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MATTE PAINTING REVIEW: A Selection Of Overlooked Films - Part Fourteen

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Greetings folks.  It's a fresh year and much has happened in the world - to put it lightly - since we last connected, so the time is ripe indeed for some pleasant and illuminating diversion into the wonder-world of cinematic sleight-of-hand.  I'm sure all of my readers would agree!  I know full well how rough things have been for a great many of you, so if this blog can in any way provide some respite and 'time out', then you're welcome!

As is my field of interest, I've put together a varied cross section of motion pictures from a number of studios as well as diverse decades.  I wouldn't have it any other way.  In addition to the usual mixed bag of cinematic treasures, which include a pair of massive super wide-screen 70mm roadshow films and a couple of very much lesser known old black and white shows from the 1940's that are not without merit both in entertainment value and creative effects technicality. 

I have included another in my Blast From The Past series, after a brief hiatus, where we pay tribute to another of the movie worlds veteran matte and trick shot exponents which I hope you enjoy.  

But first...

A Most Curious, Yet Timely Discovery:

In sifting through my files I came across an old MGM matte painting produced by one of Warren Newcombe's artists, rendered in pastel, probably from the early 1940's. The intended shot appears to represent a vast military presence of some sort in Washington DC, though what the film is, I have no idea.  Given the recent chaos at the US Capitol building that was witnessed across the globe just a week or so ago, this matte seems pertinent. If anybody can identify the film, let me know.

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A Blast From The Past:  CLIFF CULLEY


British effects artist and matte painter, Cliff Culley was one of those largely unsung and to a great extent, invisible trick shot heroes of the UK film industry, in a career spanning some five decades no less.  Cliff began his very long career as a scenic artist - as most matte exponents of the day in fact did - with the famous J.Arthur Rank organisation based at Denham and Pinewood studios in 1946.  
The Rank special effects department at the time was a busy one, with a considerable number of able and very talented technicians applying their individual specialties.  Their were such effects men as supervising Effects Cameraman Henry Harris; Schuftan Process and general special effects expert Bill Warrington; Physical Effects man Jimmy Snow; Model Maker Douglas Woolsey; Miniatures Cinematographer Bert Marshall; Travelling Matte Cameramen Bryan Langley and Vic Margutti; Matte Painting Cinematographer Wally Gentleman; All round visual effects maestro Filippo Guidobaldi; as well as a number of matte painters working under the departmental oversight of Joan Suttie and later Les Bowie.  Cliff Culley was one such matte painter, and virtually all his lengthy career would be based on the Pinewood Studio lot.


The matte department was for some years run by Les Bowie, under whom worked Cliff together with Albert Whitlock and Peter Melrose.  Later on other artists joined such as Bob Bell and Charles Stoneham, as well as future art director Stephen Grimes, Alan Maley and future well known effects man John Stears. After Bowie left to go independent, Bill Warrington would take charge of the whole Rank effects machine, and although not a matte artist himself, would have final say on all matters matte, and get on screen credit, which would rankle the other technicians (*see special published apology later in this article).
Cliff would also work alongside famous matte maestro, the great Peter Ellenshaw on the enormous matte showcase that was Disney's IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS (1962), with the huge roster of mattes and composite photography being carried out at Pinewood, with the results ranking among the best - and biggest - of all the Disney films in my book.
Around 1973 Cliff set up his own visual effects company, Westbury Design & Optical, situated right there on the Pinewood lot.  I believe this later shifted elsewhere.  He was in constant demand and would provide his services to films as diverse as ZARDOZ, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, DOCTOR WHO through to CLASH OF THE TITANS among many others.  Cliff retired from the movie business in 1999 after an incredible 52 years in visual effects.


A Scrapbook of Cliff Culley Matte Moments:

A wonderful, and rare studio portrait taken in 1963 shows Cliff adding finishing touches to his beautifully ornate ceiling matte extension for the James Bond film FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. British visual effects supervisor of several more recent 007 adventures (and dare I say it, a big fan of this very blog), Steve Begg, had this recollection: "I worked with Cliff a couple of times [as a young matte painter], and they did indeed do a front-lit pass of the painting, with the live-action area clear glass with black behind, then with the film rewound in the matte camera and a white cyc lit behind the glass and the painting in silhouette, a bi-packed interpositive of the live-action was exposed onto the camera neg using the white backing as a printing light. That's what I think I remember.  Leigh, is that your recollection?".  Fellow Brit matte painter and miniatures veteran, Leigh Took was also one of 'Cliff's boys', and had this response:  "That’s a great shot of my boss, Cliff. One of my first jobs for Cliff as his assistant was to stipple glasses with several layers of black emulsion with a pad of mutton cloth this would be then scraped with a blade to smooth out any nobly bits and then repeat the process with white emulsion ready for delineation.  Great times indeed. Mainly bi-packed colour separations a long process. And that lovely gearbox motor on the right would be grinding away all day. I can hear it now!"

The final, now iconic shot in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

Cliff worked on so many films, with rarely ever a screen credit.  This is just one such show, the excellent war picture SEA OF SAND (1958)

Pinewood had a stable of artists who would come and go over the years.  Other painters included Bob Bell and Charles Stoneham.  Peter Melrose was another who moved around various studios and eventually went freelance.  Peter painted on this film, THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL (1957) alongside Cliff, so it could have been either artist?

Also from THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL is this excellent shot which I suspect could be either a hanging miniature or a foreground glass shot, given the crispness of the 'effect area'?  The far background action appears to be a separate element added in?  The film was loaded with many matte shots, some of which looked like retouched or hand coloured photographs - not an unusual thing as many studios did that as a time saver by the 1950's.

Some rare before and after frames from the Alan Ladd period piece THE BLACK KNIGHT (1954).  Another film with a load of matte shots.  Albert Whitlock may still have been at Pinewood then so he may have also had a hand in it.

More BLACK KNIGHT frames in Technicolor and VistaVision.

I've a soft spot for old time comics, and the crazy Norman Wisdom madcap adventures were, and remain, pretty funny.  These are two of the mattes from THE BULLDOG BREED (1960)

Arguably Cliff's finest matte work was seen in the huge blockbuster KHARTOUM (1966).
A rare behind the scenes look at a block in and test composite for THE TALE OF TWO CITIES (1958)


Another of the many agreeably insane Norman Wisdom comedies, with this one being THE EARLY BIRD (1965) which featured a number of clever miniature set ups, mattes and cel animated gags such as this bit where hapless Norman crashes the firetruck into the (painted) building and giant cracks spread all up the frontage.  Funny movie, with Cliff actually getting a screen credit for 'Special Matte Effects'!

This shot from the first Bond film DR NO (1962) is a next to invisible set extension where Cliff has painted in all of the upper part of the set.  Culley worked on all of the 007 movies up to and including On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and after a spell came back a few years later to do some small scale matte work on Man With The Golden Gun as well as some cel animated gags on Octopussy and The Spy Who Loved Me. 

One of my favourite films, the terrific Richard Attenborough starrer GUNS AT BATASI (1964). A wonderfully acted, directed and photographed piece set in an unnamed African colonial outpost where a coup de tat is under way.  All shot in England of course with Cliff augmenting UK landscapes with subtle painted 'African' scenery.  Great movie!

I well recall my grandma taking me to see CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968) at the now long gone Embassy theatre in downtown Auckland, in 70mm, magnetic track stereo no less.  I recall the day out as vividly as if it were yesterday, yet I can't for the life of me remember what my friggen passwords are for any damned thing!!  Go figure!  Anyway, I digress..... live action composite here with beautiful Culley painted sky and hilltops, with miniature airship.  Cliff got on screen credit too!

Matte set up at Pinewood for another of the CHITTY shots.  Shown at top is Cliff in pale sweater adding final touches to his glass painting, while matte cinematographer Roy Field mans the huge 65mm camera and an unidentified projectionist mans the 65mm rear screen process projector.  

The very popular Carry On series also required Culley's expertise as seen in this frame from CARRY ON CLEO (1966).  The shot is interesting as it appears mostly be a huge painted cyclorama with just the middle temple bit being matte art, and by the looks of it, done as an in camera foreground glass shot.

Another from the Carry On series - FOLLOW THAT CAMEL.

The spy spoof HOT ENOUGH FOR JUNE (1963) was titled AGENT 8 3/4 in the US.

The action adventure NORTHWEST FRONTIER (1959) - aka FLAME OVER INDIA had this exciting sequence atop a busted rail viaduct, done as matte art and actors combined through travelling mattes.

A sorely overlooked war bio-pic, OMAR MUKHTAR-THE LION OF THE DESERT (1979) was an extremely impressive, big budget spectacular with Anthony Quinn, Oliver Reed and the always completely over-the-top Rod Steiger (as Mussolini!).  Massive action set pieces, stunts and physical effects, it's a film many have never heard of but is well worth seeking out.  Cliff supplied a pair of quick mattes of this vast refugee camp stretching far into the desert.

As I said, I have a soft spot for old time comics, with Bob Hope being one such entity.  CALL ME BWANA (1963) was pretty weak, though it did feature the gorgeous Anita Ekberg, so that's enough reason to sit through it!
Cliff's company Westbury Design & Optical handled all of the special miniature work for Ray Harryhausen's CLASH OF THE TITANS (1979).  Cliff's son, Neil Culley, is seen here photographing the impressive deluge.


CLASH OF THE TITANS flood with bluescreen performers added in by Frank van Der Veer.

A Culley matte shot from CLASH OF THE TITANS.

Arguably one of the very best James Bond pictures was ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969), which even with a change of lead man still hit the spot and delivered.  A tough, no shit, kick-'em-in-the-balls style of Bond that even Connery hadn't ventured into.  This is one of many mattes and visual effects from the film.  Interestingly, I think Cliff painted the mattes for this one 'squeezed', as evidenced by photos I've seen (the pic at right I've un-squeezed for this blog).  Presumably to enable the matte art to be photographed with superior spherical lenses and allow later scope stretch to 2.35:1

A couple more OHMSS mattes, with the lower one being the perfect invisible trick that nobody ever notices.  The small village far below has been painted in by Cliff, and speaking of 'cliffs', the safety cable on the stuntman's leg is very visible in this action bit.  The film, though a tad overlong, was a very satisfying experience.  Lazenby was surprisingly good and could have made a couple more (wish he had), Telly Savalas was wonderful as ever, Diana Rigg was a stunner, Peter Hunt's direction and John Glen's very 'Hunt inspired' rapid, almost violent action cutting was fantastic, but best of all was the breathtaking score by John Barry - arguably his best in the series.  Sorry guys, you can keep Daniel Craig (easily the least impressive 007 by a country mile), with not a scene being memorable from any of his Bond films, whereas I can recall so much from all my faves.

Another great little British flick many would not have heard of - THE LONG HAUL (1957) starring Victor Mature and Diana Dors.  One of several UK 'trucking' thrillers made around that time (another great one being the incredible HELL DRIVERS, made the same year.  See it now!!).  Here is a sensational full matte painting which features near the action packed climax.  

I'd seen the film several times but never spotted this matte shot until Dave Worrall, editor of Cinema Retro magazine (a must read!) told me and sent me a shot.  WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL (1971) with  an actual Scottish castle (that's by a lake in reality) that has been altered via Culley matte art to make it atop a sheer rocky clifftop.  Genius.

A superbly rendered Old Bailey courtroom matte from the Sean Connery drama WOMAN OF STRAW (1964).  Incidentally, Sean and Cliff were good mates and would often play golf together once the day's shooting had been completed at Pinewood.
One of the best James Bond films to my mind was YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967).  My father took me to see it as a kid and I well recall later having nightmares over the opening sequence in space where the bad spaceship chomps through the air supply of the NASA astronaut, letting him float helplessly away, and then this 'bad' spaceship literally swallows the NASA rocket.  Really shook me up as a young fella. Although, as a kid at the time of the first release, I knew nothing about trick effects, it was upon subsequent viewings in 35mm, 16mm and TV that the sequence really showed up the worst examples of 'garbage matting' - that is, a common procedure where optical patches are applied to omit or conceal undesired artifacts from the original composite photography - where in this YOLT sequence they popped up all over the screen in very visible 'repairs'.  Later DVD and BluRay don't seem to show this annoying artifact. maybe thanks to tighter control over the contrast of 'black' effects shots in the remastering process?

I've contributed a few articles to Dave Worrall's wonderful mag, Cinema Retro over the years and he was kind enough to send me this wonderful pic he took when he visited Cliff Culley's matte studio at Pinewood quite a number of years back.  Dave remembered Cliff as being a really nice guy and fun to be around.  This painting is interesting as it's one of just 4 remaining Culley paintings that are known to exist.  Eon, the producers of 007 apparently have this and three others in their offices (one of them is a CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG matte, which Eon also produced).  The sequence in the final film only ever uses the middle part of this matte for some reason, as a close up.  Perhaps the proposed long shot was dropped during editing?

Another grand view, entirely painted, from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.  Incidentally, this too had the most sublime score by John Barry, and beautiful Nancy Sinatra theme song to boot.  Love it!

As mentioned earlier, an apology was forthcoming:  The Pinewood studio effects team were miffed at being omitted from not only official screen credits but from all mention in the British industry journal Cine Technician, where boss, Bill Warrington was always the one and only FX kudos in print form.  This probably dates from around 1957 or so.

In the late 70's Cliff had a new apprentice, Leigh Took, and the pair of them would paint mattes and provide miniatures on a myriad of films such as WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS (1978)

Another of the spectacle films Cliff worked on was ARABIAN ADVENTURE (1978) which had many matte shots, models and some clever process combinations.

A couple of barely detectable mattes from the Brook Shields adventure film SAHARA (1983).  There were also a couple of other mattes that were supplied by Mark Sullivan and Jim Danforth.

In the mid seventies, the Disney organisation produced several pictures entirely in the United Kingdom, using all British talent.  This is one of several Culley shots from ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING (1975).

From the same film is this neat, almost entirely painted interior of The British Museum, circa 1920.

From the popular Peter Sellers series THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN (1976).

Scenes of spectacle from the made for tv mini-series THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, with assistant Leigh Took helping out on the large number of shots, and Cliff's son Neil on fx camera duties.

Preparations for an in camera painted glass shot, made on the Pinewood back lot.  See below...


A revealing look at the set up for the foreground glass shot.  That's Cliff at the 35mm camera, lining up the matte art with the partial set, and Cliff's son Neil as effects cameraman shown observing at left.

Some mattes from another mini-series for American television, PETER THE GREAT, from the 1990's.  Note the wonderful Winter Palace painting shown top left.

Now here's a film that featured some mind boggling visual effects - and most impressive they were at that.  The film was HELLBOUND-HELLRAISER 2 (1988).  These scenes were highly imaginative in design and supremely well executed by Culley and his team. 

Another bizarre set piece from HELLBOUND-HELLRAISER 2.

While we're on extreme and utterly insane films, we can't for a moment omit the psychotic nightmare that was NIGHT BREED (1990) which I covered in detail in a previous blog.  Tons of excellent matte painted shots and optical combination work.  This is a great look at the way things were done, from the conceptual artwork, plate photography through to the finished composite.  Assisting Cliff on this mammoth matte show was former Pinewood matte painter Bob Bell, and a young trainee, Terry Adlam.

I think this might have been Cliff's final film, or certainly near to it.  RESTORATION (1995) was a rollicking, sumptuous, bawdy, 17th Century, bodice ripper of a yarn if ever there were one.


So now, on with todays topic - the overlooked films.....
Enjoy

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SPARTACUS, made in 1960, is one of those films that improves with age, and is far more than the 'sword and sandals' epic one might believe, thanks in no small part to a superb, literate and intelligent script by Dalton Trumbo - who thanks to the power of star/producer Kirk Douglas was hired and credited despite his 'blacklisted' status as a result of the paranoid Red Scare. The perfect cast of veteran actors  compliment the wonderfully penned dialogue.  While the film is really Kirk Douglas' show - and great he is - the support cast absolutely make the film.  Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and best of all the unforgettable Charles Laughton who gets all the best lines.  So good is the writing that one hangs on every spoken word.  Terrific.

I'm a big fan of Stanley Kubrick, and rank several of his films as all time classics.  PATHS OF GLORY, THE KILLING, BARRY LYNDON and especially the brilliant DR STRANGELOVE - a film that gets better every year.  SPARTACUS was never a favourite for its director, with him really just being a 'director for hire' (and replacing the original helmer, Anthony Mann), though I feel the film is exceptional, and ranks as among the very finest of the big budget Roman-Biblical genre.  Beautifully photographed by Russell Metty in the high fidelity large format Super-Technirama 70mm.

The legendary Saul Bass was title designer and overall visual consultant.

SPARTACUS contained a number of matte shots, with all bar one (above) executed in house at Universal Studios.  The shot above is perhaps the most recognised and deservedly so.  For some reason, this shot was farmed out to Disney Studios where Peter Ellenshaw ran the matte department.  According to FX cameramen Bill Taylor and Craig Barron, this view of Rome was initially handed on to Peter's assistant, Albert Whitlock, to paint, though for whatever reason Albert only progressed so far - maybe just blocking it in - with Ellenshaw taking it over and completing it.  Both Taylor and Barron mentioned to me that the finished matte as a whole is unquestionably Ellenshaw in style, technique and composition.

Ellenshaws' magnificent piece as it still looks today.  The glass had cracked at some point and great care was needed to repair the delicate matte which was recently donated (or loaned?) by the Ellenshaw family to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Peter inspects his one and only non-Disney matte painting at his California home in the mid 90's.  The lower right pic shows Peter examining a tiny fragment of the original 35mm live action plate (shown top right) as shot on the Universal backlot.

So much to admire..... Modern era matte pro's Christopher Evans (left) and Craig Barron show great admiration for the Ellenshaw masterpiece, and who wouldn't?

Detail with that definitive Ellenshaw feeling of backlight and subtle silhouettes. Fantastic.

More wonderful detail.

You can see some cracks in the glass here.  An occupational hazard with the artform.

As mentioned, the remainder of the mattes were Universal renderings, with Russell Lawson being long time resident matte artist, a position he held from as far back as the 1930's on shows like THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.  Lawson retired a couple of years after SPARTACUS when he inherited a fortune.  Albert Whitlock jumped at the chance to head up a matte department of his own, so departed the Ellenshaw department at Disney and got the job at Universal.  The rest, as they say, is history.  For the above shot, the matte line runs across the screen just above Olivier's head.

A curious shot this one.  The matted in portion (much of the frame) seems to have multiple layers, with the background and distant sky on different focal planes than the main painted section with temples etc.  May be dual glasses, which is something evident in a number of old Universal films.  Quite why they did this is unknown?

Previous incarnations of SPARTACUS were poorly timed, with the matte comps looking very unnatural.  Old TV prints, VHS and even DVD's never looked satisfactory.  These frames have been taken from the remastered and restored BluRay, which literally looks (and sounds) a million dollars.  It's out on 4K UHD too, which I bet looks mind blowing indeed, though no good to me nor my home theatre set up, sadly  :(

For a three hour and fifteen minute epic there is rarely a dull moment.  Just the unwelcomed and likely front office mandated 'commercial' love interest kind of bogs things down.  Other than that, it remains a tremendous and thrilling epic.

There was no special effects credit on the film, though I know Clifford Stine (who did get an 'additional photography' credit) handled some split screen photographic effects to greatly expand crowd and army numbers, and rather skillfully.  I'm sure this shot is a complex one with painted upper half of the frame - complete with tiny flaming torches slot gags - coupled with a carefully replicated crowd of extras greatly expanded in number via soft splits.  I read about that in a Kubrick book many years ago.

An ambitious shot where most of the frame has been painted in.  Many little 'movement' slot gags are evident in the avenues between the troops barracks, bringing subtle life to an otherwise static shot.  Veteran Universal matte cinematographer Ross Hoffman would have photographed all of Lawson's mattes and orchestrated the various gags.  Hoffman has been highlighted many times in my blogs as a vital member of Universal's photographic effects department, having worked there as far back as the original INVISIBLE MAN in the early 1930's, right through to EARTHQUAKE in 1974.  Hoffman handled all matte photography and travelling matte optical composite work.

Kirk surveys his mighty army, not realising that the majority of them are mere Lawson matte art.

I've deliberately adjusted this frame so as to see the painted half of the frame, again with numerous slot gags introduced to simulate fires etc.

A subsequent cut shows the encampment from a closer vantage point.

Now, these frames are of interest.  The vast approaching Roman army of Larry Olivier is in fact a trick shot accomplished with a moving optical split which basically uses the same mass of extras twice over.  Clifford Stine is documented as having done this work.  Stine started in Hollywood in the silent era and was an old time effects man and had been a VFX cameraman back at RKO on things like KING KONG and many other films.  Later on, Clifford came over to Universal and for a time was a production D.O.P and then again was drawn back into trick photography on memorable films like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and TARANTULA.  Even post retirement Stine was tempted back to the studio to shoot miniatures (superbly) for the Oscar winning EARTHQUAKE.  Cliff's brother Harold was also an effects cameraman. 

In a later cut it appears that the background Roman battalion are either a freeze-frame split screened with the actual mobile extras in front, or the background players may be painted entirely? I wouldn't be the least surprised if the nearest mass group of slave warriors were the same extras matted again.

While SPARTACUS remains notable for a great many reasons, the savage battle sequences are indeed a thing to behold.  Superb choreography and fearless stunt work as flaming rollers are unleashed upon the Roman centurions, completely obliterating them in the process.  We can see the asbestos masks and gloves in freeze frame, but when viewed in motion the scenes are harrowing to watch.

Of course, nobody knew about asbestosis back then.


A memorable shot that probably rankled censors in various territories shows Kirk hack the arm off of a Roman soldier - complete with spurts of arterial blood. Bold for it's time.  I believe that Project Unlimited had some involvement with the film with both Don Sahlin and Wah Chang listed on IMDB for 'creator of forced perspective figures', presumably for the masses of dead on the battlefield after the monumental arse-kicking.

The final matte shot in the film... Oh the humanity!

And the 'Dorothy Lamour' honourary award goes to..... Jean Simmons - superfluous as she was to the progression of the narrative.

The Jean Simmons bathing scene was quite bold, though these rare publicity photos are extraordinarily frank for 1960.  I just felt compelled to include 'em....entirely out of respect for Stanley you understand (!) 


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As I said, I have a definite affection for the old time comics.  I love the films of W.C Fields, The Marx Brothers (a huge fan of the Marx's), Bob Hope, Oleson & Johnson, and Jack Benny, who headlines here in THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT (1945).

The crazy slapstick story required a multitude of visual effects that ran the gamut of matte art, miniatures, optical trickery, process and some amazingly complex camera moves with all of the above in the one shot!  Luckily, the film was produced by Warner Bros who were certainly up to the task.  The famous Stage 5 special effects unit were definitely no slackers when it came to creativity and problem solving.  Warners had one of the biggest trick departments in Hollywood with everything self contained.  For this movie, Lawrence W. Butler (upper left) was effects director.  Larry's father, William, was an optical effects technician at Warners, with the younger Butler already assisting his father at the tender age of just 15 on films such as NOAH'S ARK .  Much later Larry was chosen by the legendary Ned Mann to train as his assistant, with both shifting across to England to work for Alexander Korda.  Also pictured here is Hans 'Koney' Koenekamp (middle) - a top notch trick shot specialist who made hundreds of effects shots for Warners over his long career, with such films as NOAH'S ARK, THE LOST WORLD, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and a particular vfx favourite of mine, THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS - a film that Koenekamp himself was apparently most proud of.      Also pictured above is Edwin DuPar (right) - one of the greats among Hollywood effects cinematographers.  Among Ed's memorable achievements were the gargantuan FX show PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE and an all out classic in my book, the incredible YANKEE DOODLE DANDY - with it's central bit of movie magic still an absolute jaw dropper for me.

A view inside the legendary Stage 5 special effects stage at Warners.  Fred Jackman established the unit in the 1920's and many notable technicians and artists worked within those hallowed walls.  Some of these names being Jack Cosgrove, Roy Davidson, Byron Haskin, Chesley Bonestell, Paul Detlefsen and William McGann

Oddly, it was directed by Raoul Walsh.  Not a name I'd link with slapstick shenanigans.  More with tough guy westerns and war pictures.

The first of numerous mattes, though I'm sure I've seen this shot in other films - possibly from other studios?

The basic plot involves an angel sent down to Earth to, well, end life as we know it, by blowing this confounded trumpet precisely at midnight!  I never said it was high brow, but it is pretty amusing, largely thanks to it's star.

Part of the massive tilt up and dolly in toward Heaven.

The Warner Bros creative team were absolute genius when it came to complex motion shots such as this.  It was very rare indeed to see such bold photographic trickery from the other studios, and when attempted it was never a patch on the Stage 5 expertise.  Beautifully rendered matte art here with what I assume to be a perfectly blended rear projection plate of the Heavenly conductor atop the clouds. 

Chesley Bonestell was matte artist on this show to some extent, and a I'm sure Mario Larrinaga, Louis Litchtenfield and chief artist Paul Detlefsen must have had a hand in.

Jack Benny as our somewhat bored and 'tone deaf' angelic trumpeter.

The opening frames from an astonishingly well executed visual effects sequence that I'm still trying to figure out!  The conductor and his massive heavenly choir and orchestra, all in full concert...

...and in one arresting single camera move, we sweep up and over the conductor, over the heads of the choir and orchestra - all of whom are in full motion with violins and bows and the rest of it - while the camera finally comes to rest on the face of our hero with his out of tune trumpet.  Hard to describe to do it justice, but it's an absolute stunner of technical mastery that still has me baffled.
Each figure moves independently of each other...

Blurred due to original camera move sweeping across 'orchestra'.

Warner Bros successfully pulled off similar complicated camera gags in many films, particularly in the 1940's, which was the heyday of such inventive work.  Other films like THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN, RHAPSODY IN BLUE, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE, YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, SVENGALI and of course THE FOUNTAINHEAD all contained miraculous and dazzling work of this nature.  No other studio was as adept as were Warners.


Matte set extensions.

Our angel Benny is sent down to Earth via some cosmic elevator.


Likely matte set top up.

A multi-plane effects shot with flickering neons, a dolly in camera move and live action atop the building.

Dramatic camera move ending with Jack Benny coming out of rooftop doorway.  Impressive shot.

I presume the main building to be a large miniature, with process projected live action.

Matte painted set extension.

So starts an utterly madcap rooftop escapade.

The street views are very cool.  Presumably large miniature for the down views, with model cars attached to some sort of conveyor belt mechanism.

Considerable mayhem as Jack Benny does all he can to save his precious trumpet, which at midnight must be played to bring the planet to oblivion.

Painted matte.

More characters become entangled in Benny's scheme, which of course is a dismal failure.  Great miniature, matte and process work.  Also part of the effects unit on this film were William McGann and Warren Lynch.  Robert Burks was one of the miniatures cameramen and would go on to a solid career later as a production D.O.P on films such as HOUSE OF WAX, Hitchcock's THE BIRDS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

Several characters are hanging daisy chain style from each other in a wild puppet set piece.

If it all starts to resemble the climax of Stanley Kramer's IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD - well hold on to your hats friends, as that film is covered next in this blog, and I'm sure Kramer got his ideas from this show.

'No comedians were injured during the making of this film'.


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From one wild, unleashed comedy to another.  Stanley Kramer's behemoth of a raucous laugh-fest, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1962) had a cast of every known comedy star - and a few new to the genre - going through the motions of what amounted to a gigantic three hour plus chase for some stolen loot.  The comedy is broad, though the action is plentiful and packed with outrageous stunts, pratfalls, gags and some amazing effects work that ranged from thrilling physical effects by Danny Lee, optical combinations by Linwood Dunn and Bill Reinhold, effects cinematography by James Gordon, miniatures by Howard Lydecker and Marcel Delgado, mattes by Howard Fisher and Cliff Silsby and stop motion by Jim Danforth and Marcel Vercoutere, all operating under the banner of Film Effects of Hollywood.

Founder of Film Effects of Hollywood, Linwood Dunn (left & middle) with associate James B. Gordon (right).  Cecil Love and Don Weed were also co-founders. The company was established by Dunn, Love and Weed after RKO shut down it's operation in the 1950's.

Matte painter Howard Fisher is shown here at work on the high rise matte.  Howard was one of the old timers of the industry, having worked mainly at MGM in Warren Newcombe's matte department for decades.  Howard began with Newcombe as far back as 1933 and was considered one of the most senior painters.  Among the scores of films Howard painted on were GREEN DOLPHIN STREET, where according to Jim Danforth, who knew Howard, he would add little jokes into his mattes such as dogs copulating in some of the GREEN DOLPHIN mattes (though I've never managed to spot them).  Most famously, Fisher painted the amazing show stopping matte in FORBIDDEN PLANET of that massive underground power plant that everyone remembers.  In later years Howard would work for Film Effects of Hollywood alongside another veteran from days gone by, Cliff Silsby.

Some insider glimpses of the Film Effects of Hollywood facility. Top left we can see Linwood Dunn and James B. Gordon with other crew members.  Top right has Howard Lydecker crouching, Jim Danforth atop the ladder and Marcel Vercoutere on the right.  Bottom left is the matte stand with 65mm camera set up in operation.  Bottom right we see founder Linwood Dunn with director of effects photography James B. Gordon in front of a large miniature set.

Film Effects co-founders Lin Dunn and Cecil Love.  Both men had a lengthy career in optical cinematography going back as far as the old RKO era with KING KONG and films like CITIZEN KANE.  Love was instrumental in designing and building a then state of the art optical printer to Dunn's specifications, which became an industry staple for many decades.  Here the two men are shown shooting the titles for WEST SIDE STORY, in what appears to be large format 65mm.

James B. Gordon (second from right) had a long career in optical cinematography, for the most part at 20th Century Fox, under Fred Sersen, Ray Kellogg and Bill Abbott.  Gordon was responsible for hundreds of unique and outstanding optical puzzles at Fox, where a favourite gag was to drop live action figures into miniature action of scenes of destruction such as THE BLACK SWAN, THE RAINS CAME, HELL AND HIGH WATER and many more.  A Fox specialty.

A young Jim Danforth concentrates on the stop motion action climax, assisted by Marcel Vercoutere.  *Photo from Jim's vital career memoir 'Dinosaurs, Dragons and Drama'.

It was a film that never really knew when to quit, and tended to overstay it's very lengthy welcome.

The film was shot in Ultra-Panavision, which was 65mm with a 25% anamorphic squeeze, allowing high quality optics on the large negative and a wider than normal 'scope' presentation when projected unsqueezed at 2.76:1.  This looked good in it's true ratio but was absolutely dire when viewed on TV or VHS, with two thirds of the action missing.  I'm sure the current digital generation have no idea what I'm talking about (?)

For the most part, the film was almost devoid of photographic effects, with the first 9 or 10 reels being non-stop mechanical effects and mayhem.  There were the requisite process shots supplied by Farciot Edouart and Irmin Roberts, as well as a couple of invisible optical 'fix' jobs where Dunn was required to make optical mattes in the printer to alter some mistimed physical destruction that did not go according to plan when the cameras rolled (the gas station destruction as I recall). It wasn't until the last reel where visual effects kicked in.  This was the first matte shot, shown above with the pre-production artwork where an upper floor and windows were required.

The first matte painted shot may be more than just the upper floor, with the wall at left possibly also matte art.

The big money shot occurs at the start of the stunt packed climax atop a high rise building.  Here is the initial design and layout as well as a photo of artist Howard Fisher's beautifully detailed matte.

The matte as it appears in the film starts off as a close up on an actual partial set built on the Universal Studios backlot, and rapidly zooms out to reveal the full extent of the perilous situation.

Far more than a straight matte shot, as you will see below with the breakdown of individual elements.

The matte shot above comprised around seven different live action components as well as the painting itself, all assembled in 65mm on the Film Effects optical printer, which in itself, was a mammoth task given the system used at the facility.  Using the then standard method of colour separation masters, each of the live action elements required three separate passes - as yellow, cyan and magenta - each run in bi-pack with appropriate red, blue and green filters. Some twenty one separate exposures were required overall.

The matte was painted on a large, five foot wide sheet of hardboard, or Masonite as the Americans refer to it.  In my extensive oral history blog back in 2012 with Matthew Yuricich, I asked him about Howard Fisher, with whom he had worked at MGM:  "Howard was a really nice guy… he was an MGM matte artist and also one of the nicest guys you’d ever find – a very nice gentleman.  Howard must have been around 65 back in 1955. They hired Howard away from some other studio.  There was a lot of jealousy in those days."

Close up of Howard's detail work.  Friend and coworker, Matt Yuricich referred to Fisher as "a photo realist" in his style and approach.


I'm not sure about this photo.  It doesn't appear to be a matte block in due to the sheer size (note the studio lamp at right plus the notation 36" on one of the buildings).  I'm thinking it was the early stage of prepping a large painted backing for the stop motion work perhaps.


Matte shot with live action filmed on the Universal lot combined with painted in skyline.

Here's one of those cool finds that nobody ever spots until high def BluRay allows us to notice things not previously visible.  A seemingly straight production shot looking down at the plaza is in fact a 3 part matte shot.  Painted in store frontages at left, live action mid section filmed at Universal, and a matte painted street, cars, people and shops at right.  Cool, huh?  I live to discover shots like this.  See below...

Blow up of the left side of the frame.

...and the matted in right side of the frame.


A wonderful and rare image of an incomplete test for a major effects shot.  The performers on the mock up set at Universal have been split screened into a live action plate of Los Angeles, with a rough block in of what will become a matte painted section that will blend the two live plates.  See below...


The block in for the matte art that will ultimately blend the studio action with the 2nd unit cityscape.

The final shot as it appears in the film with perfect join and invisible intermediate matte art.

Not sure, but looks like a distant building may be painted into this shot?

Another view of the stunt action with another matte rendered to blend in.  I spoke with Jim Danforth about this:  "In this frame the comedians are real and were filmed on the set at Universal.  The wall of the building extending to the left appears painted.  I don't  remember how many storeys of the building at Universal we constructed.  I'm guessing that part of the building below the comedians was painted.  Obviously, the street traffic is real.  My guess is that the brick building to the right of the real building is painted (and the entire city may be).  I think this shot was completed before I started at Film Effects".

This angle may have entirely painted cityscape matted in?  Shades of THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT me thinks?

A revealing behind the scenes look at just how much skill went into executing these shots, that for the most part, were invisible to the audience.  I asked Jim Danforth, and his remarkable memory recalled the manner in which this was composited:  "The scene is live, filmed on the set at Universal with a matte split to a painted distant cityscape.  The Film Effects / Fox duping system made it possible to have the delicate iron work extend into the sky area.  In some scenes the artists penciled in 'ghost' images of the fire escape on the duping board in order to increase the black density of the fire escape iron work".

The Ultra Panavision frame.  Cliff Silsby was also matte painter on the film.  Cliff was another old timer who's career stretched back to the old days at Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox.  Famed matte artist Matthew Yuricich told me that he had fond memories of Cliff when at Fox in the early 50's.  He described Silsby as "a mousy little guy, a good matte painter who would take it all personally", especially when their boss Emil Kosa got on his back and bugged him, as he habitually did with all of his matte artists at Fox.

I enlarged a BluRay frame to show the extensive matte art.


An extensive matte painted shot with miniature action.  I was communicating with Jim Danforth a few years ago about the mattes in MAD WORLD and asked him about this curious looking shot:  "The perspective of the primary building is off compared to the buildings on the right and left.  Note that the verticals of the painted buildings at the far right are almost a true vertical whereas the primary (miniature) building is greatly canted clockwise, as though drawn to a three-point perspective, and yet, the buildings farther to the left of center are not canted as far.  This is a scene with multiple vanishing points (which rarely happens in life).  The fire engine ladder is a stop-motion miniature as I recall, and the people on the fire escape balcony are stop-motion puppets".

In an interview for American Cinematographer, Dunn revealed that some 25 matte paintings were required for all of the action shots involving the fire escape and ladder sequences, with almost all views of the buildings, surrounds and city being rendered by Howard Fisher and Cliff Silsby at Film Effects of Hollywood.



Behind the scenes stop motion.  * Pics are from Jim Danforth's memoir: Dinosaurs, Dragons and Drama


*I have copies of these pics from the old American Cinematographer magazine but decided to substitute same better quality images from Jim Danforth's Dinosaurs, Dragons and Drama - volume one, which I recommend to anyone fascinated in 'old school' special effects.  Jim discusses MAD WORLD in depth, among much else.

*From Jim Danforth's Dinosaurs, Dragons and Drama.

Miniature with stop motion.  Initially, the legendary Willis O'Brien was assigned to design and animate these sequences but sadly passed away during pre-production.  Jim Danforth - himself a massive fan of O'Bie - came on board and took over animation chores, with the experience being, according to Jim, one of the most enjoyable of his career.  Also on the stop motion was Marcel Vercoutere, and according to some sources, articulated puppet builder Marcel Delgado did some animation, which ultimately wasn't used.

Miniatures coordinator on the film was another full on legend in the field, Howard Lydecker.  Howard had decades of experience along with his brother Theodore, at the old Republic Studios, where, despite the unavoidable cost cutting that a second tier studio had to live with, the Lydeckers constantly produced incredibly realistic miniature effects that still look great today, due in no small part to excellent photography out of doors in actual daylight, something not common at the time.  So many of the newer generation of effects men owed their lot to the Lydecker brothers and their no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to making terrific model shots.  Apparently, on the MAD WORLD shoot, Howard and Linwood would clash over differing approaches to achieve shots, with Lydecker figuring upon a no-nonsense, practical means while Dunn preferred to orchestrate a complicated, multi-element optical solution. Some ill feeling developed, resulting in Lydecker walking off the shoot with a simple "Well, it's time I went fishing" as a form of resignation, and off he went, never to return.

Carey Loftin's stunt team bounce off the power lines at the conclusion.  Real stunt guys with optical overlays of sparks and zaps of voltage.

Yeah....ain't that the truth!!!


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From frantic slapstick to a somber Christmas sort of 'pull at the heart strings' movie...

Although trashed by the critics, I didn't mind THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS (1948) too much.  A hokey sort of story for sure, but I actually quite enjoyed it as a lazy afternoon time filler.

The film is of particular interest here as it is one of the few examples where storied visual effects visionary, the great Willis O'Brien no less, was matte painter.  O'Bie was a highly skilled artist in his own right, as well as a stop motion genius (KING KONG for any pathetic individuals who don't already know of his importance to the timeline of trick film technology and sheer gold standard entertainment).  When work was limited, O'Bie occasionally took on matte shot assignments, painting mattes for films such as THE DANCING PIRATE and THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S.  The story goes that the industry had a major and very, very nasty union strike in the late 1940's, certainly effecting the matte artists and illustrators union as I heard it.  Studios like RKO were blockaded with picketers, violence was rife and all hell had broken loose. I have an account by John P. Fulton's daughter:  "Dad had a friend who was an artist at Universal and when he tried to cross the picket line he was grabbed by some union guys who laid his hand across the curb and pounded it with a hammer and broke every one of his fingers".     Willis apparently worked on the sly, rendering the mattes for MIRACLE OF THE BELLS and others, at home and having them smuggled in through the studio gates.  According to Matthew Yuricich, his mentor at MGM, Henry Hillinck was also caught up with the big strike and he told Matthew he painted in secret in a non-descript building across the street from the studio.

I had a couple of readers email me about this shot which I'd used as a tiny part of my blog header collage for my previous entry so I figured I'd celebrate it here properly.  There are really just a couple of shots in MIRACLE OF THE BELLS but this main one is a doozy.  A beautiful matte that is kept on screen for some time with a slow optical zoom in, following Fred MacMurray up to the doorway.

Russell Cully was chief of the RKO photographic effects department, following the unfortunate death of Vernon Walker.  Clifford Stine was effects cameraman on the film.

A blow up of the Willis O'Brien matte art.

A few other shots from MIRACLE OF THE BELLS.

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That's it for now.  Hope you found this blog interesting and maybe even educational.
Take care and stay safe wherever you are...

Pete








MATTE PAINTING REVIEW: A Selection of Overlooked Films - Part Fifteen

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Hi there fellow fans of traditional hand made special visual effects.  It's time for another retrospective journey deep into the cinematic vault of marvellous matte painted and miniature magic, exclusively of the variety most die-hard followers of NZPete's MatteShot blog will eagerly devour and appreciate.

But first........

Pete's Editorial:

I have several important announcements to make before we explore todays lineup.  It's been brought to my attention a few times of another online site, going by the label of 'matte96', who have been busy little beavers by way of lifting, not only images and bits of text, but hijacking ENTIRENZPete MatteShot articles in toto, and republishing same in their complete (and massive tomes as is often the case) form on this other site!!  I've no problem with fans or any readers who want to lift frames and imagery, as I believe in sharing this wonderful, lost artform, but for ENTIRE, FULL and COMPLETE articles to be ripped off and reassigned to someone elses website, without so much as a line of communication or any form of permission seeking is outright theft.  This shadowy, backdoor burglary has been going on for some time now.

A massive amount of effort goes into archiving, collecting, prepping and publishing MY blog, NZPetes Matte Shot, often against the odds, with tech issues and Blogger platform implosions.... but I perservere all the same.  Must I get to the stage where I will need to watermark entire blog posts, thus destroying the usually high quality of the rare images?  The statement below now seems timely should anyone stumble across my work on another, unauthorised platform...

***This post, and all 168 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


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The End Of An Era:

It is with great sadness that I've only just learned of the closing down of the essential, one-of-a-kind special effects journal, Cinefex. This vital magazine has been with us since 1980 (though extremely difficult to find here in NZ).  I have a sizeable collection of issues, though always wished I had some of the rare, very early ones, aside from the low quality photocopies I ordered decades ago, as those films from that era meant so much to me as an FX geek.  I think the oldest issue I have is number 4, and own most of the rest (with a few gaps) up into the CGI revolution, but I never 'clicked' with the computerised medium and I longed for the days of real matte painting and hands on trickery.  I still routinely pull out favourite issues (the Dream Quest article is a gem, as is the Willis O'Brien special issue and also the Dick Tracy one and the Rick Baker edition to name just four) and often re-read these wonderfully penned pieces. An amazing, comprehensive and utterly essential publication - that for so long went completely ad-free - the likes of which we never saw previously, nor will ever again.  I know it meant so much to so many, not just geeks like me, but REAL effects people and industry creative folks.  A full statement on the shut down can be read here.

My very best wishes go out to founder, the great Don Shay, as well as to Editor, Gregg Shay and my friend, Associate Editor Joe Fordham, who has been so supportive of NZ Pete's blog over the years - and for that I am in your debt.  There will never be another publication so dedicated, investigative and comprehensive so far as the art and science of special effects as Cinefex.  You've served us so well and you have my salute.  You will be missed by so many.

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A Forgotten Photograph:

In my previous blog article on the special photographic effects work on the United Artists' epic comedy, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, I overlooked this wonderful photo of Linwood Dunn, of Film Effects of Hollywood, posing with the marvellous Howard Fisher matte painting which featured so brilliantly in the climax of the madcap film.

Dunn was very big on further education within the film community and would occasionally embark on roadshow tours of college campuses with film studies programs, as well as events at professional venues such as the AMPAS, whereby he would run 16mm prints of his numerous showreels of classic before and after trick shots from many of his, mostly RKO movies such as CITIZEN KANE, THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE, THE GREAT RACE and GUNGA DIN to name a few.  Occasionally, matte paintings and miniatures would accompany Lin on these engagements.  I recall hearing great things about these seminars from a few FX people.

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An Important Announcement For Matte Art Collectors:

Illusion Arts at it's peak with co-founders, effects cinematographer Bill Taylor and matte painter Syd Dutton shown here with then young, up and coming matte artist (and future feature director) Robert Stromberg observing a splendid glass painted matte for a Michael Jackson music video.

In a previous blogging late last year, I highlighted a splendid selection of rare matte paintings from Illusion Arts which had been put up for auction.  You can review that here. These included such pieces as the wonderful SPACEBALLS castle and BATMAN FOREVER Gotham City mattes by Syd Dutton and a number of STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION mattes rendered both by Dutton and fellow artist Robert Stromberg.  Under Bill Taylor's over sight, the entire and substantial collection of carefully stored and cared for matte paintings, dating as far back as the 1970's, have been meticulously documented, photographed and evaluated, in readiness for the complete dispersal of this most incredible, one of a kind 'treasure chest'.

Illusion Arts, as most readers will know, was formed by Syd and Bill - both key creative forces in the old Al Whitlock department at Universal since the mid 1970's - who purchased the old and reliable cameras, optical printers and matte stands when Universal decided to close down their matte department when Whitlock retired around 1984.

I have been privvy to a number of those paintings (yes, I'm VERY interested, to say the least!) and can state that some absolute gems are among this vast collection.  There are mattes by Syd Dutton, Robert Stromberg and of course, the legendary Albert Whitlock.  Many are on glass but a significant number are on hardboard (or Masonite, as the Americans call it), which makes a difference when considering foreign purchase arrangements.  The eventual destinations for the pieces will vary, with certain key, important mattes destined for the Motion Picture Academy.  Certain others will be placed with fine art auction houses at various times and some will appear on eBay.  Others may be available directly from Bill Taylor.  At present, all of the original 35mm showreels, as well as hundreds of slides and clips, are being gradually transferred to a digital medium, though I'm told it's going to be a slow process.

One of the many Universal and Illusion Arts matte paintings that will be available is this beautiful painting of 13th Century Paris from the Franklin J. Schaffner adventure, LIONHEART (1986).  For those curious among you, those gel taped 'holes' in the blacked out area were made for a completely separate matte which was painted on the reverse side, with the gels providing backlight 'gags'.

Close up detail of Syd Dutton's historic matte of Paris, which shows strong influence of Syd's mentor, Albert Whitlock in tones, backlight and a sense of 'life'.

The finished original negative composite from LIONHEART, with the standard Illusion Arts smoke plumes doubled into chimney stacks.  Resolution is superb as was the standard latent image technique, with a perfectly merged matte join.  Syd mentioned to me that the director was very happy with this shot.
I will have more detailed info and plenty of superb examples hopefully for the next blog, so any matte enthusiasts and potentially interested parties should 'watch this space', as they say. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity. *Note: The post-apocalyptic film, DOUBLE DRAGON featured as the first film in todays retrospective, there are a multitude of painted mattes by Illusion Arts.  All of these are, or will be, available to collectors.

Painted detail from ENTERTAINING ANGELS-THE DOROTHY DAY STORY (1996)


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So, let's get this show on the road...

So folks, on with the show.  Today I have some terrific mattes from films that run the range from classic, to dreadful.  We have some beautifully elegant Technicolor mattes from Shepperton Studios, made under Wally Veevers' supervision; a ton of vintage RKO fantasy painted matte work that looks stunning even now, some 85 years on; a pair of Hammer melodramas with clever, low budget tricks by Les Bowie; and also an irritating 90's dumb-buddy slam-fest set in a flooded Los Angeles - and that one is 96 minutes of my life I'll never get back - but the matte art is sensational.

So, climb on board, sit back, and enjoy

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DOUBLE DRAGON (1994) was apparently based on a video game, so with that in mind, you couldn't find anything less agreeable as far as this viewer is concerned.  To say I suffered for my matte fetish, is putting it lightly as far as this film was concerned, but a matte is a matte, and the work here is great!

It's a sort of a 'Bill & Ted' with roundhouse kicks and bad jokes, as this dim duo search for both halves of a gold magical medallion - or some bloody thing!  Notable for having memorable T2 cyborg villain, Robert Patrick, play an effete, bleach blond, spiky haired mastermind nemisis.  When it comes to 'Dragon' flicks, give me ENTER THE DRAGON any old day.  A 100% bona-fide classic....  It don't get no better than Bruce at his most unleashed....though, I digress!

A huge effects show, and curiously one utilising traditional hand painted Illusion Arts matte art amid much, now terribly dated, early CGI from Pacific Date Images. Lots of the now very passe morphing CG which looked cool in TV ads back in the day but quickly grew tiresome about a week later. 

Post Apocalyptic LA is now 'New Angeles', with almost all of it under water.  Global warming, my arse!

Robert Stromberg painted all of the mattes for this show.  Syd told me that he and Bill decided to give Robert supervision of the matte load for the picture.

The reverse side of the above with a series of specific holes drilled out, with coloured gels attached for backlight gags of flickering city lights.

A closer view.  The final on screen shot features a subtle parallax shift suggesting a fly over.  It's real subtle, but it's there and nicely sells the illusion.

The subsequent matte includes a miniature foreground element constructed by Illusion Arts resident jack-of-all-trades, Lynn Ledgerwood.  The shot has a push in on the city centre.

Robert Stromberg matte painted LA of 2007.

Stromberg's original artwork as it looks today, having been carefully stored, catalogued and photographed in the hope that this - and others - will find an appreciative owner.  Even if you are not a DOUBLE DRAGON fan -and I can't imagine who would be - this matte would be a sensational keepsake.

Hollywood Boulevard as it was in 2007 - or did you miss it?

Glorious original Rob Stromberg matte art.

Not entirely sure here, but this mammoth lift shaft looks painted to me?

How did that song go...Oh yeah:  "It never rains in California, but it pours, man it pours..."

It's all a matter of oil pigment upon masonite board.  A lost artform, which is what NZ Pete's blog is all about.  Thrills me no end to see the original art, no matter what the film.

A key action set piece features a prolonged chase along the so-called Hollywood River and it's off-shoots.  Much matte art by Rob Stromberg tied into stunt boating.

Original matte painting.

Top:  Probably matte painted shot.  Bottom:  Yeah, well, ummm.... words fail me!!

Terrific scene here with a brilliant perspective shift suggesting a multi-layered split matte for the wrecked street.  Again, very subtle, but very effective indeed.

The moving camera POV is 'on the water' following these two jerks, with the aforementioned deep, multi-layered effect as the shot proceeds.  Terrific bit that even Syd said to me had him trying to deconstruct and figure out all these years later.

The chase continues as they speed past the Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Holiday Inn.  I stayed at that hotel twice, just to be close to the Blvd and places like the amazing Larry Edmunds Book Store and Hollywood Book and Poster.  I wonder whether they are still around?  I watched the X-FILES movie at Graumans just so I could say I'd been in that glorious old picture palace.

Don't worry....it's just a painting!

High rises amid much disrepair.  Times were bad in 2007 by all accounts.  And we think we got it bad now in 2021.

Same view as a Robert Stromberg matte.  A small monorail was animated into that track in the background with a pan across camera move.

Stromberg came from a family invested in trick work.  His father William was a noted stop motion animator and introduced the young Robert to trick photography and visual effects techniques from a young age.  Robert worked for David Stipes Productions in the mid 1980's and then joined Illusion Arts a few years later as a matte painter.  Rob worked on scores of features, TV shows, music videos and commercials under Syd Dutton's mentorship.  Among these were AGE OF INNOCENCE with a fantastic museum interior, and CAPE FEAR with moody, atmospheric skies. Stromberg's ambitions grew and he would eventually leave visual effects and move into production design, resulting in back to back Oscar and BAFTA wins for the James Cameron epic AVATAR.  More recently Stromberg has ventured into big budget feature film direction.  The sky's the limit it seems.

Before and after showing the original extreme upview of the villain's lair in both matte painted form, and stitched together composite frames showing the extent of the tilt up.

Frame by frame matte shot.

Detail 1

Detail 2

Detail 3

Detail 4.  Note, the helicopter was added digitally.
"So, whatcha gonna do girl.... knock my block off?"

The City Of Angels...


The film concludes with some confrontation of some description, between good and evil - or something.  I dunno, as I'd gotten quite bored by that stage and couldn't wait for it to end.  The tortures I endure to make this sensational blog (and then, to top it all, to have someone else blatantly 'rip it off'!)

Botox ... The Inside Story!


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I've never been the least bit fond of operetta's, nor cared much for Gilbert & Sullivan, though I must admit I really enjoyed this 1953 British film.  A well made, beautifully photographed (by Christopher Challis) and acted period bio-pic.

I always try to cover British effects films as so little has ever been documented, so when a prime example like THE STORY OF GILBERT AND SULLIVAN comes along, I'm in!  Here is a selection of pics, with Shepperton Studios shown top left. The department was established in the late 1940's by the legendary Walter Percy 'Poppa' Day, with many artists and cameramen on board.  Day retired in 1952.  Next pic is visual effects supervisor and head of department, the great Wally Veevers, who was Pop Day's right hand man for decades. Next pic is chief matte painter George Samuels. Top far right is VFX director of photography, Peter Harman outside the effects dept.  Bottom row from left is matte painter Doug Ferris.  Doug didn't join the studio till around 1962 but I include the photo as it nicely demonstrates the matte room.  Next is matte artist Joseph Natanson, who did paint some mattes on this film.  Lastly, matte painter Gerald Larn who as it happens just passed away last week, well into his 80's.  Gerald didn't start with Veevers until 1964, but again, the photo nicely sums up the arrangement.

A film that has been incredibly difficult to track down, I'm delighted to have finally found it. The star cast are great, as I've always rather liked Robert Morley (so good in MARIE ANTOINETTE and countless others), and Maurice Evans, who for those unaware, was Dr Zaius in the first two PLANET OF THE APES films, albeit buried under a ton of John Chambers prosthetics, he still stole the show.

The film is loaded with matte shots and set extensions, all made on 3 strip Technicolor under Wally Veevers' supervision.  This opening shot of The Crystal Palace, for the London Exhibition, was rendered by George Samuels.  George was chief matte artist and had been one of Poppa Day's artists, while his younger brother Ted was long time head of physical effects at Shepperton.  This shot is interesting as it has much going on within the matte.  There are flags fluttering up on The Crystal Palace, and tree branches gently rustling in the breeze over the painted view.  I think this was a first for Wally's department, to double in actual foliage movement over a painted matte - a trick that several Hollywood studios such as Fox and MGM had been doing for years.  Before production began on GILBERT AND SULLIVAN, both Wally and George went on an invited tour of several American effects departments, specifically to observe photographic effects methods across the Atlantic.  It's pretty certain that they brought back this particular bi-pack 'gag' and utilised it here, though I can't recall the gag being re-used subsequently on any other British productions that I've studied.

More mattes from the early stage of the picture, each with actual moving foliage doubled into painted composites, though to my mind, overly so, thus ruining the overall com;position.  The two upper frames were quite interesting upon close study as I noted the tree branches and leaves being partly authentic and part painted, I suspect to conceal the unwanted background from those set ups.

Another interesting find were these two shots that were actually Percy Day/Peter Ellenshaw mattes lifted from the Oscar Wilde comedy AN IDEAL HUSBAND (1948), made at Shepperton some five years earlier.  It's entirely possible that George Samuels painted these too as he worked for Day.

Wally was a strong advocate of matting either miniature or painted ships into actual ocean footage whenever possible, to maintain an authentic scale to the water.  This method was applied in many films by Veevers such as THE SILENT ENEMY, THE GIFT HORSE, ALEXANDER THE GREAT and S.O.S TITANIC.

A glorious full matte painting of the opera house.

I'm fairly confident that the upper section of this frame, just above the people, has been painted in.

Same with this shot, the upper third or so has been matted in.

There are a few dramatic and very bold camera moves that integrate matte art with various pieces of live action.  This shot starts on the opera stage and in a crane action moves up through the stage scenery, following plumes of smoke belching from a smoke stack, with a continued move off the theatre roof, across nearby street frontage and finally ending on the exterior of the same opera house.  Impressive, and reminded me of the various elaborate gags executed so brilliantly at Warner Bros throughout the 1940's.  I'm sure Wally saw work of this kind during his visit to the American studios and brought the ideas back with him.

A high rez frame from the end of the above camera move is quite revealing as it appears to show a sliver of unpainted area at the bottom of the glass matte that accidentally found it's way on screen.

