Albert Whitlock - Visual Effects Society’s tribute

A great tribute to one of the master's of Visual FX/ Matte Painting's who died in 1999. Pity the video on this site isn't any bigger quality.

Click the above image for link !

Screamers (1996) - Matte Paintings

Caught the end of Screamers the other night on TV, quite a fun SF movie based on the Philip K. Dick short story Second Variety. In the original story the film is set on Earth, not Siruis 6B like in the movie, and it's a story about the Americans and Russians. The film stars Peter Weller and was directed by Canadian filmaker Christian Duguay.
I was always impressed with the Matte Paintings which were created by Deak Ferrand , they really do a superb job of expanding the filming locations shot around Québec in Canada.

When Matte Paintings go bad !

I've made a few posts recently about the Matte Painting's from Buck Roger's in the 25th Century and Logan's Run. Well here is an example from the original Battlestar Galactica movie of how not to do a Matte Painting. This really is one of the crummiest attempts at a Matte Painting I've seen, there's absolutely no blending edge or colour balance on any of the elements that have been added, the whole things looks like it was painted on a piece of cardboard and some holes were cut into with a pair of scissors for the live action to be added to. I always thought the perspective on this picture looked wrong too, it's because we appeared to be looking down on the Galactica crew and the Ovion's but across the way we could see Ovion's meant to be in caves that looked at a different angle and the caves didn't really have any depth to them.
I spent 15 mins messing with this Matte in Photoshop this afternoon removing the 2 caves and blending the pic a little better, not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination but it shows how much easier it is to blend stuff like this in post.

Logan's Run - Matte Paintings

Following my post about the Matte Painting's in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century here I thought I'd do a post about the matte painting's created by Matthew Yuricich for the 1976 film Logan's Run directed by Michael Anderson.
For the most part the film doesn't have many Matte's until we leaved the domed city, the City and the interior were realised by L.B. Abbott's miniature team. But once Logan and Jessica leave and arrive at the now ruined Washington D.C we are treat to some really super Matte Paintings.
We see the Lincoln Memorial overgrown by centuries of foliage as is Daniel Chester French's sculpture of Lincoln, seated on a throne.
We get to see The United States Congress Building covered in vine's and creepers both inside and out. Towards the end of the film Logan and Jessica return to the city with the Old Man along the beach and we see the only daytime shot of the domed city as a matte, the area where Logan and Jessica re enter the city, bottom middle picture is the "active pool" of the Water Gardens located in Ft. Worth, Texas, expanded by one of Yuricich's matte's. As I said in the Buck Roger's post, I think these old matte's appeal to me more in an artistic sort of way as opposed to a realistic way, there's no chance of ever being fooled by the majority of these matte's, but it's the fantastic worlds they convey that give them there charm to me. I don't know what it is about the Lincoln Memorial, but when I see that statue it always give me terrible flashbacks to Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes and that horrendous ending.
Matthew Yuricich went on to create wonderful matte paintings for the films Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Ghostbusters, 2010: The Year We Make Contact and Die Hard amongst others.

Buck Rogers - Matte Paintings

I was watching the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century film recently, this was the pilot for the TV series that was run theatrically. I always loved the Matte Paintings in the film that Syd Dutton created.
There's something that still appeals to me about the old style matte work than the new slick digital stuff, I think old school matte paintings have a very stylized look, and back in the day they were primarily used to set up a location in just one particular shot, so they were something to look forward too, but by the time we got to films like the Star Wars prequels were every shot on Coruscant was glossy and impressive I always wished for the old less is more adage.
If you look at the top right corner of the bottom left picture you can see the brush strokes on the unfinished edge of the painting, I suppose this would have been cropped on the 1.85:1 cinema print. The shot of the ruined city really reminds me of the matte work from Logans Run and Earthquake, again not 100% realistic but it has a great artistic quality to it.