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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.
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!
:-)
What are the most obvious differences, Bingo?
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.
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.
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?
Here you go. What REALLY amazes me is the motel. It's joined at the sign post. Incredible. It's unbelievable that they didn't build the whole motel for Psycho 2; they didn't rebuild it all until Psycho 3. And even though they had the house on the hill, in a number of shots in Psycho 2 it's painted. Wonderful!
Shanerjedi:
"That film is an excellent example of great matte work as are most of Hitch's films. He was using the digital backlot before there was one. Photochemical backlot? :p"
Well, not even photchemical, that matte painting was in camera, I believe, shot live.
How about this one. Sort of Hitchcock ;-) This is actually a travelling matte, which means, basically, that it had to actually work while the camera was tracking across from left to right as a car arrives and pulls up.
It's actually from Psycho II, in 1983, by the late, very great Albert Whitlock. The guy was an illusion genius. Yes, the hills behind the motel are not very well painted, but can you tell where the painting begins and ends?
Re: matte paintings
Most people have no idea just how much of the movie they are watching has matte paintings in it, especially with older movies which, arguably, used the art more skilfully than a lot of the later ones. Black and white movies. One of the main reasons, other than just the skill of the painter, is that people wouldn't suspect what they are looking would be painted. Look at this example, it's absolutely incredible. This is from Hitchcock's The Paradine Case.
If you saw the finished frame, would you ever suspect all that woodwork and the passageway behind weren't real? Hitchock obviously wasn't the only one who used this technique, they were being used long before him, but he sure did know how to use them.
I love that Dune Sea background Angel, it really does have a literal ocean feel about it, makes this all look like ships at sea. I like that a lot.
Well, each to their own. I still think it's repeating, and fighters don't really change that. Besides, you can't have a few shots of a battle without character reactions and then cut to the next scene. What scenes would you use for the characters?
Well, I think the last thing we need in Jedi is another parallel to Star Wars. It's already an inferior remake of it anyway, so I would avoid any more duplication like fleeing Star Destroyers when leaving Tatooine.
I'm inclined to believe that is Tim Pope speaking. And what a nice thing to say from someone who clearly still feels wronged by Miramax (oh, don't get me started on Miramax!). Well done to the editor.
Maybe you could put the Emperor's arrival before the journey to the Sarlacc begins, and then after they flee Tatooine instead of cutting to the Death Star you can go straight to the Rebel Alliance gathering, as Yoda and the Emperor's arrival will have happened already.
However, while all this might sound feasible, there are real risks of upsetting the pacing of the story. Going straight from Jabba's destruction to the Rebel meeting is a bad idea. You need a soft scene in the middle, which is where Dagobah is at the moment.
Well, I think I've done about all I can on this one. Apologies for any horrible colour/black crushing that Photobucket does, it's not there in the original image. It's not necessarily for the celebration scene, although that sky might look nice with fireworks exploding in it; it's just as easily a night establishing shot of somewhere near the Ewok camp.
Yes, given that Leia can't really know what she's recalling, "just feelings" as she says, it's vague. Either way, we know she didn't know her mother. I wouldn't change any music to prequel music unless the piece I was replacing was particularly unsuccessful as it stands. I hate homogenising everything into one identical lump. Somewhere in the 12 years since the Special Editions people have started to want that, whereas I prefer each movie to have its own aesthetic, its own identity. So what if Imperial Shuttles never appeared before Jedi and then they're everywhere. We didn't see A wings or B wings, Mon Calamari and their cruisers, and any number of other designs before they featured, but so what? Seeing new designs actually used to be something that appealed about these movies.
Doubleofive, why not try doing some stuff yourself? It's really not so hard once you get to grips with the software you're using. Well, if you're artistically inclined, of course. Do you do anything creative?
LOL!
Hahaha stop it.
Adywan would be free to use my work, yes, because I appreciate his dedication to what he does. That said, he's never shown any indication that he'd want to do so, so it's never come up. Ady seems to want to do as much of his project as possible by himself, and I can understand that. And to be honest, I really want to see what he does. If someone like Adywan used some of my work, I wouldn't enjoy watching it as much. You know, like when someone else makes you food it tastes better? It's that kinda thing.
Can't believe you remembered the Harry Potter thing. I need to be careful what I reveal around here, it seems ;-).
Doubleofive:
So legally (or contractually), no one could use your mattes unless you were getting paid? Man, that sucks. Guess it comes with the "job in the industry" territory.
Most work I do (none yet posted here) is work-related so obviously I can't share that. But the stuff I do for fun, some of it posted here, I probably wouldn't give out the full-res version unless it was for someone to use in a good project. I'm happy to post low-res, desktop-sized versions, but at the same time they really don't do justice to something that was painted with 30-40 times more detail hehe.
I know some people think that, because the stuff we post on here is inspired or even "photoshopped" from someone else's material, that we don't own it, but that's not the case. The Endor night matte I did, for example; WE know it's Endor, but there's nothing in that image that isn't mine or altered drastically from its original version, so I own the image entirely. It's a legally complex area, but generally, if you change someone else's image significantly then you are not infringing.
So with that in mind, get painting, you lot!
I think we should have a contest on the forum sometime, for people who haven't posted before, or posted much, with some sort of prize for the winner. I really want to see what other people can do.
I use deviantart, but I'm not putting my artwork anywhere at full res, not a chance. I don't mind sending to people privately sometimes when I know them a while, but I can't publish anything for free, whether it's inspired by other material or totally original.
Well, unfortunately, to keep the file size down they compress and if you're compressing an image that has 32-bit colours into something much smaller, as well as reducing it drastically in size, it "crushes" everything together in (un)expected ways. Hence the lime green on my daylight Endor matte and the blue haze on the nighttime one.
Still, you get the rest of the image clear enough and you can see what my intentions were. It's just annoying when you've done an image that's designed to stand up to detail even at 6k+ that you can't show it properly. Not that I want to be posting my full-res art for free, of course!
Shanerjedi, you literally must have caught it the second I was deleting it. I'm going to try to get a version that fixes the crushing of colours so you can get a better view of it.