I understand Joseph Natanson painted alongside George Samuels on this film, and shots involving the majestic organ above the choir were his (see below as well).  Practically everything above has been added in as matte art, with just a few rows of people being real.

The subsequent scene is extremely impressive, and a fine showcase of live action merged with a substantial painted matte, all combined with a most dramatic tilt upward onto the massive organ.

Close up of the first part of the camera move, with the soft matte line running directly above the heads of the female choir.  Presumably Wally achieved this move on the optical printer, though the image quality is very good indeed for a dupe shot.  Wally was, by training, a visual effects cameraman and relied upon Technicolor type 8 separations for all Shepperton matte composites.

More detail from the camera move.


I never thought for a minute I'd like this film, but found it really a good picture, much as THE RED SHOES did for me when I never really felt it would grab me, but it sure did, and what a magnificent picture that was.

Not sure, this may be actual production photography?

Other matte artists employed in Wally's department at the time included Albert Julion - a painter much favoured by the Korda's, especially by production designer Vincent Korda.  Judy Jordan was another painter there at the time.  Both Albert and Judy had been two of Percy Day's matte unit.  Judy left to work with Tom Howard at MGM-Boreham Wood, while Albert was a long time veteran of Shepperton until his untimely death in the early 1960's aged only in his fifties.  I'm reasonably convinced that Julion had been mentor to Albert Whitlock as their paths criss-crossed with scenic painting and matte art back in the 1940's at Gaumont.

The final matte from THE STORY OF GILBERT & SULLIVAN is this operatic show where the upper half of the frame has been added in by one of the matte artists.

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The film SHE (1935) being celebrated here is but one of at least five versions I'm aware of, with a silent version prior to this RKO production (and possibly others), as well as a pair of Hammer variants made in the 1960's.  There was also a B grade incarnation, possibly made by the dubious Cannon outfit, in the eighties.

SHE was a huge visual effects show, and many of the crew and technical people had previously worked on Producer Merian C. Cooper's all time masterpiece, KING KONG (1933).  Shown above are three key creative forces behind both KONG and SHE.  At left is RKO's special photographic effects chief Vernon L. Walker.  Middle pic shows head matte and glass shot artist Mario Larrinaga.  Photo at right is of optical cinematographer Linwood Dunn.  All three were important players in this and subsequent films such as CITIZEN KANE.

One of RKO, and later on, Warner Bros, biggest assets was the great composer, Max Steiner.  One of the absolute maestros in motion picture music scoring.

A timeless and much immitated narrative of eternal youth and beauty in a mystical lost Queen-dom, from the popular H.Rider Haggard 1887 novel of the same name.

Upon discovery of some ancient documents, a Cambridge University Don and his associates proceed to the far reaches of the Arctic in search of a lost city (always a dead cert for an enjoyable melodrama for NZPete).

The film is loaded with fine matte art and miniature work, as well as some well utilised Dunning composite photography and some nice near invisible moments of stop motion.

The trek is long, and the matted scenery is excellent.

One of the hazards of matte shots of old were that they were invariably cut into the reel with an optical printed cross dissolve to bring in the subsequent scene.  The mattes usually were dupes to begin with, so another level of optical degredation made things suffer badly with grain and washed out hues.  Especially bad when colour came in.

Either matte art or a combination of miniature set with painted glass, with people doubled in.

In addition to rendering all - or most - of the films glass and matte shots, artist Mario Larrinaga provided many conceptual drawings and paintings such as this one.  Mario added immensley to the success of KING KONG and it's steamy, dangerous environs.  Masterful!


Extensive matte art with actors clambering over the cliff top on an RKO stage.

The intrepid adventurers stumble (literally) across a giant Sabre Toothed Tiger, entomed in the ice.  A Mario Larrinaga matte painting added with good rear projection by Sidney Saunders.

A sudden avalanche brings grief to the party.  Miniatures, Dunning process work and more.

The elder statesman falls to his death.  Actor doubled into miniature footage via the Dunning (or Williams?) travelling matte process.

Excellent miniature photography of what appears to be a large model set.  It's highly probable that legendary miniaturist, Donald Jahraus, built these miniatures as he was in charge of the RKO model workshop from around 1930 until he shifted across town in 1937 to A.Arnold Gillespie's department at MGM where he never looked back.  One of the industrys truly great miniaturists, and the roll call of sensational MGM work is proof of that. His work on things like GREEN DOLPHIN STREET and the jaw dropping THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO - both Oscar winners for the miniature work.

More angles of the avalanche.

Filmed in daylight I'd presume.  Always a big 'plus'.

Our square jawed hero, Randolph Scott and entourage.  There's no going back now!

Larrinaga's matte painted cavern.

A large miniature set I presume, judging by the depth of field and scale of the steam.

One of my fave matte shots from the film.  See below for comparison...

No, you eyes aren't lying to you... I retrieved all of these high def frames from a, gulp, 'colourised' print.  I strongly dislike the notion of 'colourisation' (damn you Ted Turner!) and avoid like the plague.  However, the high fidelity specs of that print, as compared to awful DVD transfers, made for a better choice as far as obtaining very crisp effects shots.  I went about desaturating almost all of the frames for this blog, back to their original monochrome, but have kept a few samples of colour shots for comparison. 

Not sure, but likely many of these shots were made as in camera glass shots, as was common at the time.  The image resolution for most of the mattes look remarkably crisp.

A sensational, classic matte from what was the golden era of the art form.  I suspect Larrinaga was not alone with the matte duties as fellow artist Byron Crabbe was also in the RKO effects department and almost certainly would have had a hand in things.  It's entirely possibly too that Mario's brother, Juan - also a matte painter at that studio - could have painted on SHE.

The adventurers are taken by the native locals to the lost city.  A nice scene, either made with a painted backing, or a rear projected matte painting.  I suspect the latter, as there are a few stop motion birds doubled into the vista flying across the valley.  Probably animated by Orville Goldner who did likewise on the two KONG pictures and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME as well.

The colourised frame.

Top left, the set is leftover Skull Island gates from KING KONG.  Some groovy costume and art direction to be had in SHE, though the cast were exceptionally listless, especially the female lead, Helen Gahagan, and the pacing was a tad slow, it's still a good slice of thirties fantasy cinema.

She owns all that she surveys.  Glass or matte shot.  Mexican born Mario Larrinaga began in films as a technical artist at Universal Studios in 1916, where he gained experience in painting scenic backings and miniatures.  Mario worked on many silent pictures and among those he rendered glass shots for was the Douglas Fairbanks epic, THE GAUCHO (1928).  In the early 1940's Mario went to Warner Bros where he joined the famed Stage 5 photographic effects unit under Byron Haskin, while his brother Juan worked largely for Columbia Pictures as matte painter for Lawrence Butler and Donald Glouner.

Whatever you do, don't fall in love with Randolph..... You'll regret it!!

A very impressive, sweeping fx shot which begins on slave with burning torch, tilts up onto huge stone idol, pans around a bunch of idols and finally tilts down again on the last idol!   Very well accomplished, no doubt with large miniature set and miniature process projected actor is my best guess.  Willis O'Brien pioneered this gag on the original KONG, with 'postage stamp' process screens.

Blow up from the colourised print.



FX cinematographer Clifford Stine, may also have been involved with the film as he was with Vernon Walker's department all throughout that decade and beyond.

Split screen with miniature idols matted in.

From the colourised print.  Note the tiny optically added figure swinging on a rope from idol to idol.

Subsequent set extensions with either painted or model additions.

In a show stopper of an action set piece, our hero, Randy Scott flips over a flaming brazier, with the burning oil spilling down onto one of the less likeable inhabitants.  An amazing combination of physical effects carried out on set, and brave stunt work.  A 'wow' of a sequence for 1935!!

And with a wave of NZPete's magic matte wand, we have the same in 'Pseudo-Colour' (!)

Yeah, the stunt man is well suited up and masked (with 100% 'good-for-what-ails-ya'Asbestos), but it's still one hell of an action scene in my book.

Our trio make a dash for safety and make the great leap of faith across this decidedly unsafe abyss.  Looks like mostly glass art, possibly with some miniature elements incorporated.

A pursuer misses the mark and tumbles to his death.  A neat bit actually as the stunt guy falls as far as the matte line and an animated figure takes over for the remainder of the fall.  I believe the animated figure suffered horrible, life threatening injuries and sued the animator(!)  True story... or is it?

From the non-monochrome print we can appreciate the dangerous, non-union existence of cel animated stock villains.

Just in the nick of time the precarious rocky outcrop snaps off and falls away.  Animated gag.

Glass painted cave and altar for the penultimate sequence.

SHE - who bathed in the so-called Flame of Life, some centuries ago, discovers all that glows is not neccessarily good.

Oh.... this can't be good!  :(

My, my... how the years have caught up with you.  You don't look a day over 723.

I think our very own local film genius, Peter Jackson now owns that wonderful Radio Pictures end title card in his, by all accounts, very impressive movie museum here in New Zealand.


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...Just when you thought you were 'free of SHE', I have two remakes, just for the sake of semi-completeness....

Years later, SHE made another appearence, this time in 1965 by England's Hammer Films.  Not really very good, but it stuck closer to the H.Rider Haggard novel from what I hear.  The film was lavish, shot in Technicolor and Hammer-Scope no less, and Ursula Andress was perfect for the part.  The always reliable Peter Cushing provided his usual solid support.


Les Bowie (top left) was considered by many to be the Grandfather of British special effects.  The Canadian born Bowie was primarily a matte painter but due to the need to put bread on the table turned his hand to all manner of special effects throughout his career.  Miniatures, opticals, physical effects, mechanical devices, horror gore shots and much more.  Top right is matte artist Bob Cuff who, along with effects cinematographer John Mackey (bottom left & middle) departed from Shepperton and joined forces with Les in the mid 1960's and later on formed ABACUS Films with Bowie and worked on a myriad of features and commercials.  Bottom right we can see effects man Nick Allder manning the camera for a Bowie project in 1968.

While Les Bowie supervised the effects work on SHE, he left the matte work to Bob Cuff and longtime Bowie associate, Ray Caple.  In the two upper pics we can see Ray in a white shirt, setting up a glass shot on location in Malta for the Michael caine war film PLAY DIRTY.  The bottom left pic shows effects man Kit West (shirtless), while Caple adjusts the camera in the background.  Bottom middle shows then effects cameraman Nick Allder with a miniature set up, while the last pic of course is of Les.



Ursula Andress was pretty good and well cast here, and looked a million dollars.

The film was no great shakes by any stretch, but gets an inclusion here as a companion piece to the old RKO version, and if that ain't enough, the Hammer sequel to this one gets a look-see also!  Talk about value for money.... three SHE's for the price of one!  NZPete... what a guy!

All I have are DVD grabs, but this matte shot is a beauty.  The late Bob Cuff stated in an interview that both he and Ray would share all painting duties while working for Les, and that Ray was also a very gifted cameraman and modeller in his own right.

I've written much about both Ray and Bob in other blog pieces, with Bob starting off in the business in 1952 at Shepperton, while Ray came under Les Bowie's wing at the young age of 15 as an apprentice matte artist alongside Derek Meddings in a disused cinema which Bowie used as his base of operations, labelled Anglo-Scottish Pictures in the mid 1950's.

A later view of the valley of ancient ruins.  Among Ray Caple's notable films was Richard Donner's still wonderful SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE (1978).

These scenes where Ursula makes a fatal decision, as did other SHE's before her, look sensational with optical enhancement.

Poor Ursula... she was so hot in DR NO.

Night time matte shot of the valley.


But wait...... there's more

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The inevitable sequel, THE VENGEANCE OF SHE came out in 1968.  This time around, the spirit of the long dead Queen Ayesha invades the body of a sweet, innocent, giggly beach blonde and as you would anticipate, much mayhem ensues.

It was kind of pushing it to make a sequel (now they call them 're-boots' - and I hate them), but it has it's good points, with lead starlet Olinka Berova being one of them.  Thee only cast member to return from the 1965 one was John Richardson.

Great main title card!!  You never see great title cards any more, nor, for that matter actual 'titles', with movies plonking the viewer straight into the narrative without any form of credit or title whatsoever.  You only find out what the hell you're watching when the movie ENDS! God-almighty!  And while we're on it, don't get me started on 'executive producer' credits!!  How many executive fucking producers does it take to make even a simple film now!  I've counted as many as 21 separate exec prod credits in a row!  Aaaaaaargh! ... Though, as usual, I digress.

Opening shot with what I deduce to be a partial miniature set augmented with much painted scenery.  Many of the FX shots in this film are similar combination set ups.  Once again, it was a Bowie Films deal, as were almost all Hammer films.

A multi-part shot with horseman matted into either a miniature/matte combined shot, or a photographic enlargement mock up using different scenic elements.  It was quite effective in motion.

As the main characters trek, their path takes them up perilous canyon paths and such - all of which were miniature sets with the actors matted (or projected?) in by Les Bowie.

Square jawed hero John Richardson and delightful, lithe, exotic companion come across a hidden valley with a remarkable lookalike gold statue beckoning.  Joy Cuff - the daughter in law of matte artist Bob Cuff - built the miniature statue and worked on various other effects shots.  Formally known as Joy Seddon, she was also a talented matte artist and assisted Bob and Ray Caple on the mega-western MACKENNA'S GOLD the same year, did much modelling work with Bob of the forced perspective moon miniature for Kubrick's 2001, and later worked with Bob on THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN painting mattes.

Large miniature set by Joy Cuff, with the actors seamlessly matted in.

A dramatic tilt upward from the group of actors onto the massive stone entrance way and gold statue, all well accomplished.  Kit West was Les Bowie's cameraman for a number of years. Joy Cuff was miniaturist here.

The valley of the lost.  Miniature set.

Now, this is a great shot.  A large matte painting with some foreground miniature rock wall and foliage.

Here's an ingenious little shot, and one that Les had previously used to good effect on Ray Harryhausen's FIRST MEN IN THE MOON a few years previous.  All done in camera, with our comely heroine surveying the enormous pit of slaves at work.  The entire setting is a forced perspective miniature just beyond the actress, with much animated movement of slaves by way of what I suspect would be tiny figures attached to motorised conveyor belt rigs hidden within the fake setting.  Done well on a low budget.  Derek Meddings did the same thing on SUPERMAN 2 for the scenes with the battle of Metropolis where all those cars are being literally 'blown' down the street.  Classic!


I can't recall what happened, but suffice to say, she brought the house down....literally!

That was a time when Warners-Seven Arts had all of the Hammer films in the late 1960's.

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***This post, and all 168 others posted continually since June 2010 as 'Matte Shot' were originally created exclusively by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


Parting shot...

Take this beautiful matte painting by British artist Doug Ferris as a symbol of hope in regards to the ongoing pandemic.  (From Terry Gilliams' THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN)

Take care wherever you happen to be.  See you all next 'issue'.
NZ Pete





MATTE PAINTING REVIEW: A Selection Of Overlooked Films - Part Sixteen

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 ***This post, and all 169 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


Hello again friends, film freaks and fellow fans of frequently fantastic, finely finessed and more often than not fairly phenomenal, if not fabulously formidable (unbelievably, I just plain ran out of "F" words...) old school special photographic effects.  It's well overdue for another utterly jaw dropping rollercoaster ride into the mysteries, marvels and magnificence of traditional hand painted, photo-chemical matte shots.
I am most excited about todays bumper blog post, as I have accumulated some utterly superb material - some of it never (I repeat, NEVER) seen before, that, to dedicated followers of the lost artform will surely be in awe of (money back guarantee ... assuming you've given Pete some money though!)
There are several films being celebrated here today, and are, as per usual, as diverse as one could imagine.  The films cover several decades, studios, methods and matte painting exponents, with at least half of these titles probably lost on the average casual viewer or special effects enthusiast.  But that's what Matte Shot is all about... to bring attention to as many films and studio FX department systems as possible, especially to those who only know cinematic magic as being pumped out of a PC.  So sad!

One of Albert Whitlock's expansive mattes from GREYSTOKE-THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES (1984) is part of the vast collection that has been made available to the matte connoisseur.  More about that later.


Ahead, among other things, we have an incredibly rare, never-before-seen revelation that are Albert Whitlock's original COLOUR matte paintings that he rendered for the significant black & white 1965 picture, SHIP OF FOOLS.  These mattes have been on my 'bucket list' - to see in their pure form - before I expire and shuffle off this mortal coil, and that particular 'wish' has now been fulfilled, thanks to my friend and fellow matte shot aficionadoTom Higginson, who is busy, as we speak sorting through the vast archive of every single Whitlock matte and visual effect, as well as all of the post-Whitlock era material from the vital Illusion Arts effects house that Albert's protoge Syd Dutton formed in 1985 in partnership with visual effects cinematographer Bill Taylor.

Also featured here today are a selection of amazing matte paintings that are, or have been, made available for sale to fans from the Bill Taylor collection, several of which haven't been publicised until now.  In addition, I've included a slew of unidentified painted sky mattes that even have the former Illusion Arts staffers baffled.


For those, like me, who love older films, I have a few vintage flicks - a shoot-em-up gangster drama from the sixties, and a pair from the 1940's, one of which - from Warner Bros - THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN is a fave of mine and ranks as one of my all time number one visual effects shows with its massive load of incredible trick work and highly complex multi-component effects shots, which were Oscar nominated in 1944.  Also featured are some rarely seen original matte paintings by Matthew Yuricich which will be coming up for auction later in the year.

So, sit back in your comfy chair, put your feet up, and enjoy (on anything other than a dinky little bloody cellphone, p l e a s e) the latest cruise where we collectively sail the seven seas of significant cinematic spectacle.

Enjoy

Pete

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MATTHEW YURICICH SELECTED MATTE PAINTINGS FOR AUCTION:

Among the cohort of great matte artists from the traditional era, Matthew Yuricich was one of the most highly regarded in the field.  I've covered Matt's amazing career in various capacities throughout my eleven years of producing this blog, with coverage of many of his achievements in the realm of painted mattes, none more so than my extensive oral history, Matthew Yuricich: In His Own Words piece which I ran back in 2012, shortly before his passing, and that can be found here.  

There were but a small handful of exponents in the medium of matte artistry whose work - as invisible as it often was - made such an indelible imprint to the field of special photographic effects, and Matthew was one of them.  Recently I've been privileged to have been contacted by one of Matt's sons who informed me of a forthcoming auction (date to be advised) later in the year for a small selection of his fathers matte paintings, from an extensive family collection that overall numbers up to seventy mattes.

Illustrated below are the five mattes that the Yuricich family have chosen.  The films are all very well known, with each being a major visual effects event resulting in one of the following films, LOGAN'S RUN (1976) winning Matt the Oscar for his matte paintings, with three of the other four titles being nominated for Best Special Visual Effects; BLADERUNNER (1982), GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) and STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE (1979).    

Caught by the camera!  Matt applying the finishing touches to one of the many paintings for Ivan Reitman's enormously popular spook comedy GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)

The ominous gargoyle on Sigourney Weaver's apartment building that lends a threatening stare to the unwary and unprepared.

The final composite of Matthew's painting, with all of the visual effects work carried out at EEG (Entertainment Effects Group) under the supervision of Academy Award winning veteran, Richard Edlund.

Close up detail of Matt's brushwork, for a shot that few ever picked as a matte to begin with.




Matthew won his own Academy Award for his many memorable mattes for the MGM picture LOGAN'S RUN (1976).  For a number of shots showing a 23rd Century deserted Washington DC, Yuricich rendered the decay and rot of a once proud Capitol.  For this matte, and some others, high quality 4" x 5" format colour photographs were taken under the supervision of effects supervisor Bill Abbott, with these then enlarged, printed and mounted onto large masonite boards, where Matthew would do extensive retouching and painting in creeping vines, sky and centuries of neglect.  The final shots were highly effective.  *I hope to be able to show close up images in a higher resolution at some opportunity.

For the comic book fantasy tale MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987), Matt again rendered several striking matte painted shots, with this ornately designed chamber, painted entirely on glass being the highlight.

The final composite as it appears in the film.


Beautifully detailed statue work is reminiscent of Matthew's incredible shots he painted for the classic BEN HUR (1959)

More detail of the pit beneath the chamber.

One of the landmark films of the photo-chemical era of special photographic effects was Ridley Scott's sci-fi noir, BLADERUNNER (1982) - a film that was utterly robbed at the Oscars, but don't get me started on Oscar injustices!!  Matt's painting for the cliffhanger climax remains one of the most recognised scenes from the eighties.  The matte was painted in deliberate hues as seen here, dictated by the unique qualities of the duplicating stock used by the Douglas Trumbull organisation to photograph and composite the effects, though once combined for the release prints, correct colour and contrast was achieved.

Actor Harrison Ford on minimal set.

Test for final composite.

Final matte shot.

Another mammoth picture that was wall to wall photographic effects was Robert Wise's STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE (1979).  This matte painting of a futuristic San Francisco was one of the best effects shots in the film.

The final on screen composite.


Some of Matt's detail work.

I hope to have a better resolution set of images at some stage, whereby I'd be delighted to revisit these paintings.




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THE UNIVERSAL & ILLUSION ARTS MATTE ARCHIVE, continued: 


Syd Dutton's expansive matte painted Times Square as used in the Alec Baldwin action film, THE SHADOW (1994).  Baldwin even gets his own little in-joke courtesy of Syd if you look closely.


In previous blog entries I have highlighted a number of original matte paintings that formed part of the extensive collection from the old Universal Studios matte department and it's highly successful and in demand mid-eighties re-boot as Illusion Arts.  As mentioned earlier, both Bill Taylor, ASC and Syd Dutton were the backbone of Albert Whitlock's Universal operation from the mid seventies, both beginning at the studio for THE HINDENBURG, with Bill serving as Al's director of all vfx and optical composite photography, while Syd started off as apprentice matte painter under Albert, though his obvious talents quickly established him as a fine matte artist in his own right, with hundreds of features, television shows and commercials under both his and Taylor's belt all the way through the photo-chemical traditional glass painting era, right on into the digital realm.


An inside glimpse at the work and talent involved at Illusion Arts.  Top left is a very young Robert Stromberg, shown here applying the final touches to his epic AGE OF INNOCENCE museum matte.  Stromberg was a key part of the Dutton-Taylor organisation and would later go on to bigger things as a feature film director.  Top right is Bill Taylor, pictured here attaching the 35mm mag to an Illusion Arts motion control rig.  Bottom left is long time grip and miniatures man, Lynn Ledgerwood.  Lynn is seen here operating a precisely timed hand crank camera easel which was an essential tool in the Whitlock and Taylor arsenal for decades as a means to introduce subtle layered movement to clouds in otherwise static matte paintings.  The matte was rendered for THE ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES but never appeared in the finished film.  Middle bottom shows detail from a Syd Dutton matte for AGE OF INNOCENCE.  Far right is the master himself, Albert Whitlock, posing in front of one of Syd's best mattes, from Mel Brooks' SPACEBALLS.

Bill Taylor has carefully stored (temperature controlled) and maintained the hundreds of original mattes, as well as some 10 plus hours of 35mm before and after reels from not only the Illusion Arts era but also Whitlock's extensive Universal career that stretched back to around 1962.  These are all being meticulously transferred to a digital medium, with a great many requiring expensive restoration or colour correction due to the passing of time and the limited lifespan of original dyes used by processing laboratories.
Also, most exciting for old film buffs like me, Bill has dragged out some old vintage before and after reels that pre-date even Whitlock, and are remnants of the very long Russell Lawson era at Universal.  I am so thrilled at this find and simply cannot wait to see or hear what they contain.  As anyone who reads this blog will well know, Russ was matte painter on hundreds of classics (and 'B' films) such as THIS ISLAND EARTH, ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES, TARAS BULBA and countless Abbott & Costello flicks, Jon Hall & Maria Montez 'Arabian' melodramas and all those highly memorable Universal Karloff-Lugosi horrors and groovy sci-fi drive in shows like THE MONOLITH MONSTERS. Most notably, Russ contributed a veritable truckload of mattes (with John DeCuir) to one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films, the fabulous SABOTEUR - which was a huge effects show.  I sure hope to see some glimpses of any of these!

One of the discoveries found when digitising all of Whitlock's personally photographed slides was this until now 'secret' matte from the Alfred Hitchcock picture TOPAZ (1969).  The scene was shot on the Universal lot, with Albert matting in an invisible 'new' location - being the Soviet embassy, entirely fabricated by Al.  I just watched the film again recently and never spotted it!


Over the past few months a large number of mattes have appeared on ebay, and in the coming months more will be added.  An auction for around a hundred or so high profile mattes is planned in the near future, while the final disposition of other vinatge Universal mattes has yet to be worked out, but I understand some will go to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Exquisite detail from one of the mattes painted for GHOST STORY (1981), rendered either by Whitlock or Dutton.  The pair painted around two dozen mattes for the show but due to indecision and lack of forsight on the part of the director, just a few were ever used, with this one being one such casualty.

Mel Brooks' HISTORY OF THE WORLD-PART ONE (1981) - (there never was a 'Part 2' BTW...) featured many superb mattes overseen by Albert Whitlock.  I'd always assumed this majestic piece to be one but in fact it's a Syd Dutton masterpiece.  The matte measures 64" x 42" and is on glass. Absolutely stunning!

Detail from Syd's grand matte.

More detail.  I heard that Albert - being British - wasn't one to dish out glowing platitudes willy-nilly, and the best one could expect when seeking approval from the master was a gentle elbow nudge from Al while sitting watching the rushes.  The 'nudge' said it all.

This jaw dropper of a cityscape was painted by Syd for a well known General Motors 'Flying Car' commercial.

Detail

This curious photograph was concisely clarified by Syd:  "That odd painting was for a tire commercial, Goodyear I believe. There was a rear projection on the right of a truck forced to the side of a mountain road, the camera pulls back to reveal that help is just through the tunnel where there is an oddly located Good Year Tire Station. I didn’t write them, I just painted them."

Some of the myriad paintings in storage.

For a 1985 made for television version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Syd painted this fairytale setting.  I well recall seeing this on the matte showreels along with scores of other great shots back in 1986, when I met Syd purely by (good) chance.

Before & after

With all of the various - though far from complete - mattes by Al Whitlock in the Bill Taylor collection, I was most surprised to see this wonderful full frame glass painted shot from a long forgotten Kirk Douglas film, FOR LOVE OR MONEY (1963).  The draftsmanship is superb, as is the fine signwriting and lettering, which comes as little surprise as Whitlock started off as a signwriter at Gaumont Studios in England and graduated into title card lettering before drifting into scenic backings, miniatures, Schufftan shots and finally mattes!  The size of this lovely piece is surprisingly small, compared with latter day mattes, measuring just 45" x 34" - which was clearly adequate for the time, what with film grain and such.

Closer detail reveals confident and skilled lettering.  The Kirk Douglas character points to this billboard (of himself as a kid) from his window and remarks that "he's gained a bit more hair and teeth since then", to his paramour.

One of many mattes Illusion Arts rendered for the Keannu Reeves vineyard love triangle that was A WALK IN THE CLOUDS.  Love that Whitlock inspired 'donut night sky' that was a feature in so many of Al's shots and subsequently Syd and Robert's mattes as well.

The final original negative composite, complete with soft split drifting cloud layers and bright full moon.


Another of Whitlock's mattes that he made for numerous tv series and movies of the week.  This one is from DELIVER US FROM EVIL (1973), though it was later altered, probably for a different film or as a 'stock' matte painting.  At some point Albert repainted over what was originally the 'blacked out' area of ledge and part of the background and filled it in.  Likewise with the extreme left and extreme right of the frame which was originally left black as the matte was made for tv's 1.33:1 Academy projection.  Close inspection shows where Al has painted additional dimension to the vista.

Detail captures Al's inate sense of daylight and texture.
Illusion Arts furnished a lot of mattes for the shortlived 1985 sci-fi series, OTHERWORLD.  I sure hope this futuristic Syd Dutton vista finds a good home!



Around 1977 Albert made a pair of special painted mattes for what was designated the white cel rotoscope test to enable foreground character action to be introduced across the painted area without the need for blue screen travelling mattes.

These selected frames demonstrate the combined input of Whitlock's painted street scene, Bill Taylor's matte photography and (presumably) Millie Winebrenner's careful hand drawn roto work onto many dozens of large acetate cels.  The 'actor' is longtime Whitlock matte assistant Mike Moramarco, and the upper frame shows Mike on a stock Universal backlot street before the painting is matted in.  Subsequent frames show Mike vanish in part under the painting, though the latter frame examples here show how successfully Mike has been hand roto'd frame by frame across the shot.  I've watched the scene in HD - and another test - on a 55" tv and it worked a treat.  One of the big advantages I'd say here is that the actor is photographed in natural daylight, as opposed to artificial sound stage light - which was so often a dead give away in the old days.
A trick within a trick that nobody would ever suspect.



The popular late 80's early 90's tv series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was a feast for beautiful matte shots - though sadly the awful video quality of the actual tv transmission made for some of the muddiest viewing of the day, not helped by the fact that much of it took place in dark caves and caverns - a recipe for disaster in those pre HD days.  I believe the show was shot on 35mm, but transferred to a video tape medium for post production and editing, as many were at that time.  Anyway, this is a magnificent matte by Syd Dutton, and one I find particularly enchanting.

Oh boy, I've always admired this one too!  One of the many mattes Albert contributed to a single episode of the hit Rock Hudson tv show McMILLAN & WIFE from the mid 1970's.  This episode was titled Birth of a Monster.

Some of Al's brushwork.

The final, invisible composite, made on the original negative.  Ross Hoffman was Al's FX cameraman for this and had been with Universal since the 1930's.

Now here my friends is a true rarity from the vaults.... Al's missile silo matte painting from the James Bond film DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) - one of my fave 007 films despite what the 'new' generation of Bond fans claim.  

Detail is more than one might expect.

More of Al's brushwork, with extensive interactive cel overlays and double exposed pyro elements to be added during composite photography.

The original live action plate at left with the actors on a tiny 12 foot set, while the fx men blast them with an intensely bright red arc and a high powered fan to simulate the mother of all explosions!

The final, complicated fx result, with painting, live action, painted cel overlays of interactive 'blast' light, and of course some practical pyro doubled in.  Great movie, and also a great John Barry score, especially in this extended set piece where Charles Gray's effete Blofeld goes apeshit and starts blowing up nuclear bases around the globe, to the incredibly sublime slow jazz, light-orchestral Barry soundtrack that one would never associate with such a sequence, but has stayed with me ever since I first saw the flick in '71.  The track on the OST is '007 And Counting' for any soundtrack buffs out there, and is a showstopper in every chord of it's subtlety.

I rather enjoyed THE SHADOW (1994) and must do a blog on it.  A fun movie, filled with great moments and many terrific mattes, shared between Illusion Arts and Matte World.  This is one of Syd Dutton's shots of the night exterior to The Cobalt Club.  I have always had a big thing for painted neons and sparkling billboards in matte art, which is why I watch as many old MGM musicals as I can as they were the kings when it came to this gag work.


Although a very uneven and misguided film (I understand post production studio tampering kind of fucked the film over), the show has it's delightful aspects as it tells the story of two robots who fall in love.  The very opening shot shown here features one of Albert Whitlock's most dynamic matte shots.


The very wide pan as it looks when the several elements are all combined.

Detail 1

Detail 2, with Al's unmistakeable backlight and gently receding feeling of 'atmosphere'.

Detail 3

Detail 4

Detail 5

Whitlock with the large revolving miniature sonic receiver (or some such thing?), with the large painted 'flat' at the back which will be merged in with the separate matte painting.

THE HINDENBURG (1975) was Al's second Oscar win for best special visual effects - and I should point out that in his acceptance speech that night (viewable online), he personally named and acknowledged each and every member of his valuable photographic effects crew.  This glorious matte was one of over 70 such shots in the film, and was a show stopper in it's own right as I recall the chorus of soft 'gasps' eminating from the audience when I saw this at the (long deceased, R.I.P) mighty Cinerama theatre here in Auckland back in the day.  This painting measures approx 65" x 34" and is on glass in a pine frame, with a second bonus matte from the same film at the back.  **For anyone keen, this, and the other mattes from THE HINDENBURG illustrated here are available to the collector.  *For further information email:  traditionalmattepaintings@gmail.com

The final composite with miniature dirigible doubled in, along with a sun element, slowly drifting clouds and an actual ocean plate photographed with a real sunset in progress.  Sensational.

Same film, with this being the matte on the reverse side of the sunset painting above.

Final composite shot with water and airship added in, along with drifting clouds in layers.

Albert Whitlock at work on one of the airship paintings.

There are a few matte paintings that leave me breathless, and this is one!  Also from THE HINDENBURG (1975), this magnificent piece occurs shortly before the final end credits.  The matte measures approx 65" x 34" and is on glass, with a second matte painted at the reverse side.  Of note is a small technical inscription by Albert on the wooden frame: "50mm 14 degree up approach", which translates as a directive as to the light direction and the careful placement of the miniature dirigible within the shot so as precisely match Al's painted aspect.  That sort of fine detail to his shots was what made Whitlock's work so damned good for so long.  *For further information email:  traditionalmattepaintings@gmail.com

The final shot, though the colour balance in the bluray is skewed (often seems to be the case, with a far too strong magenta hue all too often I find in many so called remastered blurays??)

Same film, this superb painting is on the reverse side.  Al's clouds are always so organic and real to me.  As a (very) amateur hobby painter myself I spend so much bloody time trying to get clouds 'right', or even 'half way right' !!!

A very rare HEARTBEEPS painting by Whitlock is a sight to behold, and a fitting tribute to the Hudson River School of noted painters such as Frederick Church and Thomas Cole of whom Albert was so fond of.  I'm confident this masterpiece will find a happy home.

Closer detail.  The disparity at left between the painted sky and the unpainted scenery beneath was standard operating procedure for Albert to animate the sky with very sleight cloud drift during the sunrise.  Al said once or twice that people may not necessarily notice the movement of the sky, but they do tend to notice when it's NOT moving.

An additional sun element was added during photography, as were acetate overlays with subtle highlights of light reaching parts of the landscape and trees.  Love it!

Final composite


Illusion Arts at it's peak - busy supplying movie magic.


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Although very highly touted in many circles I found SHIP OF FOOLS (1965) to be somewhat tedious an affair.  A great cast to be sure, but a few too many melodramatic set pieces of bawling hystrionics and scenery chewing a-plenty.

Although Whitlock was a Universal employee, he was frequently loaned out to other studios and effects facilities to provide mattes.  A top Warner Bros executive once coined the phrase that "Albert Whitlock is Universal's secret weapon"due to the cost savings made possible by his more often than not unnoticed camera trickery.

The plot involves a luxury liner filled with all manner of characters - all with a chip of one sort or other on their shoulder it seems - as they embark on a voyage from Vera Cruz to Bremerhaven in 1933.  This is the opening shot, and it's a stunner.  The camera pans off the city and docks in Vera Cruz and across the bay as the ship in question steams out into the open sea.  All a total fabrication by Albert Whitlock, and a masterpiece of visual effects design and application.

And here, for the very first time ever we may see Al's original full matte painting that really takes one's breath away.  Still to be added is the additional painted ship, smoke and water wake elements.  Interestingly, the multi-talented all round visual effects man, Jim Danforth - who was good friends with Al and worked with him around this time - told me that this matte was in fact the second version of the same shot, with Whitlock not happy with the first painting for some reason and starting the whole thing again from scratch.


You want detail.... Pete's not going to let you down!
It's all about the effect of light hitting the object, rather than the object in itself.


For those who only just realised that Albert's mattes were painted in colour, yet the film is clearly a black & white affair, in a 1982 interview he explained:  "Previously our mattes were painted in black and white just as you would expect, but that was a mistake.  Peter Ellenshaw and I found that it is actually much better to paint in colour, even for black and white pictures; letting the tines take its own natural course, rather than forcing the issue by working with different shades of gray."  I wonder whether Whitlock might have been influenced by another highly regarded British matte painter, Albert Julion - whom I think was Al's mentor - as I have seen examples of Julion's mattes painted in full colour for black and white films such as the comedy DON'T PANIC CHAPS, made at Shepperton in 1959.

"The sky is an organ of sentiment" was a quote Whitlock used, from the 18th Century English landscape painter John Constable.

By examining the top of this area of sky we can see Al's handwritten notation 'ship' with a red line pointing downward, indicating the planned placement of the painted ship in the bay.

I simply cannot get enough of skillfully painted skies by all manner of matte artists.

Each and every view of the ship is a Whitlock trick.  For this view, all is painted with around one third of the frame having an actual sea element soft matted against Albert's painted sea.  The clouds drift across the screen in subtle layers.  The painted ship was a separate element, probably painted on glass, with animation gags for it's wake and smoke.

Al's matte painting with his trademark 'additional sky' painted off to the side, beyond the field of the final 35mm frame.  It may look odd but there was a very good technical reason for this.  From his early days at Universal, Whitlock had developed an excellent technique to introduce subtle and entirely credible movement to clouded skies in his otherwise static mattes.  He never felt the old means of simply having an entire clouded sky move as one was believable, even though that means had been used in countless pictures going way back.  Albert, along with his matte cameraman Roswell Hoffman, developed a method whereby the painting would be photographed on the matte camera stand with the sky section masked off entirely.  During photography, the upper most portion of the sky would be exposed only, through soft split screen in-camera matte placement.  The painting would be slowly hand cranked to a precise speed on the horizontal axis across the matte stand.  Then the painting would be returned to it's start position and the soft split moved to expose the middle layer of painted cloud only.  This in turn would be exposed similarly as the hand cranked matte was moved, though at a slower rate.  In some cases a third soft matte would then be applied solely to the lowest (and most distant) clouds, with this shot and moved at an even slower pace.  The final combined effect was that of an incredibly convincing layered 'sky' where, as in nature, those clouds nearest us appear to drift more than any further away. The trick, when combined with the rest of the painting and the live action component, all combined on original negative, were what made Albert's work so seamless. Whitlock refined this technique over the years and later on cameramen Bill Taylor and Dennis Glouner made further improvements.  The method stayed in constant use all the way up to the break-away digital era.

Detail of sky.


Made in 1965, SHIP OF FOOLS was a Columbia production though I think all of the process scenes were shot on Paramount stages.  Albert was Universal based but was commonly called upon by other studios and directors to fill the requirements.  Al's cameraman was Ross Hoffman, and I think other longtime Whitlock staff such as grip Larry Shuler, rotoscope artist Millie Winebrenner and assistant cameraman Mike Moramarco were likely in his department.  Jim Danforth was too, although for just a short time.

Now this was a very bold shot to pull off, and I don't really feel that it worked.  As the ship pulls into the docks a huge crowd is present, with the entire shot being a Whitlock painting - supplemented by some sort of ripple gag on the painted water.  I recall this may have had a very sleight 'pan' or camera move? I'm trying to recall whether Al introduced any form of 'animation' into the painted crowd - I don't think so, which, surprisingly, was taking a big risk with such a subjective shot.

Whitlock's original matte art in it's entirity.

Maybe it worked better in 1965, what with film grain and lower resolution than we have today?



Detail

I'm trying to recall, but Al may have done some sort of soft split screen gag to lend a semi parallax shift?

A subsequent shot that I think is a soft split matte with most above the actors heads painted in.

Entirely shot on soundstages, SHIP OF FOOLS relied heavily on process projected backgrounds, and they were, by and large, very good shots and I suspect some may have involved Whitlock skies matted into actual ocean plates (see below).  Bill Taylor mentioned to me that all the shots on deck were shot on the process stage at Paramount, supervised by that studio's veteran RP man, Farciot Edouart.  The shots were made at the maximum size possible, being some forty foot in width, utilising triple-head VistaVision process projection.

Another SHIP OF FOOLS Whitlock painting, though one I couldn't find the matching shot for in the film.  It may well have been used as a rear projection plate once combined with sea footage, as many similar shots appear behind the actors.

Sky and water detail.

Exquisite cloud brushwork.  When it came to skies, the maestro's of the artform were 'The British Invasion', Albert and the great Peter Ellenshaw.


Real ocean footage soft split matted into Whitlock's painted sea, sky and moving ship. Ross Hoffman gave the shot a very subtle swaying motion on his optical printer, to suggest the vantage point was from another vessel.  I was hoping to have a breakdown of the individual elements from Al's showreels by the time of publication but thus far nothing has turned up during the as yet incomplete transfers of all of those old 35mm reels.  If it does, you'll see it here in a later blog.  I'd hate to leave you hanging!

Interestingly, Jim Danforth told me how SHIP OF FOOLS was submitted to the Academy for visual effects consideration.  "When the reel was shown to the AMPAS committee, a light system was setup to indicate when a matte painting was on the screen.  (There were also full-size RP shots used for closer scenes of actors on the deck.)  Later, some on the committee stated that a mistake had been made — that the light was turned on when a miniature was on the screen.  There were NO miniature shots used for the Ship of Fools (or for any of the other ships).  Occasionally, Al tried to do too much — as when he used multiple slits and camera moves to simulate a moving camera view of the arrival at a South American dock.  It didn’t quite work."

The final matte shot in the film, as it appears in the release prints.

And here is Albert's original painting prior to photography and the addition of smoke from the stacks and animated water sparkles.  All of these colour shots were taken by Al himself back in 1965 in the form of 35mm slides, and these form the basis of a massive collection of matte paintings the man documented over time.

Some of the detail.

Of note here is the method Albert often relied upon to introduce 'lights' in windows and such like.  Jim Danforth told me Al didn't care for backlight scrape-away gags and always felt the effect could be accomplished so much more simply just by carefully painting those atributes in the correct values and hues.  For certain films where complex gradual infusion or shifting of light was a requirement, Albert would utilise large acetate overlays, painted with highlights and appropriate interactive effects and animate these.  The film COLOSSUS-THE FORBIN PROJECT (1969) is a masterwork in this respect.

Flat painted detail that will ultimately have tiny reflective sparkles doubled in by fx cameraman Ross Hoffman.

Unsurprisingly, American Cinematographer magazine wrote at great length about the rear projection work in this film, but not once did they mention Whitlock's vast matte contribution!

The picture concludes with this shot, which I had wondered about, but now know it was a huge cyclorama.

* A special thank you to Tom Higginson for sharing the colour images.  Very much appreciated.

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A pretty violent 1967 Roger Corman helmed bio-pic of sorts of the dubious characters such as Al Capone and pals, and the wholesale slaughter with Tommy guns a-plenty, that took place in Chicago in the 1920's.

There are only the two matte shots in the film, but they are certainly worthy of exploration.  Note the small, partial set in the upper right pic, on the Fox backlot, which will be transformed into twenties Chicago via Emil Kosa jnr's matte art.

The opening credits appear over a long, slow and impressive pullback revealing Chicago in all it's glory during the Prohibition.


L.B 'Bill' Abbott was head of special photographic effects at 20th Century Fox, and had been with the department as director of effects photography from as far back as around 1940 under former heads Fred Sersen and Ray Kellogg.  Abbott's career started even earlier as a camera operator, on silent films such as WINGS and SUNRISE - both notable 1927 pictures, with the latter being a significant showcase for  bold optical composite shots.

The pullback ends after the full opening credits, which was quite a long time to have a matte shot on screen.  I'm sure the optically added snow fall helped conceal the trickery.  

The second of the two mattes is a completely invisible one, and also involves a camera move.  Most of the frame here has been painted and matted in to what I assume was a Fox backlot set.  It's very impressive indeed and even with repeat playback in BluRay there is very little that gives the game away.  The grain is minimal and Emil Kosa's colour matching is spot on.  Great little shot that fits the bill of "the trick that nobody ever notices is the true special effect" as Whitlock once stated.

The final part of the push in.

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Time for an oldie, but a goodie... THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN (1944)  - a beautifully told semi bio-pic of the life of American icon, Samuel Clemens, and his literary alter ego, Mark Twain.

I'm very fond of older films, and this one is a classic in all respects, not least the remarkable, brilliantly executed visual effects - of which there are scores!  Mattes, miniatures, opticals, process and even some I just can't deconstruct, for love nor money!  As already reported in many previous blogs, Warners had one of the biggest and at the time, most ingenious trick shot departments in all of Hollywood.  The calibre of work they turned out through the late 1930's and up to the end of the 1940's was astounding.

Two of MARK TWAIN's key creative people were Paul Detlefsen (left), who was chief matte painter at the studio for nearly 20 years, and Chesley Bonestell (right) - another famed matte painter who moved around a number of studios at various times.  Of Danish heritage, Paul began in glass work (as it was termed) in 1923, working on old silent Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B.DeMille pictures before joining Radio Pictures before it became RKO as their matte man, and later coming to Warners as Byron Haskin's matte expert.  Chesley started somewhat later in the matte field, getting a job at RKO as well, in 1939, just in time for THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.  Both artists had long careers in matte work, with Bonestell most famous for CITIZEN KANE, while Detlefsen was for THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE.  Both men had pretty much had enough of the motion picture business by the 1950's - largely due to the invasion of television (*Bonestell penned a letter to his friend, fellow matte artist Jan Domela, in which he clearly stated "the picture business is pretty much dead now"), with Bonestell largely turning his talents to astronomical art and science fiction covers, while Detlefsen became a noted calender artist after working on his last film, ANDROCLES AND THE LION in 1950.

A peek inside the matte camera room at Warners Stage 5 effects department in 1939.  The paintings on the stand are Paul Detlefsen's from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.

Matte painter and celebrated fine artist Chesley Bonestell.



The film begins with an extensive camera move across a painted night sky - complete with animated falling star - across a river and landscape and finishing on a group of folks, gaping in awe.  This sort of complex shot was bread and butter for Warners' Stage 5 technicians, as they really were ahead of the field when it came to elaborate trick shot gags, as we shall see later in this article!

Stage 5 had as many as eight matte artists employed at any one time according to one time head, Byron Haskin.

The film was Oscar nominated for it's special effects in 1945 - one of seven films that year, though it lost to the thoroughly 100% deserving THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO.  Warner's head of effects was Lawrence W. Butler - one of the greats in camera effects work.  Eddie Linden was director of effects photography.  Linden was noteworthy for being cinematographer of the original KING KONG (1933)

The film contains a great deal of excellent miniature work, though by whom, I don't know?  It was all supervised by Larry Butler of course, but I've no clue as to who did model work at Warners.

What appears to be a very large tank set with model paddle steamer and likewise raft filled with kids.

Larry Butler was a genuine multi-talent in the special fx business, and had a great deal of know-how in opticals - having designed and built a printer meeting certain requirements for Korda's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD for Technicolor travelling mattes, which won him the Oscar.  Butler was versatile in all manner of effects work, with a certain expertise in miniatures as seen in things like THE DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK and IN HARMS WAY.  Larry's father William was an old school optical effects exponent, and worked at First National-Warner Bros on shows like NOAH'S ARK and others, which was where young Lawrence got his first foot in the door, as a mere 15 year old.  Butler would progress through the ranks to become assistant to Ned Mann who was Alexander Korda's chief of effects on several films, then he assumed the supervising role on things like JUNGLE BOOK and many others, as well as being head of effects for some years at Warners, then again as head over at Columbia where he was teamed with effects cameraman Donald Glouner (another name with a long lineage of several generations involved in effects work).  In either the late 1950's or very early 60's Columbia shut down their effects department, as did many studios, whereby Butler regrouped with Glouner and formed Butler/Glouner Inc as a stand alone effects house.  They specialised in all kinds of effects but didn't have an in-house matte artist, so often farmed out or subcontracted matte work to Albert Whitlock, such as many of the Edgar Allen Poe films and ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS to name a few.  Both Whitlock and Jim Danforth had dealings at different times with Larry and Donald and both reported having a good work relationship. Jim called Larry "a nice and generous man in the dealings I had with him."   Butler would continue as an effects consultant even after the sell off of their operation in 1973, with Larry even getting a character named after him by Steven Spielberg in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

The camera sweeps across the mighty river from one bank to the other, with the scale of the 'current' suggesting a sizeable miniature set up.

An outstanding set piece here involving large miniatures, child actors, and excellent process projection in a half submerged - and well concealed - RP set up.

Warners had a number of highly skilled effects cinematographers such as Hans Koenekamp, Edwin DuPar, Warren Lynch and Willard Van Enger.

Trying to navigate through tricky waterways.

Painted sky and horizon (maybe the boat too?), matted into a water plate.

Not sure here, the ceiling at left may possibly be painted in.  Miniature boat almost collides with floating houseboat in the fog.

A grand matte painted Southern vista.

Another beautifully rendered 1850's view of The Mississippi.

Not sure about this.  Might be an actual location, or possibly one augmented with snowy mountains?

The once proud river steamer has seen better days.  All well shot in miniature.

While chatting to Jim Danforth about Lawrence Butler and water tank miniatures he remarked: "Did I ever tell you about him telling Warners to uncap the artesian spring which was under their Stage 5, in order to get clear water for the miniature ship shots in “The Caine Mutiny” ?

Jim Danforth knew Larry Butler and told me a great story:  "Larry sometimes referred to Warners' as 'The Pig Farm', because it was supposedly built on the site of an old pig farm."

Matte painted set  extension on the Warners back lot.  Alongside Detlefsen and Bonestell, the Stage 5 FX department also employed Mario Larrinaga, Hans Bartholowsky, Vernon Taylor, Jack Shaw, Clyde Hill and later on, Louis Litchtenfield.

Split screen shot with some painted additions, possibly multiplying the same group of people to fill both stalls and the balcony.

Most likely a matte painted shot.

An elaborate dream sequence involving travelling mattes and process work.

Another fine matte shot.

Star, Fredric March as Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain in what looks like a trick shot of some sort - be it a painting rear projected, or a just plain backing cyclorama?  Incidentally, March was a fine actor, and I reckon he played the most convincing United States President of them all in the riveting John Frankenheimer masterpiece SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964).  See it...today!!!

The moneyshot of all moneyshots occurs halfway through MARK TWAIN whereby he tours the world as a raconteur and teller of tales, beginning here in India.  An absolutely 'jaw-on-the-floor' effects showcase, with this (poor quality) illustration taken from Chesley Bonestell's memoir.

This sequence is a real tour-de-force.  The camera starts on a gathered crowd in a square and does an incredible 180 degree sweeping pan around the buildings, cityscape, skyline and harbour with thousands of locals fascinated in what Twain has to say.  It's a show stopper of a continuous, uninterupted effects sequence, and is a real head scratcher as to how Butler managed to pull it off.

Here are the key frames for close inspection...

I'm fairly convinced the whole deal is a superbly orchestrated mix of painted matte art, photographic cut outs and very precise process projection.  Warners would often do just such 'stunts', and nothing seemed out of their comfort zone.  Just take a look at similarly eye popping sequences from YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, RHAPSODY IN BLUE and THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT - each one a dazzling display of technical and aesthetic skill that no other studio dared to tackle.

It's only evident upon repeat viewings and close scrutiny that many of the 'Indian extras' appear multiple times in various different places during the camera move.  It's sure that some are photo cut-outs, skillfully blended, yet some others are in motion and clearly 'real' extras!!  The whole thing is a wonder.

It's of little surprise that Don Siegel - Warner's top montage director and soon to be top flight director in his own right - had much responsibility on this film as well as the others I mentioned above.  The sequence would fall into the montage category as it's part of a group of similar sequences cut together in a breathless relay of movie magic.

This sequence was played at the Academy Awards that year apparently, as the visual effects category came up.

Man, would I love to see a full breakdown of this.

The same old faces keep cropping up, but you'd never know it.

Kudos to the stills photographer and/or fx cameraman who shot these extras, with the light and shadow being 'right-on-the-money' all the way.

I ponder whether the whole set up was an enormous painted/collage/process rig possibly constructed in a vast semi-circle, maybe with the taking camera in the centre on a nodal head??  Any ideas you SFX guys out there?

The film was unique in that for the period, any film nominated in a technical category, it would automatically go to the head of that particular department, such as sound or design.  MARK TWAIN marked an entirely unexpected direction with the actual SFX nomination going to the chief matte painter, Paul Detlefsen and longtime Warners matte cinematographer, John Crouse, and not Lawrence Butler.  I can only assume Butler himself put forward the names of Detlefsen and Crouse, recognising the important role they both played in pulling off the many trick shots in the film.  Reviewing the history of Oscar SFX nominations and winners, I've rarely seen a case like that before - certainly not until well into the 1960's.  The very first effects Oscar in 1938 for SPAWN OF THE NORTH did though single out and name around eight FX crew.


The fluid camera moves up off the masses and onto the podium where Twain stands delivering his speech.

Todays CG jockeys may yawn at this, but remember, this was all physical/photo-chemical and took an enormous amount of configuring to achieve.

I'm sure Fredrick March and friends are a process plate rear projected into Chesley Bonestell's vast matte painting.

Just when we thought the mind-bending effects moves were done and dusted, we get a second one directly dissolved into from the other.  Again, an incredibly well accomplished trick that is a tough nut to dissect.

Frame by frame HD look at the sequence.

Twain is a rear projected element, in what is likely a huge matte painting or retouched photo blow up.

Once again, we get the huddled masses of people - most of whom appeared in that previous major FX shot, and most of those re-occur several times.

As with other similar Warner shows with such shots, they are rarely, if ever, just a simple 'optical zoom out'.  Their pullback shots like this were, without exception, remarkably free of grain nor any optical related artifacts, with a pseudo 3D-like depth that one might associate with modern era drone footage.  Just take a look at THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT to see what I mean.


The camera moves back, with columns and foreground elements coming into view in a most naturalistic 'you are there' manner.

In an old interview, Paul Detlefsen said that he owed so much to matte cinematographer John Crouse for his camera abilities and making the mattes look good.

The massive pullback ends on a pair of laughing locals.  How on earth did Butler et al manage this?


Our storied literary personality addresses another massive crowd in this extensive matte shot.

Full matte painting for a melacholic scene.

The film concludes with yet another grand, multi-element visual effect scene.  There's more to this than meets the eye folks.

With Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens on his death bed, things become strangely metaphysical.

In what must have been a hellishly complex sequence to put together in the printer, Twain leaves his own body, joins hands with boyhood characters and climbs the stairs to what must surely be heaven - or somewhere nearly as good!  While all of this is happening, his lifeless form - and that of his wife - are absorbed by billowing white clouds, assuming their shape and form(!)

Note the gradual transformation at lower frame as Mr and Mrs Twain/Clemens are absorbed by clouds.

Meanwhile the sun is rising over the hill...

Jimmy Page takes his Stairway To Heaven...

The continuous shot is a constant transition with dissolving elements replacing others in different areas of the frame, light changes, and more!

Much occurs here in an uninterrupted shot which must have gone through the optical printer a few times to composite the many elements.

'Hold on... this ain't Heaven... it's just plywood, plaster and arc lights!'

From the theatrical trailer, a matte shot absent from the feature.  Not an uncommon thing.  The CASABLANCA trailer - also from Warners - has an unfinished matte shot in it!

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This well made 1943 mystery directed by George Cukor has all the ingredients, with political corruption and the hungry newspaper man eager to get to the bottom of things, with secrets long buried.  I do think Humphrey Bogart would have served this well in the star role.  Just sayin'.

The MGM production is quite a lavish affair (weren't they all?), with a number of excellent matte painted shots supervised by Warren Newcombe, as well as an opening storm and road crash sequence done in miniature by A.Arnold Gillespie.

Important to the storyline, a lone car speeds down a deserted road in a dense forest block during a raging thunderstorm.  The great miniaturist, Donald Jahraus was MGM's resident maestro in model construction, with many sensational examples of his craft evident over the years he spent with the studio.  Special effects chief Arnold 'Buddy' Gillespie handled the sequence, most likely by way of an undercar mechanism which passed through a slit in the miniature road surface.  Gillespie was in charge of all physical effects at MGM as well as miniature work and process projection.  Mattes all fell under the control of Warren Newcombe while opticals were the domain of Irving G. Ries.

