Info & Ideas: ESB and ROTJ Wishlist — Page 172

Indeed it was, this is pretty darn good travelling matte. Just amazing. When you see it in the movie you can see the hills are painted, as they look a little too lush green, but never do you look at the motel and think it's not there. Psycho II is full of matte paintings.

One thing I really love is at the beginning, when it shows the shower scene from Psycho and the tracking shot that ends looking out of the motel room window up at the house, the camera fades to black, and then fades up in colour, on a matte painting where the real house just was. Wonderful.

Gee, can you tell I'm a fan?

Bingowings said:

It may be impossible to add small sails to the current skiffs but there's nothing but hard work stopping us from adding more skiffs with small sails.

For those seeking a shadowy first view of Luke maybe we could have one final trial on Dagobah before going inside the mudhut for one last goodbye to his master.

If it was done in silhouette it could hide the lack of new Mark Hamill footage.

A dark robed figure picked out in the swamp mists, effortlessly moving rocks, a tree or even his ship would show how far he has come.

Yeah he'd really have to be in silhouette as it stands now anyway because there's no real footage available.

But Venal makes a great point though about pacing of the film. We do need a breather after the Jabba portion. What is that? I don't know.

The thing about these scenes now as they are in the film is that there's transitions that occur and beats that make a film flow and work on an almost subconscious level.

So we need to be aware of those.

But I still love the Dagobah scene to open the film. :p

I love Psycho II, next to ESB it's possibly my favorite sequel (Psycho III is ok but it's more like the Psycho II most of us would have expected, it doesn't take as many chances, though it has some nice touches from Perkins infront and behind the camera).

The breather would be the Emperor scene.

We have focused so long on the good guys in peril that the bad guys walking around having a chat serves as the chapter turner.

If the Fett dropping the plans off bits could be made they would also act as Act bridges but the film need to have a punchy middle section.

There are plenty of slow passages on Endor and in the Death Star before the big finale.

Darth Venal said:

 

Indeed it was, this is pretty darn good travelling matte. Just amazing. When you see it in the movie you can see the hills are painted, as they look a little too lush green, but never do you look at the motel and think it's not there. Psycho II is full of matte paintings.

One thing I really love is at the beginning, when it shows the shower scene from Psycho and the tracking shot that ends looking out of the motel room window up at the house, the camera fades to black, and then fades up in colour, on a matte painting where the real house just was. Wonderful.

Gee, can you tell I'm a fan?

No. :P

Seriously, yes, I can hear your admiration. That's great.

Okay, El Presidente Angel has just made us aware that we are off-topic, but it was a great detour anyway. Thanks for posting those pics.

Bingowings, yeah I'm also a big fan of Psycho II, although the edited for TV version is actually better in my opinion, because it removes a couple of moments of gratuity. I don't need to see Lila getting a kitchen knife stuck down her throat, and while it's effectively shocking, I did find it unnecessary. It's got a nice score from Goldsmith, too, and I like the cast.

doubleofive said:

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to knock mattes, I just wasn't fully aware of their proliferation in films ancient and modern, let alone the number in RotJ.  I never noticed most of them, which I guess is a good sign, eh?  We just need to work on improving the current mattes (Vaderios) or creating all new mattes (Venal) to eliminate some of the lines, static elements, or perspective errors.

I'd love to see more comparisons between what was shot and what was matte.  I'm sure they'll be in the eventual "Making of Return of the Jedi: The Definitive Story", since the one for "Star Wars" had a few, tiny as most of them were.

I was kidding you when I said don't knock the mattes. But yeah, the SW films are full of great mattes by some great artists.

I don't know what it is about traditional matte painting, but I just prefer it. I just feel it works better on film than digital mattes have so far. Yes, of course, digital mattes are more detailed and can be manipulated in 3D for different angles etc, but there's just something about painted mattes...

Maybe it's the work that goes into them, I know the artist has painted every bit of it, but with digital art, that's rarely the case any more. Is digital stuff technically more accurate? For sure. Does it look more real? Often, no. I feel the same about digital animation over hand drawn. Most of us are aware just how much work went into traditional animation, and how much the machines have taken that skill away. Oh, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish a workload like that on anyone! But people used to do that, every frame of it, and I can't help feeling they deserved higher praise than someone who does theirs on a computer, like me.

I wonder how much of the barge and skiff model detail could be replaced by sampling the location set?

They clearly do not match up and often (especially around the time of the explosion) both are static or with very slight movement.

 What are the most obvious differences, Bingo?

Darth Venal said:

 What are the most obvious differences, Bingo?

The colour, the weathering, the amount of detail, the lighting.

The number of open slats (ok so they can go up and down but it would sell the model shots more if some of those textures and details could be tweaked).

They obviously lack sufficient weight (the bouncing abandoned skiff has a very fake feel).

It feels like everyone teleported off before it blew up too.

OK with apologies to Angel I just wanted to show this pic to everyone, and then I promise not to go AWOL or OT or whatever you call it...

This is a satellite view of the Psycho house on the Universal lot, in the position where it's been since 1982. I thought you might like to see the War of the Worlds crash set is actually right behind the Psycho house! I believe when Cruise and co emerge in the morning and find it, the camera pans down as they cross the road, so you don't see the house! Oh, the movies. Incidentally, WotW was directed by Spielberg, who is a good friend of George Lucas' (really) who made the Star Wars movies. Wow, back on topic, just like that!

:-)

Ganamae, that's exactly what me and Angel have been discussing. When I do a new matte for it (next job I think) I will indeed be lifting it off the sand.

Darth Venal said:

 

I don't know what it is about traditional matte painting, but I just prefer it. I just feel it works better on film than digital mattes have so far. Yes, of course, digital mattes are more detailed and can be manipulated in 3D for different angles etc, but there's just something about painted mattes...

Maybe it's the work that goes into them, I know the artist has painted every bit of it, but with digital art, that's rarely the case any more. Is digital stuff technically more accurate? For sure. Does it look more real? Often, no. I feel the same about digital animation over hand drawn. Most of us are aware just how much work went into traditional animation, and how much the machines have taken that skill away. Oh, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish a workload like that on anyone! But people used to do that, every frame of it, and I can't help feeling they deserved higher praise than someone who does theirs on a computer, like me.

Well, there are some of you guys who do(did) both. Many folks like Chris Evans from Matte World, Mike Pangrazio from Weta, and Yusei Uesugi from ILM  all did mattes on glass before transitioning. I think those folks creations work very well in the digital medium. Then there is some great matte work I've seen recently in some recent films that was very good by people who've never painted on glass.

Now I'm not saying any of these people approach Ellenshaw, Whitlock, etc. But they're very good in their own right.

Darth Venal said:

 

Oh great, that first picture is doing my job.  I feel so worthless now.

Ric if it was doing your job there would be arrows pointing to "Trees" , "Road", "Building".

Hahaha, Bingo that's brilliant.

Cahoots? That's a shocking accusation. What's next, collusion? Conspiracy?!

Anyone got a thesaurus?

That's cool. Angel can do the mock up/concept work and Venal can realize it. I'm sure we're in for some really cool stuff.