This is a historical review of great matte paintings in early horror films, all done on glass. Digital matte paintings dominate the field now, but there was an ineffable charm in the works of these early pioneers.
@Degree7 we are not talking here about that how artfully they used in the procedure to create CGI while discovering new ideas . We are talking about final output here. That was the era when new techniques were discovered and it was wonderful like the era of physics . Today what happens is the enhancement of those techniques . And there is minimal hand animation in the movie lion King. And it really helps. Without hand animation venom movie would not have been possible. Today we have to work efficiently because there is large chunk of CGI's in a movie. We don't have time to do traditional and practical effects methods . It dosen't matter how artfully you use CGI in the post production , time and the quality of output matters.
@Degree7 the whole venom was made as a high poly 3d model with integrated fluid simulations which in creating will break someone's ass into four pieces. In all the shots where the protagonist was getting caught in venoms goofy black liquid it was all hand animated. Which was never done before. People think it is a visual garbage because of its story and other stuff. But the person who knows about VFX surely know it how much effort it took . And I am sure you don't have a kilobyte knowledge about it. And totally you don't know damn thing about VFX. Cause you never put a point which can elaborate reasonably, why you don't like this stuff. Now I know pretty much sure that you are just a movie watcher who just watch for fun and dosen't dive deep into it and say stuff like it's nothing.
Dear Mr. Mattingly, I am a matte painter myself and I teach in an italian Design School. I only want to say thank you because your Handbook is very useful and well done. Simple concepts well explained and a lot of precious tips in it. I always encourage my students to buy it. Thanks for this video too. Keep up the good work!
Hello. Right now (November 2017) your handbook is out of stock. Since on Amazon it's at least 100usd, my students can not buy it. Is it in the publisher's intention to print it again? Thanks
I'm a bit late to this party, but being a vfx aficionado steeped in Cinefex and Cinefantastique - and loving horror films - I just wanted to add that Al Whitlock was matte painting right into the 80's with truly memorable contributions to John Carpenter's The Thing and the so-so Ghost Story, and of course Alien (1979) had some great establishing matte shots of the derelict exterior and interior by Brit artist Ray Caple.
I grew up living in southwest Chicago suburbs in the 1970’s. The local tv stations would show horror movies on Friday nights and both afternoons and evenings on Saturday (this was pre Son of Svengoolie One of the commercials for those movies featured this scene at 2:16 and I was fascinated with it! This video was a great look at the other matte paintings of castles of yesterday - love the Hammer ones especially too.
Fun fact: much of the downtown sequence viewed from a distance in Romero's Day of the Dead intro is matte paintings. They were done so well that I didn't know for years that the entire street was just a big matte painting.
I love a good matte painting, and especially Ellenshaw's work. I will never forget discovering that the famous enemy tube that Luke and Lea swing across was a painting. Even when they are less than convincing they have a charm to them. The castle at 1:58 looks like a Scooby Doo castle. You have to love it. When CGI goes bad, it's just gray and sad.
Great video. It's like I've always said, there was a different kind of ingenuity to the FX of yesteryear that needs to continue to be admired. One can't simply say that those who appreciate these types of FX do it out of "nostalgia" (which sounds like a 4 letter word when people use it like that). You have to give credit where it's due. The work of people like Yurcich and Ellenshaw were and still are amazing to look at. And by the way, I think you're right. If Ellenshaw had taken a whack at a Dracula castle, it probably would've looked great.
Wow! Fantastic!! I hope that in the future, you could show how the shot would've looked before employing the matte painting over the scene, just so that we could appreciate exactly how much work was put in so to create the final shot.
Great video ! I remember that Roger Corman scene of the castle on the mountain overlooking the ocean. It’s from "The Pit and the Pendulum" which is one of my favorite films.
1:46 Is it me or does the 1992 castle look like Death sitting on a throne? You've got the hood and it almost looks a skeleton hand hanging off the edge.
Island at the Top of the World is now on my immediate to-watch list. Doesn't seem like it's regarded as a particularly good movie, but the art direction alone has sold me.
@@davidbmattingly I definitely have a soft spot for 70's sci-fi and fantasy media no matter how bad some of it might be. It's messy and flawed and sometimes uncomfortable to revisit today, but there's such a wealth of ideas there and the genres hadn't quite become overpowered by their individual cliches.
Liked the video, Thank You. Reminds me of the book The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting which is a favorite read I love going to when I need to escape the redundant films of these days.
Am I right in thinking these compositions, like forced perspective, depend on a _lack_ of depth perception to work, and that they therefore could not be done in 3D movies?
I am a new school (already considered old skool) 2D, 2.5D matte painter or as I call it image wangler and compositor. So I have a weak spot for good real mattepaintings. Those people from the 30s-70s were true amazing artists. Peter Ellenshaw comes to mind. But also one of the best movie makers ever James Cameron started as a matte painter. He did a lot of the mattes for John Carpenter’s, Escape from New York.
Many would not consider it 'horror', but Black Narcissus features some amazing matte paintings. Powell & Pressburger were admirers of the Disney studio, and didn't like location shooting, so virtually all of the views of the Himalayan setting are painted. The story takes a turn into horror when Sister Ruth turns on Sister Clodagh, and confronts her at the edge of a chasm. Some brilliant work in that film.
In the technique illustration at the beginning of the video, my guess is that they took a still image from the same camera and print it out to the scale of the imaginary projected camera frame on the glass, then fit it temporarily on the glass, to guide the artist match the painting to the exact position.
Often overlooked, Matte paintings were one of the finest and most powerful visual tools in older movies. The ones used in Tim Burton’s Batman movies and The Lord of The Rings are superb. Before CGI became everything.