In a post crash montage we get this curious shot suggesting a bereaved population.  It looks like the end to end parade of cars in the funeral procession are largely painted, with quite a degree of manipulation optically to lend the desired effect.

MGM were gung-ho when it came to using matte art in their films, and spared no expense when commisioning mattes, whether they would be used or not, as we shall see later. 

Newcombe's stable of artists were, for the most part, technical illustrators, but their skills adapted so well to the requirements of film.

Many artists worked in the Newcombe matte department over the decades, and it is indeed rewarding to discover a heretofore new name.  This particular matte was painted by Henry Peter McDermott - a name unknown to me until now.  This painting is unique in that Henry has personally inscribed his name, the date and the number of days spent rendering the matte (five and a half days).  Very unusual to say the least, but for researchers like me utterly fascinating factual information.  I've since discovered that McDermott, who was born in 1897, reportedly worked from the 1930's for some sixty years in the art departments of both MGM and 20th Century Fox studios, retiring only in 1972.  He passed away twenty years later in 1992.

More atmospheric mood as set by the matte department at MGM, with much more here painted than you might think.  The foreground tree has 'live' elements bi-packed into the painted tree to lend subtle 'action'.

Other name matte painters at MGM around that time were Howard Fisher, Henry Hillinck, Rufus Harrington, Irving Block, George Coblentz, Otto Kiechle and Norman Dawn, among others.

A meticulously drawn out Newcombe matte, which based upon the couple of old MGM mattes I own, would measure 75cm x 55cm - or for those of you still not in the age of metric, 28"x22".

Newcombe ruled his kingdom like a Sultan, it has been reported by those who worked under him.  That said, the sheer quality control Warren exercised over each and every matte effect that came through his closely guarded department was extraordinary.  Rarely, if ever, did anything ever reach the theatre screen that might be deemed rushed or substandard.  The MGM output, certainly during the black & white years, was of the highest standard.  Things did slip a little once Technicolor, and later Eastman Color came on the scene, but that may have been more down to the state of affairs after the negative was 'locked', and handed over to the commercial labs for theatrical prints to be struck.

An unused matte painting which in itself is astonishing due to it's incredibly small size for the actual painted information, which regardless of that, is amazingly detailed and nuanced with great skill.

Spencer Tracy, at bottom left, surveys the bridge where catastrophe occured at the very start of the film.

A secondary cut shows the bridge, though in this case a Don Jahraus miniature.

Another matte painting by Henry Peter McDermott, possibly another unused shot from KEEPER OF THE FLAME.

As I've described in earlier MGM blogs, in case you are new to NZPete's world, all of the old Newcombe mattes from the 1930's right on through to the 1950's - with few exceptions - were rendered on heavy grade art card with a mixed media of goache, pencil, fine tipped soft pastels and what appears to be India Ink.  These were really illustrations in every sense of the word, more than paintings, but the end result was surprisingly effective.

One aspect of the MGM Newcombe mattes that has continually astounded me was the excellent blend between 'fact and fiction' as I call it - the matte join virtually never becomes evident, such was the skill of Newcombes chief matte cameraman, Mark Davis and his crew at photographing and marrying together the elements.  Incredibly impressive work, with what appears to be a strong reliance upon soft matte lines and from what I've examined, often completely unexpected demarkation lines that sometimes run straight across trees or curl through bits of architecture where you would never expect it.

Not entirely sure but think this is a matte shot top up of a stage set.  The give away is the old Newcombe/Davis gag of bi-packed real foliage across part of the painting, always with a soft 'breeze' moving the leaves to fool the viewer.  Crops up in a zillion MGM matte shots.

Again, I'm fairly certain this too is a masterful matte shot, with most of the frame painted, and enhanced with bi-packed foreground tree and leaf movement to sell the deal.  A close look suggests over half the frame to be matted in.

Here is another deleted matte that never made the final cut.  Of interest here due to the very personalised 'doodling' by the matte artist, whom I'd wager might possibly have been Howard Fisher.  Jim Danforth knew Howard and worked with him on MAD, MAD WORLD.  Jim told me that Howard liked to paint odd little jokes into his mattes such as dogs humping, which apparently, he did in some GREEN DOLPHIN STREET matte shots (though I've searched hard but never spotted 'em).  Odd as it seems, Fisher wasn't the only one.  Matt Yuricich said that fellow painter Lee LeBlanc painted dogs copulating within the intricate plasterwork designs of his VIVA ZAPATA ceiling mattes.  I have an image of an old matte - possibly by Jack Cosgrove - where if you look closely, the director of whatever show it was, has been painted as a monkey in a tree holding a clapperboard with a stupid grin on his face!

The same locale as above, but this time as a miniature set, filmed in a dolly shot as an RP plate for a departing vehicle.



A later view of same, this time from the main house.

A wonderful full matte painting of the ideal 'fixer-upper'.  For more info, call Norman Bates Realty now!.

Quite possibly a miniature set with a painted background.


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OMISSIONS FROM MY PREVIOUS BLOG:

I covered the 1994 post apocalyptic teen video game saga DOUBLE DRAGON in the last blog, but completely overlooked a pair of Robert Stromberg matte painted shots, so in an effort to be complete, here they are.

Much happens in a 'future' 2007 New Angeles which had been partly sumberged.

The mattes were contracted to Illusion Arts, with Robert Stromberg being handed the baton to paint the numerous shots.

Detail

The most impressive sequence has these two goofballs jet ski down Hollywood Boulevard, in what appears to be a cleverly assembled multi-plane shot.

Close up of the most distant matte painted plane.  I expect there is likely another mid-plane painting that has yet to surface - and maybe an even closer third painted plane - with the shot being accomplished with motion control camera movement.  Really impressive on screen.

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SOME MYSTERY SKIES:

Among the clearout of old matte paintings from the former Illusion Arts collection are this handful of painted sky mattes that remain a complete and total mystery, even to Bill Taylor, Syd Dutton and Robert Stromberg.  If anyone has any clue, do let me know.


This one is a very nicely rendered, though in poor shape matte from a mystery production.  The damaged scuff portion is presently being restored to it's former condition by one of the old Illusion Arts staffers, Lynn Ledgerwood, whom I'm reliably told, is something of a genius at this sort of thing.

Some of these may be unfinished pieces, or just sketches, though most are in pine frames which would suggest production use of some sort or another.

Some may well date back to Al Whitlock's era at Universal?

Any ideas?  Yes, I'm asking you Domingo... if anyone can figure these out, it's gonna be you.


We end this months blog on a high point ... given the turmoil around the globe these days, this beautifully rendered original matte may give some hope.

***This post, and all 169 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/



I hope that proved an illuminating and revealing journey.  Do send me your feedback and let me know if any of you have any matte images to share, or recommendations.  
Stay safe, wherever in the world you happen to be.
NZ Pete

EPIC ORIGINAL MATTE PAINTING AUCTION

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Hi there fellow devotees of the magical trick shot world from days gone by, where movie miracles were created by the most modest of mediums by a highly specialised and select assembly of talented artists and cameramen.  All who follow my blog will easily appreciate and value the consumate skills and imaginative innovation applied therein, rendering so many memorable moments, not to mention the enormous cost effectiveness. 

Todays blog post is a departure of sorts from the usual clinical examination of matte painted shows of old as I wish to bring to my readers attention a forthcoming auction of traditionally hand painted mattes from the vast collection of visual effects cinematographer Bill Taylor.  As previously detailed in various NZ Pete blog posts Bill was Albert Whitlock's cameraman at Universal for a decade before establishing a highly successful visual effects company, Illusion Arts, with long time associate, matte artist Syd Dutton.  Illusion Arts specialty was in matte painted shots, with literally hundreds of these being rendered over many years for feature films, commercials and television shows.  The sheer volume of traditional mattes executed was mind boggling - and that was prior to the company eventually shifting gears and moving into the digital arena.  

The upcoming auction, held by Heritage Auctions in Texas, promises to be unforgettable.  I have illustrated all of the matte paintings here, as well as a great number of close up detailed views as possible.  Also part of the auction are a number of conceptual paintings, rendered for proposed matte shots.  I have only included a handful of these here, with some particular standouts that I personally like.  Some of Syd's incredible fine art also features in the auction - largely of a fantasy theme - though due to an already heavily overloaded blog post I haven't included them.  They can be easily found on the Heritage web site.  The bidding commences on June 28th 2021.

Interestingly, a wonderful and very rare non-Illusion Arts matte is featured as well in the auction - the spectacular Howard Fisher cityscape as seen in IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD.  I'll add those excellent high rez images in a subsequent blog.


So, I'm certain the exciting line up of fabulous traditional matte art that follows will thrill, delight and astound not only my long time readers, but also the newer fans who are only now beginning to discover and appreciate this lost artform.   I understand that further original matte offerings from the same collection will be featured in subsequent auctions at a later date.  

Enjoy

NZ Pete

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***This post, and all 170 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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Illusion Arts matte painter Robert Stromberg works on the finishing touches of one of his many amazing paintings for STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (1993).

Stromberg's huge 96" x 49" matte, painted on hardboard, or masonite as the Americans call it.

Close up







The John Goodman baseball bio-pic on 'Babe' Ruth, titled unsurprisingly THE BABE (1992), featured several mattes - some traditional and some digital.  This period view of Yankee Stadium was painted by Robert Stromberg.

Details




Final composite shot



Alfred Hitchcock made dozens of absolute bona-fide classic films through his career, though MARNIE (1964) certainly wasn't one of them.  Lots of matte shots though - with several completely invisible.  Albert Whitlock supplied the mattes, including this full frame painting with no live action.


This painting initially featured several painted parked cars and different shadow and foliage seasonal detail for an earlier sequence.  Whitlock repainted over certain portions to alter the shot for a later scene. A partially visible overpainted 'ghost' car can be seen at right.



The frame at right shows the original painting with more vehicles before Al's retouches.  Incidentally, I'm reliably informed that the front office at Universal reportedly disliked Whitlock's MARNIE mattes and requested he remove them all from his showreel.  Not sure how that directive sat with Albert? 



I've long admired Syd Dutton as a premier matte artist, and I have to admit that this beautiful BUCK ROGERS (1979) full painting is my absolute all time fave among all of Syd's vast output.  Oh, how I would so love to own this piece.  Genius!

The looseness of the brushwork, the application of tones and 'dots & dashes' of light are in themselves a thing of great beauty.  Love it!



It's all so Whitlock in inspiration and application.  The matte art appeared in numerous films or tv series under different guises, with in one instance apparently as an underwater city(!) as Bill Taylor once mentioned to me.





Syd Dutton's very large rendering of Wayne Manor for the film BATMAN FOREVER (1995)



I simply cannot get enough 'close up detail' of any matte art, no matter what it might be nor who may have handled the brush.

The final shot in the film is curiously 'flopped'.




By no means one of Mel Brooks' better films, HISTORY OF THE WORLD-PART ONE (1981) none-the-less was a matte aficionado's tour-de-force with so much fine work as supervised by Al Whitlock.  This terrific matte was one of Syd Dutton's renderings.


The key to making mattes work is undeniably the establishment of the correct Kelvin, or light temperature by pigment and wedge tests.  So many mattes over time have failed simply due to inaccurate sky sunlight intensity.  Fellow industry matte painter Ken Marschall told me this was always an issue for him and cameraman Bruce Block whereby they frequently would re-mask and double expose or burn in to make brighter skies in their matte painted shots.

Interestingly, I asked Syd a while back which mattes he was personally retaining, and I was mortified when he told me "none".  

Original location plate, black matte, and final original negative composite.


I'm a sucker for the classic haunted house genre of matte shots (and old movies), and THE ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993) featured several great shots via matte art and others with miniatures.  Interestingly, the most fascinating one, with a dizzy birds-eye, extreme downview from way atop, is not part of the auction lot.

How it all pulled together on screen, with drifting clouds and a bird superimposed.

Painted detail



Now, THE SHADOW (1994) was a cool flick, and several of my readers have implored me to do a special blog on it (which I shall).  The movie had two firms supplying the many mattes - Matte World did some, while Illusion Arts made the rest, including this gorgeous matte.  Inexpicably, this magnificent Robert Stromberg painting never made the final cut - at least not in its original form.  For reasons that escape me, the powers that be had Stromberg scan this stunning masonite piece into the computer and laboriously rework tiny details such as roof tiles and elements using fairly primitive CG tools.  For my money, the original traditional matte would have worked just as well, if not better.

If I could choose two mattes from this selection as NZPete keepsakes, then it would be this one along with the earlier BUCK ROGERS night shot.



I'm constantly fascinated with the 'run off' - the edges of matte art - that area that is outside of the motion picture frame that we'd never see otherwise.  Yeah, I know.... seek professional help.  My family would concur!



The same Lamont Cranston mansion from THE SHADOW as seen on a moody and atmospheric night.  Another magnificent Robert Stromberg matte (yes please!) that never made the final cut as is.  Rather, the painting was once again scanned and re-jigged in the computer, though to my eye, to no tangible advantage other than as an academic exercise.  Love the brushwork and hues here.


Detail of what could have been...





An incredibly photo-realistic matte on masonite by an unknown Illusion Arts artist for the 1995 Quentin Tarantino film FOUR ROOMS (ever heard of this obscurity?)

It's the Hotel Mon Signor, in Los Angeles, and it's entirely painted by hand!





Martin Scorsese has turned out many great films though I feel AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993) was a cinematic gamble that never paid off.  Much tedium and wooden performances saved by a scattering of great mattes, such as this monumental Robert Stromberg vista of the museum interior.

Stromberg at work on the above show stopper.


Detail



Final composite.  I feel the film really cried out for Joe Pesci to enter an elegant, mannered ballroom set piece in full wise-guy garb, and stomp some poor shmuck to death for laughing at him.  Just sayin'.


There are a lot of Star Trek mattes in this auction - what Bill Taylor refers to as "the low hanging fruit" in as far as collectibles go.  This is a two piece matte with both foreground glass and background masonite panel. Both Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton worked on this shot of Lutan's Palace from STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION (1987).  This image shows the foreground glass only.

And here is the rear component, painted on masonite, for the same shot.


Close up



Final shot with both planes of matte art as seen in show.







The Keannu Reeves 40's lovefest, A WALK IN THE CLOUDS (1995) wasn't a bad show, and in fact had a subliminal commercial effect on me as I just had to pause the VHS and rush out and buy some bottles of red wine back in the day!  Good thing it wasn't a 'rom-com' in a meth factory I suppose(!!)  :(


The film featured a number of nice matte shots of vineyards, beautiful 'donut night skies' and a thrillingly executed conflagration set piece with mucho visual trickery.




Master matte painter Syd Dutton shown here at Illusion Arts in the early 1990's with one of his many mattes and concept pieces for the tv series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Syd's Chamber of the Winds matte painting from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1987)



The shot was comped as a tilt down.





Another haunted house style matte from THE ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES.



It's the ideal fixer-upper for the home handyman.




One of many Syd Dutton mattes rendered for the short lived tv series TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY (1982), from the episode Trunk From The Past.

Final composite loks a million dollars.








The John Landis hit film COMING TO AMERICA (1988) included some stunningly elaborate matte and miniature combination visuals in the first reel, with the aerial arrival at the Palace of Zamunda being the highlight.  This is Syd Dutton's terrific original oil painted concept for the look of the palace.

Here is Syd's final matte painting - and a very large one at that due to a slow push in toward the live action area.  Incidentally, this was Eddie Murphy's best film by a long shot, and hit all the right notes.

Part of the final grand push-in composite as it appears on screen.










The excellent American Civil War drama GLORY (1989), had a couple of mattes by Syd Dutton.

Dutton's original concept art, and the location plate photography with black cardboard matte visible in front of the camera.

Final composite, with explosions added later as separately film elements.








Robert Stromberg's vast matte for the city of Ocampa from the series STAR TREK: VOYAGER (1995)





Original concept art for the Ocampa City matte.



Here is another matte from Mel Brooks' HISTORY OF THE WORLD-PART ONE (1981).  The matte is of Paris, with Notre Dame in mid view, and was painted on wood by Syd Dutton.

Final tilt down and push in composite.





A striking matte supervised by Syd Dutton, for the mildly entertaining THE RUNNING MAN (1987).

Final composite as a tilt upward shot.


All up, I think Illusion Arts must have cornered the market when it came to supplying futuristic city shots over the years.








A stylish matte painted sunset from Martin Scorsese's rehash of the classic, CAPE FEAR (1991)





Actual finished shot in film.




An evocative Syd Dutton matte from something called A GNOME NAMED GNORM (1992), which apparently is also known as UPWORLD, though I've never heard of either.  The live action went into the small blacked area on the left ledge.






As I mentioned, I've only included a few examples of Syd Dutton's conceptual paintings, and I couldn't go past this wonderful piece. It's an absolutely marvellous vfx concept from tv's STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE (2001), for a Klingon city.  I love this as a stand alone painting, and I have to say, this concept is light years better than the eventual computer generated screen version, which lacked absolutely everything that this beautifully concieved illustration exudes in spades.

Worthy detail from a most worthy piece of artwork.

More worthiness that just hits the sweet spot for NZ Pete.




Yes, another matte from ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993) - this time a full painting.  For the final scene they added subtle details such as a swing gently swaying, and clouds moving across the sky.  The shot was also timed much darker for the release prints.


Love the 1940's Universal Karloff-Lugosi vibe.





Old Chicago in a state of abandonment, circa 25th Century, as seen in the pilot and feature release BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY (1979).  Another great Dutton matte that I've always admired.  Interestingly, what was a partially blacked out matte painting for inclusion of live action actor and irritating 'cute' robot (lower left third) has been filled in here by Syd after the fact, with more painted in rubble.  Presumably done so as to be available as a stand alone full painting for another potential project.

Actual scene as it appeared in 1979.




Note the important line up notations along the edge of the frame, to assist the artist and the cameraman with aspect ratio line up for Academy ratio, TV, and standard theatre 1.85:1 projection.  This is to be found along the edges of a great many of the Ilusion Arts and older Universal Whitlock mattes.





One of the 75 odd mattes that Al Whitlock and team created for THE HINDENBURG (1975) which won the boys the Best Visual Effects Oscar, and deservedly so.

Composite with carefully retouched photo cut out of airship pasted onto glass; painted runway, mooring mast and background scenery, all matted flawlessly with foreground hanger and crowd.






The witless teen comedy MANNEQUIN 2: ON THE MOVE (1991) had two nice matte shots, with this one being a Syd Dutton painting.

Final composite, with a separate painted sky on another glass.




The Police Squad spin off NAKED GUN films with Leslie Nielsen were pretty funny.  This prison matte is from NAKED GUN 33 1/3 -THE FINAL INSULT (1994).  Robert Stromberg was artist.

Composite shot.







A spectacular futuristic cityscape by Syd Dutton for the tv series STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION.

Angel One





The sunset beyond Limerock lighthouse is one of a pair of glass painted mattes for a couple of shots in AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993) 

The foreground glass with painted lighthouse for AGE OF INNOCENCE.

Finished shots from same sequence with moving clouds, sun element, water sparkles and an animated boat.

Lighthouse detail

Flaming red sky artwork.






Far in the distance is 'New' Chicago, as seen from the 'wrong side of the tracks' which is 'old' Chicago.  A Syd Dutton matte from BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY (1979).

Superb brushmanship and feeling of backlight.  Love it!



Live action and matte art combined.




Another sci-fi flick here, though potentially fascinating never made much sense in the greater scheme of things.  MILLENNIUM (1989) had a few intreresting effects shots such as this finale vista.

Syd Dutton was artist on this.



Multi-element marry up, with numerous live action plates combined with Syd's painting to excellent effect.




The overwrought and interminable mini-series MASADA (1981) was, thankfully, recut later and retitled for theatrical release (as THE ANTAGONISTS) with vast swaths of celluloid excised.  Albert Whitlock painted numerous mattes for the show, such as this evening view of Rome.  For the curious, the 'extra' bit of painted sky visible here (and on many other mattes) was to facilitate Whitlock's moving skies soft splits gag.









The eighties television rehash of the cult series THE TWILIGHT ZONE featured mucho painted mattes and trick shots (though I've never seen it nor it's famous Rod Serling original and feel I must at least look at the old series).  The episode was Examination Day (and also included a beautiful daytime shot of this same scene) with Syd Dutton behind the brush.







Illusion Arts were contracted to supply several mattes for the excellent Richard Attenborough directed bio-pic of Charlie Chaplin titled, CHAPLIN (1992).  Syd Dutton was painter here and I understand Al Whitlock was involved too on the film.

Final shot.






This wonderful dank and dark grotto painted matte is from THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)

Comp with blue screened gondola and actors, with flame elements added as well as a curious CG simulated water element.







Roger Corman remains something of an icon, largely for discovering talent like Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Dick Miller and Francis Ford Coppola, to name but a few.  Roger made some really good Edgar Allen Poe chillers in the 1960's too!  This matte however, is from the bizarre and completely insane FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND (1990) - a film that is pretty much indescribable but does have some really nice effects shots, and many mattes.

The matte as a camera move looked great.




The film had another excellent futuristic city matte shot from Illusion Arts.  Let us hope that one also surfaces one day.





Illusion Arts furnished a lot of mattes for tv commercials, including this sprawling vista advertising EURO DISNEY in 1992.  Syd Dutton was painter here.

A very low rez frame from the final shot with cartoon mascots surfing the stars above Syd's art.


a closer view




Oh boy, is this one good or what?  A jaw dropping Robert Stromberg full painting of Malcor III from the series STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION (circa 1988).

From the NZ Pete archive is this rare photo of Stromberg blocking in the matte.  It is so rare to ever seen rough block ins of matte work, so I especially cherish this image from a (very) amateur painter's viewpoint at least.  So much technical info can be gleaned from photos such as this.  I'm fortunate to own a partially painted original ISHTAR matte by Mark Sullivan (another absolute 'ace' in the vast deck of celebrated matte artists by the way), and it's ever so fascinating to observe methodology.


For the final tv ready composite, live action people were doubled into the walkways.



Masterful... What more can I say?





A matte way up there among the pantheon of great trick shots was this staggeringly well done Albert Whitlock painting for Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant FRENZY (1971).

For years I'd had no idea this was a trick shot, and it wasn't until I read something about it in an old interview with Whitlock that it 'clicked'.  A remarkably accomplished effects shot that's on screen for all of about 2 or 3 seconds!  

Before and after, with original limited set, black matte, and Albert's glass painting.


Phenomenal detail work for such a quick cut.


I love this Hitchcock film... so savagely witty and relentlessly dark.  They'd never get away with a script like this nowadays, what with all of the insipidly woke politically correct 'caftan wearers' running the business.


Note the guards and even the sheen on the jailhouse floor.  I wish the eventual owner of this piece all the best, but do take care as it's on glass!


Syd Dutton painted this delightful fairytale kingdom for the Irwin Allen tv movie ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1985).

Final composite

I rather like matte painted castles of old







Concept art by Syd Dutton for the jungle lab matte shot in BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997)

A second variation of same that ultimately was the chosen view.

A full matte painting by Syd for BATMAN AND ROBIN.

Temporary shot of multiplane jungle lab matte with miniature foreground.




A supersonic US fighter jet from the film REAL GENIUS (1985), as painted by Syd Dutton.

At left is Dutton at work on another view of the same jet.  At right is the final shot of the above.


detail work




A signed Robert Stromberg matte painting from STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (1993) of the city Cardassia Prime

Matte art with foreground elements and live action additions.






The late eighties series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was loaded with fine matte shots.  This one, known as Vincent on the Bridge was featured in several episodes and is a full painting on glass by Syd Dutton.




Yet another example of grandeur of the time honoured medium, sadly now extinct.



Syd is pictured here with a conceptual matte painting he did for VAN HELSING (2004).  This painting would serve the basis for the eventual digitally created shot.




Here we have yet another city in ruins - and it's not the last one in this blog post folks - with this Syd Dutton piece being from an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE titled Voices of the Earth, from around 1988.






Now this one is a true mystery as nobody seems to able to recollect what it was painted for, nor who was responsible?

Detail







It amazes me as to how much matte work this company turned out through their tenure.  This one is from an episode of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE titled The Quickening, from the mid 90's.

Composite with live action plates.




Faintly visible here is the glass plate constructed to fit within the overall masonite support itself.  The glass serevs as a 'window' for the rear projected live action elements.




Another full painting from the first ADDAMS FAMILY feature, of the subterranean grotto.




Final shot with travelling matte live action.



Robert Stromberg was reponsible for this wonderful 71" x 42" glass matte of the planet Betazed for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. 

Live action and painting matted as one.

I can't get enough of matte close up detail work.



I never really went for any of those off-shoot Trek shows.  I'm more of a 60's original series kind of a dude.



A key scene in the movie CHAPLIN featured a mammoth pull back from a pair of characters atop the second letter of the then reknowned Hollywoodland sign.  Mostly a giant photo blow up, augmented with painted extensions and additions.

The letter 'O' was prepared especially for process projected live action elements.


Frames of the motion shot.




The perplexing, though visually dazzling David Lynch sic-fi epic DUNE (1984), was a hit and miss effects show for the most part, but did have superb art direction, costume design and terrific special make up (by Gianetto DiRossi) to help it along.  Al Whitlock oversaw the dozen or so mattes, mostly painted by Syd, such as this view here.

The shot as a tilt upward across the vast crowd.





And here's another haunted house... this time a Syd Dutton shot for a Michael Jackson music video GHOSTS (1996)

As it appeared in the final product.







As described earlier, the Roger Corman flick FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND was some weird trip.  This full painting is another of Syd's.







A severely cracked glass sunrise from STAR TREK V - THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989).  Apparently the glass cracked during filming as a result of the intense heat from a specific spotlight positioned to create the 'sun' from behind the glass.  Thankfully, a second foreground painted glass of Yosemite's mountains was strategically placed to conceal the damage, with the result being a clean shot.

The completed dual plane glass shot.

Detail




For Alfred Hitchcock's final film, FAMILY PLOT (1976), this subtle matte provided a police precinct where none had existed previous.  Syd said that this was his first solo painting, and Bill once mentioned to me that it's likely Hitch came up with this shot just as an excuse to have Whitlock - his old friend and collaborator - involved for old times sake.

"The true special effect is the one that nobody ever notices" - Al Whitlock quote.





A star filled night over small town America, as realised by Robert Stromberg in this full painting for the Walter Matthau film DENNIS THE MENACE (1993).

Stromberg at work at Illusion Arts.






STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE matte painted environment of Trill, as painted by Robert Stromberg.










A large 72" x 42" glass matte painting of the Bat Cave made for BATMAN FOREVER (1995)

An early conceptual painting proposed for the Bat Cave.




Albert Whitlock was a master when it came to painting skies, as evidenced in hundreds of films and tv shows.  This is one of the seventy plus mattes he created for THE HINDENBURG (1975).

The flawless finished composite with Al's elaborately rendered drifting cloudscape.


Superb, yet effortless.




A subsequent Whitlock matte from the same film, again with drifting and somewhat malevolent looking clouds, quite befitting the forthcoming turn of events.

Final composite






The marathon miniseries MASADA had many mattes, some very low key such as this one.

At left is Al Whitlock on location in Israel surveying a take with his matte camera at the ready.  Middle shows the live action plate, while the frame at right is the invisible final blend.

Detail




A truly epic matte painting must be this splendid Robert Stromberg piece of the planet Bajor from the tv series STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE made in the mid nineties.

Live action people would be added to the walkway as well as a waterfall motion gag.




Final shot as part of a camera push in.





The second of the two superb mattes prepared for Hitchcock's deliriously delicious serial killer black comedy FRENZY (1971).  Matte art by the great Albert Whitlock.

Before and after showing the limited London location transformed into a night time Covent Garden.

Very close detail of Whitlock's brushwork.




Wonderful work here in detail which looked fine on TV, VHS and DVD, but comes up as unwatchably dark on BluRay, as so many seem to with 'modern' so-called remastering that throws original colour schemes all askew.




The second part of a multiple four painting massive pullback as seen in Mel Brooks' ROBIN HOOD - MEN IN TIGHTS (1993).



The camera POV pulls back from a close up ground building, across the vast landscape, through the clouds and above the Earth.

... and on it goes


Detail





Probably the most impressive shot in HISTORY OF THE WORLD was this Spanish Inquisition exterior.  Syd Dutton painted this beautiful vista.






A very large 96" x 72" masonite painting of the massive endless interior of the Borg ship from STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION, an episode titled 'Q Who'.  Both Syd and Albert shared brush duties on this one.  The live action was rear projected at upper right.

Syd's original concept painting.

The Borg painting as set up for final combination photography.  Some additional miniature elements are visible in the foreground, as are their supports, which will be outside of the final frame when completed.

Once again, it just makes my day being able to observe the up close painting styles of the artists concerned.




It's really all about 'dots and dashes' and flecks of paint to sell the shot.




Found on the reverse side of one of the other auction mattes is this painting from CHAPLIN (1992) that alters an existing location in Hollywood.

Final shot, though I suspect another foreground painting of the trees may have also been used to complete the shot.  Interestingly, I've yet to see the best shot in CHAPLIN turn up - a matte of New York with the Statue of Liberty - as seen by Robert Downey jr as he leaves America for good.






They just keep a comin' ... another awesome Dutton matte painting from STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION of Jouret IV as seen in the episode The Best Of Both Worlds.

The live action with painted surrounds as seen in a close up.

The complete shot as shown on tv.







One of a pair of mattes designed for the one shot from the film MILLENNIUM (1989).  This painting serves the upper half of the frame, while a second painting was applied to the lower half of the frame as part of a dramatic tilt down, augmented with a great deal of interactive 'lightshow' gags.

The actual tilt down shot in the film. I seem to recall Kris Kristofferson and pals going through some time warp or some bloody thing, into an alternate universe(?) - Or maybe I just dreamt it? None of it made particular sense anyway.






The lower painting as utilised in what was a VistaVision tilt composite.



Who ever told you that Studio 54 was dead and buried?  Fake news my friends!





From STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION comes this Syd Dutton matte of the research station on Gagarin IV.






I featured this in last month's blog, but as I have higher quality images, and the fact that it's in this auction, here it is again.  A wonderful vintage Albert Whitlock full matte from Universal's FOR LOVE OR MONEY (1963).  Just the fact that this delightful piece has survived near on six decades in prime condition is marvellous in itself.









A full matte painting by Syd of Velara III from the show STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION





Side by side before and afters of the closing VistaVision tilt to the heavens end credit shot from STAR TREK V - THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989).  A bold shot in execution, with the camera in close on the cast as they roast marshmallows(!), with a dramatic pull back and upward tilt.  Sadly it was much in vain, as the production chose to throw the end credit roll over the top of most of the complicated shot as I recall.

Close up of the lower matte art with small area for rear projected actors.

Same view when seen in the final cut.






An oddity here - a matte for a Dan Aykroyd tv pilot described as MARS BASE ONE (1988)






Matte art from STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION of Melona IV and Delta Rana IV in different episodes.





And here we have yet another stunner from the top shelf of matte art.  This Robert Stromberg painting was rendered in 1989 initially for STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION, and was later reused for a 1994 episode of STAR TREK-DEEP SPACE NINE.



An Illusion Arts staff member poses with the painting.  There are numerous carefully drilled out holes in the masonite panel to facilitate backlight gags.


You want detail?  We got detail.... And all for the low, low price of whatever the hell passes as currency in Tau Cygna and Volan II.




Still Trekkin' along here with another one from STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION.  This was painted in 1992 by Rob Stromberg and appeared in a few episodes with additional foreground dressing (see below).

An Illusion Arts technician dresses a miniature foreground set to complete the shot.




Robert Stromberg painted this top up matte of Starfleet Academy for STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION.

Finished matte shot


detail






I promised you another city in ruins didn't I?  This matte is one of Syd's which he painted in 1990 and would appear in episodes of both STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE a few years later. 






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Well folks, that's about it.  I do hope that some of you loyal fans of traditional matte artistry enjoyed this, and moreso, find yourselves in a position to acquire a genuine piece of trick shot history to enjoy and appreciate. 

Pete's Closing Remarks:
I'd like to close on a completely non-matte related topic (if there even is such a thing?).  I tend to watch mostly British and Scandanavian television series, and a great deal of material from Europe, as there is just such a freshness and originality to so much of the material and realism in the performances.  I have just finished all five seasons (that's fifty hours all up) of probably the best series I can recall seeing for decades - THE BUREAU (aka LE BUREAU DES LEGENDES) - an outstanding, multi-layered, densely plotted French spy thriller created by Eric Rochant, and starring Mathieu Kassovitz.  It's rare indeed for any film or tv show to be as meticulously concieved and written, with not a wasted word in the subtitled dialogue, nor a false note within any performance. The complex and tangled spider web like events of immersive Deep Cover centre around the DGSE, which is France's version of MI6 or the CIA.  This series gets my highest possible recommendation.  If you enjoy John LeCarre novels and films, and the excellent US series HOMELAND, then THE BUREAU is a must see.  You may well think twice before trusting anyone ever again.    Brilliant!

Pete


***This post, and all 170 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot with all content, layout and text originally published at  http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


The Visual Effects of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG: O'Bie's 9th Wonder of the World

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Pete's Editorial:

Welcome once again to another installment of Matte Shot, the venue for devotees of 'old school' movie magic, where we celebrate the practitioners of traditional special visual effects, and dissect their methods and pioneering achievements from the pre-computerised era - which as we know, constituted the majority of the motion picture production splendidly for near on ninety years.

Today, I have some exciting bits of news and updates, which bookend the single film being examined in this issue of Matte Shot.  I say 'single film' as the production I've chosen has such a vast number of visual effects shots that there simply isn't space to have a multi-film article this time around.

The 1949 feature MIGHTY JOE YOUNG was a mammoth effects showcase, with a huge stop motion component, complimented by a large number of painted mattes, process shots, optical tricks, miniature mayhem and mechanical gags, all of which I will attempt to illustrate and expand upon here as best I can.

Willis O'Brien concept watercolour for MIGHTY JOE YOUNG.

Additionally, I simply must make mention of an exciting new book now available on my favourite subject, traditional special effects!!  I'll detail this essential publication below.

Also, I am most delighted to mention that I have just recently acquired several beautiful original matte paintings from Bill Taylor's collection, with the superb artistry and skills of Syd Dutton as well as the matte maestro himself, the great Albert Whitlock.  I'm so thrilled to own these pieces, which entice untold study, close examination and admiration each and every time I look at them.  More on those later in this blog post after the 'main feature'....

One of the breathtaking mattes recently acquired by NZ Pete.  The others can be seen in the latter stretch of this very blog post.  Check 'em out ... ya know you want to!

***This post, and all 171 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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A New Book on the History of Movie Special Effects:  


I have just about every book - and a ton of journals and mags dating way back - on traditional special effects (*with the exception of the magnificent 'Master of the Majicks', which is the finest of the realm), though I'd have to say that this new release from author Mark Wolf easily matches the best of them, and proudly stands head and shoulders above the vast majority.  What makes this volume different is that the author, Mark Wolf, isn't a mere 'scribe for hire' as was the case with many other similar books over the years, with Mark himself an experienced career effects man in various capacities on numerous productions.  Mark's knowledge of the artform, methodology and the technical experts involved is extensive to say the least, with quite possibly the broadest survey of all aspects of pre-CGI era trickery examined, illustrated and discussed in detail, than I can recall seeing in quite a while.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS: Special Visual Effects B.C - before computers covers it all; from the silent era pioneers, miniaturists, matte artists, make up specialists, special props, optical printer trickery, stop motion, effects cinematography, and even the hokey bottom-of-the-fx-barrell flicks and tricks that some of us (moi) actually get a kick out of(!)

The book (yes, a 'real' volume printed on paper and bound!) is available from Amazon (click here), and, I believe, from selected bookstores in the US at least.  If you don't believe my 'thumbs up' editorial, then just check out the 100% positive 5 star reviews on that site.  NZ Pete's highest recommendation!

Below are several profusely illustrated sample pages for the enlightenment of my readers...













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The Special Visual Effects of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG:  O'Bie's 9th Wonder of the World

With the success of the much earlier bona-fide classic KING KONG (1933), creators Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack sought to re-boot the almost identical scenario with most of the same production team and technical expertise, as well as one of the key KONG cast members for MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949).  The film followed the same basic premise of the aforementioned KONG - misunderstood beast falling in love (of sorts) with blond beauty, and being eventually exploited for monetary gain by dodgy profiteers.  By no means on a par with KONG (the human performances in MJY leave a hell of a lot to be desired, and are, at times, downright awful), it's still a remarkable picture - and better by a longshot than the dismal SON OF KONG - with Joe's breathtakingly life-like stop motion achievements bringing so much 'humanity' to the title character, that would set the benchmark for many years to follow with animated character effects.

The viability of MJY rested entirely upon the producer's certainty that the great Willis O'Brien - the visual effects wizard behind CREATION, KING KONG, THE LOST WORLD and THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII among others - would be on board.  The film simply could not have gone into production without O'Bie as chief creator and designer of special photographic effects.  Here we can see O'Bie at work, probably as early as 1947 on a wonderful concept painting for MJY which would serve as the centrepiece in the overall FX action.

For those who don't know - and shame on you for not knowing - Willis O'Brien is still considered the father (or grandfather) of fantasy film trick photography.  A true cinematic visionary whose notions, foresight and imagination spurned not only a catalogue of some of the greatest effects films and outright masterpieces of the genre (KING KONG...need I say more?), but a man who also stimulated the younger imaginations and activities of scores of up and coming visual effects artists such as Ray Harryhausen, Mario Larrinaga, Jim Danforth, David Allen, Randall William Cook, Jim Aupperle, Mark Wolf, Dennis Muren, Peter Lord, Gene Warren, Phil Tippett and many more, not to mention film noted directors such as Merian C. Cooper, Peter Jackson, George Pal and others. 

The remnants of one of the six Joe puppets looking somewhat worse for wear many decades later.

Another important creative staffer from the KONG ensemble was the legendary Marcel Delgado.  Marcel specialised in building the puppets and making miniatures.  At far left is one of the Joe armatures built by the incredibly skilled RKO machinist, Harry Cunningham, while at far right is one of the cowboy armatures as made for the incredible roping set piece.

In what was Ray Harryhausen's first feature film experience, as First Technician under O'Bie, his extensive stop motion work on MJY set a benchmark and launched Ray's career skyward whereby he never looked back, except in complete admiration for Willis O'Brien in taking a chance on his untested talents in the first place.  Here are images from Ray's latter days with him tinkering with one of the original precision engineered Joe armatures.

Harryhausen at work, probably in 1948, on the most intricate animated sequence, where a goup of cowboys on horseback try to lasso Joe to bring him down.  Note the striking jungle matte art on multiple panes of glass.  More about this sequence later!


Another look at Ray animating a Joe puppet in front of a large glass painted vista with rear projected area for live action (also visible at extreme left).

A rare and very revealing studio breakdown containing a complete list of credits as well as the VFX budget itemised down to the smallest detail.  Incredibly informative.  For those who can't read the type I'll mention specifics in various captions that follow.  Note the credit for Harryhausen which has had a handwritten notation"God bless him!", possibly the handywork of Ray himself?  Cheeky fellow!

Unusual for the era to see so many technical credits up on screen, but good on them for going that extra mile.  The film wasn't made by RKO, just distributed by them.  Argosy Productions was a small independent firm set up years before by director John Ford and producer Merian C. Cooper (for the John Wayne picture STAGECOACH) which was bold in the days when mega studios ruled the roost and typically had 100% control.  Ford himself had a credit but had nothing to do with MJY, as he said at the time that 'films about giant gorilla's weren't his forte'(!)  Classic!


I just love to come across photographs of matte painters at work, none more so than from the so called golden era where such imagery was usually verboten and shunned by the front office who never wanted their secrets or behind the scenes trickery to 'get out'.  Their were four skilled matte painters assigned to MJY, headed by old time veteran Fitch Fulton - the father of storied effects man John P. Fulton (one of my faves).  Under Fitch were Louis Litchtenfield, Jack Shaw and Vernon Taylor.  George Webb would lay out the many glass shots for the painters. I'm not able to confirm the identity of the artist shown above, other than to say he's definitely not Fitch Fulton, who was quite old at the time.  * Photo courtesy of Dr. Harry Heuser of Aberystwyth University and included in the book SMOKE AND MIRRORS. 



MJY starts off with a grand and stunningly composited tilt down from the cloudscape to a glorious African landscape.

At left is a preliminary composite, with additional foreground foliage, possibly added by Willis O'Brien himself as I once read.  The right shot is the final on screen matte tilt down, made as a multi-plane shot with at least three separate painted glasses.  The shot is astounding in it's resolution, particularly as a live action plate of the river as well as stop motion birds have been very successfully added, with very minimal grain build up or contrast, which one might expect from such a composite shot.  A marvel which sets the tone of the film so well.  It should be noted that the Art Director was none other than former head of MGM's special effects department, James Basevi.  British born Basevi started off in the field with such films as the original MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1928) and on through such epics as SAN FRANCISCO (1936) for which he designed and supervised incredible scenes of destruction.  James also provided dramatic visuals for HURRICANE (1937) and the Gary Cooper epic THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO (1938) before moving into art direction for Hitchcock and others.


There is however a curious anomaly with this shot, whereby what appears to be the relection of passing motor traffic visible along the edges of the actual water plate, though I seem to be the only 'nerd' to spot it.

After the downward tilt, the camera pushes into the small compound and dissolves to another shot.



A closer view of the unknown matte painter applying brush strokes to the middle of the three large glasses.  I've seen photos of both Jack Shaw and Lou Litchtenfield, though none of Vern Taylor, so I'm not sure here.  It could well be Litchtenfield?

Magnificent detail.

According to the original official FX budget, there were 31 glass paintings at a cost of $800 per glass, coming to some $24'800.oo in total.  Seems like a good deal to me.

The main aspect of that same matte shot as it was preserved in Willis' personal 1949 photo album pertaining to the shoot.


A second vantage point showing the same painter at work, sandwiched between the dense jungle foreground glass and the sprawling African valley painted glass.  The sky would be a separate glass in itself.

The glass mattes measured typically some twelve feet in width and were mounted in sturdy wooden frames, with the frames costing some $1500 in total.  I sadly presume they were all scraped down for re-use after the production, as was commonplace at the time.  The horror!!!!!!  :(

Another wonderful behind the scenes look at the use of the glass painting, of which MJY has dozens.  Here a camera assistant holds the clapper just behind a large painted glass extending the roof and jungle beyond for the compound set.

The final, invisible combination.  The film wasn't shot at RKO as some think, rather over at the Pathe Studios in Culver City as an entirely independent project.

One of the many original concept sketches made by O'Bie, with this being for the wonderful caged lion sequence.

The first appearence of Joe - or Mister Joseph Young of Africa as he was titled in early drafts - is indeed a show stopper if ever there were one.  Out of nowhere, Joe arrives and immediately has a confrontation with a very pissed off caged lion.  The sequence is a jaw dropper in every respect.  A brilliantly designed and conceived action piece where visuals and audio are so well combined to maximum effect.

From O'Brien's personal archive is this before and after showing the live action lion as well as a seperate plate of flowing water.  The lion element would ultimately be projected into the miniature cage.

Also from O'Bie's album is this 1947 frame enlargement of one of the cuts.


While Willis was overall visual effects director, due to the massive demands on MJY's technical requirements he was only ever able to be hands on with specific animated shots in various sequences.  The lions share - pun intended - was carried out by the very young and fresh Ray Harryhausen.  Various accounts state that some 80% of the MJY stop motion was Ray's, with some statements by Harryhausen himself in later years raising this to 90%.  Others were involved, and I'll outline those later, but all of the lion sequence I understand, was Harryhausen's work, and damned superb work it is at that!

Ray spent a full month completing this complicated sequence without assistance.

The extent to which Ray 'injected' emotion and feeling in the Joe puppet was astounding, and still holds up today 70 years later.  Ray wrote:  "When I received the live footage of the lion I counted the number of frames it took for the image of the lion to rock back and forth and matched them to the number of frames I needed to shoot for Joe rocking the model cage.  Then the real lion was projected on a little screen within the cage and the two actions matched".

The 'stop-you-in-your-tracks' moment in visual effects comes when Joe rocks the cage back and forth tips over the wagon, with the lion spilling out.  A bravura example of technical ingenuity.  The lion was a live action element, very skillfully projected (some accounts say rear while others state front projected, which is more likely) into the otherwise 'empty' miniature wagon. The 2nd unit lion footage was very carefully choreographed at an animal sanctuary, with forced rocking motions introduced by it's trainer, under O'Bie's supervision, to match what was intended for later stop motion action.

Some accounts state that the lion plate was projected in on a second camera pass(?), though perhaps an expert can tell me how that could be done when working with a stop motion set up where the miniature components are non-repeatable??  I'm hoping Harry Walton or Jim Danforth can elaborate.  :)

Joe smashes up the cage, which all required delicate wire rigs to 'animate' the destruction.  At this point, the 'real' lion is substituted with an animated puppet, which has a go at Joe and a bit of a tussle ensues.

From this original camera test we can see more trickery that really completes the scene.  At left is the beautifully rendered multi-plane glass painted jungle, with a real lion split screened in.  The bottom of the animation table is also visible.  At right we can see the final composite with the same matted plate combined as a rear projection element behind the miniature Joe and wagons.  The clever bit is a brilliantly hidden transition between the stop motion lion, as it jumps off the wagon and for a fraction of a second is hidden, and the rest of continuation where the real lion is seen running off into the jungle.  Harryhausen's match up as well as the physics of the puppet lion movement are exceptional.  Apparently John Ford viewed this sequence in rough cut form and immediately sent word through the camera department to tell Ray how much he loved that scene.  (A later account by Ray stated that Ford himself came up to Harryhausen and personally thanked him).


Harryhausen with his favourite Joe out of the six puppets - each of which seemed to have a slightly different 'feel' as far as movement went.



One of the various African vista's as matte art.

Final composite.


Ray with visual effects cinematographer Bert Willis - another KONG veteran - who oversaw photography of all of the miniature set ups.  Willis was an old hand in special camerawork and had previously worked with O'Bie as far back as THE LOST WORLD in 1924, as well as a key member of the effects unit on KONG in 1933.  In an interview, Bert remarked: "The scene I was most proud of was the one where Joe knocks over the lion cage, which used front and back projection.  I lit that one".


MJY not only required a miniature ape puppet, but numerous horses, cowboys, a baby and assorted folks in articulated form.  Here is one of the remarkable miniature horse and rider combo's, I believe, built by Marcel Delgado.  Shown here in white shirt is specialist taxidermist, George Lofgren, who mastered various processes for utilising carefully preserved and rubberised hide from an unborn calf in order to provide a very convincing non-ripple fur for the various Joe puppets, as a far more credible skin than was possible with KONG years earlier where the animator's fingers caused much fur disturbance from frame to frame.  The various miniature props that were heavily used throughout MJY were built by brothers Marcel and Victor Delgado.


A test for the ape vs cowpokes sequence.

Three frames from yet another sensational sequence, with a stop motion horse and rider galloping through a multi-plane glass painted jungle setting.  

A great deal of unexpected technical assistance came to Willis by way of a company camera grip named Pete Peterson, who as it turned out was fascinated by what he witnessed being done on the various stop motion set ups and asked if could 'have a go'.  O'Bie granted Peterson a few test shots and was astounded at how accomplished the material looked when played back.  Before long, Pete was assigned as a member of the visual effects team and in fact would play a substantial part in animating a number of sequences and key shots, with great finesse.  I believe some of the horse material was Pete's as he had a great love for horses and a close affinity for how they moved and behaved. 

A flawless rear projected miniature set up.

A very well executed combination of matte painted set extension, live action cowboys, puppet Joe, miniature foreground and solid rear projection work.

Incidentally, MJY was originally slated to be shot in colour using the newly developed monopack Eastmancolor system of the time, but tests proved disastrous as colour matching between process projections and model set ups were a major problem, with line ups looking good when in front of the camera yet coming back from the lab as complete mismatches in tones and hues.  It had always proved a simple task to hand develop 35mm tests when working with black and white and get a fast result, but the production could not afford the costly down time waiting for colour tests to be sent away and be processed elsewhere.

The plateau sequence, with extensive matte art and much highly complex multi-element action about to occur down below.

One of the superbly crafted miniature animated horses (and cowpoke) circle Joe, with a brilliantly timed transition as the horse moves off screen right and reappears again coming back around the rear of the shot, but this time as a real horse and rider as part of a process projected plate.  This gag is used a dozen times to excellent effect and is pure genius.



O'Brien was adamant that the sequence have horsemen not only seen behind or near to Joe, but to completely encircle him in action shots.  Apparently Willis animated some cuts, as did Victor Delgado, but these were deemed as not working in well with the rest of the sequence so were therefore dropped in editing. Peterson and Harryhausen shared animation duties on these shots.


Masterful!

Pete Peterson had suffered a lifelong, crippling debility of multiple sclerosis, and as such had to animate from as comfortable a position as was possible, and in later years on subsequent pictures worked on specially lowered miniature set ups, near to the floor out of physical necessity.

Interestingly, the film's director, Ernest Schoedsack was virtually sightless by the time production began, have had both retina's detached in a high altitude flying incident.  Ernest was unable to direct out of doors in direct sunlight and was severely compromised with his vision otherwise.  As an aside, a few years later the first major studio film in 3-Dimension, HOUSE OF WAX, was directed at Warner Bros by Andre deToth - a man with only one eye, thus never able to see the '3-D' himself.  But not many people know that.

Matte artists Fitch Fulton and Louis Litchtenfield shared the workload for these sequences. There is a major shift of the painted matte during this shot which oddly slipped by.

Live action plate photography for later inclusion into complex miniature stop motion scenes.

Frames from the lasso sequence where cowpokes hurl ropes over Joe in anattempt to subdue him.

Initially, Willis had commissioned a studio sculptor to make a clay model horse as a macquette for Delgado to work from but this proved unworkable so Marcel  himself ended up designing the armatures and building all of the horses from scratch, with O'Bie being very happy with the final results.

A neat bit of action with well matched stop motion wacking process horseman to the ground.


The effects camera operator would take some initial footage into a small darkroom on the stage and develop hand tests of each set up.  They would then go back in, process the strip, print up 5x7's and study them closely for matching and line up of elements.

"I'm only prepared to be pushed just so far..."


Author Paul Mandell wrote an excellent article on MJY for Cinefantastique magazine, and described the sequence as thus:  "The horsemen actually roped a bulldozer and several wooden posts, which were obliterated by split screening the action on either side of the frame.  When the doctored scenes showed cowboys slinging lariats into a soft matte line, the model of Joe was positioned in front of the split, and animated accordingly".

Whereas on KONG O'Bie had worked efficiently with a small, tight effects crew of around six key technicians, the new union rules dictated a vast crew of 25, highly unionised staffers and things did occasionally get out of hand as a result.  The story goes that when someone felt like quitting work early and going home, an arm or leg on one of Marcel's puppets would be mysteriously 'broken', which would bring filming to a halt that day while Delgado went about repairing or replacing the model.

Frames from the wonderful lasso sequence.  The ropes were tiny wires that Harryhausen would carefully match by eye to the background action seen in the rear projected process plate.  This work proved extremely taxing for Ray, having to match and align the frames one at a time through the rack-over of the Mitchell animation camera.

A very accomplished artist in his own right, O'Bie rendered scores of watercolour sketches for confirmed scenes and unused proposals, not only for MJY, but for a great many varied prospective projects that would never, sadly, see the light of day.

The heavily unionised shoot proved difficult for Harryhausen, with such simple matters as shifting a light or camera being officially 'off limits' and only to be carried out by an official union member of that specific local who would be pointlessly put on the payroll.  Later, Ray made sure to operate non-union as best he could on all of his later pictures.


All involved in the hands on animation spoke very highly of the superb engineering skills of machinist Harry Cunningham.  Harry milled and constructed some six Joe armatures of varying scales, with the smallest being just four inches tall.  Each one had precise simian skeletal joints built out of dural, with exact ball and socket or hinge joints where applicable which aided Harryhausen's animation to such a realistic level, based upon observations of actual gorilla's in captivity.  Soft wire sections were inserted for lip and eyebrow movement, and a thick rotational allen screw under the chin made for exacting jaw movements.  Marcel Delgado and his brother Victor would then set about the task of building up the model, layer by layer using foam rubber muscles and wads of cotton wool over the skeletal armatures. Then the Delgado's would apply the carefully prepared George Lofren fur hides and stitch these in position invisibly,  The same technique was used for the model lions and horses with excellent results.

The Cunningham armatures were so good that Marcel Delgado remarked: "They were like a Swiss watch.  You just moved it and it went wherever you wanted it to go."

The film was shot at Pathe Studios, with the cavernous hanger-like Stage One, which had used by Cecil B. DeMille for KING OF KINGS back in 1926, repurposed as a complete special effects stage, with all matte painting, model making, process and animation in individual cubicles, partitioned off with heavy black velvet drapes.

Another nice horse fall fx gag.

An interesting rapid cut of Robert Armstrong (so good in KONG but quite hammy in MJY) galloping up in what appears to be either a rear projection with glass painted foreground foliage or miniature trees?

Of note, this entire roping sequence was once again put on celluloid two decades later by Ray for his VALLEY OF GWANGI, though not with a monkey on that occasion.

"Enough of this shit.... you're just starting to really piss me off!"

At left is Peter Stich, the fx unit painter who worked on the final paint schemes of the miniatures, shown here with one of Marcel Delgado's superb miniature horse and rider puppet combo's, as O'Bie looks on in obvious appreciation.  Note the matte painting behind them.

O'Bie had never heard of Harryhausen until the young fan, and devoted KONG addict, cold called him one day around 1940, while O'Bie was working at MGM on what would be his unrealised dream project WAR EAGLES (now that's a film I'd have loved to have seen using traditional methods) and managed to show O'Bie some of his own hand crafted models and 16mm short films.  O'Bie just felt he was being kind to an enthusiastic young fan but was very impressed with the obvious talent on display.  O'Bie's wife, Darlyne was, by all accounts, VERY impressed, and told O'Bie how talented this Ray fellow was.  Their paths crossed a few times, with Ray working on some George Pal Puppetoon short subjects in Hollywood, so when MJY finally got the green light, O'Bie knew the man he'd like to hire as his chief assistant.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Constant manipulation of the puppets created its own problems, with wear and tear from much handling resulting in repairs that would often be quite substantial, where the model might need stripping back and relayering of foam latex.

A particularly groovy bit of business with very nicely realised animation of the struggling cowboy.

Reportedly, Merian Cooper had a lifelong fascination with jungles, which probably explains why so many of his films were set there.

More attempts to lasso the giant ape, all well orchestrated.

Note the skillfull blend between the miniature wire 'rope' and the real rope held by the actor.

For the most part, the miniature rear projection shots work very well, with some unavoidable 'hot spot' from the source projector in certain shots.  Harold Stine was effects cameraman for all of the process shots, and was the brother of Clifford Stine, a noted effects cameraman who was one of O'Bies crew on KONG and did amazing work many years later on EARTHQUAKE (1974).

Visual effects cinematographer, Bert Willis was interviewed by author Paul Mandell:  "O'Bie was a fine artist, and an even better cartoonist.  We had gobo's on the lights and he'd doodle all over them with chalk.  Frankly, O'Bie got me into trouble on several occasions.  We'd be shooting, and he'd be, you know, getting juiced up across the street somewhere [in his little 'oasis', the Coral Island Bar].  I caught heat from Cooper and studio boss Walter Daniels more times than I care to remember,  But I loved the man.  I think I was closer to O'Brien than any other employee."


