Mel Brook's "History of the World Part 1". I imagine to make up for the focal issue one could simply use a split diopter on the camera.

 

- G.

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No, you can't really use a split-diopter to shoot "glass shots" (matte paintings on glass in front of the subject.) The line is too fuzzy and obvious. You have to use more depth of field and very large paintings.

 

The reason glass shots disappeared from use so early on was that production time was too valuable to spend setting it up, plus if it were an outdoor scene, your painting would have to match a specific time of day and weather condition of the subject. Similar problems with foreground miniature effects in terms of costly production time, although it's still occasionally done ("Dune" and "Conan the Barbarian" had some great foreground miniature work.)

 

It's more common to combine the painting and live action in post. The best but hardest method was latent image, where the foreground subject was shot with part of the frame blacked out and a painting was doubled-exposed into the black area with the live action portion being black in the painting.

 

This could be done with dupes however, like an optical split-screen effect.

 

Doug Trumbull had a strange variation of this process that required shooting the painting with a camera loaded with intermediate stock instead of camera negative stock, requiring a ton of light on the painting plus using colors that reproduced correctly on intermediate stock.

 

Then there's the method of rear-projecting or front-projecting the live action into a portion of the painting.

 

All of this is to say that other than latent image, all these compositing techniques caused a generational loss that made the effect stand out, plus required a lot of wedge testing to match the color and density of the foreground to the painting element. Digital compositing is so much faster and easier, with no generational loss, that the higher costs are offset by the better quality and shorter turnaround times.

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The best but hardest method was latent image

I remember seeing this done on a cinematography video, the DP filmed the first half of the image (the live action sequence), then the film was rewound, the frame was "scribed", and they developed a piece of the negative to see where the line exactly was. Then they photographed the matte. It was pretty neat.

 

Some of the matte work on North by Northwest was fantastic. The shot inside the replicated UN was astounding. The killer areal shot of Cary Grant running out of the UN was another fantastic one.

 

- G.

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I was actually visiting the set as a college student when Alen Daviau shot a 2nd unit matte painting shot of the Baltimore inner harbor for "Avalon." There were tons of extras in costume in the bottom of the frame and a painting of the early 1900s cityscape in the painting on top. My mother appears in the lower righthand corner. :-)

 

Daviau actually invited people to enter the tented area where the shot was set up so they could understand what was going on. If I recall correctly the painting was more than six feet across. That's the last matte painting I know of, unless perhaps Coppola did some on "Dracula."

 

One of my favorites is in"Cleopatra," where the painting had to be absolutely enormous to give a three dimensional impression as the camera actually panned from real background through matte painting and back to painting again.

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For low budget work, foreground or hanging miniatures often can do what matte paintings did traditionally, and you have the advantage that constructing models is far easier than doing top-notch matte paintings. Lighting and shadows match always because the effect is created in-camera. You get first-generation quality and need no scanning & recording. And if the camera is on a nodal-point mount, it is even possible to pan within certain limits.

Just wanted to mention it, because lately I have seen some digital effects used on moderately budgeted films where money could have been spent better than doing a static matte shot digitally...

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A foreground miniature is a scaled model (e.g. a building or natural structure) which is to be added to an existing set. The miniature is closer to the camera than the live action part and will blend in perspective.

 

Some examples:

 

http://www.wonderworksweb.com/Visual.html

 

http://es.geocities.com/chominart/hanging.html

 

There's a nice model in the "Making Of" section of the TREMORS DVD, there you can see how they used a miniature canyon/cliff model to create an abyss that never existed. Strangely, there are relatively few pictures of foreground/hanging miniatures in Visual effects books, except a picture of a really clever ceiling hanging miniature in Raymond Fielding's TECHNIQUE OF SPECIAL EFFECTS, and one issue of CINEMAGIC had some spectacular images from 1970s TV advertising effects work - all done in 35mm in-camera.

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Hi,

 

There's two instances of absolutely outstanding foreground miniature work in "Aliens", perhaps the finest of which is only seen in the special edition release sequence where the colony world is shown at work. There's a movement down a miniature street, with a vehicle, then a shot of two people pulling a tarp over another vehicle - at the other end of the stage!

 

Quite how they contrived to achieve the depth of field required here, I don't know.

 

Phil

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My favourite minature work is the oil tanker in the Bond Film The Spy who Loved Me. The ariel shot of the ship and the other closer shots are superb, and according to the DVD documentary the Shell (or Esso) executives at the having seen the film asked where they had got a real tanker from.

 

Matt

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  • 1 year later...

Hi folks - just came across this thread --

 

George, did you ever get to do the glass/miniature shot, and if so, can you share images/results?

 

Also, it seems like you'd need the image or model to be a certain fixed size or larger in order to be x distance from the camera in order to guarantee focus, no?

 

Regarding the Fielding book, on amazon now you can do a "search inside the book" for some and in this one, you can bring up Fielding's photo of an early glass shot setup. That's a big piece of glass!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0240512340...%3D#reader-page

 

In this day and age, I'd think you could combine a miniature frame with photos taken from real structures to serve as the texture or siding in many cases. Roger Evans, the guy who makes the WorkPrinter DYI transfer machines, used to have some of his SFX work posted where he made a miniature house and took digital photos of the real house's siding and roof tile. The results were excellent.

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Daviau actually invited people to enter the tented area where the shot was set up so they could understand what was going on.  If I recall correctly the painting was more than six feet across.  That's the last matte painting I know of, unless perhaps Coppola did some on "Dracula."

 

Are you refering to foreground glass shots here?

 

The last documented traditional matte shot painted on glass is, according to folks over here, a shot involving the Dalai Lama for SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET (1997). However, Doug Ferris, who is now retired, also painted some traditionally composited glass mattes for THE BORROWERS, also in 1997.

 

Digital matte art really started to proliferate around 1994-5. However, movies like THE SHADOW (1994) and HACKERS (1995) were still done using matte photography and painted glass.

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Those of you interested in matte-paintings should take a look at Albert Whitlock's works, specially on such effects heavy films as Earthquake (for which he did more than 40 matte shots) or The Hindenburg. The late Robert Wise once remarked that he only agreed to shot that film after Whitlock had assured him that he could achieve the illusion of a flying zeppelin via matte-paintings.

 

Whitlock's ASC obituary.

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