Eu sempre amei esse tipo de arte mas até hoje não sabia como elas eram chamadas. Agora sei que se chama "Matte Shot" e estou muito feliz, pois agora posso pesquisar mais sobre e talvez até fazer um coleção delas ❤️👏👏👏 Obrigado ✨
Hey David! I was like is that you? I remember meeting you at one of Peters painting demo classes when you had the skin condition, hope you've made a full recovery and best of luck on your RU-vid channel, gene
ONe of my fav matte painting films is Hitchcocks The Birds. The special features that show how they did it are fascinating (especially the bird attack on the diner scene - the birds eye view, so to speak)
lovely to see reference being made still to 'island at the top of the world'. i believe i still have my late grandfather's white jumper from the production somewhere.
Yes! I was trying to remember the movie with the killer whales in it and this is the one. Didn't realize it was a Disney movie. Been ages since I saw it.
It's an interesting idea that because a matte painting or a puppet might be less convincing than an impeccable digital effect, the audience actually buys into the story a little more. More willing to accept that something is real because they're playing along rather than being fooled by an illusion. That said, there are some productions that are combining the new and old school methods in interesting ways. The Mandalorian uses both puppets and CG actors that move and look like a puppet. It's also using CG sets in novel ways. Instead of shooting on a green screen and compositing actors over fake sets, they display real time CG sets on giant screens behind the actors. So not do the actors have a bit more to play off of, the glow from the screens will actually light them properly. Now, Mandalorian uses photoreal rendering because it's obviously trying recreate physical sets but there's no reason you couldn't model and render a background that LOOKS like old school matte paintings. Imagine a painting of Dracula's castle that could actually react to lightning flashes properly. It's really an exciting time for effects artists.
Thanks for the presentation. (A couple of corrections: TALES OF TERROR was not a Hammer film--It was another of Roger's Poe films for AIP, with Whitlock art. Yes Whitlock also did PREMATURE BURIAL as you suggest. But, I question whether he did the matte work on THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, since I have a different matte artist listed/connected with that film that Matt Yurisich pointed out to me ---as well as the artist's family..) Might be worth featuring a few of the lesser-known matte shots from, uh, lesser-known films like WHITE ZOMBIE and THE BLACK SLEEP...hmmm, and both films were in black and white. That's almost as notable as Matt Yurisich being a matte artist. Or something Thanks again.
Awesome thank u for this I own everyone of these films the shots in the Roger Corman Poe adaptations are amazing my all time fav is "fall of the house of usher" I always wondered how those shots were done
I'm with you! I saw "Fall of the House of Usher" when I was a kid, and it scared the crap out of me. Corman didn't have a lot of money to do those films, so he filled them with atmosphere!
I can't get enough matte paintings or info on matte paintings. heck even roger corman who was tight with a dollar shelled out money to add them for a memorable effect. Thanks for posting.
At this point the glass technique is never used. Digital compositing is so much more powerful and flexible that painting on glass is essentially a lost art. That is why I decided to highlight the analog masters of the past in these videos.
@@davidbmattingly Understood :) I meant back when they still did this, when would they actually perform the glass technique as a practical effect on set as it was shot vs building the layers after the movie had already been shot?
@@WillvonTagen Hi Will--They would generally not do the painting on glass in real time on the set since the earliest days of matte painting. Al Whitlock would black out the sections of the plate he planned to paint, which was called "original negative technique,' since everything, the plate and the painting, were first generation. As Disney Studios where I worked, they would shoot the whole plate with no hold outs, the rear project the plate behind the painting. The down side of that was the plate was second generation, and the painting first generation, so the painting would always look sharp compared to the production footage. I know Peter Ellenshaw did some painting that they photographed through live for "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," but I think that was unusual. If you haven't seen "Darby," it was one of the high points of analog visual effects.
A lot of big Hollywood movie use matte paintings in all of musicals and some of they low budget ones to and reused the same footage in films through out their movies I seem to think in old horror movies there was a running gag about a film using the same painted background or castle the famous films often used the same castle slightly different but with a couple changes these films were huge and it didn't matter about the background looking the same. I have found my favourite horror movies are still brilliant even though I have seen the same castle or mountain from another movie odds are western and horror films and comedy films all have much more in common than the actors or locations somewhere over that last mountain or near the bend in the river a matte painting has been use half a million times in many different films its called movie magic a winning movie theme and great shot a star in the sky a tree against a red sunset the very first horror film.
Yes. Example ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q5-tvGPhxEo.html Tutorial ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--v6c2WB_kd4.html I guess it’s always the question: make it (rebuild in 3D program) or fake it ( Matte-paint it or import it) whatever is easier,cheaper, faster ......
Hi--If an actor went behind the painting, he disappeared. So part of the job of the matte artist was to artistically design the merge between the live action and the painting.
Hi, thanks for the answer I thought of that, but for example in 2:39 of the video the actor is seen moving in front of the giant building which must have either been a small glass painting, located before the actor, which brings us to the problem mentioned by you, so it must have been a giant painting in the backround, which sound quite expensive
Yes, my name at birth was Mattingly, just like my father. You might note that one of the great matte artists was Matt Yuricich, so I come from a historical line of matte artists with Matt in our name.
If the story is entertaining enough you can get away with anything. It’s when the story is too boring people start criticizing . Harryhausen‘s cyclops ? At the time folks accepted the bad looks of the clay(?) models because the story was fun for that decade.
also not a horror film, but my personal favourite is the work Albert Whitlock did on 70's disaster film "Earthquake". They simply couldn't have reduced Los Angeles to rubble in 1970 without his team's outstanding matte paintings...used to great effect both as full screen' panoramas and stunning destruction backgrounds throughout the film's narrative (the rubbled city scape background during the high-rise rescue scene is particularly impressive). 50 years later, they still stand proudly next to modern CGI variants (the movie not so much).