Assorted plot devices in the original treatments were dropped along the way, such as having Joe's transport plane crash during a thunderstorm on a desert island and saving the crew from marauding lions; a pointless courtroom sub plot and a tug of war with an Indian elephant.


Mostly glass painted.

Close up frame enlargement from the above glass painting.

In addition to building all of the model armatures, Harry Cunningham also built the special process projectors for scenes such as this.  Four were built at a cost of $4000 each, plus an additional $300 for a set of four air condensers and $800 for four lenses.  I recall that either Jim Danforth or Mark Sullivan later owned one of those original MJY projectors.

In the official 1949 FX cost breakdown it cost $4000 for material and labour to make 6 gorillas, 2 horses, 4 men, 4 lions (and a partridge in a pear tree?) in miniature as well as plaster casts of one of each and a full size mechanical gorilla arm and hand.  That's an offer you can't refuse.

Whereas the earlier KONG pictures had both heavily utilised the Dunning and also the Williams travelling matte processes for composite photography, O'Bie made the early decision to combine shots in a less complicated - and optically degraded - fashion as possible by almost exclusively relying on process projection on both the small scale miniature set ups as well as the full size live action requirements, which in general, worked surprisingly well, and occasionally with stunning results.  The same would not be the case had they shot in colour as first tested, with colour process shots being notoriously poor in quality at the time and for some time after.  The only travelling mattes in the picture are a couple of shots later in the show with hand drawn rotoscope effects.

Everyone agreed that Marcel Delgado was indispensible.  Marcel's brother, Victor - another original KONG alumni - was assigned to the miniatures shop as prop maker and test animator.  O'Bie preferred to work with tried and true technicians he knew from earlier collaborations.

O'Bie was insistant to avoid costly and time consuming - and ultimately unneccessary - optical printer composites, as he felt, quite rightly that better and quicker results could be achieved in camera, despite Linwood Dunn's arguements to the opposite.



The film had a 47 strong special effects unit, with many of those being KING KONG and SON OF KONG veterans.

In real life, Willis O'Brien had suffered a great deal, with his first wife, Hazel murdering his two teenaged sons in cold blood while he was filming SON OF KONG, then, as fate would have it, surviving her own suicide attempt.

Now this one's a great little matte shot that most people don't notice.  A rider projected into a fully painted jungle setting, with Joe about to lash out and grab the guy.  Fitch Fulton was already an old school veteran in the matte field, having started as far back as the old William Fox days on films such as the wonderful THE BIG TRAIL (1930) where John Wayne got his first lead.  Fulton - the father of John - painted for years at what became 20th Century Fox, as well as RKO on shows like CITIZEN KANE and SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (both 1940).  Fitch also painted beautiful Technicolor shots as Jack Cosgrove's chief artist on GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) and did striking jungle mattes, also in full blown Technicolor for Korda's JUNGLE BOOK (1942).

This sequence where Robert Armstrong is pulled up off his horse by Joe was a very complicated affair, with photographic challenges that weren't able to be corrected.

A stuntman rigged in a body harness hanging from a crane on the Pathe backlot in front of a partial mock up of fake rockwall, was filmed swinging wildly back and forth.  Many months later that footage was rear projected frame by frame into the glass painted scene on the animation stage as Harryhausen carefully matched the plate with his Joe animated gestures.  A problem arose when the live action plate stuntman 'swung' to high and wide and thus vanished behind the glass painting for some 40 frames.  After some deliberation with O'Bie it was decided the best course of action was to make photographic cutouts of the man to cover for the 'missing' 40 frames of movement.  The cutout was delicately prepared and hand retouched with paint for definition, from which point Ray continued and completed the shot.

Miniature man and ape.

Matte artist Lou Litchtenfield told author Paul Mandell:  "The glass painting for the rock set was just awful!  We had just finished one glass.  This one in particular was a frontal piece, and a lot of work. We didn't want to touch it until the paint was dry, so we left a note on it for the janitor who came in the next morning to clean the glass.  Which meant 'Clean off the opening.'  He wiped the whole damned thing off, and we had to start again from scratch!"


As Joe dropped Armstrong to the ground the stunt harness device was visible dangling below the matte line like a vine.  Ray remarked:  "We never attempted to correct that.  It seemed like a minor thing at the time.  Audiences were less critical in those days and we didn't think they'd notice.  We had to move on".


Willis O'Brien was a man brimming over with ideas and imagination, with literally dozens of unrealised scenarios, film projects and potential colaborations, though very few ever got picked up by Hollywood producers or money men.  To make ends meet between scarce assignments of his choosing, O'Bie would dabble in matte painting for a few studios on shows like THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS and GOING MY WAY - mainly during the notorious motion picture strike of the mid 1940's when picket lines turned really nasty.  Other jobs for hire included a few consultant credits on films far beneath his status and talent, often merely to have his celebrated name associated with an otherwise worthless picture, such as THE GIANT BEHEMOTH and the dreadful Irwin Allen remake of THE LOST WORLD where I don't believe he actually had any input at all aside from Fox using his name as a promotional gimmick.

The film went way over budget and came in at around $2 million, which for 1947 was a head spinning figure.  The animation and effects were around $200'000 or thereabouts.

Initially, O'Bie hired Harryhausen in late 1945 as an assistant whose many duties included sharpening O'Bie's pencils, cutting cardboard mattes and sundry other chores.  They had known each other in a casual capacity for a few years, with it being Ray's dream to eventually work with his idol.  Getting the call up was a treat but the on again, off again start date for filming was disconcerting.  Both Ray and O'Bie were never entirely confident as to whether MJY would ever get off the ground.  Even well into his twilight years, Ray had nothing less than reverence for Willis.

A matte test frame from 1947.  One of the artists employed was Jack Shaw, another old timer who had long associations with master visual effects artist Jack Cosgrove on shows like GONE WITH THE WIND, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY and DUEL IN THE SUN.  Jack also painted most of the matte shots at Hal Roach Studios and Roy Seawright for things like the TOPPER series and the original ONE MILLION YEARS BC.  Many years later, while at Warner Bros, working on HELEN OF TROY, Shaw would again cross paths with Willis O'Brien as matte artist on Irwin Allen's ANIMAL WORLD (1956), which was his final film.

An earlier test with photo cutouts standing in for the principals.

Matted off and final comp.

BluRay frame grab.

Former stuntman and bit player Ben Johnson was the leading man, though was, unfortunately incredibly wooden in MJY, with even his animated puppet doppleganger having more life on screen, though he eventually became an excellent character actor in about a hundred pictures such as Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH and often worked with his pals John Ford and John Wayne, and he won an Oscar in 1971 for Peter Bogdanovich's classic THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

Matte artist Lou Litchtenfield was interviewed in Cinefantastique magazine in 1998 and discussed the glass shots and his relationship with supervising matte artist Fitch Fulton: "Fitch was our head matte painter, a grumpy but lovable old bastard.  He did the basic design of the set ups.  He'd do a sketch and we wouldn't even use an art director; we were on our own.  I co-painted the jungle and mountains, and several for the nightclub.  The way we worked it, a big glass mountainscape was positioned in back of the set.  An intermediate glass had twisted trees and vines.  The miniature was on a tabletop in front of that, and in front of that was another glass of foreground rocks and trees.  Sometimes we'd all work on one simultaneously".

Note the quality drop from the crisp upper frame to this one, with the multi-part composite (several glass paintings, live action water, miniature ape and fence) rear projected onto a large screen behind the actors as Terry Moore (not a patch on Fay Wray in my honest opinion) throws a banana to Joe.

Glass paintings, miniature foreground and projected hens in cage.


Test frames before and after projected plate.

Harryhausen animates the compound sequence.


Ray with miniatures painter Peter Stich, and O'Bie at far right, pose in front of a glass matte.  Ray mentioned in an interview that he liked this picture as it was the only one he had of him together with O'Bie.


A superb production design illustration for the Golden Safari nightclub which would be later rendered as matte art for the exterior and a mix of large miniature, glass art, stop motion set ups and full sized stage sets for the action packed interiors.

The camera pulls back from the neon signage.

Matte painted nightclub with live action street plate, possibly augmented by an additional painted foreground with palm trees.  Another of the matte painters assigned to the film was Vernon Taylor, about whom I know very little, other than him being a regular Warner Bros matte artist.

A grand camera move through a combination glass painted, miniature and live action nightclub interior is something in itself, with a beautiful multi-plane move and a left sweep on and upward into the treetop viewing gallery.  

I got to chatting with Jim Danforth about these MJY shots:  "Some of the push-in shots were done on multiple panes of glass as you described. They were NOT optical blow-ups. This was ground-breaking work. The general principle was first explained to me by L. B. (Bill) Abbott when I worked with him at Fox.  However, it had never been applied as spectacularly as it was in Mighty Joe Young.  However, the shots that really impressed me were done (I’m pretty sure) by placing large sheets of neutral density gels over the process screen, behind the painting.
I used this method when doing the pull-back shot for Portnoy’s Complaint. When the projector was turned off, the screen area was completely black, even though it was illuminated by a very bright light. 
The idea is that light passing through the gel is reduced according to the angle of incidence (for example, a 45 degree angle will reduce the light by the square root of 2 (1.4 approx.) Some of the light will pass through the screen and be absorbed by the screen density.  Some will bounce back, but will not be at an angle, so it will be absorbed only by the nominal density of the filter rather than (in my example) 1.4 times the density.
When all the factors are combined, the result is a jet-black screen area, even though the painting is illuminated by a very bright light."

The camera move continues, with several pockets of projected live action.

It still moves in, at this point with a radical shift to the left and upward to reveal a musical combo visible as a process plate within the glass painting.

Another matte artist on MJY who worked under Fitch Fulton was Louis Litchtenfield.  Lou began at Selznick International in the art department under William Cameron Menzies in the late thirties and had involvment in laying out matte concepts and general assistance in the effects department under the legendary Jack Cosgrove on GONE WITH THE WIND (1939).  Lou wasn't one to let the grass grow under his feet, as they say, and spent the next decade moving between various studios' matte departments learning the ropes and different techniques as he went along.  He painted at Columbia, RKO and MGM for varying periods before becoming part of the fixtures at Warner Bros as head of photographic effects in the 1950's where he would hire back his former boss, Jack Cosgrove, as well as Fitch's son John for a time.   Lou painted mattes on many big shows such as THE FOUNTAINHEAD, LAND OF THE PHARAOHS, HELEN OF TROY, THE SILVER CHALICE and many more.  In later years he provided mattes for the remake of KING KONG (1976) and FLASH GORDON (1980).

I wonder if that large hanging lighting fixture could have been a miniature?

The iconic Beautiful Dreamer sequence unfolds.

On of the most elaborately staged and talked about moments in MJY comes when the sweet Terry Moore performs at piano to the surprise accompaniment of our hairy friend, Joe.

An early test frame of the matte elements lined up with the stop motion.

The sequence is truly extraordinary for a number of reasons.  The main one being it was almost entirely animated by the former grip, Pete Peterson, who, as mentioned, was a keen amateur home movie experimenter with 8mm stop motion in his spare time and was frequently in awe while watching O'Bie and Ray go about their business on the set.

Not only does Joe raise up the special stage platform with our heroine, but he too is standing on a slowly rotating rostrum, carefully balancing his human friend.  Practically every shot was Pete's work, with Ray pitching in for one or two, and O'Bie himself contributing one close up cut.  Some long shots were filmed with everything done as stop motion, including the Terry Moore character, in puppet form, and beautifully done it all turned out to be.


A wonderful photograph from O'Bie's personal album showing Peterson attending to the most delicate of complex animation.  The live action plate of Terry Moore and her piano is not yet visible but will be projected one frame at a time on the screen behind the models.  Bert Willis and his crew photographed all of the animation and miniatures, while Harold Stine shot all of the process plates, often in consultation with Roy Hunt, the overall production D.P, to ensure continuity in lighting and such.

Incredible timing and planning was needed to match the exact speed of the pre-filmed Terry Moore live action revolutions and that of the puppet Joe revolutions.  The sequence is simply sublime.

A close up of Peterson at work.  Reportedly, Pete was (fully justified) in his pride at how this scene turned out.

The actual Golden Safari interior was a huge set built on Pathe's stage 11, with much visual effects work applied to further extend the setting in long shots, with multiple painted planes of matte art on glass and numerous miniature rear projections each from its own individual projector, providing the live action plates such as the bands of musicians and other folk to the treetop cabana's and such.  All in all, these shots are incredibly well executed for 1949.

The shameless hucksters continue to exploit Joe for every cent they can, with this event - a staged tug-of-war between Joe and twelve of the ugliest musclemen ever assembled being an example.

The muscle men on set were pulling against an actual rope that was attached to a mechanical ratchet device, to give them real tension and some back and forth give.  Ray elaborated in an article:  "In the animation studio I placed the model of Joe in front of where the ratchet stood in the rear projected plate and matched the real projected rope to the front of Joe's hands, as well as adding a miniature rope appearing from the other side of Joe's hands.  In other words, the model's hands covered the exchange from 'real' to 'miniature'."

A tough guy has a go at slugging it out with Joe.  Big mistake.  Nice work by Ray and splendid ape-boxing moves too!

"It's the same every time... can't a giant gorilla go into a bar without some Chuck Norris wanna-be giving me crap." 

Things are booming on the gorilla vaudeville circuit...

Matte painting test for what would be a pivotal turn of events...

The organ grinder and the monkey... has it really sunk to this?  A touching and emotionally moving sequence where the mostly drunk audience hurl giant frisbee sized fake coins at Joe.  Superb character animation by Harryhausen, matched with skilled cel animation of the hurtling coins.

Various trials were made to accomplish this sequence including using stop motion techniques with large balsa wood coins, though this was abandoned as being impractical.  Eventually O'Brien managed to hire a former Disney animator, Scott Whittaker, to render the shots as cartoon cel animation, carefully matching the mannerisms and reactions of Joe as to where the coins should target, from which they were bi-packed into the Joe footage as backlit travelling mattes on Linwood Dunn's optical printer.  Scott spent more than a month rotoscoping and animating the cartoon footage, and the finished material worked a treat.

Ben Johnson consols a despondent Joe who is still pissed at having been knocked back for SON OF KONG(!)

The film takes a dark turn when three loudmouth drunks hassle Joe and introduce him to the 'demon booze'.  Not a wise decision as it turns out.

Nice subtle animation where Joe samples the booze...

...but whatever you do, don't open the cigarette lighter.  But don't worry folks, those bars are made of 'chromed steel'    (get it?)  ;)

'Don't get mad Joe.....Get even'.

A paste up image showing Joe climbing the faux tree in the Golden Safari in some sort of jungle flashback...

An unused concept by O'Bie which would have had Joe picking up obnoxious extras and throwing them into a large tank of crocodiles.  It gets my vote!

Something I always admired about MJY (and also a later very much under rated Peterson/O'Brien picture, THE BLACK SCORPION), was the inventive camera work and highly imaginative orchestration of some of the memorable stop motion gags.  This is a great, dizzying downview as Joe climbs the fake tree to survey the impending carnage.

Much destruction takes place, with carefully wired and rigged miniature sets being torn to pieces in front of a process screen.

Well, that godammned cello is gonna be the first thing to go!

...Followed by that piano!  Note the fine wires holding the model in position.

A great photo of the talented Pete Peterson animating some of the tree house carnage.  Apparently, Pete's wife had worked previously with O'Bie animating birds on KING KONG back in '33.

Joe the swinger.  Harryhausen spoke about the work:  "Suspending Joe on wires was never easy, especially when he had to be airborne.  Everything had to be rigged ahead of time.  If you leave a clamp loose, you're at the mercy of gravity.  Generally we used very thin piano wire, but I sometimes used support rods, as O'Bie had done on KING KONG."

Visual effects concept paste up combining already filmed stunt action with the proposed miniature work.

And the same sequence as it was finally put together.  Large miniature set and puppet, with frame by frame back projected stunt action.

Effective destruction, with all material property damage achieved as delicate stop motion as well as Joe.  Astonishingly, not only was the action animated here, but Bert Willis' fx camera was also match moved frame by frame as a truck in on the final part of the scene during Ray's animation.


As with the first appearence of Joe back at the start, he once again encounters a pride of lions caged in thick glass.  Another terrific piece of fx work here, with actual lions filmed on a safari ranch in California, under trainer Mel Koontz, and added into the miniature set as rear projected process shots.  What sells the shot is the brilliant transition as the glass cage shatters and the 'projected' real lion is replaced by one of Marcel Delgado's fabricated animated lions as it leaps onto Joe.  Outstanding!  You can sweep all your bloody CGI Marvel stuff out the door friends, these are 'special' effects!

Joe isn't about to be pussy-whipped by some damn lion.

Or is he??  :(

Again, utterly captivating effects photography, animation, editing, sound effects etc.

Joe uses all his might and pushes a giant fake tree over, causing much concern to the nightclub owners who weren't insured for just such a catastrophe.  Always read the fine print!

Superbly executed destruction on what must have been a significant scaled miniature set.  The overall Golden Safari miniature set measured some thirty feet across and contained five process projection set ups for the real lions within the faked African settings in glass fronted cages.  Jack Lannon was the physical/mechanical effects man on the film.

Puppet Joe in front of process projected miniature carnage, including model tree toppling.  The explosion of glass and sparks is yet another live action plate projected in behind the main miniature set, frame by frame.


We are currently in hiatus while we find a lookalike gorilla who will work, literally, for peanuts.

The city officials want to have Joe sent to the dog food factory, but Terry/Jill has other ideas...

On the run... just like Thelma and Louise.  Pete Peterson handled all of these shots.

Incredibly, even the getaway truck was a stop motion miniature.

As was this entire detour set up.

A beautifully crafted miniature valley and mountainscape, likely built by Victor Delgado, and it looks like it has been augmented with a foreground glass painting to assist with depth of field - a common practice in the old days with slower film stock etc.

All animated; the truck, the ape and the girl.



Pete Peterson and friends.


The County Sherrif and his cohorts are rapidly approaching.  All miniature stop motion work.


Merian C.Cooper asked for some light comedic touches, so Peterson animated some expressive, near 'human' gestures and some thumb tapping gags, which pleased the producer but not Harryhausen.


There's some really nice curling lip and sneer expressions here.

No, your eyes are not decieving you... MIGHTY JOE YOUNG really does change hue in the last reel to emphasise the danger of the visual effects packed fiery conclusion at this burning orphanage.

Behind the scenes photo from O'Brien's personal album.  Note the gas jets and special shaker rigging under the miniature which were controlled by special effects man Jack Lannon.

Entirely miniature set with stop motion truck approaching.  The rooftop fires are either rear projections or possibly added later optically.

Miniatures and animated truck.  One of O'Bie's close associates from the KONG films, Buzz Gibson, was on board MJY, though in what exact capacity I don't know.  He did some stop motion on the KONG films so may have helped with similar work here?

I have much admiration to Bert Willis and his crew for the excellent miniature cinematography throughout MJY, none more so than in the last couple of reels where the work is truly outstanding.  Bert's crew included Monroe Askins, Pinky Arnett, Richard DeVol, George Hollister and Tex Wheaton.

OMG... it's an inferno....a towering inferno!

A considerable amount of clever optical work is evident in these scenes, with Ben Johnson and Terry Moore matted into the large burning model as they climb the stairs.  Various fire elements and falling flaming debris were also superimposed by Linwood Dunn and Cecil Love on the Acme-Dunn optical printer.

It's really very impressive, and I'd love to see an exact breakdown of the elements that went together here.  Great work!!

I think the actors were on a small set of stairs with a large process screen behind them filled with miniature conflagration footage, with a split screened right side in foreground with a burning model in front of the actors... plus the superimposed debris falling.


Harold Stine photographed the gradually collapsing seven foot tall miniature orphanage at 96 frames per second.

More excellent miniature work as Joe senses trouble above, and clambers up to the roof.

All of the animation staff had a part to play in the tree sequences, including Marcel Delgado, who did the long shots with the smallest 4 inch Joe model.

Harryhausen had a small foot pedal on the floor to advance the camera and projector frame by frame.  Camera assistant Monroe Askins was tasked with always making sure the Mitchell was sufficiently locked down and running properly.

The orphanage begins to collapse.

Joe breaks open the wall and rescues his gal.  Another outstanding bit of trick work combining process fire fx, an additional process plate of Terry Moore, a miniature structure - destroyed in stop motion - and of course, our pal Joe


The entire last reel is packed with wall to wall visual effects; from large scale miniatures, pyro effects, mattes, split screen effects, animation, optical superimpositions and rear projection - sometimes all at once in a single given shot!

I'm fairly sure that this is Pete Peterson, though it sure is a sensational behind the scenes photo.

Apparently, these specially tinted sequences were missing from prints for a number of years - possibly due to the cost of striking 35mm or 16mm prints with special requirements.  A few initial release prints had these reels printed by Technicolor, though the cost was too much for the producers so the remaining prints relied upon a simplified 'tone and tint' process using standard black & white film.  The DVD's and BluRays have restored it all as intended.

The sudden change to tinted footage was jarring at the time for audiences, not to mention theatre projectionists, who scrambled to check whether they had threaded the correct film for the change over!

An expertly carried out bit of miniature demolition and effects camerawork.



The miniature was mounted on a large rocker platform which shook the pre-prepared (plaster?) structure loose to great effect.


I've seen the sequence in plain old monochrome and it isn't half as effective.


A remarkably crisp muliple part composite that has all the hallmarks of being first generation.  The live action rooftop set has been combined flawlessly with what appears to be an extensive matte painted downview, with people, possibly painted and with slot gag 'movement'(?), or a live action plate with real extras.  Also, some optically added fire to set the scene.  One of the best shots in the film.

Left, a split screen matte.  Right, full miniature set and characters.

MJY took some two years of extensive pre-production, followed by around 14 months of animation, matte and composite work, and three months of principal photography.


The top left frame is from Marcel Delgado's animation using the smallest of the 6 Joe models.

Another tremendously effective shot has the baby crawling along the ledge while all burns around him.  A brilliantly executed scene with model rooftop and tree, complete with Ray's animated puppet baby - built by Marcel Delgado - and rear projected inferno.  


An incredibly powerful shot where all hope seems lost.

A great deal of emotion was injected into the Joe puppets, largely by Ray Harryhausen, armed with a modelling tool, a screwdriver, an animators surface gauge, and a pencil eraser to facilitate eyebrow movements and manipulation.

Yet another highly inventive piece of action where the tree falls to the ground with Joe, still safely clutching the baby.  The neat thing is that the camera's POV follows the tree collapse in a single motion shot, almost as if the cameraman were bolted to the tree!!  Brilliantly conceived and executed.

A second angle shows onlookers projected in.

"I can't hold her together Captain...she's breakin' up!"

Cooper was so impressed by Harryhausen's output that he loaded a bonus onto his $250 salary per week.

First rate miniature destruction married with first rate animation.

Frame by frame...

"So...what do you say we split this joint and head off somewhere for a quiet drink?"

T'was beauty who, this time, didn't kill the beast...  He lived to a ripe old age back in ole' Africa (*and no 12 foot gorilla's were harmed during the making of this motion picture).


The upper left and middle frames are from the end title of MJY while the rest of these frames come from the re-issue trailer.  They made such good trailers back then that would tempt any 12 year old boy to go along.  I don't think the film was a particularly successful one, sadly, with a few atrocious reviews here and there, but reportedly theatres had sell out houses in various venues, so it certainly had an audience.  I believe that the production company, Arko/Argosy, had a deal with RKO for a 50/50 split of international distribution rights.

Willis and the Oscar for Best Special Effects.  The trophy actually was meant to go to the producer, as was the accepted practice, but Cooper happily gave the statuette to his longtime friend and creative associate, not only for MJY, but as an acknowledgement for all he'd done on KING KONG, which preceeded the FX Oscar category by some six years.  This Oscar has just come up for auction should any of my readers be interested??

The original pressbook from an era when they really knew how to sell a movie!


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NZ Pete's Big Box of Mattes:

As I mentioned, I was very happy to recently recieve a large, solidly constructed wooden crate from Los Angeles containing a bounty of wonderful original Universal and Illusion Arts matte paintings from Bill Taylor's collection.  I'm so thrilled with these beautiful pieces, which include one of Albert Whitlock's and a half dozen of Syd Dutton's as well as a couple of unidentified works at the reverse sides of two mattes.  
Out of neccessity I had to choose mattes prepared on hardboard (or Masonite as it's called in the States) for safe shipping purposes over a vast distance to the other end of the globe. A couple of them were already in their original old Universal pine frames so I've been busy constructing frames for the remainder, as well as mounting same up on wall space, which was a task and a half given the very large dimensions of the mattes and the added weight of the wooden frames.  Three of them went atop a high staircase and that required very precarious balancing acts atop high ladder wedged on a narrow edge of steps.  Got there after some sweating and swearing.

Here are the mattes and some close up details as well.  If anyone else has acquired any of those many mattes that were recently auctioned off, do tell me what you have.

Enjoy



The 130kg crate which reached New Zealand quite speedily yet sat in NZ Customs for some 9days till they finally got around to opening it and examining the very well packed contents, which they apparently also photographed for some unknown reason?  At least in got here, which in this pandemic of 'the pox' is in itself, a small mercy.

Probably my favourite one, and a matte that simply draws in the eye of the viewer with it's myriad network of roadways and a wonderful vanishing point.  It's one of many mattes that Syd painted for a short lived sci-fi series OTHERWORLD (1985) - a show that has a dedicated fan base still to this day.  The vast size measuring around 96 inches in width seemed excessive for tv but the final shot involved a foreground glass painted hot air balloon with painted people which travelled frame by frame up and over the futuristic city, with the camera following the balloon's progress.  Syd told me that he designed it all to resemble a giant circuit board.

Detail of Syd's loose and impressionistic brushwork which sells as photo real when viewed in toto.

More of the same.

Annoyingly, OTHERWORLD has never been released on any form of home video at all, despite having a cult following.  C'mon Universal/MCA.... get off your lazy arses and release this 8 part series... please.


 
I love strong perspective work in matte art, and this one proudly fills a wall in my living room.

Another Dutton matte painting, also from OTHERWORLD (1985), is a stunner, and is beautifully rendered.  The final shot in the show involved subtle painted light rays coming through the trees on an overlay, with a slow push in on the castle.  My wife, who is firmly disinterested in mattes and fails to 'share the joy', and took MUCH convincing to allow me to embark on this matte importing venture, loves this one and admits to having great admiration for the rest of 'em too.


Detail

This one is a stunner, with all the elements falling into place that I like: an evocative sky with finely crafted clouds, strong architectural detail and a wonderful sense of backlight.  It was painted by Syd Dutton around 1988 for a commercial for a French energy company.  See below...

A frame from the final composite (maybe a tilt up?) which show a parent and child walk up a ridge and point out the 'city of the future', which presumably is powered most efficiently by some French energy corporation of some description.  There is animated traffic on the freeways and, I think, moving clouds drifting across the vista.

Close up of the futuristic city.


Syd makes it all look so easy...



A striking 10th Century European landscape with traditional motte and bailey fortifications as painted for the fantasy film DRAGONHEART (1996) starring Dennis Quaid and Sean Connery.  Syd Dutton painted this beautiful matte after the film's original effects contractors, ILM, failed to come up with a satisfactory result, with Illusion Arts coming to the rescue.


Detail from the very large 78 inch wide matte.




And here I can say I'm so happy to own an original Albert Whitlock matte.  This gorgeous sunset across a valley is a sight to behold up close, and was painted for the Andy Kaufman robot love story HEARTBEEPS (1981).  The extra sky at left was a standard Whitlock/Dutton gag, painted deliberately to allow later drifting cloud trickery with the sky exposed in separate soft matted bands as the painting is moved frame by frame on a horizontal matte stand.

Whitlock was the master of light when it came to subtle infusion and gently inter-woven hues. Genius!


Just love those violet hues creeping over the valley.

Of interest, I have a video interview with Whitlock at Universal at work on this matte and describing in detail the many additional gags that will be employed to add life to the raw painting, including a burnt in sun element, moving clouds, complex painted overlay animation of the last rays of sunlight gradually fading from the foliage.  For a subsequent wider shot as seen through the factory windows by the main characters, a real tree was positioned on set outside the window in front of a blue screen which covered the unpainted left side of the artwork.

Another of Syd's mattes, and one of many he painted for the popular tv series from the late eighties, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.  I find this particularly atmospheric.

The finished scene with the boat added as well as a painted overlay of light rays.  That series had so much matte work.

Close up



A bonus painting as found at the back of one of the other mattes was this Japanese temple in a thunderstorm from the relentlessly violent Christopher Lambert actioner THE HUNTED (1995).

Before and after showing the final composite with drifting cloudscape, moon element, lightning flash interactive gags and rain all added on the matte stand.  Note the top of the tree at right has not been painted on the original matte but does appear in the finished composite.  The tree top was painted on a foreground glass so as to facilitate the moving clouds and other painted overlays with lightning highlights across the clouds and temple.

Detail plus half a tree!

Although Dutton did paint on this film, he thinks this shot was done by another artist, most likely Robert Stromberg.

And finally, another interesting little 'bonus' of sorts, on the reverse side of one of the paintings.  What appears to be a loose blocking in of a matte that will be eventually completed separately (see below...)

The finished matte painting that Syd painted for what he told me was a 'Terry Bedford commercial'.  Syd mentioned that the final composite included a coyote or large dog bipacked up on the ridge and howling at the sky.


***This post, and all 171 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/




I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I did.  Your feedback is always welcomed and appreciated.

Stay safe wherever in the world you happen to be.

Pete

MATTE TRICK SHOT REVIEW: Scaling The Heights of Excellence

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Hi there friends... and welcome to another edition of NZ Pete's Matte Shot; your veritable 'one stop shop' for all things 'traditional' as far as painted mattes go, as well as other forms of old school hand made motion picture trick shots.  I've got some wonderful material assembled here, a great deal of which hasn't been seen before.

The title banner on todays edition, Scaling The Heights of Excellence, was most deliberate.  It actually encompasses not just a very spectacular effects filled Alpine motion picture from the late fifties, but also doubles as a personal tribute to the recent passing of one of the visual effects community's most respected members, the late Bill Taylor, with whom I've had many helpful and engaging interactions with over a number of years.

This edition of Matte Shot features a long overdue retrospective on the astonishing Disney picture THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN - with celebrated matte artist and visual effects designer Peter Ellenshaw providing dozens of thrilling trick shots.  Also, in a not entirely coincidental outcome, I've included some bafflingly well executed trickery carried out by none other than Ellenshaw's own step-father, the great Walter Percy Day, from one of his final films, the brooding, though excellent Carol Reed picture OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS reviewed here.  Also, how can NZ Pete release a blog without at least one old MGM show?  Well, the beautifully acted and directed MADAME CURIE is one such picture, with a dozen wonderful Newcombe mattes, of the quality readers of this blog have become accustomed to (even though we all know Warren never painted a single one himself!)

Last in the line up is ZARAK - a big budget UK period swashbuckling actioner set in what would eventually become Pakistan, with some Tom Howard supervised sprawling mattes, a tough square jawed hero and a spectacularly eye-popping leading lady who filled the lush and vivid compositions of the CinemaScope frame admirably.

Finally, some very exciting news - well for Pete it's monumental in VFX thrill factor.  I have been fortunate indeed to have been sent the long lost before and after HD transfers of the matte showreels of old time Universal matte exponent, Russell Lawson (thank you so much Thomas).  These original 35mm reels - dating from the 1950's - have been in storage among the late Bill Taylor's collection for decades, and feature among the nearly 12 hours of 35mm showreel material covering all of Al Whitlock's work and subsequent Illusion Arts assignments.  I had intended to include them here in this blog, but will instead do so 'next issue'.     I did however include one fabulous sample at the close of this blog.

Enjoy,

Pete

***This post, and all 172 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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BILL TAYLOR - Respected VFX Cinematographer, Inventor, Magician, Collector.

With the sad passing a month or so ago of Bill Taylor, I'm using this opportunity to pay tribute to a man whose many contributions to the film industry - not to mention the world of stage magic and illusion - have earned a number of accolades over the years. 

Bill Taylor pauses for a snapshot while on a desert location in 1994 for the film SPEECHLESS.

Although I never met Bill in person, I can say that I did enjoy a most fruitful and highly educational line of communication with him for a number of years, through a great many email missives back and forth, largely on the subject of matte shots, photographic effects and technical breakdowns.  We also had some wonderful discussions on cinematographers, such as the late, great Gordon Willis; films that had been overlooked, effects wizards from the golden era and a few personal opinions Bill had on certain auteur directors he'd had the displeasure of working with.

I have been so very fortunate since I created this blog around 12 years back.  There have been so many specialists in the field who have been more than happy to answer my 'inane' questions, explain modus-operandi, share long lost tricks of the trade and basically open up.  Guys like Harrison Ellenshaw, Mark Sullivan, Jim Danforth, Gerald Larn, Brian Johnson, Matthew Yuricich, Syd Dutton and others, have been so generous with their time.  Bill was one such gentleman - and from comments I've received from others, he was a gentleman - where no question would ever go unanswered, trick shots were broken down and explained in incredible detail, right down to the film stock used and whether the film had been 'flashed', etc.  Bill's memory on all aspects of not just the thousand odd trick shots he'd no doubt worked on, but on the work of others in the business, was phenomenal to say the least.

Far left:  Bill at Illusion Arts shooting some bi-pack elements.  Middle: Lining up a blue screen shot for THE GATE.  Right:  Bill and Syd and their excellent adventure.

Only now do I realise, having spoken to Bill's long time associate, Syd Dutton, that this sort of 'giving back' and furthering the educational aspect of the effects business was something Bill was driven by.  

In a recent conversation between Syd and myself, I asked about Bill's interests, knowing him to be a very keen magician and in the process of writing a book on the subject, Syd summed up his longtime friend and collaborator so well:  "Yes, Bill did finish his magic book. I have no information about publication.  Bill had so many interests. Magic might have been his first love. His sister just recently told me that at her wedding, he cut one her bridesmaids in half. I know he had an act, dressed in top hat and tuxedo  along with the obligatory attractive female assistant, but unfortunately I never saw a performance".

"Our long 26 year partnership probably worked because we were so different. Bill was active in the whole visual effects community and advancing the science of cinematography. I was only concerned with painting and solving visual problems. Bill was also an avid clock collector and fascinated by different movements, complications and how it impacted the history of navigation. After long hours in front of the easel, my only interest was driving home to my family and a stiff drink".

"Bill also loved music. But that’s another story among several others.  
Bill’s home, in which he lived the entire time I knew him, he'd had that completely 'tricked out' - a treasure trove of an eccentric, multi-faceted man.
I told someone that Bill was like a Swiss Army knife, the specialty blades neatly folded and hidden away until needed".

Some of the faces of Bill Taylor.  At left, busy with Albert Whitlock rigging the miniature 747 jumbo jet for the sea crash in AIRPORT 77.  Top right shows Bill manning the trusty matte camera for a shot for the film WEEDS, in which a standard street in North Carolina will be transformed into a bustling New York City avenue.  Lower right is a rare behind the scenes picture showing Bill (in white shirt) with Jim Danforth (manning camera) and Laine Liska shooting effects tests for the unfinished film COLD WAR IN A COUNTRY GARDEN (aka THE MICRONAUTS) *photo courtesy Jim's excellent memoir Dinosaurs, Dragons and Drama.

Rather than go into a complete historical study of Bill's career, as I've written much about it in earlier blogs, and an excellent, wonderfully detailed piece appeared courtesy of the American Society of Cinematographers, which can be found here, I'll instead provide some personal anecdotes from Bill, as well as some comments from those who knew him and very kindly contacted me, along with a rare selection of behind the scenes photos and clips. I've included a few select effects shots only as to do a full and complete summary would indeed be an epic endeavour.  Much of Bill's work can be shown in my extensive three part career piece on Albert Whitlock; here, here& here, as well as an article I did years ago on Illusion Arts (here).

Two important pieces of machinery that Bill utilised on a daily basis throughout the photo-chemical era at both Universal and later on at Illusion Arts.  On left is the tried and trusty Mitchell-Fries 35mm matte shot camera.  On the right is the studio matte camera mounted on a sturdy lathe bed as used for photographing paintings, making latent image composites and introducing elements within specific shots by way of the bi-pack arrangement.  Note the lamphouse visible at the right, allowing the camera to also serve as a projector for displaying a frame of the original plate photography onto the primed and prepared glass for the matte artist to trace off and make the necessary perspective lines and other important decisions.

Matte painter and all round visual effects exponent Mark Sullivan wrote me:  "The news about Bill shook me up. Bill, Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton were a huge inspiration to me growing up (and now, too).  I recall meeting Bill when he visited Jim Danforth, at Jim’s studio. I was working on my first professional matte painting at the time. Being in the same room with Bill Taylor and Jim Danforth, I felt very privileged, and lucky!  As Bill was very skilled and knowledgable, he was equally as kind and courteous."

A great behind the scenes photo from the making of the Oscar winning THE HINDENBURG (1975), which was Bill's first assignment when hired by Albert Whitlock at Universal - and as Bill once regaled to me, almost became his last assignment!  From left to right are assistant matte painter Syd Dutton; matte camera assistant Mike Moramarco; visual effects supervisor Al Whitlock; effects cinematographer Bill Taylor; key grip Larry Shuler; and special stills photographer Larry Barbier.

Years ago, Bill told me about his first 'adventure' with the fated German airship on the backot:  "I was determined to shoot the miniature airship in real sunlight; no phoney stage lighting for me!  I experimented with an odd scheme for matting the miniature that I thought would work in daylight that in retrospect sounds 'Fulton-esque'.  In those days a day-lit blue screen was not saturated enough to give a good result.  I shot the model airship against black velvet, with the sun as the key light.  I filled in the miniature with a row of arc lights with deep blue filters, balanced so that viewed through a blue filter the ship appeared to be flat lit. Black detail like the swastica was painted blue."

"My intent was to print a silhouette matte from a  blue positive separation,  which I hoped would have uniform density throughout. Then the foreground detail would go on with the green separation used twice, through blue and green filters, and with the red separation. This of course was a sort of simplified Vlahos colour-difference dupe. The highlights and shadows and the red patch around the swastica reproduced normally on the green and red separations.  Don't think anything like this had been tried in colour." 
"Clever scheme, eh?  In practice, a disaster!   The grey airship just soaked up the blue light, and even with arc lamps cheek by jowl, it proved to be impossible to light the shadow side uniformly enough so there were not translucent areas in the matte.  To try to get the sun intensity in balance with the arcs. I had the grips hang a net over the airship.  If there was more than one layer of net, there were beautiful moire patterns cast on the ship.  There was a little wind on the back lot on one day, which ripped the net, and down it came, where the arc lights burned holes in it. 
 It was thanks to Al Whitlock's enormous clout at the studio that I got to try this in the first place, and did not get fired as a result!"
"I began to re-think shooting the miniature against blue screen on the sound stage, which we finally did.  On Universal's biggest stage,stage 12, which was right outside our door, I could back the single key light 200 feet away to get really hard, parallel shadows.  I loved those old arc lights, which were close to being point sources of light.   A great big wrap-around diffuser produced shadowless fill and a ground cloth produced the appropriate bounce from land, water or lower clouds.  We dollied the camera on rails which rested on a carefully screeded sand bed, so the camera move was dead smooth" .

THE HINDENBURG - Bill with grip Larry Shuler at left, and with cameraman Mike Moramarco at right, in the process of filming the post crash wreckage of the dirigible.  The partially visible full scale rigged airship skeleton would be matted out and replaced with entirely painted elements by Whitlock.

Bill had been an entry level employee at Ray Mercer Opticals in the early sixties, gradually moving from van driver and general helper, to learning optical line-up work and finally camera operator.  "During my ten years at Mercer and some time with Linwood Dunn at Film Effects of Hollywood, I introduced myself to Al Whitlock around 1965, by cold calling him at Universal, and also to Petro Vlahos, from whom I learned the Colour Difference Blue Screen System for travelling mattes.  Those two gentlemen changed my life, because when Whitlock needed a blue screen 'expert' for THE HINDENBURG, he hired me to take the newly retired Ross Hoffman's position".  Bill also remarked:  "In between Mercer and Universal I did the opticals and served as consultant on John Carpenter's and Dan O'Bannon's DARK STAR - and I also wrote the lyrics for the title song, 'Benson Arizona'.  You can get to do pretty much anything you can in the low-budget film world.  So, in brief, I worked nine years at Mercer, one year freelancing, ten years at Universal and 26 years at Illusion Arts.  I have been so lucky.  Most of my colleagues have had dozens of jobs, and I've really only had three".

Before and after, with the final composite.

Also from THE HINDENBURG was this seemingly ordinary, mundane production shot that I'd never appreciated, until Syd Dutton drew it to my attention, as described below.  This sort of ingenius problem solving was what traditional trick photography was all about folks...

For quite some time I had assumed the shot shown above to be a piece of newsreel footage, but then Syd Dutton mentioned a particular HINDENBURG fx shot that always made a lasting impression:   "One of my favorite fx shots in the film wasn’t a painting at all, and I was referring to the men on the guide line shot at magic hour and then in sunlight to simulate the explosion. Pure genius."  Syd then asked Bill to write me his recollections of the particular shot, which now puts a whole new spin on the brief cut for me:   "Syd is referring to the shot in which the men holding the mooring lines are suddenly lit by the explosion of the airship above them.  Our camera was on one of the big corner pylons of the airship hanger in  Santa Ana.  The same men were shot twice in exactly the same positions, their feet carefully marked and each man taking note of his body position.  In one shot they were in full sun from above, casting strong shadows.  On cue, they dropped the lines and ran away.  In the second shot, made later the same day when the sun was low enough to be off them (Magic Hour), we shot them in the same spots, looking upward at the airship.  I had shot a Polaroid of the guys in the first shot and we used it to cue them into matching poses."
"The shot in the film starts with the Magic Hour shot.  With a very soft-edge wipe we transitioned to the brightly-lit men colour timed to appear as though they are lit by the exploding airship.  Their shadows provide exclamation marks as each man runs for his life.  Because the scope of the shot is so wide, it would have been impossible to achieve the effect with any lighting instrument and of course any real pyrotechnic effect would have been very dangerous.  As Syd said, a brilliant idea.  Albert did not get hung up on whether the effect was physically 'authentic'; he knew that for the few seconds that were needed it would play perfectly."

Whitlock with Taylor on location in Vermont on Interstate 89 shooting plates for what will become the fictional town of Milburn for the film GHOST STORY (1981).

Bill checks his f-stop while atop an elaborate manually 'driven' camera dolly/sled, as constructed by key grip Lyn Ledgerwood, for a vital sequence in the film GHOST STORY.  In the scene, actor Craig Wasson, ultimately blue screened into this miniature plate, tumbles to his death, with the camera both trailing the frightening descent with him, in addition to capturing the subsequent up-view of the actor falling face first straight into the glass atrium.

On board The Queen Mary, in Long Beach, for the filming of CHAPLIN (1992).  From left:  Bill, Larry Shuler, Albert and Syd.

Veteran stop motion exponent, matte artist and fantasy film visionary, Jim Danforth, worked with Bill on a number of occasions, dating back to the early 1970's, and told me he had very fond memories of those times: "For many years, I owned an MGBGT automobile. It accommodated two nicely, but there was only a small back seat, plus the luggage area.  Bill often curled up in the luggage area.  What fun we had".  Jim and Bill collaborated on projects as diverse as the popular KUNG FU television series, John Carpenter's cult flick, DARK STAR, the low budget Australian drive-in classic ESKIMO NELL, and the unfinished science fiction project COLD WAR IN A COUNTRY GARDEN.
"Bill was very generous, and he gave my wife Karen and me tickets to see Angela Lansbury and George Hearn in Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, He also took Karen and I to some magic shows starring David Copperfield, for example. Bill also took the official studio portrait of Al Whitlock and was a proud member of the ASC - the American Society of Cinematographers."
Unknown to many, Bill also plied his thespian talents, and appeared in bit parts in things like the terrific original ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, INTO THE NIGHT, THE FOG, BEVERLY HILLS COP 3 and others.

A curious snapshot which once again proved some amazing visuals could be conjured up with the most rudimentary of materials and a considerable degree of imagination.  This is the special camera rig built for the explosive climax of the exceedingly groovy flick, THE CAR (1977).  In fact, it was my curiosity about the visuals in this film which prompted me to contact Bill many years ago - not for one moment expecting so much as a response.  Bill quickly replied, amazed at my interest in this forgotten bit and elaborated on the scene in great detail, for which I was - and remained - very grateful.  Shown here are Bill, Mike Moramarco and Al Whitlock with the home built lens distortion rig that would create the demonic incarnation from the bowels of hades for the fiery climax.

Ever since I saw THE CAR back in '77 on the huge Scope screen at our Cinerama theatre - complete with pounding Leonard Rosenman score, it's been a favourite for NZ Pete.  Here's what a somewhat surprised Bill had to say when I wrote him: "I'm glad you like this shot.  As time has passed and technology has improved, it makes me wince.  The face was much subtler in earlier versions, but previews revealed that most of the audience did not get the gag, so we re-did it much more blatantly.  I thought that a horn on the soundtrack, accompanied by a flashing title that read, 'big demon face' was the next logical step".

"We started with big naptha fires and slow motion flame thrower film elements just as you thought.  
We shot elements of white Mole smoke against black in our studio, which we cherry-picked to find interesting shapes, then reversed into black smoke to serve as the background for the face.  The face features were constructed from black cloth on an articulated wire armature so the mouth could move.  The cloth was dampened with napthalene - like lighter fluid, nice yellow flame - and set alight, blown with a fan and photographed in colour at a high frame rate, probably about 120 FPS.  I recall that it dripped little drops of flaming naptha.   Even though the face was a pretty good size, the flames were too big in scale and 'miniature-y' looking so we hit on the idea of shooting them through a moving distortion glass to break them up". 

"The final result was not exactly finished as much as it was abandoned, since we just ran out of time. Leonard Rosenman's music helped a lot!  I thought that this was a pretty good film in which the subtler ideas are the most effective, like the creak of the floor boards just before the car appears in the barn".


Still so cool after all these years.  As far as flaming satanic beasts from the pits of hell go, this evil bastard get's my vote every time!

In an astonishingly rare-as-hens-teeth snapshot here my friends is the aforementioned 'Devil' in all his sock-puppet, 'lamb chops' meets Cujo glory!  My pal Thomas Higginson sent me this, and some of the other pics here, and had this to say:  "Here's another pic of that odd 'The Car' gag.  There you'll see Al with the toy race track transmitters that controlled the rotational speed of the distortion lenses and Syd in command of the sock puppet.  The picture says it all!"

One of my all time favourite movies was THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980), and alongside a few mattes, Bill engineered a show stopping sequence where an entire flop-house in Chicago is blown to pieces by a patently off her head Carrie Fisher.  The view here was in fact a huge photo blow up of the actual location, salvaged from the small amount of head trim from the original 35mm production take.  The blow- up was heavily massaged with painted touch ups and blends.  Bill told me all about the trick, as explained below, which I think is a corker of a shot.

"The explosion shot for The Blues Brothers may be more amazing than you realize"Bill revealed to me.  "There is no actual miniature at work here; it's all a giant blow up, but carefully divided into two planes.  The back plane photo of the hotel was pasted onto a large thin sheet of fabricated plasterboard, made with a very brittle formula.  The photo/painting was heavily scored with a Stanley knife so that it would break apart at the appropriate places.  There were holes cut clear through for window openings, and so forth.  The back of the plasterboard was 'wired' with a large serpentine pattern of the smallest, 'gentlest' detonation cord available.  Because the 'det-cord' is virtually instantaneous, the timing was critical to allow the naptha bag explosion to develop before the plaster was blown.  A small scale test determined that timing.  There was only one full size take needed".  Interestingly, as an aside, many years later at the VES tribute to Al Whitlock, director John Landis regaled the audience and panel with his memory of being invited onto the effects stage by Al to witness the epic event.  Once the cameras rolled at a very high and noisy frame rate as was needed, it was all over in a mere second.... basically a 'poof' and a quick 'flash'.  Landis reported witnessing the event first hand as being "Extremely unimpressive", but once finished and cut into the daillies the shot looked a million dollars.

A great insider look at the Illusion Arts crew creating a smoke effect or other gag with various liquids for an unknown production in the 1990s.  Left-to-right: Matte cameraman Mark Sawicki, Bill and miniatures wrangler Lynn Ledgerwood.

The daily routine at Illusion Arts in the mid nineties, with Bill retrieving 35mm original negative 'held takes' from the chiller; setting the mag onto the motion control system; and shooting a multiplane matte/miniature set up for DENNIS THE MENACE. 
One of the reasons Bill found himself fascinated by trick photography was the work and films of the legendary Ray Harryhausen.  Here is a picture of Bill presenting Ray with an award at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.  The frames shown here are, of course, from Ray's remarkable JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) -  a film which stimulated the imaginations of so many future visual effects exponents, not to mention many thousands of 'monster kid movie' freaks like yours truly and I'm certain, a whole swag of Matte Shot readers out there.

Speaking with Bill a decade or more ago, he shared his memories of early influences:  "When I saw JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS in the summer of my freshman year at Pomona college, at which I flunked out after just three semesters, I was immediately inspired by Ray Harryhausen's example to look for a career in the visual effects field.  I was thunderstruck to realize that here were visual illusions on such an enormous scale.  Up until then, and unlike virtually all of my contemporaries in the effects world, I had not been especially interested in visual effects, or even in photography; but since my artistic abilities were nil, it at least seemed that a life in the movie business as a technician was possible".

Like me, Bill admired so many of the old effects films, and we talked at one stage about the work in Disney's fabulous DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE (1959) - a film I still regard as perhaps the pinnacle of all round trick shot excellence.  "Some of the classic stuff is so perfect, that it's hard to imagine what's really going on.  I remember being totally baffled by the trick perspective work in DARBY O'GILL, and Peter Ellenshaw's work, until I finally read an explanation somewhere.  So, I was delighted to be part of Randy Cook's crew years later on the trick perspective shots he designed for THE GATE.  Later I devised the moving camera trick perspective technique used in the first LORD OF THE RINGS film, which allowed limited dolly moves in depth, so I feel like I made a tiny contribution to the advancement of the art".

The many facets of Bill.  At left attending a tribute for comedian and actor Steve Martin - himself  a lifelong devotee of magic - Bill demonstrates a series of sleight-of-hand coin tricks he learned from a very young Steve, back in the early 1960's while working together in the magic store at Disneyland.  Upper right shows Bill and Syd conducting one of their day long seminars on VFX, while the lower right has Bill demostrating to a group of aspiring effects students.

In an email, Bill told me about his interests in stage magic:  "I was indeed interested in both stage magic and sleight of hand, and have created several stage illusions that have been performed by magicians around the world, including Harry Blackstone jnr, and The Pendragons".  At the time of writing to me Bill said that he was still busy as an illusion designer at Owen Magic in California.  In another conversation we talked about favourite cameramen, knowing Bill to be fond of guys like Jack Cardiff.  "On the film BRENDA STARR, which was lit and shot by Freddie Francis, I asked Freddie what his secret was for 'glamour lighting'.  He said 'Put a great big light over the camera, and get Brooke Shields if you can!'"  Bill continued:  "I always wanted to get Freddie and Jack Cardiff together and just record their conversation, but I could never quite manage it."

At left:  Albert and Bill at Illusion Arts in 1992, pose next to a very large matte painting of 'Hollywoodland' for the film CHAPLIN.  At right, Bill recieves the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation from AMPAS in 2013.

Telling a tall tale perhaps?  Bill manages to crack up fellow vfx man Harrison Ellenshaw.  I sent Harrison a copy of this image, which to my surprise he'd not seen, and he said: "If I recall that was a presentation at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theatre. Bill himself persuaded the Academy to name it that. That's former ILM'er John Knoll to Bill's right.  John and his brother invented a thing called Photoshop".

Bill carried his knowledge of motion picture visual effects requirements all the way through the traditional photo-chemical era and well into the digital arena with ease.  Interestingly, Illusion Arts - the company he and Syd co-founded in 1985 - would often integrate both traditional and digital tools on the same film or tv assignment well into the late 1990's where, as a pragmatic decision, both methods could occasionally compliment each other to deliver an effective end result.  Syd told me he liked to paint his mattes using the customary artists' tools and medium whenever the opportunity presented itself, and in general found the older process more satisfying as a trained painter.  The traditionally rendered paintings, if not composited as original negative or rear projection were sometimes scanned as a large digital file and augmented or manipulated with computer technology, though the foundation and integrity of so many shots made in the CG era, remained 'hand made'.

A dire film, but some beautiful photographic effects work from the Universal matte department, RED SONYA (1985) saw Bill create some interesting gags to accompany the stunning painted mattes:  "We were pretty happy with our fake lava in this film.  It was all back-lit, made from plastic wheels, positioned at a raking angle to the camera.  They were painted to add bits of texture.  As usual procedure, we shot this gag through soft splits, with multiple passes, and so on.  We made a separate lava element that Frank van der Veer and Barry Nolan used elsewhere in the movie".

The epic 'Big Apple' sequence from Sidney Lumet's THE WIZ (1978) remains one of the bona-fide eye popping vfx shots of the decade - and beyond!  There are some eight painted elements, thirteen individual filmed elements, a motorised styrofoam apple which were all assembled in some 34 separate passes through Bill's matte camera and a further six passes through the optical printer!

Bill remembered the sequence shown above as something of a nightmare to pull off:  "All I can see is the matte line around the apple, which, for some reason didn't bother Al at all!  We had other takes where the miniature apple fit perfectly, but the shot was so complicated that something else went wrong in every one of them.  It was one of the shots made on our matte shot camera with multiple passes, and then carried over to the optical printer for the apple, so as to avoid duping the paintings".  I asked the fairly obvious question about the traditional photo-chemical era optical composites and the complexities therein:  "No... I don't miss the 'good old days' one little bit!"


Bill was recipient of an Emmy award,  along with Al, Syd and the entire Universal matte department staff, for the visual effects work they accomplished on the Biblical miniseries A.D (1985), and would later collect a couple more for the tv series STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION later on, and was a founding member of the Visual Effects Society.  If all that weren't enough, he was also on the Board of Governors at the Motion Picture Academy.  

Bill with two buddies - matte cameraman Mark Sawicki (left) and matte painter, friend and co-founder of Illusion Arts, Syd Dutton (right).

                                   William (Bill) Frank Taylor, ASC   1944 - 2021


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NZ PETE's RANDOM MATTE FROM THE ARCHIVE:

Having so many matte shots in my archive, it's not always easy to show 'em all, no matter now much I feel they deserve some attention.  This is one such shot that I like and needs some attention.  This is the opening shot - a full painting - from the Andre deToth western LAST OF THE COMANCHES (1952), starring the great Broderick Crawford.  The show was a Columbia picture, so Larry Butler and Donald Glouner would have looked after the trick work.  No idea who painted this nice shot, but possibly Juan Larrinaga - the brother of Mario - who was a fixture at Columbia for years.

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PETER ELLENSHAW REACHES THE SUMMIT:


Some of Disney's best live action films were made in the fifties, in my opinion.  THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN (1959) is among the class catalogue which included shows like 20'000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE and of course, the delightfully marvellous DARBY O'GILL & THE LITTLE PEOPLE.

