Where The Truth Lies Serendipity Point Films 2005
Finessed and tracked in a large matte painting of the New York City skyline circa 1959
The tricky thing about creating this matte painting was that a lot of the buildings that were part of the skyline then are now either torn down or blocked by other buildings. The skyline had to be carefully re-assembled from archive photography, which because of it’s age had a very different quality than what we are used to seeing in films. Because of this the original assembly that I was provided with felt very much like an illustration:
Stage 1: Painted out detail and desaturated distance, added 3D water, added reflections to water:
Stage 2: replaced sky, added smoke from chimneys, haze between buildings, and more dramatic shadows and highlights:
Final: changed lighting so that it appears later in the day; deeper shadows, some buildings in silhouette, added sun reflections to windows, added moving boats and birds.
Ice Harvest Focus Features 2005
Matte painting – this entire forest was put together using stock photographs of trees, the road was hand painted. Some of the trees were very subtly warped so that the branches swayed, and a little mist was added to give it some depth
Set extensions – a large area of this icy lake was created in a quarry using huge amounts of paraffin wax. To achieve these wider shots, the ice was painted to extend to the edge of frame, and excess shine was painted out.
The Santa Clause 2 Walt Disney Pictures 2002
3D environment
Designed the look of the North Pole, creating it entirely in the inferno out of photographs arranged in 3D space so that camera moves have realistic parallax, also created aurora borealis. 3D plane provided
It’s Always Something (The Gilda Radner Story) Merv Griffin Enterprises 2002
Moving matte painting
Created scenery for dream sequence from stock photographs; icy cliffs, eerily shifting rocks. Greenscreen actor and tiger provided
War Next Door (The) USA Network 2000
Matte painting/composting
Greenscreen actor provided, background, atomic blast, dust, shockwave all added, using stock cloudtank footage, stock smoke, photo cd images
Due South Alliance 1998
Matte painting
Camera pulls back from men camping to reveal an entire mountain. Small cliff set combined with Photo CD images, stock snow and fog
Due South Alliance 1998
Set extension
Ice crevasse – extended set using stock photographs of ice, added falling snow