Key to the thrill factor of the, mostly genuine mountain climbing sequences, were the dozens of superb matte shots supervised by the great Peter Ellenshaw.  Peter, for those new to my blog, was one of the true masters in the artform of painted mattes, with a long career originating in the mid 1930's in England, under the steely gaze and brushmanship of his mentor, Walter Percy Day - the Grandfather of British special effects.  Peter would become a staple at Disney Studios, with Walt himself giving him a lifelong contract as a result of his astonishing work on the studio's first live action picture, TREASURE ISLAND in 1950.

Master matte artist Peter Ellenshaw is shown here at work on a foreground in-camera glass shot for another of the studio's big productions, IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS (1962) filmed at Pinewood Studios in England.

I'm not aware of anyone else recieving 'Matte Artist' screen credit before Peter did on all his Disney films, even as far back as 1950 for TREASURE ISLAND, and in fact it would be decades until a similar credit appeared on screen for any other practitioner

Matte painted view which opens the film, which although was The Matterhorn, was changed in the script to The Citadel for some odd reason?  Maybe the real Matterhorn threatened to sue?

One of the stunning mattes by Peter Ellenshaw which reminds me of his paintings which open the earlier BLACK NARCISSUS.

The Swiss village, presumably a set on the Disney lot with an extensive make over by the matte artist to extend the view.  The matte line runs across just above the heads of the extras.  According to Peter's son Harrison, a number of the mattes in THIRD MAN were done as latent image shots, on original negative, which Disney did utilise off and on around that time on various productions, before settling into their in house rear projection composite method which they would pretty much stick with throughout the sixties and seventies.

I'm not sure on this shot.  If it is a matte then it's a very well blended and matched matte.  The film was largely shot on location in Switzerland, with a great deal of first rate professional climbing unit material expertly integrated into the shots with the actors.

Apparently the film was originally called BANNER IN THE SKY, and after a not very enthusiastic box office take, would again revert to this alternate title for later TV showings.  The critical reaction however for the film on it's initial release was good and it's held in high regard among many Disney enthusiasts to this day.

Not sure with this one, but strongly suspect it's an actual 2nd unit shot?

The numerous moments of danger in THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN were accomplished with carefully designed and composited matte shots, such as this thriller of a shot.

My favourite shot in the flick is this devastatingly well executed downview of James MacArthur atop a spindly pinnacle, high above the valley floor.  I've always had a thing for extreme perspective painting in matte work.  Absolutely love it!

Even in a matte shot you'd never get NZ Pete to be up there!  :(

Unquestionably the work of Peter Ellenshaw, with his trademark cloud brushwork and light as witnessed in so much of his own fine art and also scores of movie matte shots.

Another cut, this time with drifting mist added in.

Peter had two assistants in the matte department at this time, Albert Whitlock and Jim Fetherolf.  I'm sure both men lent a hand in furnishing such a large number of mattes.  Bill Taylor once mentioned to me that Al learned so much from observing Peter paint.  The quick block ins, often using towels, rags or huge brushes, followed by an intense period of highly focused dabs and 'expressions', where Peter instinctively knew just how much to paint, and where to draw the audience's eye in.  According to Bill, Al acknowledged his own painting progressed in leaps and bounds as a result of watching Peter paint. Peter was a highly prolific and very fast matte artist.  A master, and by all accounts, a true gentleman.

I'm most impressed with the live action plate photography in this film.  Almost all of the plates appear to have been carefully shot in natural light as opposed to studio lit soundstage mock ups, where the 'fake' studio arc's of the day never matched the Kelvin of actual sunlight and were for decades, always a dead giveaway.

Being alpine, the weather can change at the drop of a hat.  The skies darken and a storm rolls in...

A beautifully manufactured alpine storm, combining multi-plane Ellenshaw matte art, with the mountain range, at least two layers of glass painted clouds, and cel animated lightning bolts as well as the interactive gags.  Very nice work.

This film's director, Ken Annakin, did a number of shows for Disney, starting with SWORD AND THE ROSE in 1953.  Ken was a huge admirer of Peter's abilities, and would consult and utilise matte shots frequently on many pictures.  In an interview with film critic and historian Leonard Maltin when discussing the vast number of effects shots for SWORD AND THE ROSE, Ken had this to say:  "Walt specifically had the picture (Sword and the Rose) designed in such a way to use the maximum number of painted mattes; in fact, we used sixty-two mattes in all on that film, and it allowed us to give the picture a much broader sweep visually than it ever could have had.  It resulted in Peter being given a life contract by Walt Disney.  I got very taken up with this matte technique, and continued to use it on later pictures, but I almost had to train new artists myself, and pass on to them the sort of tricks I thought Peter Ellenshaw relied on.  But Peter just knew how to modify reality to make it look realer than real".

It's Matterhorn Five-0 for James MacArthur.  Another splendidly painted set extension that most likely slips by unnoticed, split screened into a totally realistic exterior setpiece.

The weather turns treacherous.  Matte art and multiple fx gags.

Director Ken Annakin was apparently known in the business as 'Panicin' Annakin'.

I was chatting with Peter Ellenshaw's son, Harrison, about this movie and he said: "Your mention of THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN (original title BANNER IN THE SKY) brought back some very pleasant memories.  I was only 13 or 14 when I travelled with my mother and father to Zermatt, Switzerland to the location for THIRD MAN. I was even an extra for two shots. I recall that we combined the trip with a visit to my grandmother and her husband Walter Percy Day, OBE. You may have heard of him."

Another dizzying matte, with drifting mist and cloud layer.

The marry ups of the paintings and the live action plates are really impressive in this film, with blends quite hard, if not impossible to detect in most instances.  Soft matte demarkations would suggest original negative photography and compositing.

THIRD MAN is probably a mostly forgotten film today, though it's worthy of rediscovery and appreciation as it's a great little film.  Another couple of great little Disney flicks are KIDNAPPED and GREYFRIAR'S BOBBY made a couple years later, made before they concentrated on silly, squeaky clean and largely unimaginative matinee fodder.

Another vertigo inducing point of painted view.

Extremely convincing alpine grandeur, created on Peter Ellenshaw's matte easel.

Not somewhere I'd pitch a tent folks!

Our sort-of villain, the wonderful character actor Herbert Lom - who played far more baddies than most actors have had hot dinners - in a precarious situation.  An interesting effects shot here.  I'm wondering whether the background of mountains and valleys might have been actual location still photography, matted into the foreground artificial snow set, and blended with an expertly painted in precipice.  Whatever Peter did, it worked a treat.

This show is one of the rare Disney films that didn't rely on studio bound sodium shots to place the actors into 2nd unit footage.  Disney were gung ho on the yellow backing travelling matte system, and, come the 1960's would use it constantly - if not excessively - on the majority of their films.  I don't recall any travelling matte shots in THIRD MAN at all.

Would have looked fantastic on the big silver screen back in the day.

The final scene as the adventurers return home.  Upper half of frame is painted, with the matte line curling around just above James MacArthur and Michael Rennie's heads and down across the set.

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JOSEPH CONRAD'S DARKNESS OF THE HEART:


After the light and breezy Technicolor adventure discussed above, we move into far darker territory.  OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS (1951) was a very deliberately grim and forboding narrative indeed - just as one might expect from anything penned by Joseph Conrad (ie: LORD JIM and most notably, the underlying theme, characters & entire premise of Coppola's brilliant APOCALYPSE NOW).

I've written much about the effects work and contributions of the grandfather of British special effects, Walter Percy Day - or Poppa Day as he was well known in the industry.  For those not in the know, Pop was step-father to the aforementioned Peter Ellenshaw, and thus be came step-grandfather to the also aforementioned Harrison Ellenshaw.  Talent seemingly runs in that family.

A dynamite cast in my book, all exquisitely photographed by John Wilcox, and brilliantly directed by Carol Reed.  Percy Day never liked to be lumped as 'special effects' in film credits, and much preferred 'Process Shots' as his specialty apparently.

Some of my favourite actors feature in this show; the fabulous Trevor Howard, Ralph Richardson and Robert Morley all provided solid performances - as did the dark and mysterious native beauty, 'Kerima', who has a whole truckload of psychological issues.  Excellent, though unsettling British film, and a top shelf production all the way.

The picture was made on location for the most part - though where, I don't know - somewhere steamy and exotic.  The fictional locale is never identified in the film but looks like Malaya or Borneo to me. This is an effects shot BTW, with foreground cast and set combined with ocean and schooner via travelling matte.

Another wider view, with what must have been a vast blue screen.  I only noticed it as being a travelling matte on a BluRay viewing recently, as previous editions were strictly VHS or YouTube.

Aside from a number of blue screen composites, made at Shepperton Studios under the supervision of Wally Veevers, there is really just one special photographic effects sequence, but it is a substantial and beautifully executed, lengthy set piece that is very much worthy of inspection.  The sequence in question involves the dangerous navigation of the ship through near impassable coastal reefs and rocky outcrops, where hazards lurk at every turn.  It may not sound like much to the Marvel or X-Men VFX overload generation, but it's a remarkably adept and complex puzzle to traditionalists like me. 

There isn't a cut in the 3 minute sequence that isn't an effects shot of one sort or another.

Strikingly, each and every shot in the several minute sequence comprises a visual effects shot of one sort or other.

Try as I might, I've never been able to firmly establish how Day and Veevers managed to pull off the numerous shots.  This material is extremely impressive, and continually blows my mind as I try to deconstruct the work.  This is what 'special effects' really amounts to.

The best guess on my part is that combination set ups involving miniatures, glass paintings and actual ocean footage were somehow merged in layers...?

I'm almost given to think of a similar technical variation on Ray Harryhausen's Dynarama/Dynamation method where a miniature could be 'sandwiched' within an already pre-composited effects shot by way of split screen mattes?  Some shots suggest this.  The shots are rapidly cut, so repeat slow motion review on my part proved the best bet, but even then, left me scratching my head.

Certainly miniature rocky pinnacles and outcrops were used in some shots, and matted with actual ship footage, such as where the vessel almost comes to grief in this bit.

I'm thinking, multi-plane glass paintings with real sea?

Blue screen work probably carried out by Doug Hague or Bryan Langley, with the latter often working with Wally Veevers and an expert in travelling matte composite photography.

Likely a full tank miniature set up here.

I'd donate a kidney to see a breakdown of the elements for a shot like this.  There's far more involved here than you may think in the brief time the shot appears on screen.  Perplexingly brilliant!

Definitely a multi-plane glass shot as shown below...

Painted foreground, water actual, and separately painted background - all expertly 'moved' as the boat passes through the gap.

This was one of Pop Day's last films before retiring.  By this time Day had several painters working for him, including George Samuels, Albert Julion and Judy Jordan.  Pop's son, Thomas Day had been a cameraman for his father from as far back as the mid 1930's,  in an unpaid capacity for the most part!

Commonly, special effects cinematographer Wally Veevers had generally avoided shooting miniature boats in tanks and preferred, where possible, the option to shoot boats 'dry' and matte them into actual ocean plates, which he would do on scores of films at Shepperton.  Looking at this frame it seems apparent that the boat may be painted perhaps, with a faintly discernable matte split along the waterline. The very distant formations seem painted on one plane while the mid-ground rocks are on a second plane.  The immediate foreground rocks appear part genuine (for the water splashes) and part painted as a top up.  All up, a superb puzzle of trick photography, supremely done.

Again, a matte line split is visible, with what may be a painted profile of the ship animated frame by frame amidst several levels of painted scenery and real water.  Great stuff!

Percy Day had for many years worked out of his own home and then at the giant Denham Studios, in conjunction with J.Arthur Rank.  In 1946 he joined Sir Alexander Korda's London Films, based at Shepperton Studios, establishing a fully functional and well equipped matte and process department where he remained until retiring in 1954 at the age of 75. 

The footage is so well shot and combined for 1951, it's hard to detect anything might be amiss.

Most likely a large outdoor tank shot, with painted profile cutout for the background.

Split screen matte shot with model ship combined with foreground stage set, merged with matte art.

In her biography of her grandfather, Susan Day reported:  "Percy officially retired from Shepperton in 1954 but continued to serve the British film industry in an advisory capacity.  The BBC asked him to give a series of talks on special effects, and even proposed the services of a chauffeur driven car, but in his usual ornery way, Grandad turned the proposition down flat.  He was determined to devote his declining years - he was by this time seventy five - to his one consuming passion.  He enrolled for a refresher course at Canterbury College of Art, and had the gratification of having the remarkable self portrait - which I now own - hung on the line at The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1954.  He told a journalist who interviewed him that painting gave him more satisfaction than working for the film industry, because it's more creative."

A fascinating letter, sent to Percy by Sir Alexander Korda in 1951, congratulating him on the trick work in OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS as well as inviting Day to prepare for a planned, though unproduced, ballet picture of Sleeping Beauty.  (Letter courtesy of Susan Day)


'Kerima' - a woman of few words, or bat-shit mad harpie?  You decide.  Great film!

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MGM'S LAVISH PERIOD BIO-PIC:


In customary glossy style, MADAME CURIE (1943) told the story of the discovery of radium, with the always reliable Greer Garson in the title role as the Polish-French physicist.  Wonderful production standards, as you would expect from MGM.  Male lead, Walter Pidgeon had always been a tad wooden for my tastes (though one of his final films, HARRY IN YOUR POCKET made in the mid seventies with James Coburn was really good!)


The true story takes place in Paris in the 1890's, with a number of scenes fleshed out with matte art from the Newcombe department at MGM.

The World famous Sorbonne Institute in Paris, 1890 as realised in pastel and gouache.

MGM had some of the finest matte artists in Hollywood, many of whom came from a technical illustration background.  Warren Newcombe was the longtime 'chief' of the department, and by all accounts I've heard and read was a most eccentric man to put it lightly.

As well as having utmost control and say over his stable of artists, Newcombe settled for nothing less than the highest standards when it came to the integrity of the finished shot, with expertly blended mattes that made detection of just where the matte join might be next to impossible.  Chief matte effects cinematographer was longtime associate Mark Davis who really pulled off some miracle composites.

As I've described in earlier blogs, the favoured method for rendering matte art at MGM for decades was with very fine pastels and gouache, applied onto artists card with astonishing results.

Cedric Gibbons was longtime head of the art department at MGM, and this stunningly composed matte painted shot is a testament to the romanticism of the golden era, which that studio reigned supreme. Best shot in the film.

A great many matte artists came and went in all of the Hollywood studios during the war years when this film was made.

Some of the artists around at the time were Howard Fisher - one of the original guys, and Henry Hillinck, George Coblentz, Henry Peter McDermott, Otto Kiechle and Jack Robson.

Almost all painted here.

I'm pretty sure this is a major set extension too, with the trademark 'doubled in' tree as an actual film element to add life.

A wonderfully detailed interior matte, with much credit to the artist.

This shot is interesting, not only for the superb draftsmanship and painting, but noteworthy for the crowd replication.  The two balconies have the exact same live action plate matted in if you watch closely, though timed a little independently so that when one balcony rises to clap and cheer, the second does so just a second or two later.  I'm also curious about the crowd below the balcony seating, which may be a split screen to multiply the number of extras?

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RATTLING SABRES, EASTERN ADVENTURE AND A HAREM HONEY:

 

While not an especially memorable movie, Terence Young's ZARAK (1956) was an okay time filler on a wet Saturday afternoon.  Star Victor Mature was always an underrated actor in my book, and did some solid work over his career (was an absolute hoot playing himself to the hilt in The Monkees freakin' insane film HEAD in 1968).  As for the feminine love interest... well more about Anita Ekberg later  ;)

Grand CinemaScope title cards and thumping score.

Special Photographic Effects were overseen by an uncredited Tom Howard at the MGM-UK studios, though the picture was a Columbia release.  Tom was a specialist in optical cinematography, having begun his very long career in the early 1930's with Ned Mann on the sci-fi classic THINGS TO COME, and later on providing the blue screen composites for THIEF OF BAGDAD right on through to designing and constructing the state of the art reflex front projection rig for Stanley Kubrick's monumental 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in 1968.  Tom recieved a pair of Oscars for his effects work, one for TOM THUMB and the other, inexplicably, for BLITHE SPIRIT - a film pretty much devoid of visual effects, that even it's director, David Lean, was left mystified as to quite why that award was given, as he mentioned in the wonderful memoir of his life and career by Kevin Brownlow.


Anita Ekberg is the seductress in ZARAK, though not so you'd really notice.

I've no idea who painted the mattes here.  It's always been a bit of a mystery with regard to the Tom Howard department, though I do know that Judy Jordan - a former assistant to Percy Day at Shepperton - left to join Howard over at MGM-Boreham Wood around 1954, so it's possible she painted on this show.

Our femme fatale, Miss Anita Ekberg, was box office gold, with studio publicity departments building entire movie campaigns around her charms, whatever the role or film. I feel utterly compelled by forces beyond my control to single out Anita in today's illustrious blog, as I also quite equally would have had Dorothy Lamour been available!

The mattes are variable, but work reasonably well.

Did I mention that Anita Ekberg is in this movie?

Matte painted Peshawar, in what was India at the time the story takes place.

Ms Ekberg was a former Miss Sweden!  For this flick she's Miss Colonial era India, 1850.

The classic old school fortress atop the hill matte shot, with far more painted here than you might think.

Seen in a second closer cut.  Very nice sky.

She reportedly once shot a paparazzi with a bow and arrow!  Fact.

No actual credit for Tom Howard, though physical effects men Cliff Richardson and Jack Erickson both got screen credit, oddly.

She does quite a lot of seductive dancing, gyrating, writhing and pouting of the lips in this film - often all at the same time!  Worth the price of admission alone.

In successive cuts during this extended raid sequence, the matte itself 'shifts' jarringly, though only when viewing individual frames end to end is it evident.  See that in a lot of films, and a useful way to find where the matte join is.

True fact:  Anita's first husband was very, very jealous - for the life of me I can't imagine why - and was known to violently assault anybody who so much as glanced at his wife!    


The walled city goes up in flames.  Virtually all matte art here - with added smoke and matte stand fire gags.  The only live action portion is the bit of grass with Victor Mature riding away.  All else, including the foreground rocks are matte art.


'The Dance of the 7 Veils', or something along those lines.  Maybe it was six veils... or no veils at all?  Hell, it's been a long week here!

Oh, and there are some scenes and matte painted shots that don't involve Anita, though in hindsight, they probably should have!

There's no easy escape from this gal.
Victor Mature is also in ZARAK.... well, he's the star actually so I suppose I should give Vic some breathing room here.  An undervalued actor actually, and did some great films.  

Nothing whatsoever to do with the art of special effects, ... yeah, yeah, I know... but seriously folks, whatcha gonna do?          Anita ... we loved 'ya baby!

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THE LOST MATTES OF RUSSELL LAWSON

As mentioned in my introduction I had intended to showcase the contents of the old 35mm showreels containing many before and afters by career Universal matte artist Russ Lawson and effects cinematographer Roswell Hoffman.  Both Lawson and Hoffman had a mammoth career at the one studio, as readers of my blogs will know, dating from the early 1930's.  Lawson retired in 1961, while Hoffman did so in 1975.  I'll dedicate the next issue to these wonderful finds, though I can't resist a small sampler.  A very big thank you to Tom Higginson for sending the complete showreels to me.

Presumably a tank on the Universal backlot, this partial riverboat set has been extensively altered, extended and brought to life by artist Russell Lawson, with smoke elements added in a subsequent pass by Ross Hoffman.

The name of the original production is a bit of a mystery, though I can confirm this same shot was later 'borrowed/stolen/purchased' by 20th Century Fox, with photographic effects man L.B Abbott using it in the John Wayne picture THE COMANCHEROS (1961).  The original 'flat' Academy aperture ratio matte comp was transferred to 2.35:1 CinemaScope on James B. Gordon's optical printer at Fox, and presented as a tilt down scan to accomodate the wide screen ratio.  I'd always assumed it to be an Emil Kosa jnr matte, but now having viewed the Lawson reels in full, it's quite clear the shot was made years earlier at Universal.

***This post, and all 172 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

Hah!  Just when you thought I'd gotten Anita outta my system ... Well, she was rather memorable in Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA (1960), as pictured here.  AlrightNo more Anita Ekberg!


Well folks... that's about it till next 'issue'.  I do hope you enjoyed the ride.  I need a drink!

Catch you again next journey...

Take care,

NZ Pete



THE LOST MATTES OF RUSSELL LAWSON

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Hi there fellow enthusiasts of that marvellous, magical and utterly beguiling lost artform of traditional matte painting and old school trick photography.  It's that time once again for NZ Pete to unwrap another parcel of ingenious and often amazing hand painted motion picture processes from the photo-chemical era, or as my friend Mark Wolf would say, "B.C - before computers".

In this, the final article for 2021 (and maybe for good given the state of the world as it stands at present) I want to delve into an exciting treasure chest of never before seen goodies that I'm quite confident will enthrall many of my regular readers, and most likely a few irregular readers as well(!)

The bulk of today's blog post covers the lost 35mm sample reels of old Russ Lawson matte shots that had been hidden away in storage since the late 1950's.  There are some fantastic before and after shots in this exceedingly rare collection of Universal Studios oldies, which for this fan, is pure heaven.

In addition to the old Lawson showreels, I've also including a few other gems as well, such as a look at the consumate visual effects professionalism that was matte artist Geoffrey Dickinson - an integral part of the small yet much loved British movie studio, Ealing.  As if that weren't enough, I've also recovered another 'lost' matte shot, this being an Albert Whitlock shot that wasn't used in SHIP OF FOOLS.  Finally, I've come across a pair of interesting before and after mattes also painted at Universal for the first George Lucas EWOK telemovie that just happened to be tacked onto the end of one of the aforementioned sample reels.

Oh, and in closing...  As you know I received a crate load of wonderful original mattes recently.  I'm told that another of my fellow New Zealand countrymen also ordered a sizeable shipment, though just who, I don't know.  If you happen to be a reader of Matte Shot, I'd love to know what marvellous paintings you acquired.  My guess would be a certain film maker of those grand Tolkien epics, who has a massive private museum of Hollywood props, artwork, vfx artifacts and so on.

So, with that.... let us board the bus and start the journey...........

Enjoy

NZ Pete

***This post, and all 173 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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NZ PETE'S RANDOM MATTE FROM THE ARCHIVE:

 

This spectacular matte shot was rendered by British matte artist Geoffrey Dickinson for the gritty crime drama POOL OF LONDON (1950). The sequence shown here was a complicated assembly in more ways than one.

Geoffrey Dickinson was Ealing's photographic effects supervisor for a number of years, usually screen credited as 'Special Processes'.  Dickinson was the resident matte painter on many films produced by the studio from the mid 1940's through to his final picture the year he died in 1955.  The studio was famous - not just for being the oldest continually operational film studio in the world - but for the catalogue of timeless British classics that were enormously popular with, not only the English audiences at home, but throughout the Commonwealth countries, and, presumably to a limited extent, in America.  Films such as KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, WHISKEY GALORE, THE LAVENDER HILL MOB, SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC and the excellent THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP are all classics and are as sought after today as they were when first released.  Dickinson was, and pretty much remains to this day, one of those creative enigma's of the UK film industry, as were so many ingenious visual effects craftsmen, who received very little by way of a mention.  Geoffrey did however get on screen credit for many films during his years with Ealing, and for that at least we should be thankful.

The dizzying 'leap of faith' shot from POOL OF LONDON, with Dickinson's elaborate matte painting combined with a partial live action plate, and all of this serving the basis for a brilliantly executed travelling matte described in an interesting article about the Ealing effects department in Brit. Kine at the time as the 'split-beam process', where the backing is illuminated with blue light and the foreground actors with yellow light, in much the same way as the old Dunning Process.  The two films are exposed in the beam splitter camera with the yellow lit foreground on panchromatic film and the blue lit backing on special blue-sensitive film.  The latter produces a sillhouette of the foreground image, with the films combined in the optical printer.  The benefits of this process being a complete lack of fringing around the final matte.

Dickinson (centre) and his vfx camera crew are shown here setting up a foreground glass shot for the classic Alec Guiness film THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (1951) - a very dark satire indeed.  Geoffrey also served as scenic artist on several films, so I'm assuming he came from that long line of British backing painters who, over time, merged into specialised matte and glass shot work.



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RESCUED FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR:

A few months back I did an extensive article on the vfx for the Stanley Kramer film SHIP OF FOOLS (1965), and illustrated for the first time, the original Albert Whitlock mattes - painted in colour as in fact they were for what was a black & white film.  One particular matte painting stood apart, as I could never find a matching scene in the film to correspond it with.  The mystery is now solved, as the matte was indeed composited and finished, though evidentally fell victim to the editor's scissors.  I'm happy to report that glorious deleted shot, though unused, can now be seen and appreciated.


One of a number of spectacular paintings created by Al Whitlock for SHIP OF FOOLS, though not seen by audiences.

The glorious final composite recently uncovered on Al's old sample reels.  For those unaware, ALL of the shots of the ship at sea in that film were entirely fabricated by Whitlock as matte art at Universal.  Only the very near ocean here is real, with the distant sea, ship, sky etc all painted on glass.  Additionally, the clouds drift slowly in layers and smoke rises from the stacks.  As per Al's non-negotiable preferred method, all done on original negative for maximum resolution and quality.

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THE LOST MATTES OF RUSSELL LAWSON:

I was thrilled beyond belief to receive the digitally transferred masters of the remaining 35mm sample reels of a broad selection of Russ Lawson's mattes that to my surprise had been stored in the temperature and humidty controlled vault that the late Bill Taylor had carefully conserved thousands of vfx elements such as all of the old Albert Whitlock showreels dating back to the early sixties, as well as the later Illusion Arts paintings, photographs, preparatory sketches and other material.  I am greatly indebted to my friend Tom Higginson for kindly sharing these incredibly rare original before and after mattes with me, and most importantly, in their original 'movie' format, as they were intended to be seen. 


Universal of the 30's, 40's and 50's - flat, scope, monochrome and Technicolor.  The logo always revved me up as a kid, watching Saturday matinee's at my local revival picture theatres, with shows like THIS ISLAND EARTH blowing my young mind.

It was common industry practice for a number of decades for mattes to be a high, almost secretive specialty trade, with some of the practitioners themselves seen as part of the branding exercise as shown here as a 'Lawson Matte Shot'.  

Universal had a pretty inventive photographic effects department since it began back in the early silent era.  Among the heads of department for the VFX side were Phil Whitman in the early and mid 1920's; Frank Booth took over from Phil from the late twenties; George Teague did a very brief stint as well as chief but didn't last long; the legendary John P. Fulton was in charge from the early thirties through to the mid to late forties; John's long time assistant David S. Horsley managed the department from the late forties until the mid fifties, whereby Clifford Stine was given the headship for around five years.
  


On the matte painting side of things, the pioneering Norman Dawn - pretty much regarded by most in the business as the inventor of the motion picture matte shot - was Universal's matte expert in the very early days and conjured up many amazing shots and tricks.  British born artist Conrad Tritschler, I believe, was engaged for a time painting mattes (most likely for the original Bela Lugosi DRACULA and others), and somewhere in the early part of the thirties both Jack Cosgrove and Russell Lawson teamed up as resident in-house matte painters.  Jack departed in the mid thirties for David Selznick's up and coming studio and never looked back. A few years later future Production Designer John DeCuir came on board as a young apprentice in Lawson's department and painted many mattes with Russ, off and on, between 1939 and 1946.  DeCuir's son told me some great stories about his father working for Lawson:  "As the story goes Russ took John under his wing. Russ managed up John's skills from illustrator into matte artist. John told me his first assignment from Russ I recall he said his first day at work, Russ came in and dropped a huge rock on his desk - dirt, shit and leaves flying in all directions and said "paint this", when I can't tell if it's a photograph or not we will go on to painting clouds, and then Russ went up on the roof to take his lunch time-nap. After rocks Russ told him to paint the clouds outside his window. He was about to quit when he got his first real glass matte to paint.  As Russ's roof top naps got longer, Dad found himself running the department and would have stayed there except he went into the Navy (WW2) about 1941-44. - After the war he came back to Universal as an art department illustrator and he rest was/is history."  

A classic golden era Universal matte shot from the Bela Lugosi DRACULA (1931), may be one of Lawson's but most likely executed by British artist Conrad Tritschler, with Frank Booth as head of special effects at the time.

As is well known, the Universal matte department would eventually pass from Russell to Albert Whitlock around 1962 or so.  What isn't well known is the fact that both Russ and Albert worked together for a time.  Al's long time friend and associate, Syd Dutton, kindly shared some history of the events, as told to him by Albert.  "Albert and Russ did work together briefly, but I don’t know if it was on Taras Bulba, but the time line suggests it could have been. I’ll watch the film and give you my impression if there were two hands working on the matte shots."
"Al told me that he had struck a deal with Universal, but under the condition he wasn’t supervised. Russ started to critique a painting of Al’s and Al shot back that Russ wasn’t his supervisor. Russ, so the story went, said “We’ll see about that!” and stormed off. After seeing the powers that be, he returned and said that Al was correct. It must have been a frosty relationship."
"Al said that not long after, the owner of a bar across the street from Universal died and left the establishment to Russ, who was his best patron and friend. Russ came into the painting studio with his new found wealth and said to Al, “It’s all yours!”…..and that was that."

Finally, I've never been able to track down any photo's of Lawson, unfortunately.  John DeCuir's son told me recently he still has a large storage box of old Universal matte department memorabilia from the 1940's, including before and after 35mm frames - many being of the various Arabian Nights genre pictures - and photographs of matte paintings.  I had hoped to see some of this wonderful material to flesh out this blog piece, but sadly, nothing came of it.

So then, here are the lost mattes from the old sample reels.  Some are pretty ordinary, some are really good, and a few are jaw dropping.  I do hope you enjoy them.


As mentioned, I was only able to identify about half (if that) of these films, though this shot I do know.

From the comedy film KATIE DID IT (1951).  A very nice shot with some interesting perspective allowances.  Note the real tree in the foreground added as a separate bi-pack element to lift the shot out of it's static look.  Universal did that occasionally, as did Warners, though MGM under Newcombe were gung ho with dropping in such 'actual' elements over the paintings.

A partial composite with a location airstrip matted with a separate live action element of air traffic staffers at top right.

The beautiful finished multi-part composite with Lawson's stunning sky, soft matted in as well as an airstrip filled with fighter planes.  Sadly, I have no clue as to the film here, and I've seen hundreds of old war pictures (love 'em).  Anybody recognise this?  Probably from the late 1940's.

Just the full and final composite here, and again, a mystery as to title.

This film I do know.  It's the Errol Flynn melodrama ISTANBUL (1956).  This frame is from the original unmatted live action shoot, with this set eventually being transformed into not one, but two different matte shots...

The first of the two mattes, with a fine rendering of the port and city of Istanbul, with the famed Blue Mosque in the distance.  I visited this city in 2008 and enjoyed it.

The same setting as seen later after a bomb goes off, with a revised Lawson matte painting.  I've only ever seen this film on YouTube in an awful 'pan & scan' full frame edition, likely recorded off tv, so most of the matte was cropped off badly. Note, this CinemaScope film was in Technicolor but the ravages of time have been extremely unkind to the film stock.  I have tried to make it easier to view as it was 'pure magenta'.  

Another mystery film.  Take note of just how much of the live action plate will need to be replaced with Lawson's artwork, as evidence below will demonstrate.

The final shot from what appears to be a late 1940's or early 50's war film, of unknown title.


I made a blow up of the mid portion so as to demonstrate all of the invisible 'filling in' that Russ rendered to the military camp, no doubt as a buget saver.  This sort of trick work really sums up 'special effects' for me.  As Albert Whitlock often stated: "the true special effect is the one that nobody ever notices"  Truer words were never spoken.

Live action Technicolor plate from an unknown production.

Finished matte comp which appears to have an apparent English setting.

Very small area of live action to be greatly expanded...

Again, the production is a mystery.  Something set in tropical climes on a plantation?  The perspective draftsmanship is a bit off, with the fountain at left all out of kilter, though I'm sure nobody ever notices these things.

A plate for a quite expansive matte as seen below...

A great shot, and possibly a deleted shot from a rather good little thriller called PHANTOM LADY
 (1944) directed by Robert Siodmak, which had other similar mattes involving railway settings and lookalike actress.  *Noteworthy as a taut film to watch actually, as it crossed the censorship boundary of the time with the wonderful character actor Elisha Cook jnr (no relation) portraying one of the screen's most perversely creepy, deviants ever - positively oozing with sleaze, which may have had audiences choking in their popcorn back in the day!  Ya' heard it here first!!  ;)

Now, this one was interesting.  At first I thought I knew it, but was misguided...

It had the look and design of a very similar matte in Alfred Hitchcock's excellent SABOTEUR (1941), though the clapper board info suggested otherwise.  Different director and cinematographer chalked on, unless of course it was shot as a second unit?  Hmmmmm?

The completed shot.  Sure looks like the same cabin and forest from the Hitchcock film as shown from a closer angle?

Live action element from another unidentified Universal film...

I've attempted to research this based upon the director chalked onto the slate and the date, but to no avail.

The final composite - one of a pair on the sample reel from the same film.

A second view from the same unknown production demonstrates a partially assembled, multi-element shot...

"Action...."

Final result.  Noteworthy as it surprises me how Russell would run his matte lines through sky and along edges of clouds, which to me seems very bold.

This show I recogised.  This unmatted plate was for the Rock Hudson war film BATTLE HYMN (1957)

matted plate

Composited but not yet complete ...

For the eventual release prints the BATTLE HYMN matte shot was flopped optically.  This BluRay grab shows how much was lost from the badly faded old 35mm footage.


Sorry folks.... this one's another mystery.

A Technicolor period film, looks like it's set in New York, yet shot at Universal.  Any takers?

Just when you thought I didn't know any titles, well this one I picked easily.

The live action train (possibly a miniature?) has been matted into an extensive painted setting here for the Joel McCrea western CATTLE DRIVE (1951).

Live action component that would be invisibly integrated into matted scenery...

Plate masked off for matte.  Note the portions of actual sky left visible.

I think I've seen this film but probably never picked the shot as being a matte.  Can't place the title, but the blending is very well done.

Another unknown show, but possibly the same period film that at least three of the Lawson shots in this blog tribute originated from.

Live action at Universal...

Invisible blend bringing the painted together with the set.  Film unknown but vaguely familiar?

Before you give up all hope folks, this one I can confirm!  It's EAST OF SUMATRA (1953), and a fairly entertaining adventure it was.

The superb composite which involved not just the live action foreground and painted city of Singapore, but a separate painted sky moving across slowly.  Lawson had a peculiar habit around this time of deliberately shooting the painted sky element 'out of focus', presumably to attempt to soften the clouds.  It never worked and always looked artificial to me.

Singapore was very, very dodgy in those days, with many a treacherous cut-throat and countless ladies of questionable morals at every street corner.... or so I'm told ;)


Not sure, but this pre-matted plate probably from EAST OF SUMATRA as well.  I've seen it, but may have missed this shot, or fallen asleep, or not taken it as a trick shot, as YouTube is the worst possible venue to see old films, quality wise, so I avoid in general.

Interesting how some of the original, long tucked away colour 35mm reels look perfect, while others look shite.  Some 40 odd years ago I worked in film distribution here in New Zealand, with vast back catalogue product in 16mm, 35mm and even some in 70mm.  As I recall, release prints from various eras had notable differences.  The old genuine dye-transfer process used by Technicolor (I think called imbibition) produced beautiful, rich colour, impervious to fade and very difficult even to scratch via frequent projection and rewinds.  Those old prints from the 40's onward still looked great in the early 80's when I was there, though shrinkage could be a problem, resulting in film perforations sometimes slightly out of whack during projection.  Technicolor labs phased this practice out, maybe in the mid 70's.  Later release print technology however, moved away from this tried and true quality, with Eastmancolor type chemistry and printing nowhere near that of imbibition for lasting the distance. Different base film stocks for prints also played a part, with Estar, Acetate and the dire Nitrate being especially unforgiving! 

Yes, I know this one too.... Three cheers for NZ Pete!

Universal cornered the movie market when it came to colourful desert adventures, that usually sat on the lower half of the double bill.  This grand shot is a real beauty from THE GOLDEN HORDE (1951). 

Very dark, but this live action plate is of a small walled culvert from what will be an Arabian palace.

Extremely dark (and I've lightened it up as far as I dare) final shot from the laughable Tony Curtis sword & sandal desert flick THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF (1951).


Easier to see here, with an alternate shot from the DVD.

A standing set on the Universal lot that was used in many a production over the years.  This set up is for the pirate adventure YANKEE BUCCANEER (1952), where a great deal of alteration will be carried out courtesy of matte painter Russ Lawson and fx cinematographer Roswell Hoffman.

Hardly any part of that standing set will be retained...

When all is said and done, the small amount of backlot facade has been extensively augmented by Lawson, including one of those deliberately 'out of focus' cloudscapes drifting across.  An additional live ocean front and rocky foreshore plate has been shot and matted in by Hoffman to complete the illusion.  The painted blend between the set and the ocean is really good.

As it looks on BluRay, with all expertly assembled, except that damned 'blurry' sky, which kind of kills the whole affair!

Also from YANKEE BUCCANEER is this live unmatted plate which will eventually expand the horizons of this swashbuckling fodder.

Ross Hoffman's carefully positioned matte.

From Hollywood to Jamaica.  Seeing is believing.


YANKEE BUCCANEER as it looks remastered in all it's vivid Technicolor glory.  


A snuck this one into the previous blog post as a teaser...

This standing riverboat set appeared in tons of Universal movies, though this particular one I don't know.

A most grand and expanive vista indeed.  I thought it could have been from the Yvonne de Carlo film RIVER LADY (1948), but cannot be sure??


As I mentioned in the previous blog, this mighty shot, oddly, did appear in the John Wayne picture THE COMANCHERO'S (1961), which was a 20th Century Fox flick, and was 'optically scanned' as a tilt down camera move for CinemaScope to boot!  I had always assumed it to be an Emil Kosa jnr matte shot for years, having seen that 1961 film, but obviously it pre-dates the Fox show.  It seems that Fox's Bill Abbott, who ran their fx shop, lifted/begged/borrowed/stole/acquired this shot from Universal - not at all unusual as fx shots from questionable origins often appear in other studio's films.  George Pal was notoriously cheap when it came to this, with scores of 'his' key fx shots in his films being lifted wholesale out of other, older films... and even winning an Oscar at one point!  Though I digress....

Now folks..... this one's a doozy, in every sense of the terminology.  I had to play this reel a number of times just to take it all in.  I will explain as we go along, so pay attention, as I will be asking questions later...  The film is another Universal 'B' picture, of some economy, but not without it's merits - this shot being one of them.  The film is DESERT LEGION (1953) with Alan Ladd.  The plate shown here formed the basis of a vast and extravagant matte composite, which you will see shortly.  Matte cameraman Ross Hoffman shot this on location with the full intention of isolating specific elements only to use later, as you shall see...

DESERT LEGION: A separate plate was made of distant horses (I think)...

DESERT LEGION:  Another plate added, with other live action horses or riders...

DESERT LEGION:  Added to the jigsaw puzzle is a plate of white water rapids...

DESERT LEGION:  Further additions by Hoffman include another plate of some different rapids...

DESERT LEGION:  Additionally, Ross has shot and dropped in a river flowing into the distance.  **Note:  Pete will be very bloody annoyed at any reader viewing this all on some fucken cellphone sized piece of crap!  :(

DESERT LEGION:  ...and it just keeps getting more complicated.  Now Ross has combined footage taken from that very first full frame of live action, with the waterfall element isolated as well as a portion of the foreground brush with the riders on horseback as well.  "Are you following me? ... Well quit following me or I'll have you arrested" (**the great philosopher, Groucho Marx)

DESERT LEGION:  Okay, so now let's see... rapids, white water swirling, river, distant fields with horses, more horses, waterfall, foreground people, a partridge in a pear tree - and, oh yes, the first of two painted mattes by Russ Lawson!  All individual pieces of film... and we're still not done!

DESERT LEGION:  The magnificent finished visual effect jigsaw puzzle, all seemlessly assembled on Ross Hoffman's optical printer.  Incredibly smooth collage of numerous pieces of film.  Bravo!


I made a close up of the Russ' artwork.

That old riverboat set again, though just what film this plate is intended for, I dunno?  The final shown below is quite cleverly done.

Composite, in Technicolor, though not so as you'd notice it!

Same movie, night view.

Another doozy of a matte, that I guarantee nobody would ever detect in the final version...  This full frame plate (in colour...apparently) was made in the desert (apparently).  See below...

For the same unknown western, a second plate was shot of a typical cowboy town set...

Town set masked off by Ross Hoffman for some rather skillful trickery...

Here is where the fun begins.  Hoffman has matted the desert footage into the town footage, though with specific portions remaining, which will be blended in by Russ.

The finished effect, not so as you'd ever expect it to be a trick shot.  The two plates have been expertly blended with subtle matte painting to tie it all as one authentic western setting!  Brilliant, though I wish I knew the film?  I'd most likely never even spot the 'trick' anyhow!  Bravo!

A blow up of the unpainted area.

Subtle matte art pulls the illusion together flawlessly.


Also included on Lawson's reels was this avalanche sequence from the James Stewart western THE FAR COUNTRY (1955), with Clifford Stine as visual effects chief.  

The sequence was basically a split screen affair, with miniature mountain matted onto live action.  I'm guessing Russell may have painted on the shot to blend the two together, with the rocky outcrops at left and extreme right appearing to be added in later.
Curiously, the tumbling boulders all seemed to have precisely 'drilled' holes visible as they crash toward the people, making me assume the miniature rocks were pinned in place somehow and released on cue.

As seen on the DVD, with proper colour!


Live action set up for yet another mystery Universal film.  The building was a regular standing set on the studio backlot, and was seen in countless pictures and tv shows over the years, more often than not as part of a matte shot of one sort or other.



Live action limited to a small piece of wall and driveway prior to addition of painting.

Transformed into the Green Island Casino for mystery film.  Cameraman Ross Hoffman has added an additional water plate as well as a blinking neon sign and smoke rising from the chimney.

I'm most curious about this scene, and would like to know just what the film is?

Minimal live action added to Lawson's sweeping, period European setting.

I knew this one as soon as I saw this 'before' plate... It's from Douglas Sirk's emotionally shrill menage-a-trois WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956).

Ross filmed the original plate full frame Academy ratio and then had it optically reduced and repositioned to fit the matte painting.

Lawson's painting perfectly married into Hoffman's live action plate.


The shot as it appeared in the Technicolor release prints.

WRITTEN ON THE WIND starts off with this night time view of The Hadley Oil Company HQ, with blinking animated signage above.


Unmatted live set for another Douglas Sirk picture, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955).

Matte painted landscape and added architectural features.


The scene as it appears in the film, with Rock Hudson in foreground.

A variation as a night sequence.


Much optical work was needed for a seemingly straight forward scene in CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (1944), with this small soundstage set to be extended somewhat.

The orchestra is isolated initially.

A group of extras were photographed in the left side...

...and the same extras repositioned in the middle...

...and subsequently moved to the extreme right...

With the crowded auditorium assembled optically, Lawson was then required to paint in the balcony seats and patrons at extreme right, as well as architectural additions to the stage and proscenium.

I've lightened this final CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY frame for clearer viewing.

Partial set on a sound stage for an evening matte.

Painting combined from an unidentified Universal picture, illustrated earlier in a daytime shot.

Painted set extension using that familiar backlot homestead, as seen here in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956).



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ADDITIONAL LAWSON MATTE SHOTS FROM PETE'S ARCHIVE:

What follows are a sizeable selection of some of the other matte shots carried out by Russell throughout his very long career at Universal.  As one would expect, there are a number of memorable mattes from the numerous science fiction and horror pictures that served as Universal's profitable bread and butter throughout the decades, beginning in the early 1930's through to the late fifties.  As mentioned, Russ teamed up with the legendary Jack Cosgrove in the early few years at Universal and for a time at Columbia as well as a couple of so-called Poverty Row establishments in Hollywood.  After a couple of years Cosgrove moved to Selznick International, where he and cameraman Clarence Slifer set up the much acclaimed matte and photographic effects department.  Russ would remain at Universal for the remainder of his career, working closely with studio effects cinematographer Roswell Hoffman.  The only actual screen credit Russell would gain was for the big budget TARAS BULBA shortly before his retirement.

In an email I received from the son of John DeCuir, who as mentioned, worked with Russ for several years, he stated:  "We too are digging through the archives and recently came up with a wonderful collection of 35mm bi-pack camera test strips from those Russ Lawson Universal days (mattes dad was painting for Russ). The film strips are short only three to six frames. They seem to be in pretty good shape - the subject matter was mostly Arabian Nights but more detective work is required to ID the actual film(s). I am sure you would be able to help there. When time permits I will get the strips scanned and we can share the detective work. We also have some B&W prints of the half-black half-painted glasses."

I'm hopeful that these will become available at some point and shared on a future blog.


'Lights, camera, action'

A spectacular Arabian city - somewhat of a specialty for Lawson, along with gothic castles - from the movie THE GOLDEN BLADE (1953).  Not unusually, this shot cropped up an other similar films of that ilk.

I love old time horror pictures, and old time matte shots as well.  It's the romanticism of the artform from back then that appeals to me greatly.  This 1932 version is one of numerous.

An arctic CinemaScope matte from THE PERFECT FURLOUGH (1958)

Both Russ and fellow artist Jack Cosgrove worked on THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935).

An exceptional matte for BENGAL BRIGADE (1954).

A rare non-Universal Lawson assignment was the ambitious disaster-end of the world show DELUGE (1933) - a film that was quite bold for it's time, both with gung-ho effects sequences, but also with staggering pre-code sexual assault sub plot.



A low key Universal-International western, CAVE OF OUTLAWS (1951), had a couple of interesting mattes.

Also from CAVE OF OUTLAWS was this excellent Lawson shot.

From the very funny Abbott & Costello film WHO DONE IT? (1942)

Another great shot from WHO DONE IT?.  Russ' assistant, John DeCuir also worked on this film so he may have painted these?



Science fiction was a real money maker for Universal, with those shows churned out by the dozen.  THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955) was way above average for the genre, and provided many exciting visuals and classic matte shots.

I'm pretty sure that's David Stanley Horsley manning the camera for THIS ISLAND EARTH.  interestingly, the studio sacked Horsley halfway through the filming due to supposed cost over runs and internal politics, resulting is production cinematographer Cliff Stine taking over, not just the rest of the unfinished fx shots, but also the Universal photographic effects department!  Not to worry, as Stine had a long 'previous life' as an effects cameraman at RKO and worked on things like KING KONG and many others.

Iconic imagery from THIS ISLAND EARTH, courtesy of Russ Lawson.


Also from THIS ISLAND EARTH.  Great movie but ends too abruptly.



Two of the several mattes from the highly absorbing war film THE IMPOSTER (1944).  At right is production designer Eugene Lourie's concept sketch for Lawson's matte shot.  Lourie would himself become an established effects man later on, with a special talent for miniatures on many a show such as BATTLE OF THE BULGE and KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA.

Exotic locales Russ painted for THE FLAME OF ARABY (1951).

Stately architecture and set extensions for the original SHOWBOAT (1936)

From the Rock Hudson Korean war flick, BATTLE HYMN (1957)

I can't be certain whether Russ was already at Universal then but here is a shot - most likely a foreground glass shot - from the original 1931 James Whale FRANKENSTEIN.  The painted ceiling has been added in, which was common practice for practical purposes.

Painted factories from ALL MY SONS (1948)

Another James Whale flick, GREEN HELL (1940).  My late father often described this jungle adventure to me, as his mother - my grandmother - who was very, very religious, absolutely forbade my dad from going to see a film with "Hell" in the title, as it would surely lead to damnation and an eternity of fire and brimstone up the whazoo!  My dad, being the fellow he was, went anyway!  Miss ya' dad!

Speaking of 'religion', this one's called BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY (1953) and starred the one actor who possibly appeared in more Lawson-matte shot pictures than anyone else under Uni contract... one Rock Hudson.

One of my favourite golden era matte shots was this one from the Lon Chaney classic, THE WOLFMAN (1941).  Not sure why, but it's always grabbed NZ Pete.

Two more from THE WOLFMAN.  The matte at left was a multi-plane gag, with the mansion, midground and tree all painted on separate glasses, to give a perspective shift as seen from a motorcar driving past.

Two interesting frames that Russ worked on with his cameraman Ross Hoffman from the film CHIEF CRAZY HORSE (1954).  The setting was designed to slowly dissolve from one time period to another, with much of each period painted in, such as the river, prarie, distant homestead and most of the Indian tents.

Bizzarre, post-modernist design at play here with the mattes Russ did for SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939).


A pair of the numerous Technicolor mattes from the Gregory Peck saga THE WORLD IN HIS ARMS (1952).  Very nice work here.

From the rather good (and I think true story) THE GREAT IMPOSTER (1961) starring Tony Curtis.  Poor perspective work though.

Universal-International must have made a hundred pirate shows too.  Most of them forgettable, but many with effects shots, such as this one, THE PIRATES OF MONTEREY (1947) featuring the rather delectable Maria Montez, who while no Anita Ekberg, managed to make an impression...of sorts.

That same, familiar Uni backlot homestead is used yet again, this time for the not too bad Orson Welles drama MAN IN THE SHADOW (1957).  I got these from a cropped tv print whereby the only time you get to see the full Scope matte shot was during the uncropped titles.

Scores of mattes feature in SUDAN (1945).  Lawson's off-sider, John DeCuir definitely painted some of the many shots, so a few of these might have been his.

Another iconic monster movie matte shot, with this being from THE HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)

The always reliable and competent Jeff Chandler made a ton of westerns and war films for Universal.  This one was RIDE A CROOKED TRAIL (1958), with some creative and clever painting going on here.

I'm a big fan of old comedy teams like Abbott & Costello - though this one was not one of their better efforts.  A & C GO TO MARS (1953) had lots of vfx shots and matte gags... and also had Anita Ekberg in a tiny bit part, so I suppose all was not lost!  I'll be doing a special blog on all of the many and varied trick shots used in the Abbott & Costello pictures at some point.  John Fulton and Stanley Horsley really earned their paycheques with those.

A nicely atmospheric setting from WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935), virtually all painted.

Two of the many mattes from TARAS BULBA (1962) - the only show to ever give Russ a screen credit.  I was told by Al Whitlock's friend, Rolf Giesen, that Al painted certain shots as well on this film.

One of my favourite films, the ultra-nasty prison flick BRUTE FORCE (1947) with the brilliant Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn.  A number of inventive matte shots, opticals and complex combination shots are used very well.  A classic, and not to be missed.

Also from BRUTE FORCE.  John DeCuir's son told me a nice story about visiting the set:  "I am writing a series of articles that resurrect some of the old art department stories and Brute Force plays a role in one of my stories.  I walked the Brute Force set but I was only 6 years old.  I do remember getting patted on the head by Burt Lancaster in the elevator of the Waldorf Astoria in New York. He asked me if I wanted to an actor when I grew up, I said no...my mother was furious l;-))"


The exceedingly dull Tony Curtis costumer, THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH (1954) - a film often misquoted as the one with that terrible line by Curtis"Yonder lies the castle of my fodda...".  It wasn't that line, and in fact the actual awful, similar line in question was used (by Curtis) in SON OF ALI-BABA which also features in this line up of mattes...


As I said earlier, I just love the old time comics like The Marx Brothers, Olsen & Johnson, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and of course the great W.C Fields.  This shot is one of many from one of the most insane pictures W.C Fields made, NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (1941) - a film of such wild abandon it looks as if he made it up as the camera's were rolling.  Utterly hilarious, and pointless - and all the better for it - as only Fields could get away with.

Also from the same W.C Fields comedy.  Let me give you a clue as to what's happening here... well you see, Fields is in a commercial airliner, mid-flight and his bottle of bourbon falls out of the open(!) window of the passenger cabin, with which, any shameless drinker would do, he leaps out of the (open) window at 15'000 feet in pusuit of said bottle, flailing and falling toward earth, and straight into the arms of 'Mrs Hemoglobin', played by Margaret Dumont, in her mountain top retreat that can only be ascended by rickety, block and tackle elevator!!!.... and so forth.  Then things start to get real crazy!

One of the mattes that often cropped up in various Universal westerns, with this BluRay shot taken from MAN FROM THE ALAMO (1953).

I'm wondering whether Ron Howard got the idea for the silly film SPLASH from MR PEABODY AND THE MERMAID (1948), as it's the same gig.  Some nice mattes by Russ here.

Nice matte from the Doris Day comedy LOVER COME BACK (1961).  Probably Lawson's as I don't think Whitlock was there yet.


When it came to side-splitting, off the wall, leave your brain at the door insanity, few films matched the crazy Olsen and Johnson flick HELLZAPOPPIN (1942) - one of the funniest films I've seen.  The sequence shown here (among several ingenious John Fulton vfx gags) involves the stars questioning what the hell is going on (as is the audience by this time!) and pausing to pull out a Russell Lawson matte painting, prop it up against the wall, and allow the 'live action' to commence within the darn matte painting itself, as they sit back and watch!!  Surely the most unique usage of the painted matte ever conceived.  

HELLZAPOPPIN - truly a one of a kind, and almost Monty Python, long before it's time.  I chuckled all the way through this one.

Universal churned out dozens of Sherlock Holmes thrillers, and some were quite good.  HOUSE OF FEAR (1945) had the requisite creepy abbey in a thunderstormatop the precarious cliff - as any half way decent thriller should, of course!

The original James Whale film of H.G Wells' THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) was a staggering trick shot showcase for John Fulton, David Horsley, John Mescall and Ross Hoffman, but also used matte art in some subtle ways as well.  This shot is practically all painted, with just the doorway and bottom area being real, along with the crowd of people approaching the other side of the non-existant house.

More sci-fi here, from THE LAND UNKNOWN (1957)

Venice on the Universal backlot, courtesy of Russ and his paintbrush, as seen in THE LOST MOMENT (1947).

The Maria Montez and Jon Hall tropical adventure WHITE SAVAGE (1943)

I discussed a similar shot in the 'Lost Mattes' sample reels, which bore a close similarity to this matte from the fabulous Alfred Hitchcock chase thriller, SABOTEUR (1942).


Also from SABOTEUR - quite possibly my number one Hitchcock film, and also one of, if not the, biggest visual effects shows connected to Hitchcock.  Packed with mattes, miniatures, optical gags, process and sometimes all of these combined!  Astonishingly, John P. Fulton didn't even get a screen credit on this huge project!  Must have pissed him off, no end.

More from SABOTEUR.  Lawson's assistant, John DeCuir painted many of the shots, in particular the stunning Statue of Liberty action climax, which rank right up there in movie folk-history.

Much painted ballroom additions from the obscure Boris Karloff thriller THE CLIMAX (1944).  The mattes were better than the film itself.  DeCuir painted also on this film.

I really enjoyed this oldie - THE INVISIBLE RAY (1935) with both Karloff and Lugosi!  Man, they could be great together... just check out the patently freakin' insane THE BLACK CAT (1934) for a real experience that defies definition in psychotic depravity.  

A terrific little film-noir, PHANTOM LADY (1944), that hit all the right notes.  Some fine mattes, moody cinematography, good performances and Elisha Cook jnr!  Enough said!!

Also from PHANTOM LADY.  Love this shot!  Virtually all brushwork here.

CinemaScope spectacle from THE TARNISHED ANGELS (1957), featuring, yes, you guessed it, Rock Hudson - who's probably in more matte shot films in Universal history!

An oddly designed and executed matte at left from the silly SON OF ALI-BABA (1952).  This one is where Bernie Schwartz utters his (oft misquoted) line:  "This is my father's palace, and yonder lies the valley of the sun".  The line is infamously quoted in error as: "Yonder lies the castle of my fodda" and was falsley attributed to THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH, not that it matters, but it's long held Tony Curtis Hollywood folklore

More gothic imagery that Russ furnished for THE HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944), with the shot at left benefitting from the bi-packed in moving tree foliage.

Also from the same film is this shot - a shot that I'm very fond of.  Has the very essence of the time, the genre and the stylistic approach of the day.

Definitely one of the least impressive 'creature features' from Uni was the silly THE MOLE PEOPLE (1956) which pretty much failed on every count!

THE MOLE PEOPLE habitat, though surprisingly well illuminated given it's 1000 feet under the ground.  Not Universal's best.

This excellent matte appeared in both THE GOLDEN BLADE as well as THE SON OF ALI-BABA.

Mattes from MAGNIFICENT DOLL (1946), with the set extension shown at right being especially good.

Most of the old Abbott & Costello comedies had matte shots and other visual trick work.  This beautiful shot is from PARDON MY SARONG (1942).  Nice shot.

Also from PARDON MY SARONG, which John DeCuir's son told me his dad also painted on.



TOWER OF LONDON (1939) had Russ painting mattes under George Teague who was Universal visual effects boss for a short time.

Stately manor home matte painted for THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE (1944).

One of scores of western forts that Russ rendered at Universal.  This shot's from WAR ARROW (1953) though I've seen it in other films as well.

The utterly captivating spoof, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) was, oddly, titled ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE MONSTERS here in New Zealand back in the day, presumably due to the fact that Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman and the Invisible Man all show up!


Some rather nice Technicolor mattes from CANYON PASSGE (1946).

The classic Hollywood ballroom, with this one being from THE GOOD FAIRY (1935)

One of many mattes found in ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942), with the decidedly cute Maria Montez.  I think this was Universal's first go at Technicolor if I recall.  The studio weren't too keen but relented as it was 1942 after all, and others had been working in the glories of full colour for some time.

Just the style of old time matte shots that appeal to me, is this lovely matte from THE MUMMY'S CURSE (1944), with this shot looking almost first generation to me, such is the clarity.  I wonder if it might have been an in-camera glass shot set up on the sound stage as the shot appears a dozen times throughout the very short, barely hour long, monster flick.  Cool baby!

A not entirely successful jungle picture, but COBRA WOMAN (1944) did have Maria Montez in it...and in vivid Technicolor.

A terrific, almost invisible matte from THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942).


Although Disney's Peter Ellenshaw was responsible for the most impressive of all the SPARTACUS matte shots, with Peter's single matte of Rome being among the greatest ever committed to film, Russell supplied a number of mattes to broaden the canvas, as it were, of Stanley Kubrick's film.  These are two of Lawson's shots, with the lower one have numerous 'slot gags' to suggest background action - not something commonly seen in Lawson's shots.

Gothic mood was beautifully captured in these shots from THE STARNGE DOOR (1951), with the extreme perspective in the down view being just the ticket for NZ Pete.


Some of the exotic Eastern action in ALI-BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1944), expanded with the matte work of Russ.

One more lavish interior, this being from ARABIAN NIGHTS.


        

Maria Montez ... the sultry and exotic femme fatale who died young, aged just 39.  She was Universal's answer, but no equal to Dorothy Lamour - Paramount's reigning box office queen of jungle & sand pictures.

             

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BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE!

Before we say goodbye to 2021, here are a couple of interesting shots that were found on one of the sample reels.  These are Syd Dutton mattes that were done at Universal in 1984 for the Lucasfilm telemovie THE EWOK ADVENTURE-CARAVAN OF COURAGE.  The film and it's follow up were both ILM affairs but I assume the workload was too great so they farmed out a couple of shots to Universal and also to Jim Danforth.  Take a look at these...

Original plate photography of live action.

Syd Dutton's matte painting shown here as a test comp.

A poor quality image of Syd's painting.

The final shot as it appears in the telemovie.

The masked off live action plate for a second EWOKS matte shot.

Temporary composite with Syd's painted additions.

The final shot.


***This post, and all 173 previous blogs known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


Well friends, that's about it for this substantial installment.  I look forward to your feedback.  Judging from last month's posting, the magnificent Anita Ekberg is proving more popular than most matte exponents that I've covered(!!) ... And rightly so, says I.   ;)

Take care wherever you are.

Pete


















INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC: THE MATTE ART - Part One

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 Hi there folks.  It's a fresh year and it has been a while since I felt compelled enough to put together another gigantic issue of Matte Shot, but here we are at last.  It's always difficult to get into the swing of these things during hot summer days (and nights), what with numerous home projects needing to be tackled during the good weather, baring in mind of course that summer here at the bottom of the world is a December to March kind of deal.

For the first blog post of 2022, I'm delighted to present - after a long wait - the first in a multi-part assessment and tribute to the wonderful world of Industrial Light & Magic matte painting.  I've gone through as many ILM films as possible and assembled a vast catalogue of matte shots dating from the very formation of the company in 1976, through to the very last of the traditional, hand painted matte work, which as best as I can determine, was around 1994, from whence the customary tools of the skilled and highly trained matte exponent - brushes, pigments, glass and wedge tests - all 'went west', the traditional equipment and tools were thrown away as it were, and the demon computer, sadly, took over.


I was always a big fan of ILM from it's incarnation, and eagerly awaited new releases, often only to be thrilled by their skilled craftsmanship (with the actual film in question sometimes being unworthy).  I loved the period through the 1980's in particular, where ILM mastered miniatures, mattes and especially optical cel-animated gags, which were a particular area of fascination for me until the digital era took all of that creative 'hand made' thrill factor out of it. What follows is a breakdown of, hopefully, almost all - or at least a great many - of ILM's hand painted matte shots from those glory days of an amazingly creative and highly skilled group of artists, cameramen and technicians.  The films are all covered in chronological order, though the mattes within some of the big shows may be a little out-of-order due to the difficulties of collating and organising such mammoth illustrated posts.  I'm sure you'll understand. 

Oh, and please make the effort to view this post on a proper sized screen rather than some idiotic, gimmicky i-phoney toy.  Many of the pics are high def, from BluRay and in some cases 4K frames where possible!  The thought of somebody just 'flicking' or scrolling through these collections with their finger on a cell phone screen can be very disheartening. There is some great material to be had here.

Before embarking upon this exciting journey I should make mention of a new (printed) publication which has been sent to me.  Italian digital matte painter and title designer Lorenzo Moneta - a long time dedicated follower of this very blog - has recently published a detailed handbook on the digital matte techniques, Creare Scenografie Digitali, from Dino Audino Publishing, though it's in Italian only.

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***Final word:  We here at Matte Shot wish to take this opportunity to extend our kind thoughts and utmost support to the people and legitimate government of the democratic nation of Ukraine.  

All the best.

Pete

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***This post, and all 174 previous blogposts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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Here is where it all began ...  in a manky old warehouse ... in a low-rent industrial zone ... in a galaxy not too far away....

I well recall seeing this masterpiece some 6 times during it's first run, including it's opening day around Christmas here in New Zealand at the long gone mighty Cinerama theatre in Auckland, on that massive screen in 70mm and 6-track stereo!  Wow, what an event that blew my mind.  Interesting sidenote was that I - and a handful of school friends - had already been introduced to STAR WARS several months earlier by way of an imported Super 8mm 400' digest edition, which were the film buff's only way to 'collect' movies back in the day, so we already had a preview of 17 thrill packed minutes of the George Lucas space opera.  Man, did that Super 8 see some projection mileage, in fact I still have my EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 8mm print.

Probably the most well publicised photo ever of a matte painter and his work, was this Starlog cover picture of a young P.S (Harrison) Ellenshaw posing with his famous power trench matte.

Fascinating fact:  P.S Ellenshaw (Peter Samuel) shown here at work, was, sometime after the release of STAR WARS, having lunch at Disney studios in the commissary with his famous father, the legendary Peter Ellenshaw, during preparatory work for Disney's THE BLACK HOLE.  A producer stopped by the table and congratulated Ellenshaw senior on 'his' matte work in STAR WARS, to which the elder statesman matte exponent smiled and thanked the producer very much for the kind compliment - all while the younger Ellenshaw looked on in stunned disbelief!  It was right at that moment that Ellenshaw jnr told his dad:  "Right...that does it...I'm changing my name!", and Harrison Ellenshaw was 'born'. 

At the time, ILM didn't have a fully functioning matte department in 1976, nor among the hundred or so cameramen, model makers, animators and technical staff, a matte painter.  Producer Gary Kurtz had put out feelers to Disney some months previous, to try and come to some arrangement for their matte department to supply the painted mattes.  Harrison was hired as a sole sub-contractor under the newly devised company banner of Master Film Effects, purely for STAR WARS, specifically as a moonlighter - with full Disney approval.

STAR WARS wouldn't be half the success it turned out to be without the invaluable creative input of conceptual designer and assistant matte painter Ralph McQuarrie.  The whole 'look' and feel of Lucas' universe was largely down to Ralph, whose incredible conceptual paintings served the basis of all that was to follow.  I still own the original folio collections of McQuarrie's concept paintings from the first 3 films which were sold at the time of each film's release.  Here we can see Ralph blocking in a Death Star interior matte.

McQuarrie was a highly skilled technical artist and commercial draftsman, with STAR WARS being his first cinematic project. In conversations I've had with Harrison, he told me:  "Ralph was a genius, a great artist, a kind man, and he became a good friend.  There would be no multi-billion dollar STAR WARS franchise without Ralph."


The final composite.  


Ralph McQuarrie's true calling was in the astronomical art, with various planets and galactic views being his airbrush work.


McQuarrie planetary matte art with miniature Dykstraflex motion control ships.  Man, did this shot go over a treat on the huge 70mm screen in 1977 - complete with Ben Burtt's ear splitting sound effects coming at us from all directions. Oscar winner for both visual and audio effects, deservedly.


More McQuarrie planetary artwork.  Some of this matte art would be recycled, reframed, re-orientated for subsequent shots.  Contrary to what many might imagine, STAR WARS was not a huge budgeted film, even for 1977, and deadlines loomed.

McQuarrie artwork and motion control escape pod, which if I'm correct, was the first completed vfx shot to roll off the optical printer, after many months of delays and threats to shut the whole ILM shop down by the 'suits' at Fox, which was largely seen as some hippie hangout filled with layabouts.


A great pic of Harrison, taken a couple of years ago at Lucasfilm, examining one of his original acrylic painted glass mattes, as part of the extensive, carefully curated collection of ILM matte art.

Above matte art in progress at Disney.  Sadly, George Lucas took it upon himself in recent years to substantially re-jig the original 3 films and in doing so, either dropped or altered digitally a number of the wonderful original mattes and opticals - such as this one (replacement shot not shown).  Incidentally, the latter day alterations to SW often included idiotic additions and stupid background sight gags, to no good result.

Discovering the city of Mos Eisley.  Ellenshaw utilised a large photo blow up of Death Valley and hand painted the distant city onto it.

The giant sandcrawler was just a partial facade for most shots (and miniature occasionally), though this long shot was a very small Ellenshaw matte painting.


The rebel hanger, with rough initial block-in at top; Harrison's matte art and the final shot.  For the composite, Harrison used the same live action plate twice - once in the foreground and then again reduced in size in the background.  The numerous mattes would take anything from 4 to 6 weeks each to complete - often with more than one being worked on at a time.  The film had around 13 paintings, used in 17 different shots, though some were repair patches, to remove unwanted areas of the frame and paint over.

The mighty Millenium Falcon and docking bay on the evil Darth Putin's Death Star.  The mattes done at Disney were all made using their tried and true rear projection composite method, using separations.  The shots composited at ILM were done with an entirely different method, that being bi-pack photography.  Ellenshaw told me that the Disney method was far more flexible and allowed more freedom in assembling plates with the artwork.  None of the mattes were done as original negative.

Not sure about this one.  Harrison said he didn't recall who painted it.  It may have been Ralph or possibly art director Joe Johnston?  According to Ellenshaw, the matte room at ILM - which itself was nothing more than a drafty, converted warehouse in the San Fernando Valley - was a less than ideal set up.  "The second floor was not the ideal place to have a compositing camera.  The camera would vibrate whenever somebody walked up the stairs.  Not a good thing.  We had signs all over the place about how to walk softly, but like any sign, after a few days, nobody takes notice of them".

Harrison was paid the princely sum of US$1050 per week to create the mattes.  From that he paid old time Disney matte cinematographer Bill Kilduff around $100 for each shot he worked on.  Around half the shots were made at Disney, with the remainder done at ILM.  Harrison and Kilduff would work nights at ILM on the matte composites.

Dennis Muren - a legend in vfx now - was 'second cameraman-photographic effects' on STAR WARS under 'first cameraman' Richard Edlund and overall director of vfx, John Dykstra.  Here, Dennis takes a light reading from one of Ralph's amazing matte paintings of the ominous Death Star.
Ralph's expertly painted Death Star.


Matte art Death Star with miniature foreground and blue screened stormtroopers and ship.  **I should mention that, back in the day, while at high school, I persuaded our 5th Form english teacher (the late Mr Hassan) that as we were studying the 'social ramifications and sub-liminal message of cinema on the population' (or some such utter bollocks) that we, as a class, should go and see STAR WARS.  And.... we did, as a whole class one night.  I was never more 'popular' with fellow pupils (and even the bullies) for a week or so than I was then.  

Occupational Health & Safety is sadly lacking on the Death Star!  A bit silly!

'Who was c*** who built this, I ask you?'

The Elstree set in England of the throne room, and accompanying Ellenshaw matte art.

A better view of what I feel was the best matte in the whole film, which apparently was very enthusiastically recieved by the director and others.  This particular painting had to re-painted some three times before both Ellenshaw and Lucas were happy with it.  All of the Disney mattes were composited with an ancient Bell & Howell stop-motion camera, built around 1912.  According to Ellenshaw it was quite simple, yet extremely reliable, with rock steady movements along with the one-second turnover between exposures.

The final shot, and end of the film.  This almost got a standing ovation in the cinema, what with John Williams' unforgettable Souza-esque march score contributing so much to the scene.  Bravo!

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With the vast and deserving critical and box office success worldwide of STAR WARS, Lucas naturally had to follow it up, though this sequel wasn't a patch on the original, it did have first class vfx work throughout, especially the stop motion sequences by Phil Tippett (sadly, not covered here...)

ILM had now moved to an entirely new premises up in Northern California, with the old LA site becoming Apogee, with former ILM chief John Dykstra in charge.  Shown above the the make up of the new ILM matte department, headed again by Harrison Ellenshaw (front).  From left is matte artist Michael Angelo Pangrazio; matte camera assistant Craig Barron; matte painter Ralph McQuarrie; and matte cinematographer Neil Krepela.

'Matte artists in their natural habitat'(imagine that phrase as spoken by naturalist Sir David Attenborough if you will).

Ralph with his trusty airbrush works on one of the numerous ice cave shots that open the film.

Finished painting prior to composite stage.

Above matte art as seen in the final film.

A second view further back as all hell breaks loose.

One of several subtle 'blink and you'd miss it' mattes, with Harrison Ellenshaw's painted power generator visible at left.  Similar shots also used artwork such as this.


Michael Pangrazio's painted snowscape.  Mike had previosly worked on some low budget flicks and did a spell with Introvision before being hired by Richard Edlund at ILM.  Mike would very quickly prove himself to be one of the most talented artists in the field, with scores of incredible and memorable shots over the next 15 years before transitioning to the digital medium, and much later over to production design.  Last I heard, Mike was here in NZ working with Peter Jackson at our WETA Digital on various films like KING KONG, AVATAR and others.

Detail from above

Mike would split his time on EMPIRE painting mattes and scenic backings such as this, for use with the jaw dropping miniature stop motion sequences.

On the Taun-Taun set, with effects director of photography Dennis Muren; stop motion animator Phil Tippett; and matte artist/scenic painter Mike Pangrazio.  The set up appears to be a multi-plane gag, with painted backing, stop motion mid section and separate, highly detailed glass painted foreground plane, just as the great Willis O'Brien would have done it.

Top left:  Ralph McQuarrie.  Top right: Craig Barron.  Bottom left: Mike Pangrazio.

One of Ralph's elaborate cloud city paintings with the Millenium Falcon on the landing pad.


The final composite.  I spoke with Harrison Ellenshaw about Ralph and his heavy reliance on airbrush techniques which to me tended to have a little too much of a slickness and artificially smooth quality about it: "Ralph used airbrush a lot and it helped to create the 'look' of STAR WARS, and the overall success of the franchise.  A good blend is a good blend.  Personally, I never had much patience with airbrush... damn things clog and splatter... I don't like them."

Matte cameraman Neil Krepela makes final adjustments to the reflex front projection rig initiated as a valuable means to composite live action plates with matte art, ILM's first use of this method, which I understand Harrison had picked up the idea from his former Disney mentor, Alan Maley, who used it successfully on the Bond picture, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (possibly the best 007 flick of 'em all, though, I digress...).

Another view of Neil with the front projection unit.


Harrison at work on one of the many mattes required on EMPIRE.  Around 70 mattes, or partial mattes were rendered in all by the three artists.

Matte art of a different view of the same swamp.  Incidentally, at risk of serious SW fan backlash, I hated that absurd 'Fozzy-Bear of the wetlands',Yoda, with a passion.  I even think I laughed out loud when that creature appeared.  It was cringeworthy then and remains so today 40 years later, especially as the popular Muppet tv show was still on the air and the moment this Yoda puppet opened it's mouth all possible attempts at credibility went out the window!  Now there's an entire character that Lucas could have digitally rotoscoped out of the picture and replaced quite happily with something (anything!) more credible.  God almighty, even the insufferable Jar-Jar Binks was a step above the muppet with the Miss Piggy / Fozzy Bear voice - and that is really saying something!  There.... got that out of my system!

The finished shot, though oddly optically flopped for some reason.

Another view, this time painted by Ralph McQuarrie.


Another McQuarrie painting on the matte stand.


More splendid Ralph McQuarrie matte art.


Close up detail.



I'm not entirely certain if the matte art at left is the same as the finals at right, but it looks close enough.  Matte painted aerial view of Dagobah, rendered by effects art director Joe Johnston (top middle), with a separate plexiglass  layer of painted clouds by matte artist Michael Pangrazio.

To aid in the architectural aspects of some of the cloud city mattes, artist Mike Pangrazio enlisted help from ILM's miniatures shop to construct a variety of structures which would then be carefully lit and photographed as high resolution stills.  These stills would be cut out, arranged and directly mounted upon the glass.  Pangrazio would then paint additional features and extend the matte as desired (see below).


The finished multi-plane matte art with pasted on photographic elements and artwork.  The background sky is on a separate glass.

Close up detail where photographic elements and brush work merge.

Dual plane matte art on stand for final photography.  I think that might be matte assistant cameraman Robert Elswit there - now an ace Academy Award winning production cinematographer, shooting all of Paul Thomas Anderson's pictures, including my number one fave BOOGIE NIGHTS.



Harrison's desk with partially completed matte art at right.  "Richard Edlund, along with Brian Johnson were the special effects supervisors on ESB, and I will always appreciate that Richard and Brian left me alone in the matte department to do my job without interference.  They were very supportive. willing to help out in any way."

Striking matte art by both Pangrazio (foreground clouds) and McQuarrie (city).

Two McQuarrie variations of Cloud city at different times of day.


Decades later, the original glass paintings were brought out of storage at Lucasfilm for Harrison Ellenshaw to have a veritable 'blast from the past'.


Top:  Neil Krepela arranges miniature components in front of a substantial Mike Pangrazio matte painting (below) of the Death Star.

Ellenshaw at work on the Slave 1 spaceship.  The ship was to some extent a pasted on photograph, as were some of the background structures.


Closer view with painting and photo blended in.

As it appears in the final scene.


A different vantage point of Cloud city, as rendered by Ralph McQuarrie.

Ralph with his Cloud city painting on glass.  Behind that is a separate painted sunset skyscape that was done by Pangrazio.


Another highly detailed interior matte by Ralph McQuarrie that will serve as a nice 'in joke' when finalised.  See below...

Final shot with not one but three matte painters all shamelessly chewing the scenery in their collective 'big moment' on screen!  Subsequent acting assignments were, regrettably, NOT forthcoming!

Thespians at large.... "Stella .... Stelllllllaaaaaa...."


Clockwise from top left:  Ellenshaw & Krepela prepare to shoot a finished painting; The 3 Amigo's - Ellenshaw, McQuarrie & Pangrazio; Pangrazio at work on a starfield; Lucas confers with Ellenshaw on the swamp matte progress.

Before and after of Millenium Falcon on the pad.

As it looks in very high rez.


Original Elstree limited set and Harrison's finished painting...

Final composite.  Ellenshaw stated to me that a great many wedge, or exposure tests would need to be made on every matte shot, and maybe a dozen takes before he got a satisfactory 'final'.


McQuarrie's initial rough block in and the finished matte shot below...

Chatting with Harrison is great.  So many fascinating, funny and sometimes unpublishable anecdotes.  He told me a nice one about beginning junior camera assistant, Craig Barron:  "Craig was so enthusiastic.  He absolutely loved movies.  He would see every film that came out.  He was still a teenager then, and would tell me that one day he would write the definite book on matte painting.  I'd give him a hard time and tell him he would never get it done;  too big a subject matter and all of that.  I am thrilled that Craig proved me wrong, when 'The Invisible Art' was published.  Craig is now a member of the Academy Board of Governors as well as an Oscar winner for effects on THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON in 2008.  He owned and ran Matte World for 24 years.  He's still an inspiration to the new kids who want to work in film."


A second view from a different angle.

According to Ellenshaw, George Lucas would come by ILM before the screening of fx dailies and would stroll through the facility checking on progress.  Getting immediate feedback on the matte paintings in progress proved invaluable to Ellenshaw.

Ralph McQuarrie matte art for the climatic duel between good and evil.

Final shot in 4K HD.


Another vantage point of the same gantry light sabre swashbuckling effects sequence.

Final shot.


An atmospheric matte painted by Harrison Ellenshaw which will have a miniature of the Millenium Falcon blue screened into the landing pad.

Here is another of Harrison's paintings, which when initially completed with laser strikes by the ILM optical department, caused a mild panic at a screening room viewing once it became quickly apparent that the optical boys had, in error - and no doubt under immense time pressure - composited all of the laser animation and explosions over the painting upside down back to front and coming out of the building!!!  The footage was later recomposited correctly by the stressed optical department.

Here is a most interesting matte painting by Ralph McQuarrie - the old fashioned set extension.  Adding tops to studio sets was one of the most common uses of matte and glass shot work over a century.

The superbly assembled finished shot looks a million dollars.

A subsequent shot from the same sequence with painted set additions.


Matte masters ply their trade.  There was a real rush to complete all of the shots in time for the final locking of the negative for release printing.  The matte crew worked double shifts in order to photograph and finish all of the shots.


I never quite figured out just what this thing is/was?

Painted detail.

On screen final shot.


More McQuarrie matte art.


As it appeared on screen.

Not sure here... might be a full set with backing or a blue screen shot?

Matte art by Harrison with blue screened Luke.


Harrison's meticulous, and surely headache inducing shaft painting.  Must have driven the artist to near insanity drawing in all of these details.


I think this was one of Harrison's pieces.

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Sensational ad art here for a thrill-a-minute adventure yarn, very much of the old school, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) was a super hit, and wisely kept the visual effects in check, and strictly at the service of the story, unlike films of this new era which just don't know when to 'quit', to the point of 'enough already'.

The first matte shot comes in pretty much right after the main title card.


Three undetectable painted mattes occur in a row, with views up a deep pit with just a small area of live action at the top.

A second cut from the same set piece.

The third matte in the sequence from a wide, ground level vantage point, with much here added by Alan Maley's brush.

A gorgeous Nepalese landscape which was a full painting by Michael Pangrazio.

Pangrazio at work, and the shot as it appears on screen, likely with added smoke animation gag and interactive light from the windows.  The shot was very dark in the BluRay edition (as are so many on that medium), so I've lightened this frame somewhat.

Early on in the show, a most intriguing effects shot occurs - that being the Pan Am Clipper.  They found a genuine plane of the 30's vintage, though one landlocked only, so an additional plate was taken of a wooden pier and water elsewhere, with these elements combined with an extensive Alan Maley matte painting.

Alan's matte painted dock and port, with even the airplane's Pan American logo branding painted into the matte.

The finished shot.  I assume some animation or interfearence gag may well have been implimented in order for the (real) propellor to crank up and spin over that area of the painting(?)

An especially memorable effects set piece - following an edge of the seat full scale stunt sequence - was this bit where a jeep load of Nazi scum go over the cliff to their deaths.  A very large matte painting measuring some 8 x 4 feet in size of the cliff face and valley floor below was created by supervising matte artist, Alan Maley.  The painting was turned onto it's side for photography to allow a frame by frame tracking move with a similarly sideway mounted camera.  Note the lower right picture of Maley pretending to paint a massive matte with an impossibly tiny brush.  Alan had been in the matte business for decades, having begun back in the late 1950's in Wally Veevers' department at England's Shepperton Studios, painting on films such as DR STRANGELOVE and BECKET, as well as a stint at Pinewood with Cliff Culley where he painted with Peter Ellenshaw on Disney's IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS among others.  Peter later found a position for Alan at Disney in the US where he would head the matte department and painted mattes on big effects films such as THE LOVE BUG, THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE, BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS and the huge effects show ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD.  Later Maley would provide freelance matte and optical work on one of the best of the 007 Bond movies, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME.  Alan sadly passed away at the young-ish age of 64, and was longtime friend and mentor to Harrison Ellenshaw.  

Individual frames from the sequence show the rear projected live action roadway plate as well as the ingenious stop motion animated falling jeep, complete with animated Nazi puppets falling out.

Note the animated jeep and occupants falling to their death - all superb stop motion by Tom St.Amand, against blue screen..

Of course, if you are viewing this on some laughable i-phoney type toy, you'll never appreciate, let alone even see the detail as mentioned.

Four scenes with matte work used to expand studio sets, miniatures, cloud tank gags and suchlike.  The island was a painting, as were the views of distant landscape surrounds.
Large miniature German sub split screened with matte painted island.

Not sure but looks like a matte painting, again split screened with ocean plate.

Modest sized stage set with matte art all the way around.

Physical set, matte art, cel animation and cloud tank gag all at play.


The final matte shot was, and remains, a true winner, and one of the most famous in the artform.  Here, artist Mike Pangrazio is seen working on what will be the enormous and secretive government warehouse, where the so-called Ark of the Covenent will be stored away for later possible military use.
First part of pullback to reveal vast storage facility.

A frame from the final sequence, with a camera move, the shot stays on screen for around 30 seconds - an unusually long duration for any matte shot.  Matte supervisor Alan Maley stated in 1981:  "That shot was difficult from a matte painting point of view, because even though the painting is 6 feet long, when we start out on it we're actually focusing on a close area that's maybe 18 inches wide and about 6 inches high.  Plus, when the camera is pulled all of the way back, the shot is still held on screen much longer than one usually likes on a matte painting.  So, Mike had to paint to a much higher degree than on any of the other shots".

Detail #1

Detail #2    I'm not certain, but I think Pangrazio may have organised a layout of small cardboard cartons to be still photographed in preparation for tackling this mammoth undertaking.  I know that another later ILM matte artist, Mark Sullivan, did just that for a quite similar scene in the Coen's film THE HUDSUCKER PROXY.

Detail #3


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The big budget fairy tale extravaganza, DRAGONSLAYER (1981) would be ILM's fourth production, and one that was loaded with a variety of visual and physical effects.  The film itself was incredibly dull, though the amazing 'go-motion' animated/puppet work was a show stopper.

Once again, Alan Maley was ILM's matte painting supervisor - even though he'd 'officially' retired from movies in the late 1970's.  Here Alan poses for another candid 'joke' photo, using an impossibly tiny brush to lay in a vast landscape and castle.  Years ago during the fx work on Disney's ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD in 1974, the matte department was overloaded so they hired veteran Mathew Yuricich to help out.  In my 2012 oral history interview with Matt he described the atmosphere in that department, which at first left him bewildered and a little concerned, at the constant side-swipes and banter going back and forth between Maley and Peter Ellenshaw.  It wasn't until Matthew cottoned onto the very 'British' sense of humour, and natural use of irony and pointed,witty sarcasm (we here, as former Brit colonials in NZ definitely 'get it') - humour which to untrained American ears seemed like a constant barrage of insults, yet was quite the opposite.  I can quite easily imagine it.

Under Alan were two painters, the already experienced Mike Pangrazio (left), and the newly recruited Christopher Evans (right).  Both paintings here feature in DRAGONSLAYER's opening sequences.

A number of mattes feature in the film, usually night time mountains, rocky outcrops and the like.

A beautiful full DRAGONSLAYER painting on display at LucasFilm, though possibly not used, as the matte below appears to be the final choice. 

Alan Maley designed this matte to be a front projection composite, though with painting and projected plate photographed in separate passes.  Front projection permits a stronger, more evenly illuminated image of the plate, whereas rear projection can have issues with 'hot spot' and illumination 'fall off', which can be dead giveaways.

Close up detail.

The magnificent finished shot, composited with a camera pan to the right, as the horsemen ride to the castle.  I think Chris Evans might have painted this?

A series of four atmospheric mattes from DRAGONSLAYER.

They raid the castle at night.  An Alan Maley matte shot.  Maley stated:  "I have a great theory about matte painting, that if you set it up like a matte shot, it'll look like a matte shot.  But if you shoot it as you would a normal production shot, you tend to take the curse of it.  The better the shots are, the less you're going to notice them, and I don't think you should notice matte shots in movies".

Before and after from one of the numerous mountain mattes from the climax.

Seems to have been mostly shot as virtual sets with bluescreen action and painted environs.

More of the same...

Ditto...

Not sure whether this volcano crater and surrounding was a large miniature set or a substantial painted matte?  Looks painted to moi.


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I saw POLTERGEIST back in 1982 on a freakin' dynamite double bill with John Carpenter's THE THING at Aucklands magnificent old 1920 picture palace, The Civic.  To say the two flicks blew my mind would be putting it politely!  POLTERGEIST was a 100% bonanza of thrills, scares, ghosts, apparitions, obnoxious teen kids and corpses, with powerhouse ILM input in all avenues, from brilliantly orchestrated and assembled opticals, fabulous cel animated gags, creature fx, matte art and that's not even all when you appreciate the heavy duty mechanical and physical effects side!

The show had a relatively light matte painting load, which given that ILM was tied up with so many ongoing projects that year, was probably why.  Michael Pangrazio was matte artist and this was one of his invisible matte shots that most people never spotted.  A great deal of the housing development in the valley as well as the distant hills and sky were matte art.


Here's a real nifty effects shot that's worth talking about.  The forboding bank of storm clouds closing in over the suburb and the Freeling house, which is really when all the shitstorm kicks off - in more ways than one.  The shot is largely a cleverly rendered matte painting by Pangrazio of the neighbourhood, rooftops and sky.  The main body of the encroaching storm cloud comprised of the standard practical injection of tempura white paint pigment into a clear water tank and manipulated by resident 'cloud wrangler' Gary Platek. In a darkened room, Platek used special probes to manipulate the tempura in the water until the correct 'formations' of pseudo-cloud were created, which were then photographed, numerous times until just the right effect was achieved.  The tank elements were then composited into Pangrazio's painting, with Mike even blending aspects of the tank cloud footage with more subtle matte art, including a shadow moving across the distant hills.  So while a great portion of the storm cloud was a physical effect created in a tank, specific areas of the same cloud bank were in fact 2-dimensional artwork, smoothing the edges out, but the whole thing ties together so beautifully, it made for a most memorable shot, and looked great in Scope up on the big theatre screen back in '82.  Kudo's to matte cameraman Neil Krepela and optical man Dave Berry for pulling all of this together.

The tornado strikes and causes havoc. The left side of the frame is an actual set, while the right side - including the dug out pool, kids swings, fence, houses and sky - is a complete matte painting.  The young actress reached up too high and some roto was needed to have her arm clear Mike's matte art briefly.  The actual tornado was a special physical effect created  by Gary Platek in the water tank with tempura paint.

A reverse angle, this time shot on a location elsewhere, but heavily augmented with Pangrazio's matte art comprising around 50% of the frame, including neighbouring homes, trees, backyard and sky.

A key moment in POLTERGEIST where we learn just why the Freeling house has pissed off so many ghouls from the afterlife.  This is a highly detailed Mike Pangrazio matte painting, which proved quite an ordeal as the artist was repeatedly asked to make changes and additions.  Official screen credited director Tobe Hooper and other director Steven Spielberg (though never outright credited as such but we all know he helmed the picture from the sidelines) , made artistic directives at odds with each other and even with how Michael felt the shot should look to make it work best.  Mike called the finished shot "Too busy".

Final shot - here with the late, great character actor James Karen -  with rear projected live action plate and subtle backlit 'scratched off' small bits of paint to give the illusion of grass moving in breeze, to match the live action.

The film concludes (or does it?) with the Freeling house imploding and vanishing into the netherworld.  Don't laugh... this happens more often than you might think!  I know, because I read it on the world wide web(!!)  

Multiple element shot with live action street, miniature house that was literally blown to pieces with Richard Edlund's very own shotgun(!), optical gag sparkles, flashes and subtle matte painted neighbourhood.  POLTERGEIST was up for the best FX Oscar that year, but lost out to another, utterly undeserving ILM film.  More on that later...

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I enjoyed the original TREK films, especially the first one from Robert Wise - which I feel was grossly neglected.  Anyway, STAR TREK 2-THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982) was a solid show and very entertaining.  Lots of effects but only a handful of matte shots.

Two ILM artists shown here, with Christopher Evans at top left being in charge, while ILM newbie, the extraordinarily talented Frank Ordaz, shown at bottom right.

The key matte shot was what they called the Genesis Cave - reportedly a shot that nobody in the matte department liked and felt uniformly that the composition was all wrong.

Final composite.

The same sequence features some three mattes, with this being a Frank Ordaz rendering.

Some close up detail of Frank's work.  Ordaz would become an exceptional and prolific painter at ILM for the next few years before quitting the film business to focus primarily on gallery art and illustration work.

The last of the STAR TREK 2 mattes is this full painting which features in that same setting, and worked well.

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At risk of a smack in the mouth, I'll be right up front and state I couldn't stand this movie, in truth, disliking it with a vengeance.  E.T - THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL (1982) was a trite, manufactured piece of shameless, sugary, cinematic commercialism, and worst of all, it stole the FX Oscar that year from BLADERUNNER - an infinitely more deserving recipient (and even POLTERGEIST as a close runner up was way up there!)  But don't get me started on Oscar injustices...

Among the matte shots were these two, with Michael Pangrazio as chief artist and Chris Evans and Frank Ordaz also on painting duties.  Neil Krepela was matte cameraman, assisted by Craig Barron.  I understand that Frank Ordaz was responsible for one or both of these mattes.

The diminutive intergalactic irritant extra-terrestrial, discovers the bright lights of the big city.  A tiny puppet creature, foreground miniatures and a large painted cityscape rendered on hardboard by Chris Evans, all shot in camera.  Camera assistant Karl Herrmann drilled out dozens of tiny holes in the 8 x 4 foot painting and arranged a set up behind involving frosted acetate strips, small fans and lights - all shot at 36fps to create a twinkling effect.  Nothing new there, as studios had been doing that for 50 years, particularly MGM's famous Newcombe department who absolutely mastered the art of backlit twinkling lights and neons etc on a hundred Technicolor musicals - incidentally one of my fave old time matte trick shot techniques that still to this day never fail to amaze me when watching old movies.

The original masonite painting on the wall at George Lucas' film factory.  The painting was able to be backlit with flickering light effects.

E.T marked a major turning point for ILM - that being the introduction of their first original negative latent image matte composite.  It seems hard to believe now, as premier matte artisans such as Albert Whitlock had mastered that method right down to a fine art, with optimal visual fidelity and quality for decades.  Both Pangrazio and Evans stated that they were great admirers of Whitlock's work and learned a great deal from Al's methodology.

Several shots in this backyard sequence utilised matte painted night skies, with the moon in various degrees of visibility under cloud for each cut.  The skies were all painted, and at first tentative attempts were made to do the shots as latent image, with eventual highly successful results after numerous trials and tests.  Of interest, the clouds themselves weren't painted, but were in fact pieces of cotton wool that camera assistant Barron had carefully cut out and shaped and then stuck onto a pane of glass. The pasted on cotton wool clouds would be repositioned for subsequent shots in the same extended night sequence to suggest the passage of time.  ILM were very happy with the first generation quality of the o/neg method but felt constrained by the hard fact that one must be absolutely confident in composition, matte placement and all else when shooting such shots as the shot is npretty well 'locked in' once the plate is filmed.  Old time practitioner Al Whitlock over at Universal on the other hand was so experienced in the o/neg method, that nothing was impossible, even the most complicated, mind-boggling latent image composites were able to be achieved, provided firm decisions and utmost control of all steps along the way were respected.  ILM would use this o/neg method off and on for occasional films thereafter, especially for those intended as made for tv, and later on, key matte exponents from the company would use it extensively.

The film comes to a conclusion - and about bloody time I say - with a horde of BMX bikesters in full flight (don't ask) headed into the setting sun(!)  All matte painted here, in layers on individual glasses to allow depth, plus a sun element at back.  The kids were a mix of actors on bluescreen stage and some puppeteered go-motion miniature work.  It worked well.

Craig Barron (left) and Neil Krepela (right) establish meter readings on the multi-plane glass shot set up.  The shot comprises some 3 layers - the first with a treeline, the second with mountains and hills, while the third one at rear was the sun.

Another deep plane matte multi-element shot, most likely utilising the puppet kids on miniature BMX's.

Multi-part vfx shot.  Miniature spaceship and forest surrounds, with the far treeline and distant city and sky painted.



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Fans were waiting, and George delivered RETURN OF THE JEDI in 1983, and again while not as good as the first film, was an improvement over the second.  An all out balls-to-the-wall visual effects showcase, loaded to the hilt with amazing and jaw dropping trick work throughout.

A mammoth matte shot film, JEDI had a very busy troop of matte artists, headed by Michael Pangrazio.  Shown above is painter Christopher Evans wearing his trademark brown dustcoat with one of his dramatic mattes on the stand.

Michael Pangrazio confers with matte cinematographer Neil Krepela.

ILM matte artists always seem to double as scenic painters as well.  Top left is Ralph McQuarrie on EMPIRE but not involved with JEDI; right is Mike Pangrazio (also on EMPIRE), while bottom left is Frank Ordaz with his forest painted backing for a key JEDI action sequence.

Frank Ordaz - one talented painter indeed and seemingly able to use his brush skills in matte work and it's own peculiar requirements with ease.

An invisible before and after JEDI shot.

Even in high def, the blending is excellent.


An interesting matte that unfortunately never made the final cut.


A Mike Pangrazio matte painted shot, assembled on ILM's AutoMatte system.
Pangrazio matte art.


Now, not all matte shots are grandiose show-stoppers.  Often, they are utilised to hide, conceal or fix things that aren't meant to be in the shot.  This is one such example by Frank Ordaz where he was tasked with painting in a little sliver of desert to mask out the mechanical rigging holding the craft in 'the air'.  This sort of invisible trickery has forever fascinated NZ Pete.

The final shot, though not so as you'd ever know.



Chris Evans at work with jeweller's loop, painting in the most minute of detailing on the Death Star matte art.

An overall view of same.



An incredible Mike Pangrazio rendering of the Death Star docking bay interior.

The finished scene.


Top left we see Mike at the initial stage where he is working out crucial perspective lines, while at right we see fellow painter Chris Evans helping out with the scores of painted stormtroopers.


A later view of the same environs from another angle, as painted, with astonishing skill by Frank Ordaz this time.

Here, Frank works on a highly detailed painting of the Millenium Falcon.

This pic is a work in progress frame, where much is still to be done.  I just love seeing partially complete or blocked in mattes in their early stages.

Close up is a view to behold.

Ordaz matte art detail.


Breathtaking brushmanship.

The finished scene once the two actors have been dropped in via travelling matte.

A Mike Pangrazio rendering of the Death Star, complimented by foreground miniatures.

Pangrazio applies final touches.


Chris Evans works on the Ewok tree top village, where many mattes will be used.

The final result of the above Evans painting.


A very nice wide view of Ewok-Town.

A rare sight indeed, of artist Chris Evans sans brown dustcoat, as he works on a beautiful matte.

A wonderfully accomplished finished shot.


This matte appeared, printed way down, in the EWOKS tv films, though it may also have appeared in RETURN OF THE JEDI.


Steps needed to introduce live action characters into an expansive Frank Ordaz matte painting of the Ewok village at night.  Areas of paint are carefully scraped away to permit rear projected live action plates to be added in separate passes.

ILM's VistaVision rear projection unit for composite photography of matte art, as used for the Ewok shot above and below.


A nice, crisp picture of Frank Ordaz's Ewok matte art prior to RP composites.


Camera operator Craig Barron and matte artist Chris Evans.


The final glorious result.


George Lucas confers with vfx art director Joe Johnston on a major matte painted shot.


Individual frames from the above illustrated matte composite set piece.

The same setting as seen in daylight, with matte art by Christopher Evans.


Original full painting, nicely framed and on a wall some place.

Detail


More detail from the same matte.

This one is a Michael Pangrazio painting, and it's a beauty!

The same painted matte when combined with live action.


Pangrazio busy at work on a matte that I don't think ever made the final edit.

Various examples of Pangrazio at work on JEDI.

Another of Pangrazio's mattes that I don't think made the final release prints.

Composite of shot not ultimately used.


Detail


Closer detail...

Even closer detail still...


Frank Ordaz painted this spectacular craft.

Close up detail...



The shot as it appears, with the evil, unhinged Darth Putin, oh, I mean Vader (or do I?) descending.



A brilliant matte painting of Endor, rendered by Frank Ordaz.  According to FX supervisor Richard Edlund, originally the film had only 15 mattes planned, but once the production saw the quality of the shots already done, which Edlund called "really fantastic stuff", they upped the ante and the number grew to around 50 shots.

The miniature set with radar dish also utilised a foreground glass painting of trees and foliage to lend depth to the set.

The fx crew prepare pyrotechnics to blow up the dish.  Note Chris Evans' glass painted foreground.


Supposed to be JEDI shots but look more like mattes from the telemovie EWOK films to me.  In fact it looks suspiciously like a Syd Dutton matte that was done for one of those EWOK shows?

Mike Pangrazio finishing off an awesome painting of the landing bay in the Death Star.

Here is a most interesting pic, of the same Pangrazio matte in it's early, roughed in stages.


Part of the final shot, which served as a slow tilt down, with several patches of live action going on.

The lower part of the same tilt down.  Mike found it useful to draw the audience's eye to the live action by introducing subtle things like a large painted circle around the floor and pockets of spotlight illumination upon the extras - an old trick in matte magic going back decades, and notable in films like FORBIDDEN PLANET made in the mid 50's.


A close look at Mike's superb work.  Note the circle painted around where live action people will be layered in.

Mike's workspace was like the H-Bomb had dropped... but the results speak for themselves.


Intriguing pic here of the Death Star trench, painted by an artist named Richard van der Wendt (I think?)


Now this shot was very neat, and one I'd never spotted until just recently.  Chris Evans painted this forest setting for a very quick cut and a battle ensues.


The finished shot is all but invisible as a painted matte.  Nicely animated imperial walkers coming through the trees.  Terrific bit of work here all round!


Chris Evans at work on some planetary art - possibly on an actual physical globe?  Did I mention that JEDI took home the best vfx Oscar?  I did?...well here it is again.




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Another winner in the best visual effects Oscar stakes, was INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984).  The flick hit all the right buttons and was a rollicking, rollercoaster ride right from the opening lavish musical number, with the delightful Kate Capshaw hoofing and singing Anything Goes - in Mandarin no less (possibly my fave sequence, oddly!), right through to the eye-popping stop motion mine chase and it's subsequent cliffhanger dust-up.  Sadly, the next two INDY films were less than impressive, and to my stunned amazement, I hear they're dragging poor ole' Harrison Ford out of his retirement village to star in yet another(!)  Indiana Jones with hip replacements, a walking frame and all.

Tons of top shelf visual effects throughout, and a fairly healthy chunk of matte art to boot.  

Superbly blended matte art, painted by Chrsitopher Evans.

Blue screen shot with actors dropped into extensive matte painted vista, with destroyed village.  Fires and smoke doubled in as well.
The palace where some strange stuff happens and the dinner menu is most definitely to be avoided at ALL costs!  This full painting was rendered by both Pangrazio and Evans, though both were unhappy with the final result, and thus sought alternate means to present the same shot .
Images taken of the detail work as painted onto the initial, albeit, unused Pangkot Palace matte.  See below for how it was ultimately achieved...


The eventual palace matte shot was done very differently, and with excellent results.  For this incarnation which ultimately was used in the final cut, Pangrazio prepared a basic, simplified cut out onto a large 8 foot sheet of black foamcore - traced from a slide of the original unused painting - onto which were glued small bits of wire and other odds and ends to lend roof top details.  Pangrazio and Barron would then transport this rudimentary cut-out onto a suitable exterior, chosen for the likelihood of a good sunset.  The cut-out was nailed to some timber stakes which had been pounded into the earth, with a suitable sky in the background.  An additional foreground glass was also set up, onto which the artist painted impressionistic details amounting to not much more than highlights here and there and some minor detailing.  Pangrazio himself stated at the time: "The painting itself looked ridiculously bad - just brush strokes that end in a black sky, but on film, I think it's one of the best things I've done."  The final shooting was a success, with a real and vibrant sunset behind the silhouette, and looked 100% real.


A later matte painting as Indy and pals approach the palace.

Michael Pangrazio at work on the palace, which was optically flopped in the final cut.

High Def frame of the final shot.

An insightful before and after from probably the best matte shot in the film, where the tiniest of live action plates of the kid were integrated into a magnificent Pangrazio matte painting.

Mike's awe inspiring matte is a sight to behold.  The shot was done as latent image, though unusually, the artwork was completed a long time before the live actio bit was shot.

That same village, previously shown at the start as desolate and 'dead', was again seen in a more healthy state later in the film via matte magic.  Doubles for the main characters - one of whom was matte painter Caroleen Green with a wig - walk down to the village, which didn't exists and was just a part of George Lucas' spread.  Later on, Mike Pangrazio furnished the verdant valley and bustling village in paint.

Final shot, with a gradual tilt upward.

Some danger lurks in those caverns, where at left cameraman Craig Barron is setting up a forced perspective miniature against a Frank Ordaz matte painting.

Completed shot with miniature foreground, matte art cave, steam optical overlay and actors dropped in via travelling matte.


An invisible matte shot with the Pangkot Palace just visible far on the horizon.


Now the action packed climax was a doozy!  Here is a piece of pre-vis concept art which aided in establishing the look for the many mattes required.


The matte painters were often 'press-ganged' into performing duties outside the safety and warmth of the ILM matte room.  Here we see artists Caroleen Green and Frank Ordaz atop ladders painting scenic backing for a key vfx shot which involved actors and miniature deluge.

Chris Evans' spectacular establishing shot of the cliffs and valley in Sri Lanka.  

The delightful Caroleen Green adds some final small touches to Chris Evans' painting.

The completed scene, with rear projected live action on cliff ledge as well as water in river. The now very famous director David Fincher was an ILM cameraman for a few years, and was responsible for adding an authentic, subtle aerial wobble to the shot, to give the realistic appearence of being taken from a chopper (ie: the flying thing, not the motorcycle!)

The set piece is crammed with expert visual effects, stunts, sound fx editing and more!  Here is one of several downviews which involved multi-element composite work.  A practical set, shot in Britain, matte art extending the cliff further, an actual river filmed 2nd unit and a considerable amount of hand rotoscoped business as characters legs flop over the matte area and some poor bastards are flung to their demise in the crocodile infested river below!


Another view with matte painted right half of frame.


Presumably all the ILM artists had a part to play in making all of these cliff face mattes.


Don't look down!

I told you not to look down you fools!

The steps involved in assembling the shot shown above.  The UK live action stunt players and actor; river plate; hold out mattes; matte painted rockface; rotoscoped cel animation for falling stuntman; and finished test.

Just to conclude, here's a close up of that aforementioned rejected painting of Pangkot Palace.


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Kirk, Spock and Bones are all back for more in STAR TREK III-THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984).  Again, a big ILM assignment with much model, optical and cel animated work, as well as some nice matte painted shots.

At left, what appears to be an unfinished version of the planet surface sequence.

The final shot with much painted set extension added.

A sprawling planetary vista was created by Chris Evans as an enormous backing cyclorama of some 25x16 feet in size, completed with foreground foliage and greenery as the camera does a wide pan around to the actors.

Presumably painted matte art.

Caroleen Green's beautiful other-worldly sunset is picturesque as the Enterprise in flames crashes to the surface.  Great, subtle cel animated and roto gags for the flaming ship.

Slugging it out as lava flows below.  Not a good idea.

Chris Evans' concept painting for the planet Vulcan.

Either Evans or Ordaz here at work on a Vulcan establishing shot.

The completed shot.

More Vulcan mattes, with Green, Ordaz, Pangrazio and Evans all likely doing their bit.

Upper half of frame painted in later.

The non-denominational Vulcan Temple, with Chris Evans at work.


Flaming sunset over Vulcan.  A rather striking, full matte painting.


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A massive hit, NEVER ENDING STORY (1984) was never a film that appealed to me, but seemingly, I was in a minority.  Ace British effects man Brian Johnson - a two time Oscar winner - supervised all of the visual and miniature effects in Europe, where the film was shot, with ILM sub-contracted to provide several matte painted shots, though personally, I never felt the ILM shots were anywhere near their usual standard.  Noteworthy, the most sucessful mattes in the film were not actually made by ILM at all, and were contracted over to veteran vfx man Jim Danforth to do.  In the interests of completeness, I've included Jim's mattes here as well.



I'm not sure but this was either a Caroleen Green or Mike Pangrazio painting, and I'm not certain if it appeared in the actual film?


A simililar shot - one of several - though it always looked like a miniature, or at least a multi-plane kind of deal to me?

ILM's Caroleen Green (and kitten) at work on a matte conceptual sketch.  I get the impression that Caroleen is 'feline' realllll good about her career at ILM.


Dramatic cloudscape on glass.


Final shot.


The ILM artists included Mike Pangrazio, Frank Ordaz, Caroleen Green & Chris Evans.


Matte composite.  There were two sequels, and I preferred part 2 actually.  Al Whitlock supervised on that, with his long time associate, Syd Dutton rendering almost all of the many excellent mattes, though Leigh Took and Peter Talbot in the UK did some work as well.  The 3rd film was forgettable, but had some nice shots by UK painter, Doug Ferris.


ILM matte.


A rare pic of one of the large glass paintings that ILM produced.


Finished marry up of painted and live action.


Closer look at the brush work.


Matte art, apparently by Caroleen Green, with both frames likely early tests and versions of intended final shot.


The same scene as it appears in the release version, with drifting clouds that looked like the real thing.


Green with her work in progress.


A second cut of the same sequence.



        NON-ILM NEVER ENDING STORY MATTES RENDERED BY JIM DANFORTH:

I've always felt that the strongest asset in NES were the utterly magical mattes made by old time visual fx specialist and matte painter, Jim Danforth.  This matte of the Crystal Valley remains my all time favourite among Jim's many painted mattes.  Composited, as is Jim's usual preference, via rear process projection plates, the finished image simply glows with an almost tangable feeling of wonder that the film is purporting to present.

Another of Jim's wonderful mattes - again, simply magical.

I asked Jim and he was pretty certain these were his shots too.

The final matte is also a Jim Danforth shot.

Credit where credit's due.  Note David Fincher's name in the credits.


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I have already done an extensive coverage on both of these made for tv films, and that substantial article can be foundHERE.


Both EWOK telemovies were absolutely loaded with great matte shots.  A veritable feast for matte art surveyors of all ages, religions, ethnic background.  Viewhere.


Pangrazio and one of the 60 or so EWOK mattes, almost all of which were assembled as original negative shots.


Artist and matte camera crew make incredible things happen...

One of Caroleen Green's marvellous EWOK ADVENTURE paintings.

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An oddly melodramatic little love story from John Carpenter that had it's moments.  A handful of below-the-radar effects shots from ILM, including some painted mattes by Frank Ordaz at the end.

Watch the skies... 


I assume the sky was a painted view by Frank, with miniature spaceship and animated light effects.

Really well done actually, with underside reflecting the desert floor and horizon on it's chrome dome.




Ordaz matte art, where it looks as if Frank painted in the reflected scenery, based upon the final behind the scenes photo.




The quite striking imagery that Frank has created on his easel.

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Another popular kiddie flick, THE GOONIES (1985), that was a super hit and seems to have a cult following.  Not bad I guess, though I was far too old to appreciate it and have a preference for far 'darker', grittier cinema.  


Not many fx shots, and just a couple of mattes as far as I can recall, with this shot of the old pirate ship requiring some painted in set extension to add in more sails, cave walls and such.


Again, Frank Ordaz has painting duties, and here we can appreciate the invisible fix up work that a good matte artist can do.  Also, the Warner Bros. soundstage lighting and gantry work was in frame so this served a dual purpose.

Christopher Evans discusses his preliminary sketched in outline for a proposed matte shot with the vfx director, though the final shot, shown below, I read used miniatures(?)


The shot when completed.  Though the view seems to be identical to that which Evans had roughed in, I think it was ultimately done with model work(?)


I'm pretty sure this well is mostly painted.


Long shot of sailing ship at sea was either matte art (most likely) or miniature doubled in.


A shot that's not very effective, and has a distinct 'pasted on' quality about it.  Not ILM's finest hour.

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***This post, and all 174 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/




                                                 TO BE CONTINUED....


I'll be back soon with great matte shots from shows like THE GOLDEN CHILD,  HOOK,  STAR TREK IV,   EXPLORERS,  ENEMY MINE,  THE DARK CRYSTAL,  LABYRINTH and even that god-awful HOWARD THE DUCK (o.m.g, what on earth were they thinking!)

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***Final word:  We here at Matte Shot wish to take this opportunity to extend our kind thoughts and utmost support to the people and legitimate government of the democratic nation of Ukraine.  

All the best.

Pete



























INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC: THE MATTE ART - Part Two

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Hi there friends, followers and fellow film fanatics.  It is, without question, well and truly time to examine more of that utterly magical lost art form of the traditional, hand painted and photo-chemically assembled matte shot.  I have an epic (truly!) rundown here today, as the continuation of the mammoth tribute piece to Industrial Light & Magic's matte painting department and the personalities therein.

As with the first part of this extensive overview, I've attempted to cover all of the ILM traditional mattes as best I can, and in chronological order.  There are some familiar shots here for sure, but also a number of long forgotten mattes from a mix of genres, all having been a product of the ILM factory.  The first film covered here today is one I overlooked in Part One (THE DARK CRYSTAL), so, apologies.

A number of painters continue to be celebrated, as do cameramen and others.  Part One included foundation magicians of the matte Harrison Ellenshaw, Alan Maley and Ralph McQuarrie, followed by the next generation of exponents such as Michael Pangrazio, Christopher Evans, Frank Ordaz and Caroleen Green.  Part Two carries over some of those storied talents as well as adding in some fresh names such as Sean Joyce, Yusei Uesugi, Richard Van Der Wendt, Paul Swensden and the multi-talented Mark Sullivan.  Also, in a couple of film entries I'll point out other non-ILM mattes that were rendered elsewhere by other artists such as Doug Ferris and Charles Stoneham in the UK, as well as veteran Jim Danforth at his Effects Associates fx company.  I've endeavoured to be as complete as possible, so if anyone out there spots something that I've missed - be it a matte or film title - let me know.

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I stumbled, purely by accident, across an excellent podcast website called Filmumentaries, which delves into comprehensive and intelligent guest interviews by creator and host, British podcaster Jamie Benning, with all manner of film industry people, such as ILM and Matte World's Craig Barron and Michael Pangrazio as two examples.  Craig's podcast can be found here, while Mike's is here.  Highly recommended, and I simply must dig deeper!


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*** We here at Matte Shot wish to take this opportunity to extend our kind thoughts and utmost support to the sheer strength and resolve of the brave and courageous people, armed forces and legitimate democratic government of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.       The frenzy of brutality, mass murder and wholesale destruction - all clearly crimes against humanity - engineered by Putin's fascist, genocidal Russian war machine, upon the innocent Ukrainian population is unforgiveable.  The entire 'free' world is on the side of Ukraine, with the Russian invaders international credibility now competely lost due to the actions of their dictator, for generations to come.

All the best.

Pete 

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Now, with that important opinion piece off my chest, it's time to begin our journey down the magical matte painted highway...

Enjoy the ride...

***This post, and all 175 previous blogposts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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In keeping with an intended chronological rundown, I had meant to include THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982) in the previous part of this ILM retrospective, so with oversight corrected, here it now appears.

DARK CRYSTAL was an entirely British based production, with visual effects supervised by UK optical veteran Roy Field.  Some of the mattes were done at Roy's company Optical Film Effects, in London - and those examples come are shown after I demonstrate the ILM shots.  ILM were called and given a total of eight painted mattes to render some while into late production, to further flesh out the broad vistas, and the finished shots were indeed magnificent.  This is a Mike Pangrazio matte.

Pangrazio at work on above matte at ILM.

Another of Mike's mattes from the same sequence.

Pangrazio and brush...

This beautiful shot was the work of ILM's Christopher Evans.

A closer look...

Another of Evans' mattes.  Unusually, all of the ILM mattes were shot and composited on 4-perf, rather than their standard VistaVision 8-perf.  Matte camera operator Craig Barron recalled the assignment as being one of the rare pick-up matte jobs that came into the matte department, and was completely separate from the rest of ILM's operation.

This shot is a Mike Pangrazio matte.

Chris Evans matte shot.


NON-ILM MATTE EFFECTS SHOTS:
I'm not completely sure about all of these, but can state that the bottom left frame with the swirling sky was executed at Roy Field's O.F.E in London.  Veteran matte artist Doug Ferris first attempted to create the effect as a large glass painting and smoke effects (shown below), but early trials were disappointing.  The effects shot was eventually achieved by UK fx man Jon Sorenson as a combined water tank gag.



UK matte artists Charles Stoneham (left) and Doug Ferris (right) at work on mattes.  Some fx shots were dropped when the running time was shortened after preview audiences were confused.  The 3 mattes here were Stonehams work.  

These four mattes were also painted by Charles Stoneham and photographed by Martin Body at Roy Field's Optical Film Effects.

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I seem to recall that Ron Howard's COCOON (1985) might have won the best vfx Oscar that year.

The film featured only a few matte painted shots, though the numerous cel animated optical shots were really impressive.

Multi-plane matte art for camera move which opens the show.

Kid on set shot against a blue screen, with an extensive Caroleen Green matte painted neighbourhood and moonscape added in.

Caroleen Green shown here at work on the above matte art.

Matted housing sub-division.

A closer view of Caroleen's moonscape.

Setting up the huge multi-plane glass painted intersteller vista for the dramatic conclusion of COCOON. A total of four 8 foot square glass sheets were required.  Matte supervisor Chris Evans used translucent acrylic paint and careful airbrushing.  The sheets of glass were mounted parallel to each other, backlit, and shot with a motion control camera move, with the miniature mothership composited in later.

Matte painter Caroleen Green shown with large scale artwork and spacecraft miniature in what is likely a paste-up departmental publicity shot.

Green armed with airbrush, completes the giant Earth painting as part of the concluding sequence.

And this is how the sequence shaped up on screen (also see following frames...)






A great little movie, bolstered by the wonderful cast, especially the late, great Brian Dennehy and the always remarkable veteran, Hume Cronyn.


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Joe Dante's EXPLORERS (1985) was, to a certain extent, entertaining, but, as with many of Joe's flicks, just never knew when to quit!  All of the Earthbound stuff was great, but once the alien creatures got in on the act it became tiresome, rather quickly.  It does, however, have Dick Miller in it.... always a plus!


Around a dozen matte paintings were used in EXPLORERS, with all being night time suburban neighbourhoods and the like.  Here is artist Sean Joyce at work on one such view.

Sean's painting with miniature home built DIY spacecraft, theThunder Road, doubled in, along with foreground tree elements.

Extensive matte art brings nice ethereal moonlit luminence to the proceedings that actual location first unit work couldn't.

More mattes expand the kids environs.  The lower left Drive-In sequence was a hoot, with deliberately hokey faux bad sci-fi flick playing, all out of sync, if I recall - much like some 60's Italian space epic!  Gets really funny when an actual genuine flying saucer cruises up in front of the screen and buzzes the audience, with one slick guy in his car trying to impress his girlfriend with:  "Oh, that's so bad... you can even see all of the matte lines" (if I recall).  Best bit in the movie.

Sean Joyce adds detail to one of his many mattes...

The final shot ...

Lining up a substantial foreground miniature set with background matte art.

Both Sean Joyce and Michael Pangrazio shared painting duties on EXPLORERS.

Presumably window illuminations etc must have been backlit gags, possibly shot a separate pass.

The painting used for the above shot, with matte cameraman Craig Barron shown here.


A combined large matte painting with added physical 3D relief, a layer of fibrefill clouds strategically arranged on a glass plate, with the Thunder Bay model craft doubled in.

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German director Wolfgang Peterson turned out a reasonably interesting sci-fi take on the old Lee Marvin-Toshiro Mifune classic, HELL IN THE PACIFIC, with this space opera, ENEMY MINE (1985).

The flick was okay I guess, but made quite watchable with good fx character make up and ILM's excellent visual contibutions.

As a visual effects showcase, the film stands up very well, even decades later, and features a great number of beautiful painted mattes.

Original footage made by another director was shot in Iceland, but all of that work was jettisoned by the studio due to 'artistic differences' and schedule over-runs.  Filming resumed under a new regime and the unit was sent to Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, where WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH had been filmed many years earlier, to excellent effect.

Before and after where exotic landscape has been enhanced with painted sky and moons (see below)

The same matte shot, though optically flopped for the release version.

A Chris Evans matte (see below)

Chris Evans works on one of the many mattes for the show (see below), while at upper right is director Wolfgang Peterson, seen here with one of the miniature sets built and shot at Bavaria Studios in Munich, Germany.  The troubled production saw all interiors and sets shot in Munich, while second unit and plate photography for alien landscapes were shot in the Canary Islands.  Post-production opticals and matte work was all carried out back at ILM.

The crashed ship and much artwork...

Before and after pre-comp.

The final composite of the above frames.

I'm not sure if the actors went to Lanzarote, or just the 2nd unit and effects unit camera crews?

The matte department had already formulated an overall 'look' and design for the various shots before first unit production was underway with the initial director, though these designs were later altered and reimagined somewhat once the new director took the reigns.

German film maker Wolfgang Peterson in ILM's matte studio.
I'm not sure, but this might be the same matte shown above, with sky now painted in?


Matte cameraman Craig Barron and assistant Wade Childress went to the Canary Islands and shot many 8-perf latent image plates with their VistaVision camera.

The meteor shower... probably due to global warming or some such thing...

Virtually all of the mattes were executed as original negative composites to maintain maximum quality.  The matte department were heavily involved with the planning of proposed mattes from early on in the production, importantly, as the paintings and comps were to be o/neg, so much foresight was required.


Miniature, matte art and blue screened actors in Munich.

The director was very specific about colour schemes, with those decided upon in conceptual design sketches translate accurately with mattes and composites.

A spectacular tilt matte shot.

A closer look at the upper part of that same matte.

Likewise with the lower portion...

Matte cinematographer Craig Barron and chief matte painter Chris Evans were gung-ho about using the latent image original negative technique, to maximise quality, colour matching, subtle soft edged blending and no loss of contrast given the many night time matte shots.



This expansive shot lasts on screen for one whole minute and contains various elements.  The ocean and intense sun was a live plate filmed in San Francisco, the sky, mountains and much of the crowd were all a matte painting,  They filmed some 30 extras in costume and composited them into areas of the painting via front projection.

Amid a grandest of intergalactic vista's, our two actors are doubled in atop the cliff.

ILM artist Sean Joyce with his jaw dropping sunset painting.  An ardent admirer of master matte painter Albert Whitlock, in an interview Sean stated that this particular matte painting was his own personal tribute to Whitlock.

Cameraman Wade Childress arranges Sean's splendid painting for photography, as well as a separate 'burning sun' element to complete the effect.

The sun sinks slowly into the west...



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The 1985 pic YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES (called PYRAMID OF FEAR in this part of the world for some inexplicable reason!) was another dazzling fx showcase, resulting in another nomination for the ILM effects boys.

Michael Pangrazio adding fine detail to one of just three mattes required for the film.

Mike's painting in an original negative matte shot.

A lousy image, but it is in full colour.  I do try to be as complete as possible with what I have on file.

An interesting combination shot, with foreground miniature street and buildings, matte painted city beyond, and live action figures doubled in.  Incidentally, the film was a bonanza of VFX, with brilliant stop motion, opticals and the first ever(?) digitally created 'stained glass man', which was a show-stopper.

The only other matte painting that I'm aware of was this one - I think the work of Caroleen Green - with additional fx elements added later.  I recall Craig Barron explaining this shot to me years ago, and I think he stated that the original live action plate with actors climbing (or sliding?) on pyramid's facade - shot in England - was unusable due to camera motor surge or flicker.  The matte department, I recall, had to cel animate the figures in front of the painting.  Interestingly, this sort of 'animation' over a painted scene was an old and tried & true technique used by Albert Whitlock on scores of films, and really set a benchmark within the vfx industry.


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Aside from TV's 70's MUPPET SHOW I could never really get into the Jim Henson kiddie-fantasy films.  Probably due to my passion for Dario Argento and DePalma horror and hard-hitting Sidney Lumet type serious police drama.  Anyway, LABYRINTH (1986) was a massive hit, so what do I know.  

Oh, and Jennifer Connelly was an absolute doll (and hey, she even appeared in Argento's blood, corpse and maggot soaked CREEPERS around the same time, so that's something!)

Interestingly, the film was a UK based show, with the effects largely carried out there.  I'll demonstrate the British matte shots after the ILM shots.  I think Caroleen Green may have painted this one?



Some closer detail...

Not sure if this matte is the exact same painting or one not used?  It may be one of Doug Ferris' mattes from the UK?  Note the face of David Bowie clearly woven into the hedgerow, a point that Ferris made a point of mentioning in an interview, and how Henson wanted to merge Bowie's visage into as much of the matte work as possible.

Not sure if this one is ILM, but there is Bowie's face painted into the stonework at right.

This shot I can confirm is a Caroleen Green painting, with this frame enlarged from an original unbalanced 35mm trim.

The same shot as seen in the BluRay edition.


NON-ILM MATTE SHOTS:
Veteran British matte and optical artist Doug Ferris and matte cameraman John Grant supplied a number of shots.  According to Grant they did some 14 shots though I could never find that many, so maybe some were dropped in the final edit, or replaced by ILM later?  This sequence is Doug's.

The same sequence rendered by Doug Ferris and John Grant.  Doug started off in 1961 at Shepperton Studios in England, with the sci-fi classic THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS being his first film in which he provided stop-motion miniature cars doubled into a matte painted deserted Paris.

Another of Doug's shots.  Nice painting and atmosphere but marred by a less than impressive marriage of artwork to live action plate, sadly.

Not certain who did these, though I'm sure a fair amount of subtle and well integrated matte art was needed to breath life into these amazing Escher-esque sets.  

The sets would have been impossible to construct as a practical environ - a veritable nightmare for architects and carpenters I'd imagine.

Certainly an optical composite joining different partial sets, no doubt blended with subtle matte art.

Fabulous art direction, with this extended matte art and optical fx sequence being the film's highlight.

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You can't criticise Pete for not going the whole distance for the sake of this splendid blog-site.  I saw this stupid bloody thing back in the 1980's and felt it was utter crap.  In spite of those dark memories from decades ago I felt it my duty to take another 'gander' at HOWARD THE DUCK (1986) for the purposes of matte shot evaluation! Still crap, but not quite as bad as I seem to recall, with some moments of amusement amid the many visual effects... and Lea Thompson is still kinda hot. 

In my part of the world, this film was released with no mention of a fucking duck being the leading character (for good reason!), and was retitled HOWARD - A NEW BREED OF HERO.  Audiences spat out their popcorn once it became apparent the 'star' had webbed feet, a bill and feathers!!!  Probably demanded their hard earned coin back.  Anyway, the top frame is some sort of fx shot, though is part of a very broad pan across the Duck's city.  Possibly a full city painting, or at least the night sky?

A number of impressive matte shots occur - mostly in the first 10 minutes - with this spectacular 'birds-eye' vantage point of Duckberg(!)

Frank Ordaz was supervising matte painter, with Sean Joyce, Richard van der Wendt and the lovely Caroleen Green tasked with much brushwork.

I had hoped it were 'duck season', but unfortunately it was 'wabbit season'.  Think about it...it's a rather clever joke ;)    **(apologies to the late, great Mr Chuck Jones)

Spectacular matte art augments an indescribable sequence where 'Howard' is sucked out his home planet straight through to Earth.  Who writes this stuff?

Many of the galactic shots feature a subtle camera move, sometimes multi-plane.


Multi-plane matte work where said poultry falls to Earth.  Quack, Quack!

Continuation of same with painted city and separate layer of clouds - probably cotton wool.

A Frank Ordaz matte shot where around 60% of the frame has been painted.  Red blinking lights atop the Dynatechnics complex add a nice 'live' touch.  This frame is from the BluRay.

Same matte as it looked as an original 35mm test frame.

A nice invisible tilt up trick shot by Caroleen Green.

Beautifully done, with no clue as to where the join is between real and painted.

Caroleen Green's painted intergalactic zapping contraption, and likely the roof of the complex as well.

Location action with painted set extensions and clouds.

Credit where credit's due...

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The last of the really good Trek movies, STAR TREK IV (1986) was a whole heap of fun, and in fact, looked like everybody on screen were having a ball.

Left, Craig Barron with matte on stand for composite work.  Right, Frank Ordaz deep in concentration.

Ralph McQuarrie served as conceptual artist on STAR TREK IV, and this was one of his renderings of a proposed - though unused - look for Starfleet HQ in futuristic San Francisco.  Great artwork!

Before and afters from the final version of Starfleet HQ.  I much prefer Ralph's concept above, personally.

A wonderful example at left of a basic block-in without any detail work applied yet.  Photos like this are so rare to find and are most informative I find.  At right Barron and Evans discuss the final painting.

The finished composite, almost certainly an original negative comp, with bi-packed spacecraft above.  Reportedly, neither Evans nor Barron were happy with the final shot and felt it was poorly designed, too busy and lacked a central area of focus - vital when a shot is only on screen for some two seconds.

A shot that many wouldn't notice as being matte art....  See below.

A full painting of a San Francisco Bay area some hundreds of years in the future.


Concept sketch for an important planetary set piece.

Frank Ordaz with his pallet rendering the Bird of Prey craft and environs.

The final composite, though to this viewer it all looks too 'painterly' and 'stiff' to be fully effective.  Just my opinion.

Another of Frank's paintings, with additional sunburst element.  Possibly a shot recycled from the third TREK picture.

The first frame from a massive sweeping pan across the alien landscape as the ship lifts off.  A vast painting measuring some 4 x 12 feet in size, and rendered by Sean Joyce.

In it's entirety...

Spaceship model added as a motion control element, and blue screened in actors as well.

Engine flare and interactive 'sunlight' upon ship shot in additional motion control passes with miniature.

Brilliant sun was a separate practical element made by directing a light source directly into the lens, with vaseline smeared on a glass as a means of diffusing the light.

Not sure, but reckon this is all painted from the waterline upward.

The marine park plays an important role in the narrative of TREK IV.  Some ingenious trick work was needed here to combine several different locations as one.  The marine institute was not actually in San Francisco, and did not have a water tank as seen here.  The water was shot elsewhere and matted in.  The San Francisco skyline was also a separate live element, filmed hours away, and matted in too.  Some subtle matte art was employed to tie all of the different pieces of live action together - and very successfully at that!

The same setting as seen later on, this time largely shot 'as is', with the actual empty rock pool.  Again, the distant (real) city and sky were actual location 2nd unit plates, though filmed some 80 miles away and combined optically with the marine institute, again with small degree of painted work to marry it all together as utterly convincing.

Matte painting supervisor Christopher Evans at work on various conceptual sketches for proposed matte shots.

Matte painted park in a misty moonlit setting.

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While not as bad as most reviewers might suggest, THE GOLDEN CHILD (1986) was a rollicking mix of comedy, mystery, witchcraft and supernatural shennanigans; chock-filled with top shelf ILM visuals, from matte art, stop motion, cel animated gags, miniatures and a few jaw-on-the-floor major fx set pieces.


The opening shot in Tibet was a wonderfully orchestrated mixture of multi-plane matte art by Chris Evans, and intermediate miniatures and optical snowfall.

Evans with the deep, multi-plane set up.

Craig Barron watches on as Chris Evans touches up the miniature monestary.  I assume ILM veteran Paul Huston had a hand in this, with vast experience in miniatures and other gags.

For interior shots of the Tibetan monestary, Caroleen Green blocks in not only the architecture but also the majority of the Buddhist priests.


Green working in the overall structure.

The shot was conceived to have a slow push in move, so foreground miniature pillars were built and positioned in front of the painting to lend depth.  Chris Evans is pictured here.

Final shot with entirely painted monestary, mostly painted people, miniature foreground and a handful of extras in costume filmed on the left side only and then optically flopped to appear on the right side as well, to provide some 'live' movement.


Another very quick blink-and-you'd-miss-it matte painted shot was this view as a bird flutters near ceiling.

A later visit to the Tibet setting utilises a second establishing matte shot, withb this one being a tilt upward from the live action people.



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THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK received a British BAFTA award for Best Special Visual Effects in 1987, and the work was pretty good.

Not sure here, may be painted skies or split-screened in real cloud footage?

Multiple element shots involving live action, painting, cel animation and possibly cloud tank gags.

The classic 'ghostly manor' matte shot, as seen in a hundred old Universal movies.  Live action lower plate, painted stately home and sky, plus lightning interactive gags added.


From a lousy looking DVD.

An invisible matte shot where the house is seen far off in the distance.

Craig Barron and Sean Joyce set up a latent image matte shot utilising a large plywood cutout conforming to the outline of the fictional house.  The black painted cutout was set up in a chosen position, with the Pacific Ocean in twilight off in the distance.  Later, the actual detail of the house was painted at ILM and double exposed into the blacked out sillhouette, with only sufficient detail required for the twilight, backlit conditions.

The shot as it appears on screen.  A small tilt down was added to what was a thoroughly convincing shot.

Artist Sean Joyce working on a sprawling daytime matte painting of the house, though sadly, dropped during the final editing.

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A popular kids film, HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS (1987) featured just a couple of mattes in one sequence, though did have a dynamite Rick Baker hairy Yeti suit and amazing articulation which was a character in itself.

Oh, and that's Harry.  More preferable than Howard the quacking Duck...by a long shot!

In one key sequence, Harry stumbles across a busy freeway and kind of 'freaks out'.  Matte shot with painted environment and much traffic doubled in later.

Harry gets closer to the roadside.  I suspect this whole scene was a complex vfx set up.  The mountains are painted and the constant passing vehicles and trucks all look 'matted in'.  Possibly miniature traffic added by blue screen, especially the big 18 wheeler's that roll by.  Interesting.

A second view


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Definitely a cute little audience pleaser, BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED (1988) was highly enjoyable, and as it featured one of my fave actors from days long gone, Hume Cronyn, what's not to like?

I'm fairly sure most or all of these frames are painted mattes.

An fx shot, possibly with miniature sign and painted buildings on either side.

Caroleen Green was responsible for this tilt up matte shot of the all central old tenement building.  The plate was shot 8-perf with a VistaVision camera mounted on it's side, allowing a large negative area once the painting was added and an optical scan included.

Same shot, as the partial facade is extended with invisible brush work.


The film concludes with a wonderful reveal, as the tiny tenement building is sandwiched between a myriad of highrise skyscrapers - all a major matte shot.

Christopher Evans at work on the matte for the above shot, also filmed with a sideway oriented VistaVision camera to facilitate the extreme tilt and very slight optical zoom.

Frame by frame as it appears on screen.  Virtually all painted, right down to just above the real crowds in the actual plaza.  Evans also added a slot gag to his painted fountain, with faux water spraying upward.


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A massive effects film, WILLOW (1988) was nominated for the VFX Oscar that year.

Great kiddie fantasy, jammed with terrific visuals and marvellous matte artistry.  I did extensive coverage of WILLOW a few years ago in a massive article, and that may be readhere.

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A fair entry in the series, but not a patch on the first two films, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989) had one or two great action set pieces and in at least one instance, truly ingenious effects work by ILM, as well as a fresh stable of matte exponents.

Some of ILM's matte department veterans such as Barron and Pangrazio had departed the 'corporate' Lucasfilm world and established another firm of their own, Matte World, which in itself proved highly successful.  A new, though highly experienced matte painter had joined ILM around this time, the multi-talented Mark Sullivan.  Following many student fx projects and a stint with David Stipes, Mark professionally entered the fx industry primarily as Jim Danforth's protoge at Jim's Effects Associates.  The above shot was the work of Mark.  Some years ago I conducted a deep delve career interview with Mark: "Around the fall of 1988 I got a call from Scott Ross, ILM's general manager.  Except for some of the camera people, pretty much the entire matte department personnel had departed ILM that summer, for various reasons.  ILM had INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, GHOSTBUSTERS 2 and THE ABYSS all in house, and all of those projects had various matte painting shots in need of completion before Memorial Day weekend of 1989.  This shot was almost an entire painting, with the lower quarter or so of the car approaching being live action.  This was my first matte painting at ILM.  I started on it around the beginning of November 1988.  This was the glass painting that I cracked, but Paul Huston helped me to repair."

Another fresh young matte artist also joined ILM around this time, Yusei Uesugi, whom matte artist Rocco Gioffre - Sullivan's fx business partner - had met at a film festival in Japan in 1985.  According to Mark: "Yusei was a student at the time and approached Rocco with some examples of his matte painting experiments.  Yusei started at ILM around late January of 1989, as I recall, and we were quite fortunate to have Caroleen Green join us for several months."  The above shot is one of Yusei's mattes.

Two of Mark's conceptual paintings for important matte shots.

Mark's superbly realised matte painted establishing shot for the Republic of Hatay.  Magnificent sense of backlight and sweltering 'humidity'.  Very 'Whitlock'.

Matte in final stages of preparation (see below for final).  Mark described the set up at ILM for me:  "Early on, for about 4 to 6 weeks, I was the only painter in the matte department.  I suggested to the powers that be that they consider hiring Yusei Uesugi, who had done some nice work assisting both Rocco Gioffre and me at our shared studio space in West L.A the previous year.  Wade Childress, Bob Hill, Jo Carson and the multi-talented Harry Walton were our main camera people on projects at that time. We could bring in help from other departments as needed: model builders for reference miniatures, grips and electricians for special rigging set ups, and of course the optical department to create RGB separations, registered colour prints or projection plates."

The flawless finished composite.

Further INDY matte work above by Mark.    When asked about the actual working environment, Mark told me:"In terms of the physical infrastructure, there was a very pleasant second story painting studio area, with skylights over each easel.  The paintings would be lowered to the first story photography stage down a little dumbwaiter elevator system.  The matte photography stage had a small, light-tight film changing room, for loading and unloading camera magazines, and a set of rewinds for breaking down latent image rolls.  There were 4 permanent camera set ups with matte stands; one was a versatile system with both the camera, two painting supports and a process projector, mounted to a motion control rig.  There was a front projection matte stand that we never used, and two fixed matte stands, constructed from box steel for locked-off shots.  One was a Bell & Howell 2709 four-perf camera, mounted to a steel pedestal, and the other, with a Vista-Vision eight-perf camera, was also mounted on a steel pedestal.  All the stands or pedestals were bolted to the floor, which I believe, was poured concrete under the linoleum."

The action heats up in this closer cut.

A cleverly concieved trick shot which Mark called The Crescent of the Moon shot.  See below...

Mark described this trick shot clearly:  "This photo, taken off-axis from the movie camera's line up, shows Paul Huston's miniature terrain behind my panel painting of the surrounding mountains and sky.  Paul devised a very clever technique to trim the bottom of the painting down to a knife edge, so it would blend better with the background.  Paul also handled the very difficult colour blending of the background miniature - the painting was created first, and the miniature was built to match".

Yusei at work on elements for the dramatic 'Leap of Faith' sequence which ultimately involved physical props, miniatures, matte art and painted backings - to amazing effect.

Mark had much praise for miniatures collaborator Paul Huston:  "Paul was another huge talent who seemed to enjoy working with the matte department.  We were able to save some time on certain shots by using some of Paul's beautiful miniature work, in lieu of painting everything in the frame.  For instance, several of the shots in INDY's 'leap of faith' sequence were entirely Paul's work.  Paul carved and shaped the steep cliff walls, and modelled and painted the trompe l'oeil piece that Indiana Jones steps onto in that sequence."


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An amusing sequel to the hit '84 blockbuster, GHOSTBUSTERS 2 (1989) was a huge effects assignment.  I never saw the new revisionist girly re-boot, though by all accounts, it stunk!

For the abandoned NYC subway station, a minimal set was built and extended considerably with matte painting and a miniature river of 'slime'.

A second cut from the same scene, with multiple components.

Not sure if this was a full matte painted New York (probably) or retouched photo blow up, with the lights all going out, as there's something strange goin' on.

This shot was definitely a full matte painting.

An astonishingly breathtaking full matte painting by matte supervisor Mark Sullivan.

Mark with his masterpiece.  Sad to say matte fans, this beautiful piece shattered to a thousand pieces sometime later.  I tentatively brought the topic up with Mark:  "Yes...at some point when it was being hung up to display, it was dropped and it shattered!  I don't know if it was salvageable as I wasn't there at the time. That's the sad and dangerous thing about using glass.  I would use a heat lamp to dry the oil painted glass mattes overnight.  Once I stupidly aimed the heat lamp at only one end of a painting, where I'd been painting, and by the next morning, the temperature difference between the ends had cracked the glass."

Here is a wonderful test frame of Mark's as yet unfinished matte, though around 80 to 90% of it has been completed.


Close up detail showing Mark's perspective lines drawn in, and sketchy motor vehicles parked.

More detail where highly finished brush work is juxtaposed with loose blocked in forms.

The finished shot as it appears on screen in 2.35:1 theatrical.  Love Mark's perspective, and probably regard it as his best matte, and I have had the privilege of seeing pretty much all of his archive.


Another painted wide vista of Manhattan, with evil baby-thieving ghost nanny doubled in.

I'm not sure here - certainly a lot of vfx going on.  Possibly painted city?

The museum at the centre of the shot was a large miniature, with some live action and a great deal of Mark's matte art for the remainder of the view.  An original negative comp, on VistaVision.

Again, miniature museum with matte painted skyscrapers and live action extras.

More of the same...



Matte cameraman Wade Childress takes a light reading from the large miniature of the Liberty Lady, as Mark paints the lower portion of the statue on glass, where rear projected characters will be added in what would become a very dramatic downview as 'she' comes to life!

Final shot.

Stunt guy in a Liberty Lady suit in a tank, shot against bluescreen.  Not sure if the city is matte painted but feel it was likely as a night shot was better suited to matte art.

A monumental number of effects cuts were needed for the whole sequence, with some shots being live street crowds requiring painstaking roto work to include action as giant lady strides down Fifth Avenue. Some shots used miniatures and some, such as this (I'm certain) were sprawling matte paintings, rendered largely by Caroleen Green.  Sullivan commented that to achieve a decent exposure when attempting to shoot live in New York on a busy night would have been difficult in itself, so matte painting was seen as a safer alternative.  Fabulous shot!

The always photogenic and highly talented Caroleen Green armed with brush, finalises detail work upon her wonderful Fifth Avenue matte.

Pretty sure this view was also mostly painted, with what appears to be a matte split running along just above the first floor of the actual 'live action' buildings.

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THE ABYSS (1989) was a visually stunning experience for sure, though marred by appalling dialogue and stock, two dimensional, cardboard cut-out performances.  A director who can only handle spectacle like few others and has not a clue when it comes to character development.  Sad to say it, but that glow-in-the-dark translucent entity from the ocean floor gave the best performance.

The show was loaded with well deserved Oscar winning visual effects from a number of suppliers.  Just the one solo matte shot as far as I am aware, with this 35mm wedge test being a Mark Sullivan shot:  "The matte painting process really involves an enormous amount of communication and joint thinking between the matte artist and the matte camera person.  For instance, I worked with Harry Walton on a pretty challenging matte shot for THE ABYSS - a movie that Dennis Muren was supervising.  A portion of the shot was an original negative plate, another portion was a rear projected element, behind the glass painting, of a large, live action wave, and there was a foreground element of some sailors that was an in-camera travelling matte.  Optical had prepared a black and white hold-out matte that Harry would bi-pack when he was shooting the painting, with the projected water footage, onto the latent image roll.  Harry would then have to load up the latent onto his optical printer, and expose in the positive RGB separations onto the take.  With all of the colours and densities that had to be matched and balanced for all of the elements, it was a lot to keep track of". 

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An odd little 'romantic comedy' seemed almost a throwback to the screwball comedies of the thirties, JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO (1990) featured matte art, travelling mattes and miniatures.


The flick opens with this tilt up onto a quite deliberately skewed cityscape, with Yusei Uesugi as matte artist and Jo Carson shooting the mattes.

Lovers lane with all the glittering lights.  Not sure about lower shot, but certainly appears to be a vfx view, due to the bizarre colour scheme.

Tom Hanks on his voyage to find himself.  Miniatures, matte art and optical gags.

A highly romanticised bit of corny storytelling.

Mysterious South Seas paradise?   ... Nah, it just a matte shot.

May be miniatures, or partial painted combinations?


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John McClane kicks arse in Chicago this time for DIE HARD 2 (1990).  A good, solid, ruthless, no bullshit action flick, though not quite as good as the original, was a far sight better than those which followed (*footnote: I was present with family on vacation in Budapest in 2012 and spent the day watching the filming of action sequences for part 5 of the series, with Budapest standing in for that bastard Voldemort Putin's Moscow)

Lots of explosions and A-grade model shots, though only the one, impressive matte shot, which comes at the end in a massive pullout (I do mean massive!!)  Here, artist Yusei Uesugi is working on the preliminary stages of the vast airport painting, with a number of airliners and emergency folk convene.

All of the airlines on screen were fictional companies, no doubt due to the fact that several of them are blown to bits, mid-air!

Close up showing painted detail and photo blow up area pasted in for scale and lighting reference.

Yusei's mural sized matte on the wall at ILM years later.


The shot was composited using very primitive computer technology of the day and transferred back onto 35mm film in what was a massive and time consuming process involving, if I recall, maybe a crate load of floppy disks and a main frame to contain the data.

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The frequently beautiful DREAMS (1990) from esteemed Japanese film maker Akira Kurosawa literally did have a dream-like quality to it.

Among the few mattes was this gorgeous rendering by Mark Sullivan.

Mark's painting on the wall at ILM.



Another ILM matte shot by Caroleen Green.


NON-ILM MATTE SHOTS:
I believe these shots were made in Japan, at Den Films, by matte artist Taksuhiro Miyaguchi.

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Oliver Stone has been somewhat of a hit or miss film maker over the years, though I'd have to say he's been more on the 'hit' side than the other.  THE DOORS (1991) was excellent!  No two ways about it.  A brilliant bio-pic on Jim Morrison and the band, with astonishing performances, especially by Val Kilmer, who really never did anything as good ever, before or since. Fab soundtrack too...naturally!

Just a few visuals in the film, including a pair of Mark Sullivan matte paintings, with this one starting off the show as a seemingly genuine locale.

Mark's splendid painting, sans live action.

Closer view of the painting.

A second matte in the same sequence - with a painted desert and stormy sky as seen through an approaching car windscreen - was one that Mark told me he found particularly satisfying.  The original plate was shot hand-held from the back seat of a car on a bumpy desert road.  Mark's painting was later match-moved on the Auto-Matte camera with much care, making this ILM's first match-move, motion-control matte composite.

While the upper frame is from the BluRay edition, this one is from Mark's original 35mm wedge test.

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Ron Howard's 1991 firefighter movie, BACKDRAFT had plenty of pyro and episodes of frightening conflagration, as one would expect.  One matte painted shot was supplied by ILM for a key sequence.

For a sequence involving a burning warehouse with people on the roof the wide shot was achieved with a cleverly combined matte painting, by Mark Sullivan, which was composited with a large burning miniature roof and upper floor.  An actor was later added in, running across the inferno's roof.

ILM's miniatures people built this rooftop.

The final shot, with all of the elements tied together so well (note the small figure running toward edge of roof).

And this was how it looked once cropped down in the Super-35 release prints.

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Yep... I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  THE ROCKETEER (1991) hit all the targets for me.  Great 1930's Saturday matinee serial vibe, fab art direction, engaging performances, terrific effects work, a dastardly villain, an amazing Rondo Hatton-esque thug, and the exquisite Jennifer Connelly, who never looked more radiant!

Once again, Mark Sullivan was matte painter, and rendered a handful of wonderful period shots such as this one of Hollywood Blvd.  Incidentally, the director, Joe Johnston started off as ILM's visual effects art director way back on the first (and best) STAR WARS.

For a major action set piece where The Rocketeer blasts off from a nightclub, up through the atrium and over Hollywood, Mark Sullivan painted this massive aerial view of the entire district.  Mark initially rendered a small painting of the view in order to aid the stop motion animators with perspective etc as they animated the puppet Rocketeer.  Sullivan then commenced prep work on what would become a massive painting on a sheet of Lexan, measuring some 19 feet wide x 6 feet high.


In the past, several other ILM matte exponents had utilised the helpful aid of photographing very rudimentary models prior to commencing on a complex matte perspective piece.  Pangrazio did it for his closing RAIDERS shot and others did on occasion as well.  Mark Sullivan elaborated:  "The birdeye's view of Hollywood, and the South Seas Club presented some challenging perspective work.  The ILM model shop made a few hundred tiny wooden blocks for me, and I arranged them in a grid, following the linoleum tile edges of the floor of the matte painting work area.  I traced out the reference photos onto an ink and pencil layout painting, about 20 inches wide.  This layout art was then photographed, projected and drawn onto the large matte painting surface.  Having the perspective laid out saved a lot of time, and kept the guesswork to a minimum when I was painting."

Mark did a fair amount of research into 'old Hollywood' and established which landmarks still existed and those long since demolished.


A close up image from Mark's incredible painting.  The brightly illuminated dome upper centre, next to the Egyptian cinema, was the start point for the Rocketeer to blast skyward in the final scene.

Another close up.  The shot was filmed as one continuous camera move but director Joe Johnston decided break the shot to make the action in two cuts.

Sullivan also painted this later seen vista of LA with the Griffith Observatory and spotlights.

I feel it would be sadly remiss of your humble blogger to not insert this subtle, passing glimpse of the exquisite Jennifer Connelly - who never looked more fetching than in this flick.

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Steven Spielberg's HOOK (1991) was, sadly, a complete misfire.  An astonishingly dull attempt at a timeless children's fairy tale, where in truth, really should not have missed the mark so badly.  That said, ILM's matte department really came to the party with superb matte work and some neat trick shots.  

A number of matte artists worked on this film.  Oddly, this matte, seen here on display, was in fact a large colour photo blow-up - licensed from a stock image agency - retouched by ILM fx art director Dave Carson and matte artist Yusei Uesugi, mainly to add snow to the rooftops and the bridge.  I'd always figured this to be a marvellous full matte painting but Mark spilled the beans for me and I never forgave him!

The shot as it appears in the film, with nice cel animated sparkles over the heads of a pair of cute in-joke personalities - a certain George Lucas and Carrie Fisher, or so I'm told!

Mark Sullivan was, once again, supervising matte painter on HOOK, with this being one of Mark's conceptual paintings to establish the look of the island.

In my interview with Mark, he described this interesting out take:  "This is a test frame of three separate back projection elements being feathered into the as yet incomplete matte painting.  This was eventually used as part of an optical comp, to place Robin Williams into the foreground.  A lot of the colour and clarity of the painting, and it's rear projected portions, were lost in the final optical composite".

The final matte composite, minus the live action element of Williams.

Probably my favourite among the many HOOK paintings was the absolutely captivating kids Neverland tree clubhouse setting.  

Sullivan's full painting as it appears in the film, with live action kids on the right side of the ledge.

This would look so nice on my wall at home - if I didn't have a half dozen other mattes already up there!

close up

Although Chris Evans had departed ILM by this time, he did return for a while to assist with the 20 odd HOOK mattes.

Evans' painting on the LucasFilm wall.  Magnificent subtlety with the hues here.  LOVE IT!

Close up detail...

Final composite with actors dropped in via blue screened TM.  Many of the mattes for HOOK contained multiple elements and gags, worked into the shot, with in some cases as many as 30 separate elements, ranging from breakers, water sparkles to waterfalls to interactive firelit torches and so on.


Another of Mark's shots:  "Everything is painted here, except the water, which has been added as a bi-pack element.  The moons were separate paintings, shot on separate passes, so they could be rising at different speeds.  The moons were shot through a split, so they could be seen behind the horizon".

Not sure about this, it almost has a miniature quality about it, but is probably painted?


Most of the HOOK mattes linger on screen for a longer time than would be usual for painted shots.  This shot is one of Yusei Uesugi's painted mattes.  The actual sunset sky was real, photographed by a second unit with a sillhouette painted black on a sheet of glass to create the exact outline of the land mass set up in front of the camera, and combined later in with Yusei's painting and other atmospheric elements.

Sullivan started work on HOOK right as far back as it's initial pre-production phase, working closely with Spielberg and the fx chief, art director and others to properly establish the desired look and feel for the twenty plus matte shots.

Mark described his style: "I wasn't a meticulous 'fill in the drawing' type of painter.  I once had an instructor who would say 'Draw with the paint'.  I would usually start laying in areas with a large brush, and then work down to the smaller brushes as various areas were refined.  If an area or effect from the initial rough-in seemed to work, I would then leave it alone, or at least try to preserve what it had to offer."

The actual painting rendered for the above scene.

A highly complex tilt-upward shot involving a large 20 foot high miniature tree, various live action plates of rocks, ocean and crashing waves, stop-motion flat cutouts of birds, plus matte painted areas and a large painted backing.

HOOK recieved an Academy Award nomination for best visual effects, and I recall seeing the shot where Peter glides through the clouds over Neverland as being shown on the Oscar broadcast that night.  Here Yusei attends to a spectacular painting for that very sequence.

Multi-element effects shot with Williams on a flying rig in front of a massive blue screen; artificial clouds, and Yusei's expansive matte art of Neverland.  

Yusei's traditional 2D painting was scanned into the computer and an early texture mapping tool was used to allow for some perspective shifts as the motion shot went along.  Some other subtle elements were also added such as shadows and softening of the practical stage produced and photographed clouds.


The final big effects shot in HOOK was back in period London, where an enormous camera pull-back was desired, from the characters on a balcony, out and upward across London.  An ingenious trick, though one used since the 1920's - with the old Warner Bros. Stage 5 effects department being trophy holders for doing just such fx shots on countless classic films.  At left we see matte painters Rocco Gioffre and Eric Chauvin at work on a large 10 foot wide foreground matte painting - one of two - of the house frontage and nearby buildings.  Suspended above it is a second large 8 foot wide photo blow up of the London skyline, which itself has been considerably reworked with paint to omit modern buildings and alter period structures so as to bring a more romanticized feel to the city.  Yusei also worked on these paintings.

FX cinematographer lines up the two paintings, with the lower, foreground one having rear projected people added onto the balcony.

The big reveal, as the camera zooms out and swings upward, just how Warner's used to do it so well for so many pictures throughout the thirties and forties, on shows like THE FOUNTAINHEAD, THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN and THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT - all of which NZPete has covered in depth in past blogs.  Seek 'em out...you don't know what you're missing!

Frame from the sequence where the RP people can be seen on a matte painted balcony.

The finale.  Rocco Gioffre mostly was responsible for this heavily retouched photo-matte.  Certain artistic changes were demanded by the director such as to re-paint Big Ben in closer to the action, for more recognisable value, as it was too far away in the original, actual photographed view.

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Here's a fairly entertaining sort of show, MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN (1992), though I much prefer my 'invisibility' flicks of the old Universal-John P. Fulton variety, personally.

A few matte shots, though some may have been of the 'digital variety', which we try not to discuss here.  This one though is a real, with the actual artwork shown below being a genuine matte painting, rendered by Christopher Evans

Chris' original matte painting.

Not certain here, but these have a profoundly 'manufactured' computer look to them (I might be wrong).


NON-ILM MATTE EFFECTS SHOTS:
As with certain other ILM shows, such as THE EWOK ADVENTURE and NEVER ENDING STORY, veteran matte and all round trick shot expert Jim Danforth was hired to provide some mattes.  Here is an informative before and after for one of Jim's shots which nobody would ever suspect as being a matte painting.

BluRay frame of Jim's matte, though, who would know?

Jim also painted this snowbound mountain cabin retreat for a later scene in the film.

The final composite, with this frame enlarged from one of Jim's original 35mm wedge tests.

...and, as it appears in the BluRay edition.

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A rather strange film, DEATH BECOMES HER (1992), which I think may have been nominated for an FX Oscar??  Memory failing in my old age, and no, not from Long Covid... didn't get it!

Amid the numerous optical and CG gags was this solo traditional matte painted shot by Mark Sullivan.  This was one of the last traditional mattes Mark painted for ILM, as he regaled the story to me in 2013:  "I well remember having a nervous laugh about it [traditional mattes] with Ken Ralston.  Most of the ILM matte guys were by then working on computers in a darkened room elsewhere in the building, to see the monitors better.  I was working upstairs alone in the essentially abandoned ILM matte painting area, and Ken came up to look at a wedge test on the lightbox.  The place was starting to get dusty and unkept, and I guess we could both clearly see the shape of things to come".

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I've never seen this film, THE PUBLIC EYE (1992) is one I must catch up with.

This invisible shot from THE PUBLIC EYE is another Mark Sullivan matte:  "The matte painted work is all of the background buildings, above, and to the left of the green Oldenburg truck.  The grey concrete building in the centre of the frame is all real, except for it's 'sunny' side on the right, above the two story building.  The upper story of the closest building on the right side of the frame is painted.  The real bricks are just a bit lighter looking compared to my painted ones.  This was an ILM project, done right after HOOK".



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Wow...who'd have thunk it?  A traditional matte in the non-traditional epic box-office bonanza, JURASSIC PARK (1993)??  Well, yes indeed!


And there, my friends, you have it!  A magnificent Christopher Evans traditional painting for JURASSIC PARK.

Truly great art but sadly muddied up to near oblivion in the final washed out digital composite.

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I'm of a mixed mind about Coen brothers films - some are brilliant (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and OH BROTHER, WHERE ARE'T THOU and FARGO) while others leave me utterly perplexed, such as THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (1994)

I was of two minds as to whether to include this film.  It was an ILM affair, but, importantly, the matte painted shots were rendered independently outside of Industrial Light & Magic.  Mark Sullivan was, by now, working largely on his own as a freelancer from his small studio in Berkeley, California, and provided a few mattes as a sub-contractor.

Sullivan in his independent matte shop, where he painted for a number of big assignments.

Before and after for the big HUDSUCKER reveal.

A staggering piece of work in anyone's book!  I'd go completely cross-eyed after an hour attempting such a complex painting!!

The finished, incredible original negative matte shot, as seen here in a rare full frame 35mm trim from Mark's archive.

Closer look...

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***This post, and all 175 previous blogposts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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Hope this was an enjoyable ride... do drop me a note if you liked it, or have any comments

Pete

TRICKERY ON A BUDGET: Special Visual Effects in Low Cost Films

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Greetings friends.  It's been a while since we ventured together down those hallowed halls of cinematic wizardry, though I'm quietly confident the extended wait will prove to have been worth the wait.  My good lady wife of nearly 40 years strongly feels I waste my time with these blog posts and is utterly convinced that nobody actually reads them, especially given the size of the average post and no one today has the attention span required.  Is she right?

Today I have tackled something a little different.  In many recent blogs, such as the mammoth ILM two-parter, the emphasis has in general been on big, mega-budget showcases, where more often than not, money was no object, and top shelf facilities and practitioners of the effects art form were in plentiful supply.  This blog post we will be examining the more economic budget effects work for a change.  The work covered here today represents various aspects of what could be termed 'low cost' trick work.  The more than 320 examples range from outright quickie 'B' movies to ambitious semi-professional projects, through to made-for-tv films of the week (and never seen again!) productions, independent movies through to Hollywood studio releases purely intended as the bottom half of some double bill, that is to say, back in the glorious era when we had such things as double or triple bills. We had several movie houses here in Auckland that would routinely show 7 or more films back to back, with kung fu, horror, westerns and sexploitation being big drawcards.  Those were the days.   A staple of my formative years!

 I've put together a substantial retrospective from American, British and a small handful of foreign  film producing locales such as Finland, USSR, Czechoslovakia and even here, New Zealand(!)  Many of the technical staff's names associated with the sampled films will be familiar, though in many cases the films may not be.  While a certain number of the films and some of the shots may be familiar, I'm confident that a sizable number will be entirely new to most Matte Shot readers and fans of old school visual effects.  I always try to dig deep.   The examples illustrated cover the range of matte paintings, miniatures, stop motion, opticals and a few full scale physical effects.  Also, as a first, I've included a small handful of highly memorable old school special make-up effects, where ingenious prosthetic gags made a major impression on me way back in the day.  I could do an entire blog just on special make up fx, but will just stick to the few choice examples I've selected here for now.



I've always been fond of low budget flicks, be they cheesy exploitation shows or well meaning though by circumstance, economic sci-fi movies.  I'm often more impressed with what a film maker can pull together with very limited means over some trillion dollar exercise in self indulgence.  So many great 'little' 1930's horror films, 40's comedies, 50's sci-fi pictures, minor thrillers and westerns, not to mention the great decade of the 1970's where the sheer number of amazingly good, low key, modestly produced motion pictures (non-effects films) were made - the likes of which we'd never see again as no studio exec would green light 'em, though as usual, I digress....

What follows is, hopefully, a fascinating and informative journey into an aspect of traditional, hand made visual effects often overlooked.  It's not my intention to 'scoff at' nor denigrate any of the technical work shown here, as one must keep in mind the practitioners and artists could only ever achieve what the often absurdly tight budgets and ludicrously unworkable scheduling would allow. There is some great material here to be revealed, appreciated and enjoyed.



Enjoy the ride...

Pete



A delightfully ancient clipping I found in a very old motion picture industry journal, dated 1918, showing pioneering effects legend Ralph Hammeras (right) and associate Ray Mammes shooting a miniature for an unidentified film.  I live for historic documents just such as this!

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***This post, and all 176 previous blog post articles, known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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An atmospheric matte shot from RKO's  programmer A GAME OF DEATH, directed by an up and coming prestige film maker, Robert Wise in 1946.  Matte artist could have been Albert Maxwell Simpson or Fitch Fulton.

Here's a rarity indeed... the opening panoramic effects shot as seen in BBC's (live) television version of George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR (1954), starring Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence.  Longtime BBC vfx director, Bernard Wilkie supplied this impressive shot.  Wilkie would go on to oversee all of BBC's fx work for decades, with things like DR WHO among many shows.  Orwell's novel remains one of my all time favourite books, and definitely worth revisiting every few years or so (now more so than ever, sadly) , ever since my high school English teacher had us read it in the mid 70's.  Masterpiece!     A subsequent British feature starring Michael Redgrave (and again, Pleasence)  film came out two years after this tv presentation, which too is well worth viewing if you can find it, and decades later Michael Radford made his definitive version with John Hurt and Richard Burton - his final and finest role ever - purposely released, unsurprisingly in 1984.

Les Bowie was a vital cog in the UK trick shot industry from the mid 1940's up until his early death in the late 1970's.  This is Les's wonderfully evocative full frame CinemaScope matte painting from the low budget Hammer flick THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (1957).

Four uncredited mattes from the tough and violent gangster noir 99 RIVER STREET (1953) from United Artists.  Good, understated movie!

I couldn't resist throwing in these genuine antique photos from the very dawn of motion picture trickery. Love this 'old stuff'.

Jack Rabin and associates were forever associated with 'B' movies and second rate pictures, and a number of their shows are documented in todays blog.  Rabin began as far back as 1927 with Selznick and later worked in the Fox and Warner Bros effects departments where he dabbled in matte painting, models and finally specialised in opticals.  Rabin formed his own optical house in the mid 1940's. ATOMIC SUBMARINE (1959) was fairly entertaining in it's own way, especially if you, like me, like sub movies.  The sub model, by the way, measured 3 feet in length.

Irving Block's matte from ATOMIC SUBMARINE.  Block started off as one of Fred Sersen's matte artists at 20th Century Fox in the 40's and later served under his friend Warren Newcombe in the MGM matte department and painted on epics such as JULIUS CAESAR and others.

Roger Corman always bragged that he never lost a dime on any of the hundred-odd movies he made.  That's due to the fact that Roger never spent much more than a dime on his productions!  AVALANCHE (1978) was something of a laugh-fest, made at the tail end of the 'Disaster Cycle'.  Highly variable vfx abound, supervised by William Cruse, who a year or two later would oversee the $20 million dud METEOR and recycle several of the AVALANCHE fx sequences, which while passable here, looked awful in the latter flick once reformatted, cropped and stretched out to 2.35:1 Scope proportions with grain the size of golf balls!

This AVALANCHE sequence was one that popped up again in the dire METEOR, and also in a couple of made for tv films as I recall.  Completely gratuitous nudity (thankfully) breaks the histrionics and saves AVALANCHE from being a total wash out though!

THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KIDD (1953) was one of those Columbia serials of old.  I remember a couple of old serials shown with Saturday matinees, something long lost today.  No idea about matte artist, but at least 2 of these shots were lifted from other films, with the lower left bay originally being a spectacular Technicolor matte shot lifted from somewhere else.  It re-appeared a decade later cropped to fit the Scope screen in a Fox pirate movie, and in colour!  You'll find it later in this blog post!  Man, do I do the hard yards all in the service of old time visuals!!  Ya' can't complain!

SSSpectacle in spades with this matte from THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI-BABA (1954), distributed by Fox but likely not the real TCF deal, as it was a Walter Wanger production.  Careful how you say that last name!

The brothers Skotak - Robert and Dennis - have for many years been a main stay in the field of Oscar winning visual effects on many a big budget studio epic, more often than not, sticking to their tried and true basic no-nonsense, yet pragmatic methods.  Years ago the boys made this moderately interesting little post-apocalyptic thriller THE AFTERMATH (1979).  Top pic shows the brothers setting up an in-camera glass shot of wrecked Los Angeles, to excellent final effect.  See below...

The ruins of the once bustling city were achieved by much painted alteration and extensive retouching over a high quality photo blow up of Los Angeles, with some carefully placed foliage placed in the foreground to hide the blend.

A close up of the Skotak matte painted additions.

Many of THE AFTERMATH views of destruction comprised superb use of foreground miniatures, shot in natural light - always a 'plus'.

While THE AFTERMATH was a bit of a jumble, and occasionally lacking, the Skotak visual effects made up for the (numerous) directorial and acting short comings.


The minor but okay made-for-tv western AVENGING ANGEL (1995) did have a couple of nice Illusion Arts matte shots such as this one.  One of my Matte Shot long time readers owns this one.

The dreadful Cannon Films, Israeli produced and shot post-nuke quarry pit epic, AMERICA 3000 (1986).  There were a whole sub-genre of terrible movies of this ilk around that time, mostly out of Italy, and all of 'em insufferable.  Blame MAD MAX 2-THE ROAD WARRIOR for starting this trend.


Now, this one was fascinating. THE ANGRY RED PLANET (1959) wasn't half bad, even if the patented CineMagic process made one crave for 'full colour' after a while.

Sam Raimi's ARMY OF DARKNESS (1993) was chock-filled with effects work and nods to icons like Harryhausen.  The shots above were highly effective Introvision miniature-front projection composites (see below...)

Before and after Introvision work.

Another ARMY OF DARKNESS miniature before and after.

Low rent, though inexplicably popular hi-jinks with the cut-price, bargain basement Bowery Boys, this time round in BOWERY TO BAGDAD (1955).  The matte is one of those 'evergreen' paintings that seems to show up endlessly in various 'B' pictures.  

The same matte as originally rendered in colour for another mystery film.  Quite likely a Universal or Columbia show some years previous?  This same matte shows up in another sci-fi flick later in this blog, this time stretched all to hell to fit the CinemaScope frame!


Yeah, I kind of dig giant bugs (or whatever) on the rampage, with the fifties knocking out some gems, usually on a micro-budget such as Bert I. Gordon's BEGINNING OF THE END (1957).  Bert specialised in 'larger than life' sci-fi with many independently made films under his belt, and often not bad all monetary things considered.  Bert's initials, B.I.G said it all!  Give me this over some CGI bullshit any day of the week!

BUGLES IN THE AFTERNOON (1952) was a Warner Bros flick with Ray Milland.  I'd hazard a guess that perhaps Jack Cosgrove did the matte art as that sky is very telling.
A tightly made, yet very effective fifties monster show, done for little money  was the excellent THE BLACK SCORPION (1957).  Veteran all round effects man Ralph Hammeras painted the glass shots (some of which catch the reflection of the stop motion puppet) while Willis O'Brien and Pete Peterson looked after the very impressive and varied stop motion sequences.
More great stuff from THE BLACK SCORPION, where highly creative camera angles and lighting - not to mention camera moves - lend so much to what could have been otherwise 'drab' animated sequences.  Well worth a look and very under rated!


BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE (1958) was a low budget British horror film with a number of uncredited matte shots.

A rather effective painted matte from BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE.

One of Irving Block's mattes from THE BLACK SLEEP (1956).

Also from THE BLACK SLEEP with Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt collaborating.

A bona-fide cult classic from right here in New Zealand was Peter Jackson's first film, BAD TASTE (1987).  Shot on 16mm on weekends over four years with Peter's mates and pocket money from his 'day job', Peter hit pay dirt with this one-of-a-kind splatter epic.  Jackson not only co-starred, but wrote, directed, photographed, edited and manufactured the incredibly good special effects and prosthetics - with the aid of his Mum's kitchen oven for baking foam latex, and his Dad's tool shed for building miniatures!

Hey, I did tell you I'd include a few choice low budget make up effects didn't I?  Zombie getting head blown off with 44 Magnum (nasty), and subsequent brains-on-a-spoon dining scene (featuring Jackson himself in multiple roles) were show stoppers!  They didn't call the flick 'Good Taste' for a reason.  Who'd have imagined Pete would end up with a barn filled with Oscars a few years later??  Classic!

One of the early feature films that made Ray Harryhausen a household name was THE BEAST FROM 20'000 FATHOMS (1953), which like most of Ray's projects was really an assignment under adversity to get things looking as good as they did.  Great stop motion and composites.


Columbia's THE BLACK ARROW (1948) seemed filler for the proverbial double bill.  Uncredited effects would have been supervised by Larry Butler and photographed by long time studio fx man Donald Glouner.  Juan Larrinaga may have painted as he was a long time artist in Butler's effects department.

The diabolically awful Italian sci-fi sex film, THE BEAST IN SPACE (1980) with Euro-leaze kitten Sirpa Lane, was as bad as bad can get.  Supposedly directed by one 'Al Bradley'.... I strongly smell a pseudonym - a very common practice in Italian cinema of the 80's, and used with good reason here!.

An effects vision from BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER (1960) from director Edgar Ulmer.

Swashbuckling on the Afghan frontier in Hammer's THE BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR (1965).

BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR matte art by Les Bowie, Ray Caple and Ian Scoones.

Another slice of Kiwi special effects ingenuity with Peter Jackson's BRAIN DEAD (1992), known in the US as DEAD ALIVE for reasons which escape me.  Above illustrates detailed miniatures of Wellington, circa 1955, created by  newly established little firm known as WETA Workshop.  The flick, naturally, is mostly known for the sheer amount of gore, bodily dismemberment and living dead mayhem - the likes of which had never been seen before, nor since!  Kudos to Richard Taylor and Bob McCarron for in-fucken-credible make up effects and prosthetic work.  The perfect 'date movie' says NZ Pete.

A well made and taut little Columbia second feature, THE BLACK ROOM (1935) with Boris Karloff expertly split screened into dual roles.  Matte art provides an excellent gothic gloom.  Solid mystery movie.

Bruno Mattei turned out a great deal of sleaze, with Italian horror and cannibal flesh-chomping his usual stomping ground.  CALIGULA AND MESSALINA (1981) saw Bruno jump on the Bob Guccione bandwagon with this, literally just one of scores of cheesy Italian CALIGULA ripoffs, none of which reached the dizzying heights of the Tinto Brass original.  Above is one of a couple of mattes in the film, though I'd bet my left testicle that it was lifted from another Spaghetti extravaganza, and likely the work of someone like Joseph Natanson, Emilio Ruiz or similar.

Low grade costumer from 1954, apparently in 'color', so why is my frame in black & white I wonder?  I feel so ripped off!

This CAPTAIN KIDD (1945) isn't to be confused with the one shown above.  There were a lot of similarly titled pirate films.

Lloyd Kaufman's two-bit outfit Troma put out a number of extreme splatter films in the 80's, with THE CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH (1986) being one such example.  Theo Pingarelli was credited for matte shots.  Troma usually churned out third rate exploitation fodder, yet did however hit bullseye with the classic THE TOXIC AVENGER.

The H.P Lovecraft inspired tv movie CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991) was entertaining enough, and captured a wonderful period flavour.  Tons of vfx from a number of contributors such as the Skotak brothers among others.  Artist Rick Rische painted the mattes and glass shots.

A revealing before and after of Les Bowie's Middle Eastern matte painted locale for the opening shot of the British film CIRCLE OF DECEPTION (1960).

The late Jena Holman was matte painter for this sequence for the tv movie of the week CRASH ISLAND made in the early 1980's.  David Stipes was effects cameraman.


Hammer didn't only turn out horror flicks as many might think.  They made comedies, pirate films, mysteries, adventure films, science fiction, dinosaur epics, war movies... you name it.  This shot is from the very low budget (yet solid and exciting) WWII drama THE CAMP ON BLOOD ISLAND (1958).  Les Bowie was the uncredited matte painter with Roy Field on fx camera duties..


Oh brother... they don't make 'em like this any more!  CAT WOMEN ON THE MOON (1954) ranks right up (down?) there with FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE and ROBOT MONSTER in sheer insanity.  Jack Rabin was fx boss, with associate Irving Block painting the mattes.  I think they shot some of this on left over sets from Gary Cooper's epic ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO.

Columbia's THE CROOKED WEB (1955) featured a few less than optimal matte shots that didn't seem in step with the usual quality to come from Larry Butler's photographic effects department.

Two beautifully rendered matte painted shots from the wonderfully atmospheric RKO classic CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944) co-directed by Robert Wise.  Vernon Walker was effects chief, with old time veteran artist Albert Maxwell Simpson painting the mattes.  I'm especially fond of the beautifully rendered snow covered park and bridge at left, much of it being painted to augment a tiny set.

Another from the second-tier disaster cycle, CITY ON FIRE (1979).  William Cruse was effects supervisor, and yes, that is Leslie Nielsen there, before he found his cinematic 'funny bone'.

Four excellent mattes from Warner's COLORADO TERRITORY (1949).  Chief matte artist was Paul Detlefsen, with fellow painters Mario Larrinaga, Vern Taylor, Lou Litchtenfield and Chesley Bonestell on staff.


These were actually pretty funny, and immensley popular here in New Zealand, with CARRY ON ABROAD (1972) being one of about 20 odd cheaply made entries in the long running series.  The producer was something of a miser and the cast were bitter in that they were always working for peanuts, with even seasoned and experienced character actors like Sid James being paid an insulting pittance.  The films, by and large, still are amusing and give rise to more than a few chuckles, though the 'woke' PC brigade of today would shudder in horror at the well seasoned and harmless array of saucy gags!  A Cliff Culley matte shot here of a half built (and, as things turn out, half-arsed) 'luxury' holiday resort. 


A little known British shocker starring Boris Karloff - CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (1958) utilised mattes to establish the 19th Century period.  Quite entertaining.

I grew up with all of those great Irwin Allen tv series of the 1960's, and they always inspired me and filled me with awe and wonder.  This is one of the mattes from CITY BENEATH THE SEA - a 1971 tv movie.  Irwin's longtime effects man, Bill Abbott was naturally chosen to oversea the various effects shots, as he had done on all of Irwin's series and subsequent features.  No idea who painted this.  Emil Kosa jr had passed away some years earlier, and it doesn't strike me as being the brush work of Matt Yuricich.  The matte is interesting as it includes dozens of tiny coloured bulbs all wired together at the back of the artwork, with many holes drilled out of the support to facilitate back lit blinking lights.  Anyone who grew up with any Irwin Allen show would know the dude just loved banks of flashing lights everywhere!!

CAPTAIN SINDBAD (1963) was directed by Byron Haskin - himself a veteran vfx man who's career dated back to the silent era.  Haskin, as director,  helmed many big effects pictures in his day such as WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE NAKED JUNGLE and TREASURE ISLAND.  The fx in this show were supervised by Tom Howard at the British studios of MGM.  Note the upper left before and after, as well as the far right extreme upward tilt, no doubt accomplished with a hanging miniature.

Actually a pretty good little gangster film, despite it having the Monogram label.  DILLINGER (1945) had a couple of quick mattes, one with The Biograph where the signage lights sparkle and blink, and the other with the Tucson banner.

The late Paul Bartel was quite a character, both as an actor and as director.  Paul admirably helmed DEATH RACE 2000 (1975) for cheapskate producer Roger Corman, with the result being a wonderfully dark social satire that was an absolute hoot.  The opening shot was this Matthew Yuricich matte.  The original painting shown at left.  I do wonder about this shot as an interview with Jack Rabin states that he did the matte?  Perhaps he just shot and comped the Yuricich painting.
Yuricich's matte as seen once cropped down for theatrical and DVD viewing.  Animated vehicle is seen passing through the 'skyway'.  Great little movie that Bartel almost disowned when Corman filmed extra gore inserts and spliced 'em in without notifying Paul.  Amusing support cast with the always good Mary Woronov and a chap named Sylvester Stallone no less!


The inevitable sequel was the abysmal DEATHSPORT (1977), strictly a cheap cash-in by Roger Corman and his New World enterprise on the original, vastly superior DEATH RACE 2000.  Dreadful in every respect, with the only selling point being co-star and former Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings 'getting her kit off' as they say.  


The matte shots were painted by Jack Rabin, who as mentioned, had begun his long career back in the matte departments of Selznick, Fox and Warners.

DEATHSPORT - see it at your peril...


DESERT SONG (1943) from Warner Bros.

Even low budget tv movies can dazzle with fx work.  Ken Marschall painted this beautiful matte for DANGER ISLAND (aka THE PRESENCE) back in 1992.  Oddly, when I interviewed Ken a few years ago for a mammoth career blog he told me he had no recollection whatsoever of actually painting this piece, though interestingly, once he stumbled across the artwork in his storage boxes it's now one of his favourite matte paintings!

Okay, back to bizarre, off-the-wall motion pictures...  DEMENTIA (1955) - also known as DAUGHTER OF HORROR on re-issue - must have had audiences walking out and demanding their money back when first shown!  No dialogue whatsoever; stark expressionistic camerawork, with lots of close ups of eyes and laughing mouths!  This matte shot (which was a wide pan across to some action in a hotel window) and some wacked-out opticals by old timer Albert Maxwell Simpson.

Costumed action piece set in the 17th Century, THE DIAMOND QUEEN (1953) featured this nice matte, with veteran effects cinematographer Clarence Slifer credited for photographic effects.  Matte artists could have been Jack Cosgrove or Jack Shaw?
So-so fantasy adventure with variable animation.  DINOSAURUS (1960) was one of Project Unlimited's assignments, with founders Gene Warren, Wah Chang and Tim Baar on effects.


MGM didn't usually dabble with 'B' pictures, so THE DEVIL DOLL (1936) is a bit of an unusual entry.  A fun picture for sure, with interesting 'tiny' folks, though these weren't a patch on almost identical 'tiny folks' sequences engineered by John Fulton for Universals BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN just a year earlier.

The third film in the 'Dead' series by George Romero, DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) was in my opinion the weakest of the lot.  Not a patch on NIGHT nor DAWN, DAY does though have some premium Tom Savini bloodletting (eventually) to make it worth a once-over.  This shot is a Jim Danforth painted matte, with an actual Miami location extended and altered invisibly.  Interestingly, late in production the director decided he needed an additional shot of the same street but without the hordes of zombies. Jim used the same matte painting twice by painting in an apparently empty street with cars parked etc, over the top of the portion where the zombie extras were visible in the original composite.

THE DUNGEONMASTER (1985) I never saw, and from what I've researched was good judgement on my part.  Apparently it took seven (yes 7) directors to make this thing!  This shot appears to be a sort of Dynarama type set up, with a rear projected live action plate split screened with a foreground model, a-la Harryhausen style.

Highly esteemed visual effects visionary, Willis O'Brien was mostly known for stop motion creations such as Kong, but few know that O'Bie was a highly accomplished artist and in fact worked as matte painter for hire on a number of movies.  THE DANCING PIRATE (1936) was one such job, with these very early Technicolor matte shots.
I remember finding this all so cool when I saw it on first release, DAMNATION ALLEY (1977) certainly doesn't hold up well today.  William Cruse and Margo Anderson supervised a huge number of optical effects composites, from weird laser photography for the matted in skies, giant scorpion blue screen comps and some Matthew Yuricich paintings.

Pinewood's resident matte man Cliff Culley did mattes for hundreds of films, such as this entry in the long CARRY ON series, DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD which was set during the French Revolution.

The effects loaded (some might say overloaded?) sci-fi picture THE DAY TIME ENDED (1980) started off really well and had some good ideas, but ended up getting swallowed by simply too much visual grandstanding for it's own good.  This was one of several mattes painted by industry veteran Jim Danforth.

The spectacular City of Light matte painted shot by Jim Danforth from the same film.

Another great shot from THE DAY TIME ENDED, which was also known as VORTEX during filming.  This sprawling matte painted shot was rendered by artist Dave Carson and nicely brought together as a rear projection composite.  Years later Dave would join ILM I believe and did some painting on films such as HOOK.

Same film, with a dazzling optical sequence where homestead vanishes under a swirl of inter-galactic something or other (quite what the hell was going on, I dunno?)  Peter Kuran worked on these shots and has always been at the top of the game when it came to cel animated fx work.

Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD II (1987) had a number of effective visuals.  Bob Kayganich was matte painter with Jim Aupperle as effects cinematographer.

I covered the making of EQUINOX (1969) in an earlier blog, with some great behind the scenes pics.  Several mattes by Jim Danforth as well as some strikingly well executed perspective tricks by Dennis Muren and stop motion by David Allen.

In the pantheon of crazy mattes, this uncredited British matte from Marty Feldmans' satire EVERY HOME SHOULD HAVE ONE (1970) must rank right up there?

Throughout much of his distinguished career, Ray Harryhausen was restricted by tight budgets and near unworkable schedules, yet still expected to perform miracles, but miracles were produced.  EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956) was a miracle in what Ray managed to bring to the screen with Dynarama  and much animated destruction.  I believe Larry Butler, who was in charge of the effects unit at Columbia, provided the various optical effects such as force fields and ray guns etc.

Show stopping mayhem with Harryhausen destroying Washington Monument frame by frame with wire rigged animated debris and such, all comped with the Dynarama RP process.


Even a multi-million dollar big studio action thriller like Tony Scott's terrific ENEMY OF THE STATE (1998) can benefit from simple low tech yet imaginative tricks.  UK effects man Leigh Took of Mattes & Miniatures created satellite views of the Washington DC area simply by carefully sprinkling talcum powder onto glass.

Another example of Leigh's talcum powder clouds prepped for ENEMY OF THE STATE.  Leigh learned this trick from his mentor Cliff Culley who had been in the J.Arthur Rank matte department from the mid 1940's.

As mentioned earlier, Bert I. Gordon specialised in movies about 'big things', and in this case FOOD OF THE GODS (1976) based on an H.G Wells story, with giant rats terrorising the cast.  Bert designed, and to a large extent, executed many of his visual effects himself.  This shot is terrific!

More vermin pest control problems in FOOD OF THE GODS - a film I thought somewhat better than critics hammered the movie as being.  Jim Danforth told me about working on some travelling matte shots for the film.

An excellent composite shot from FOOD OF THE GODS - a film I first saw back in the day on a double bill with another of Bert's 'big films', EMPIRE OF THE ANTS - a very silly film that a can of Raid pesticide spray could have sorted.

THE FLYING SERPENT (1946) was barely an hour in length but seemed to go on forever.  No idea on who did these mattes.

I saw FRANKENSTEIN 1970 (1958) when I was a kid and it gave me nightmares for a week.  This sole matte shot was obviously filched from some other film, with the extreme anamorphic stretch giving the game away.

The most unusual Brit black comedy set sometime in the future, THE FINAL PROGRAM (1973) - which was also known as THE LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH for American audiences.  Gerald Larn was matte painter on this film, which he told me was the very last assignment for the once proud and busy Shepperton special effects department, with the studio shutting down all departments thereafter, laying off all staff and going 'four wall'.

Another of Gerald's mattes from THE FINAL PROGRAM.
There aren't too many things as pleasing as discovering some obscure little film I'd never heard of that proved most enjoyable and as an added bonus featured some dynamite special effects scenes.  This film is FRISCO JENNY (1933) - what you might term a 'B' picture - yet a good one - from Warners that worked into it's neatly driven dramatic narrative a whopper of an earthquake - that being the great San Francisco quake of 1906.  Excellent effects work from the studio's well regarded 'Stage 5', with top notch miniatures, full size destruction and very impressive combination shots where those are combined with high quality process projection.  For such a 'small' film I was very impressed.  Effects supervised by Fred Jackman.
Another sensational thirties miniature shot from the film FRISCO JENNY.  All of the fx appear to have been shot in daylight, which is always a positive for a convincing result.


Universal made a mint from all those cheaply produced talking mule comedies, such as this one, FRANCIS GOES TO WESTPOINT (1952).  Matte art by Russell Lawson.


The fifties saw a truckload of space travel movies churned out, most of highly variable quality.  FLIGHT TO MARS (1951) from the poverty row Monogram Pictures was mildly entertaining.  The cockpit NASA type technology here is hilarious.  Irving Block and Jack Cosgrove painted the mattes for Jack Rabin's fx house.

 I still recall this being on tv in the sixties, which even as hokey as it was, FLASH GORDON (1936) still enthralled a kid like me.  


Rude, crude, lewd... but a total hoot!  FLESH GORDON (1974) was a cavalcade of trick shots of all types, and all carried out with an affection for old time matinee serials of yester-year.  I did a major, detailed retrospective on this film in an older blog, and that may be readhere.

Jim Danforth at work on one of the Throne Room mattes for FLESH GORDON, with a temp RP composite shown at right.
The same shot as scanned full frame from Jim's original 35mm trim.



More from FLESH GORDON with matte art, foreground miniatures and stop motion.  A number of major names in the effects community were involved with FG.

Before and after matte by Jim Danforth.


Probably my favourite shot in FLESH GORDON is this Danforth matte.  I've only now just noticed that the left side of the shot clearly shows the edge of the actual painting on glass in it's mount.


The misguided, sanitised sequel FLESH GORDON MEETS THE COSMIC CHEERLEADERS (1990) made way too far into the poisonous era of 'political correctness' to be of any consequence.  Quite a lot of mattes and other effects though.  Matte artist was Bob Kayganich.

Another of many films about body snatchers Burke & Hare, FLESH AND THE FIENDS (1959) was pretty good actually.  No fx credit but possibly Les Bowie, who did a lot of mattes for independent producers when not gainfully employed by Hammer.

Albert Maxwell Simpson's matte shots FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (1958), directed by former Warners' vfx chief, Byron Haskin.

A Les Bowie matte shot as seen in GRIP OF THE STRANGLER (1958) that was in fact originally painted by Bowie for David Lean's GREAT EXPECTATIONS  more than a decade earlier but not included in Lean's final edit.

Cost-effective and not by any means even a medium budget fantasy show, THE GATE (1987) certainly looked good.  Randall William Cook supervised the extensive trick work which was entirely 'old school', with much use of live in-camera forced perspective DARBY O'GILL inspired gag set ups (top left and right); dimensional animation; matte painting and rotoscope animation.

THE GATE:  Mark Whitlock supplied this spectacular sunrise vista as one of two overlapping full paintings which were optically 'wiped' from one to the other.  Mark's father, Albert stopped by and helped out with the sky according to effects cameraman Jim Aupperle.

While the first film was a fun trip, the follow up GATE 2-TRESPASSERS (1992) was utterly forgettable.  Rocco Gioffre rendered a couple of matte shots to help it along.

Also from GATE 2.

Expansive matte art from the Japanese GAMERA-THE GIANT MONSTER (1965)

GAMERA again, with all hell breaking loose in Tokyo.

Roger Corman's New World organisation knocked out a somewhat mystifying though highly competent perils-in-space thriller with GALAXY OF TERROR (1981).  High quality visuals courtesy of Robert and Dennis Skotak, with input from a certain James Cameron as art director.  Some great beam-splitter composite shots keep the quality high.

Martin Landau starred in an oddball thing called THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE (1965). Van der Veer Photo Effects had credit for vfx, though the shots with the strange canter levered house atop the hill looks so good I don't know if it's a matte shot or an actual address!  The actor is careful not to cross in front of the area of the frame with the structure.  Any readers know if this is an actual property?  If not, it's an outstanding matte shot (??)
The lovely Maria Montez made dozens of 'B' pictures for Universal before her untimely death.  Mostly Ali-Baba genre flicks and the like.  This one, GYPSY WILDCAT (1944) was certainly forgettable, with none of the rich flavour that the usual Arabian Nights costume melodramas had.  Just the one effects shot, this Russ Lawson matte with quite odd perspective.



Britain's Ealing Studios produced so many memorable and much beloved 'little' films over the years.  This show is THE GHOST OF ST. MICHAELS (1941), with this shot almost certainly the work of matte artist Geoffrey Dickinson.


Tom Howard was in charge of the visual effects for GORGO (1961), and much of the work looked pretty good.  Ton of action, lots of model work and some fine opticals.


Poor old Jack Palance must have been really slumming it to be enticed to lend his name to the dire sword & sandal cheapie HAWK-THE SLAYER (1980).  Cliff Culley supervised the effects work, with assistant Leigh Took tackling the lions share of the matte painting chores such as this example.

Leigh Took at work, and the final shot.

Another British show, this being the cult television series THE HITCH HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.  I believe veteran matte and scenic artist Peter Melrose rendered these shots.

British film HOTEL RESERVE (1944) starring the always wonderful James Mason.

The extremely popular American tv series MAN FROM UNCLE would spark the notion in some exec's head that to splice together a couple of episodes, bang a new title on it and release it to theatres would fool the unsuspecting punter.  Apparently it did, so they repeated the experiment several times.  This shot is from one such 'feature', THE HELICOPTER SPIES (1968).  It's most likely a matte by old time industry veteran Jan Domela who according to his daughter, painted mattes for the tv series.

A Rocco Gioffre matte shot from the teens in peril horror film HOUSE (1986).

The New Wave futuristic attempt at cinematic cult status, HARDWARE (1990) would see a young Steve Begg render the mattes.   Steve told me he was strongly influenced by BLADERUNNER with his night shot of the city.  Some time later Steve would go on to supervise all of the vfx on the Daniel Craig 007 films.

A rare matte in pristine condition from the tv series HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL which ran from the late 1950's through to the early 1960's.  Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt were credited with photographic effects.

The above painting as seen composited (left) and a revised version shown at right from another episode.

Excellent miniature work from the Spanish-UK co-production HORROR EXPRESS (1972).  The film was a sort of Murder on the Orient Express with monster and splatter, and a first class ride it was too.

The Italians churned out a million sword & sandal muscleman yarns and each one was the same as the last.  HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959) was typical of the genre.

HERCULES UNCHAINED glass shots of temples atop hills etc.  Director Mario Bava was an accomplished visual effects artist and supplied trick shots to a number of his - and his son Lamberto's - films as well as some shots for Dario Argento.  Mario is shown at right with glass shots from another of his productions.

Uncredited matte shots from THE HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN (1974), which I saw years ago.  Was it a blaxploitation pic...?  Voodoo or something? ... I can't recall?

I grew up watching shows like The Monkees on television (along with gems like Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, I Dream of Jeanie, and even, dare I say it, The Banana Splits!).  HEAD (1968) was the American Fab 4's feature film, and it's a blast!  Insanity prevails with Marx styled gags, bizarre cameos, breaking the forth wall,  freaky dream sequences, counter-culture satire and some great songs, with the creme of the crop being the remarkably choreographed and edited show stopping 'Daddy's Song' routine with Davy Jones and Toni Basil that utterly demands repeat playback ... just brilliant!  Anyway, a heavy load of optical effects shots supplied by Butler-Glouner flesh out the wacky unscripted craziness.  Groovy, baby!

I liked the Edgar Allen Poe films that Roger Corman made in the sixties, and was always surprised that self confessed cheapskate Roger managed to present such rich production values up on the screen that never at all looked as cheap as they most likely were.  THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963) is an example of one such film, and had some marvellous matte shots such as these, which I'm strongly of the opinion were the uncredited brushmanship of Al Whitlock, with all the hallmarks of his technique.  Larry Butler and Donald Glouner had the effects contract and they would often subcontract Whitlock to paint the mattes.  Apparently Albert had a good relationship with Butler.

Eagle-Lion was a small independent outfit who made a number of interesting films through the 1940's and beyond.  HE WALKED BY NIGHT (1948) was a fairly engrossing cop movie, with matte shots by Jack Rabin, who was credited with 'Special Art Effects'on many Eagle-Lion pictures.

Ray O. Binger was an effects cinematographer going way, way back, and supplied the effects on HEAVEN ONLY KNOWS (1948) for United Artists.


THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959) was a sad, sad experience, in more ways than one.  Directed by Eugene Lourie - who really should have known better - this monster flick was a turgid affair and absolutely reeked of cheapness.  Again, Rabin, Block and DeWitt had the effects contract, with someone having the bright 'marketing idea' to enlist the great Willis O'Brien on board to lend an air of prestige to the dire proceedings.  The stories behind this film are far more engrossing than anything on screen.  Poor O'Bie - a legend in the field - actually did barely any animation on this thing, with O'Bie's longtime offsider, Pete Peterson doing most of the work at home in his garage.  Rabin was a bit of an opportunist, and devised a myriad of ways in which to extend the limited amount of stop motion footage by giving his optical printer a full workout by 'flopping' footage, 'zooming in', re-printing and repeating shots over and over to make it all look like far more animation had been carried out than was ever filmed.  This film wasn't the only experience O'Bie had with shyster film makers, capitalising upon his good name and reputation.

An often quite intense little sci-fi programmer, IT, THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958) must have been in the mind of Dan O'Bannon when he wrote the first treatment for what would become Ridley Scott's brilliant ALIEN (1979)

Uncredited miniature and scenic art from the above film.  Film is a lot better than it might sound!

Highly esteemed production designer William Cameron Menzies directed this seminal fifties 'B' picture, INVADERS FROM MARS (1953).  Irving Block painted the mattes, while Jack Rabin did optical work and Theo Lydecker did miniatures.

An obscure 1940 vehicle for the often under-rated Peter Lorre.

A striking vision of the not too distant future, courtesy of matte artist David Stipes, as seen in the minor sci-fi adventure ICE PIRATES (1984).  See below for fx breakdown...


David was an all round effects man, with expertise in many facets of the art form.  Here is a step by step demo of the wonderful futuristic city that David created for ICE PIRATES.  Here we see the original live action plate masked off; the painting;  the construction of the miniature monorail and its track.  The monorail was shot frame by frame and isolated as an element to be matted into the lower part of David's painting. The shot was combined as a rear projection composite.  David told me that he much admired Albert Whitlock's work, especially his famous El-Train shot for THE STING, which proved to be the motivation to make this shot.


Fabulous sky artwork from I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) - a low budget RKO chiller but a definite classic of the genre.  Matte artist possibly Al Simpson or Fitch Fulton.

Not really an octopus as many think as it only had six tentacles to make for less animation chores, Ray Harryhausen's IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) did much  with so little money.  Interesting shot with a sprawling matte painted San Francisco, most likely pinched from an entirely different film, which occurred a lot in Ray's films around that time, with creature and model clock tower added later.

I didn't know whether to include this in this particular article as the film is a top notch and important British true story; I WAS MONTY'S DOUBLE (1958) was a superbly made though low key war drama.  Shepperton Studios' Bob Cuff painted this, and other subtle mattes for this excellent film.

Don't be put off by the ludicrous title!  I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958) is in fact a terrific little flick, very much along the lines of the masterful INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS in nerve wracking unease.  The star, Tom Tryon reportedly told Paramount "No way am I  appearing in this fucking thing!" when handed the script, with the film's title putting off more than a few participants.  Tryon had to do the film as being under contract means they tell you what you'll do!  He ended up getting right into it as the very quick shoot progressed and he and co-star Gloria Talbot (who was excellent BTW) much admired the finished product.  By the way, that matte shot above was stolen from an older Universal comedy, PARDON MY SARONG, with Abbott & Costello.  John P. Fulton supervised fx on both films so obviously recalled the shot as a budget saver for Paramount.

Quite a number of subtle and genuinely jarring vfx were used by Fulton - some of which must have totally freaked out 50's film-goers.  This one's a corker...  our square jawed hero isn't who his new bride thought he was (ain't that the truth, guys?) - and in this brilliantly executed sequence a thunder storm reveals just what the dude is made of with almost subliminal glimpses of his actual self during lightning flashes.  Bravo!

Same film; one of Paul Lerpae's excellent optical transitions where an ominous alien smoke absorbs the poor human inhabitants.  John Fulton was a dab hand at 'choreographing' amazing smoke/mist optical transitions in many films when at Universal, with his jaw dropping SON OF DRACULA jail cell trick shot among the NZ Pete Hall of Fame in VFX Excellence.

Now here is an interesting matte from a fairly obscure comedy starring Ryan O'Neal, IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES (1984).  Part of the film involves the making of a Civil War epic, with some fx work needed to create the battlefields.  Ken Marschall painted this and a few other very hard to detect mattes, with associate Bruce Block on camera and original negative compositing.

Ultra cheap Cold War quickie, INVASION USA (1953) made to cash in on the Red Scare of the time.

Revealing behind the scenes pic, and equally revealing in quite a different way, publicity photos of models with models(!)  Bizarre!

William Castle was long renowned for his (sometimes quite good) low cost chillers, usually sold with absurd theatre in-house gimmicks to scare the audience.  This film, I SAW WHAT YOU DID (1965) was a major studio release for a change (Universal), though I'm sure a quickly made and economic affair, with Albert Whitlock rendering mattes, including a vast sweeping panoramic shot.


I can't believe both John Ford and Howard Hawks passed over this 'epic' western!  What could have been!  JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1966), with the legendary William 'One-Shot' Beaudine behind the camera, so nicknamed as his reputation for rarely doing more than a single take on any given shot, and squeezing every frame of 35mm raw stock as 'usable' footage.

Matte art possibly done by Jack Cosgrove from the excellent Nicholas Ray western classic, JOHNNY GUITAR (1954).  Highly recommended for fans of non-formula cowpoke flicks.

Some rarely seen frames from a little known Czech fantasy-adventure JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME (1955) by Karel Zeman, who amazingly not only wrote and directed this (and other genre titles), but also was production designer and chief visual effects artiste.

The original 20th Century Fox version of Jules Verne's marvellous JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, made in the late fifties, which starred James Mason, remains one of my favourite films.  Well, this utterly appalling 1988 remake is one of the worst films of the eighties!  So mind numbingly awful it beggars belief.  Several effects contributors involved, with this shot being a Robert Stromberg matte.

From the same film some more matte art, with Ken Marschall providing this first rate full painting.

Another marvellous Ken Marschall full painting from the same abysmal film.  I never understood what the point of writing this sequence and setting into the script was all about?  Waste of fine matte art.

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977) was a fun 'creature' romp, very much of it's era.  William Shatner battles a never ending assault by creepy-crawlies with tongue firmly in cheek.  Although hard to distinguish here, the final scene has this massive pullback from a gas station covered with spider webs out to a big 'shock' reveal where the whole town is pretty well buggered.  Sometime art director Cy Djurgis painted this large matte.

I've long admired and appreciated the Hammer film factory.  Their films were generally of a high standard, both in acting and production values, which, given the small budgets and very limited resources really was admirable.  KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1963) was good, solid gothic horror of its day, with Les Bowie in charge of the effects.  Ray Caple was matte artist, assisted by Ian Scoones.

I used to own a Super 8mm print of KONGA (1961), and even as a kid found it pretty laughable... even though it was shot in'Specta-Mation' (!!)

There were some quite good special effects to be found in the Japanese monster mash KING KONG VS GODZILLA (1962), where, unsurprisingly, lots of things get 'squashed'.

This is one film I'd like to see remastered on BluRay.  KRONOS (1957) was highly imaginative and really well done on a low budget of just $160'000.  Jack Rabin, Irving Block and Louis DeWitt handled the extensive photographic effects work, with the aid of old time 20th Century Fox matte painter Menrad von Muldorfer who was one of Fred Serson's originals back in the thirties.

Property values reach all time low thanks to that merciless metallic bastard KRONOS.

One of the many, many serials that came out of the thirties, THE LOST CITY (1935) utilised the services of vfx pioneer Norman Dawn for the glass shots.  Most historians credit Norman with inventing and further developing the matte shot process around 1910.

Republic Pictures were never a cash-heavy outfit, and made the most of what they had, often extremely well.  THE LADY AND THE MONSTER (1944).  In-house special effects supervisors, Howard and Theodore Lydecker had long provided high level expertise to the small studio with their highly skilled miniature effects, with many of their shots becoming 'library stock shots' for other studios to utilise.

LADY AND THE MONSTER miniature.

Same film with miniature skillfully matted onto live action area.

The sequence shown here is most fascinating.  The film was one of director Ken Russell's more outlandish (if that's at all possible?) pictures, LISZTOMANIA (1975) - a film that had to be seen to be believed, believe me!  The climax involves Roger Daltry (as 18th century pop idol, Franz Liszt) piloting a sort of jet powered Cathedral organ(!), packed with groupies and fitted out with lasers, which swoops over WWII devastated Berlin, firing it's lasers at the Frankenstein monster (no, I'm not making this up) and blowing the lumbering, stitched together bastard to kingdom come!  According to fx man Ian Scoones, he got a call from Les Bowie asking for help to do this sequence as an insert, though, as usual, for next to no money.  Bowie and Scoones built a tower 16 feet high on the Bray backlot for fx cameraman Harry Oakes to film a swoop down over Berlin.  Scoones says:  "Les got these cardboard boxes and tore them so that there were irregular edges to each side, placed them like buildings side by side and sprayed them black.  He then got me to shovel all this ash from a bonfire up to the boxes, and that was all the rubble.  Then we put titanium tetrachloride - which is a toxic smoking chemical, all around the boxes, plus some black smoke from burning diesel rags inside the boxes.  Les then said "Right, let's zoom in on that Harry!"  So Harry Oakes zoomed in on it.  He said he'd got it and we finished by 11.30, so Les said, "Right...down the pub!"  That was it, and on screen it looked fantastic.  It looked just like Berlin in the blitz."    *Note:  I've enjoyed many of Ken Russell's films, with THE DEVILS, starring Oliver Reed (never better) and Vanessa Redgrave made 4 years earlier, being an outright masterpiece - a film that the executives at Warner Bros positively fucking hated, with a passion bordering on hysteria! A one of a kind experience, especially if you manage to catch a rare uncut print.


A barely noticeable foreground glass shot from the excellent British WWII psychological drama, THE LONG AND THE SHORT AND THE TALL (1961).  All takes place in Burma though filmed entirely on interior sound stages which proved most effective in ratcheting up the tension with a claustrophobic animosity and mistrust between the individual Brit soldiers under much pressure.  Brilliant film.

The completely bananas mystery/thriller LAST RITES (1988) did have, in it's favour, a couple of nice matte painted shots by Mark Whitlock - son of legendary painter, Albert.

A fave slice of insane 70's multiple genre crossover was the deliriously crazy LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974) - a blood soaked tri-production between Britain's Hammer, Hong Kong's Run Run Shaw and American giant, Warner Bros.  I've always had a soft spot for this film... I mean, hell... it's got the always wonderful Peter Cushing; Chinese vampires; a sultry Swedish sex-kitten;  kung fu battles; throat slittings;  slow motion zombies and this Les Bowie matte shot of Dracula's new bachelor pad and distant mountain range in China(!)  This flick has it all!


The popular motion picture LOGAN'S RUN (oh man, did I have a crush on Jenny Agutter!) spurned a tv series spin off which, I guess, wasn't too bad back in the day as I recall.  Once again, Matthew Yuricich was tasked with providing some matte shots.  Heather Menzies (above right) subbed for the exquisite Jenny for the tv series and left quite an impression too.

LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE (1963), which was retitled SWORD OF LANCELOT for US theatres, was a lively period action adventure that looked good on a tight budget.  Les Bowie painted a number of mattes (all done as foreground glass shots) with trainee assistant Ian Scoones lending a hand.

Same film; Les Bowie's grand Medieval castle painted to blend with a facade built on location establishing the lower sets of windows and drawbridge.

Bowie and crew cleverly introduced highly effective and realistic broad pan moves across landscapes onto painted castles for several shots in the film.  Interestingly, that exact same tree appears in the other 'matte pan' shots too for different scenes, so obviously that tree was part of the trick where the glass painted castles were mounted/secured.

Another LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE shot painted and executed by Les Bowie.  The pic at left demonstrates the painted castle on glass on location whereby the matte art isn't yet aligned correctly to blend in with the Yugoslavia location.  At right is the final CinemaScope shot as made directly onto original negative.



MANHUNT IN SPACE (1954) was one of many cheap and spartan space adventures made in the fifties.  Mattes were by Jack R.Glass who worked on a ton of 'B' movies and much television shows from 1949 through to around 1959.  Jack was born in 1915 and died in 2001.

This one was a great example of much being achieved for relatively little;  MOONTRAP (1989) starred former Trekkie Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell.  Some fine matte work in this little show, with Bob Kayganich painting mattes.

Bob Kayganich matte art.

Another matte from MOONTRAP

I've seen hundreds of Hong Kong movies over the years (though find now that Korean cinema is in a class of it's own as far as intense thrillers go).  THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977) was pretty much a carbon copy of  a hundred Japanese monster flicks, but did have its moments here and there, though you've really seen it all before.

I must thank a regular reader (hey Steven...I'm talking to you!) for giving me the heads up on this remarkably good 'little' Columbia thriller.  MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945) was a title I'd never heard of, yet turned out to be an excellent, very well made psychological drama with strongly effective Hitchcock-esq themes.  This wonderful matte sets up the forboding atmosphere so well.

THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951) with effects by Jack Rabin and associates, though I did read somewhere that the film's director, Edgar Ulmer apparently painted that top right castle shot himself.

Les Bowie was credited here as 'The Bowie Organisation' for the fx with this matte in Morecombe and Wise' comedy THE MAGNIFICENT TWO (1967).  A very funny duo sadly missed whose comic timing was impeccable.


As I said in my intro, I've selected a few choice make up effects to delight and disgust.  Here is a jarring shock reveal for Fay Wray from Michael Curtiz' MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) in very early two-tone Technicolor no less.

Highly disturbing I'm sure for audiences of The Depression era, thanks to Warner's make up artists Perc Westmore and Ray Romero.

It seems every studio had to have a gal being abducted by an ape man, with Paramount being no different.  THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL (1941) has matte work by Jan Domela.


Arguably one of the 'remade' and 're-imagined' stories ever was THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932) which still to this day crops up in various incarnations,  Byron Crabbe made the glass shots, and no, your eyes aren't deceiving you; that lower right 'log across the chasm' glass painted vista was also used in KING KONG, as both films were shot back to back on the same stages at RKO with much of the same crew and cast!

Another multi-element effects shot from THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME where matte art, stop motion birds in flight etc have been combined with live action with the Dunning travelling matte process.


Like Universal, Columbia Pictures churned out scores of these Aladdin type second features.  At least one of these mattes (middle bottom) has shown up in a bunch of other films.

MONSTER FROM THE GREEN HELL (1958) matte shot by Irving Block.

More of that giant wasp from MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL, with effects by Gene Warren, Jack Rabin, Jess Davison, Irving Block and Paul Blaisdell.


The Spanish made Jules Verne fantasy trip, THE MYSTERY OF MONSTER ISLAND (1981) was strictly for kiddies.  Emilio Ruiz del Rio supervised the effects, with foreground paintings, glass shots and perspective miniatures. 

I never really cared for the man-in-a-rubber-suit 'stomping monster' movies from Japan, but some of the science fiction films of old were pretty good   THE MYSTERIANS (1959) had lots of inventive visuals by the great Eiji Tsuburaya and his most able team.

A young Mark Sullivan painted and composited this invisible matte shot early in his career for a tv movie titled MURDER ME, MURDER YOU (1982)

In the spy mad sixties, Columbia knocked out a quartet of Dean Martin-Matt Helm spy spoofs, all containing mattes and trick shots of various types, and made quickly on limited budgets.  This is MURDERER'S ROW (1966) and this matte painting was done at Film Effects of Hollywood.

These oldies are quite a buzz.  THE MYSTERIOUS DR FU MANCHU (1929) was a very early talkie with matte art by Jan Domela and effects photography by Irmin Roberts.  I don't think Gordon Jennings was at Paramount yet.  Maybe Roy Pomeroy ran the fx dept??

I think MANIAC (1962) was a Hammer film.  Matte shots by Les Bowie and Ray Caple.

The 16mm dino epic  A NYMPHOID BARBARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL (1990) had mutants, stop motion creatures and glass shots - all supplied by the director and creator Brett Piper.  Sadly, the title promises far more than it delivers, and was disappointingly sanitised.  Note the glass shot where the frame support is visible.

Ninja's were all the rage through the 80's, with this beautifully painted and composited matte by Jim Danforth from NINJA III-THE DOMINATION (1984)


Here is another of those little 'B' films I'd never heard of, but stumbled across by accident - NIGHT KEY (1937) with Boris Karloff in a non-horror role.  A neatly wrapped crime story with a smooth sci-fi undertone.  Thoroughly enjoyed it!  John P. Fulton did the effects, with cool cel animation and a Russ Lawson matte of New York city.

I bet no reader of this blog has ever heard of Cirio H. Santiago?  He directed around 100 low budget Filipino exploitation and action flicks such as this one, NAKED VENGEANCE (1985).  Sleaze, tits and retribution come thick and fast in Cirio's extensive high-brow back catalogue:  T.N.T JACKSON ("...she'll put you in traction"); EBONY, IVORY AND JADE (..."they'll match every man ever made, with fist, foot & blade"); NAKED FIST (..."she makes a seduction with destruction"); THE MUTHERS and who could forget VAMPIRE HOOKERS?  Well, the frame above is a glass shot, primarily to try to disguise the fact that the film was shot in The Philippines but is supposed to be Washington State ... but who'd ever know the difference?

Back to Hammer Films again... two frames from NIGHTMARE (1964), with Ray Caple painting the top matte of the mental hospital, and the distant view below, aided with some foreground miniature dressing by Ian Scoones.


Hal Roach Studios normally made Laurel & Hardy comedies and small films, which made ONE MILLION BC (1940) quite an ambitious affair.  Lots of Oscar nominated visual effects that still look good 70 odd years later, so good in fact that many of the sequences were frequently lifted and spliced into dozens of other films and tv shows over the years.  Roy Seawright was the Hal Roach photographic effects chief.

ONE MILLION BC Jack Shaw matte shot.
For the big volcanic catastrophe in the remake ONE MILLION YEARS BC (1966), Ray Harryhausen enlisted occasional collaborator Les Bowie, who along with miniatures expert George Blackwell and assistant Ian Scoones created an impressive sequence, supposedly for just 1100 UK Pounds.  The lava was porridge with red dye and the earthquake consisted of simple tabletop models, with extras added by travelling matte after the fact,

PICKUP ALLEY aka INTERPOL (1958) with a most intriguing cast, including the always great Trevor Howard and the enormously talented Anita Ekberg(!)

Matte painted fortress by Ray Caple for PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE (1983).  The ad-art promises much more than this B grade flick could ever hope to deliver.

Middling film of one of the greatest maritime mysteries, PHANTOM SHIP aka MARY CELESTE (1936).  A 'Guaranteed Picture' by all accounts..

Ray Milland both starred in and directed this post-nuke survival story PANIC IN YEAR ZERO (1962).  Very efficient, gripping and at times downright nasty.  Great mushroom cloud matte shot enveloping Los Angeles!

A number of vfx folks worked on PLANET OF THE DINOSAURS (1977), with Jim Aupperle shown top with stop motion puppet, and Jim Danforth below at work on a matte shot.

Another inventive bit of matte painting by Jim Danforth that brilliantly creates a cave where there never was one.  It's matte trickery like this 'fix' that always fascinates me more than the huge, spectacular type of matte.

A pair of mattes from THE PIRATES OF TORTUGA (1961).  The bottom shot is intriguing as it's from at least 2 other older films, one of which is the 1940's serial THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KIDD, which was in black and white, and not CinemaScope, so it was clearly a colour matte shot from some even earlier film.  The original 1.33:1 frame has been very successfully cropped in to fulfill the Scope 2.35:1 aspect for this 1961 film, whereas such an 'optical re-jig' would normally suffer badly.

I've already mentioned William Castle - the man directed so many different genres though he was forever associated with horror.  PROJECT X (1968) however falls into the indescribable category.  Something about cryogenics, spies and much totally freaked out psychedelic sensory overload that must have delighted the druggie fraternity no end back in the day!  Tons of visual effects by Paramount's veteran opticals expert Paul Lerpae, with additional 'special sequences' by Hanna-Barbera of all people! 

THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (1977), with effects by John Richardson and Ian Wingrove.  No credit for matte shots, but maybe Cliff Culley or Leigh Took?

The very eerie and well acted chiller THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD (1975) utilised Jim Danforth's skills to create a landmark lakeside lodge at two different time periods.

It's a toss up as to whether Columbia or Universal had the monopoly on pirate costumers, though these frames are from Uni's THE PIRATES OF MONTEREY (1947), with several nice Technicolor mattes by Russell Lawson.

Matte art and miniature work by Jack Glass from PROJECT MOONBASE (1953).

Oh brother...what were they thinking?  The Zsa Zsa Gabor interstellar laugh-fest QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958) was a giggle indeed.  Surprisingly, the effects were done by the great Jack Cosgrove - one of the foremost matte artists, responsible for such mighty achievements as GONE WITH THE WIND and many other prestige pictures.

The opening shot from QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE was in fact from a totally different movie(s), with the squashed out fake Scope format a dead giveaway that it was from a 'flat' film originally.  The painting looks like either a Universal or Columbia matte and appeared in, among others, BOWERY TO BAGDAD in b&w.

I'm at a loss for words here... QUEEN KONG (1977) was a deliberately 'bad movie', played strictly for cheap laughs, with cheesy fx being done on purpose I'm sure.  Top right frame is odd, with what I'm certain is a huge picnic table right there in shot as Queen Kong busts down the wall! .


This one's an interesting 'lost' shot - from the popular tv series RANDALL & HOPKIRK made in the early 70's, which if I recall was about a ghost.  The matte painted portion is perplexing as it almost, but not quite, looks like part of the vast glass painting rendered in the 40's at Fox for the musical STATE FAIR, but possibly modified to add more at the right?

A neat behind the scenes glimpse at the miniature set up at the Hal Roach Studios for the film ROAD SHOW (1941)

I rather enjoyed ROCKETSHIP XM (1950), and liked the photographic effects of Jack Rabin and matte artist Irving Block.  Decades later some enterprising effects folks got together and shot a few additional effects scenes for the film for a video edition.

Ken Marschall painted this full matte for Dan O'Bannon's amusing RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985).  Great theme music in this flick!

I don't know if this film ever got finished or shown, RAIDERS OF THE STONE RING was a late 60's or early 70's project for a number of then budding vfx men such as Dennis Muren and others.  Great example here of creative foreground perspective photography.

The very ambitious and at times quite an exciting ride, ROBOT JOX (1989), from the, at times dubious Charles Band production house.  Excellent and plentiful vfx throughout, with stop motion, opticals, miniatures and best of all terrific'live' puppeteered robot mayhem executed in camera at actual desert settings.  David Allen was effects supervisor and lead a large crew.  I still have the VHS copy of this.


Fabulous behind the scenes look at the marionette systems and rigging.  That's David Allen at right doing stop motion in a more controlled setting.  Well worth a visit with the material looking a million bucks on screen.


Republic Pictures may have been a tiny studio, but they made a lot of quality product with very limited resources.  ROCK ISLAND TRAIL (1950) was one such film, with the usual quality Lydecker miniatures and some fine matte art.  Early era matte artist Lewis Physioc had a long association with Republic, so he may have had a hand in the matte art?

A forgotten matte before and after was a Matthew Yuricich shot from the made for television movie SANDBURG'S LINCOLN (1974).  Matthew explained in my 2012 extensive oral history how he had to fight the director on this shot as they wanted the actors to perform well beyond the limit of the masked off matte line, with Yuricich having to explain, with exasperation, that the people will disappear and then reappear like some silent movie joke gag!!!

Republic's SINGING GUNS (1950) with a most fanciful vision of the old west.

I've never seen this one, SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY (1987) appears to be one of William Shakespeare's lesser known works.  My friend Mark Wolf, who penned a marvellous book recently, Smoke and Mirrors, on traditional special effects, was vfx supervisor on this show.  I'm sure he has some tales to tell...

An original matte painting from the sci-fi flick STRANGE INVADERS (1983).  IMDB list a large vfx crew, including the Skotak brothers, with Jay Roth as 'visual effects artist'.

Close up detail.
Until Peter Jackson came along, New Zealand had never ever ventured into any sort of visual effects, with cinema here being very 'dry', minimalist and largely uneventful.  Geoff Murphy's THE QUIET EARTH (1985) was the first feature to require any vfx work, with this memorable climatic shot being the first ever matte shot.  Famed NZ gallery artist Brent Wong painted the large matte, with Murphy attempting our first original negative composite with the held take-rewind the film method.  With John Scott's magnificent orchestral score, the scene remains indelible, though arguably perplexing. 


I think SPACEWAYS (1953) was a Hammer production if my memory serves me.  Watchable enough, though not very good.  Matte shots by Les Bowie.

Allied Artists tended to specialise in low end product, with SABU AND THE MAGIC RING (1957) being simple matinee fodder to fill a double bill. Curiously, the poster states 'Color', while the YouTube print was in b&w.  They often made b&w 16mm prints from color originals for tv broadcast in the old days.  The matte here is another of those 'stolen' shots seen in dozens of similar films of this ilk, and is probably of Columbia origin.  Film is noteworthy for costarring William Marshall - a very good black actor with a most commanding presence who ultimately found cult status as BLACULA in a pair of very cool 70's flicks.

A number of mattes make SLAVE SHIP  (1937) not a bad film by any stretch.  The upper middle shot of a busy port appeared in several Fox films such as the excellent DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS, some 12 years later.

The late Larry Cohen was sometimes a complete schlock-meister, to put it lightly, but sometimes knocked one out that was pretty enjoyable.  THE STUFF (1985) was a fun little movie, with some interesting effects such as this inventive and quite complex shot, as described here by Jim Danforth, from the first volume of his essential and meticulously detailed memoir Dinosaurs, Dragons & Drama.
Mark Sullivan also contributed some of his expertise the THE STUFF, with this splendid matte painting.  All painted except for small areas for the soldiers and a doubled in blob of fast encroaching deadly pudding!


The very funny western THE SKIN GAME (1971) with James Garner and Louis Gossett jnr was a real treat.  I've studied this establishing shot at length, both in motion and as successive frame grabs (a good way to spot matte line jiggle).  It's a good shot and looks like something Al Whitlock might have done, but I can't confirm who did it.  Whitlock did a lot of uncredited shots for Warner Bros in the 70's.

Fred Sersen painted this matte in conjunction with fx cameraman Charles G. Clarke, for the silent film SIN SISTER (1929).

A very unusual though quite watchable sci-fi, THE SPACE CHILDREN (1958) has a few good moments but overall fails to hit the mark.  Modest effects by the great John P. Fulton.

SPACE CHILDREN matte shot by Irmin Roberts.

THE SPACE CHILDREN matte, with probably miniature added in, by Paramount's Ivyl Burks rather than Jan Domela painted art.

Here are a set of astonishing matte shots rendered for the 20 minute short film SCENE STEALER (2004) by the highly creative effects duo of Richard Kilroy and Rick Rische - who worked side by side on several features.

Wally Veevers and his team of matte artists at Shepperton Studios in England were responsible for SATELLITE IN THE SKY (1956).  Artists in Wally's crew included George Samuels, Albert Julion, David Hume and Bob Cuff.

As mentioned in my intro, I love old school make up effects - you know, the type done with latex appliances and clever devices, live on set!  None of that CG shit here!!  Some of my idols in the arena were, naturally, the great Dick Smith (a God), John Chambers, Tom Savini and Rick Baker.  Well Rick devised these make up effects for the unassuming yet top notch little American International horror film SQUIRM (1976).  I well recall seeing this at the grand old Civic theatre here in Auckland on a double bill back in the day, possibly with SUSPIRIA, and this show-stopping set piece just blew my mind!  Movie is about meat devouring killer worms on a rampage in Georgia after high voltage power lines fall in a storm and pump a zillion volts into the damp earth.  The sequence still has my jaw on the floor today.  This poor bumpkin trips head over heels into a basket of these fucken' worms, whereby the little slithering bastards burrow and chew their way up into his face in graphic detail.

Astonishing in all respects as the sequence was filmed in bright sunlight, leaving little chance to conceal prosthetic blends and mechanisms to literally drive these worms up under his 'skin' in close up...

Bumpkin tries in vain to rip these things out of his face, while others keep burrowing in.  I recall reading somewhere that Rick devised a monofilament system within the (excellent) facial appliances to drag the silicone worms up through pre-prepared 'flat' channels.

I well recall a group 'gasp' in the cinema as this SQUIRM scene hit the silver screen.  The only thing I've seen similar around that time were some Joe Blasco prosthetic fx for a pair of David Cronenberg horror shows, SHIVERS and RABID.

I haven't seen too many Finnish-Soviet co-productions, but this one proved of interest, SAMPO - THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE (1959).  The English title, and ludicrous ad campaign was misleading (probably on purpose) as it's really a rather quaint Finnish folk tale, albeit quite an elaborate affair.  Lots of photographic effects work and some beautifully painted mattes, which looked great.

Some nicely done shots from Columbia's thriller SIGN OF THE RAM (1948).  Likely to be the work of Juan Larrinaga, brother of Mario.

An amazingly accomplished matte by Albert Whitlock from a completely obscure and forgotten tv film, STRANDED (1966) which I believe was also titled VALLEY OF MYSTERY.  The viewer would be hard pressed to even spot a trick here it's so well done, on original negative, as was Al's constant modus operandi.

In what is a clear and affectionate fan 'nod and a wink' to the great Ray Harryhausen, Italian effects man Armando Valcauda created this stop motion sequence for STAR CRASH (1979), also known as THE ADVENTURES OF STELLA STAR. 
The exquisite Caroline Munro was the chief sales pitch for STAR CRASH, unsurprisingly.  Directed by Italian exploitation auteur Luigi Cozzi, who like many other Italian directors through the 70's and 80's went by pseudonyms to try to fool foreign audiences into believing they were watching an American movie. Cozzi was one 'Lewis Coates' here.  Top right shows some quality model work under construction by effects man Armando Valcauda.


More cosmic shenanigans from STAR CRASH.

Here is another of those absolute gems - a film I was unaware of until UK vfx man Steve Begg most enthusiastically told me about it.  SPLIT SECOND (1953) is a dynamite little inexpensive thriller from RKO.  Seriously unbalanced crim on the lam takes hostages in desolate ghost town unaware that it's right in the zone of the American atomic tests!  Much tension ensues as the clock ticks by to A-bomb detonation.  Terrific film!  Harold Wellman was in charge of the special effects, with long time RKO fx cameraman Russell Cully involved.

The town is blown to hell in one god-almighty A-bomb blast, in what was a phenomenal bit of effects engineering for it's day, and extremely impressive still now!  In this incredible, but brief master shot, the entire street is literally 'swept up' - with cars flipping over and roofs coming off!  An amazing mechanical effects set piece that even had Steve Begg baffled - and he's got decades of effects experience with the latter day 007 films and a good deal of work with the maestro Derek Meddings.  It doesn't look like a (large) miniature, and seems to be full scale.  Just how they managed to rip everything apart all at once (maybe pre-stressed facades pulled rapidly by some pneumatic devices??).  The only similar type scene I've seen, full scale, was in an old Buster Keaton short where the wind blows the town to bits and Buster along the street like a feather!!  Bloody brilliant!!!

A quite good sci-fi flick, THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X (1958), which was also known in some places as THE COSMIC MONSTER.  Very moody and quite gory in places, with plenty of special effects by Les Bowie, including models, painted mattes and some quite jarring - for it's time - make up effects.  Worth a look.

The very unusual sort of a Die Hard in the future (or some such nonsense...I lost the plot) SHADOW CHASER (1992) started off with this impressive matte painted extension by Steve Begg.  Steve worked for a time at Westbury Optical & Design, with old timer Cliff Culley and his son Neil, where Steve learned matte painting and compositing.


The always terrific Sterling Hayden (so damned good in his films with Stanley Kubrick) was right on the money in this compact though completely satisfying western TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN (1958).  No special effects credit.

Samuel Fuller wrote and directed so many great films.  A true life tough guy, which shone through in most of his films such as the excellent Korean War drama THE STEEL HELMET (1951).  No credit for photographic effects.

The late, great Steve McQueen found stardom through this cheaply made, though completely agreeable 'monster' movie THE BLOB (1958).  Bart Sloane did the numerous effects shots which ranged from perspective photography to miniatures and some very cool cel animated effects

THE BLOB matte shot.  A later 70's sequel SON OF THE BLOB  was worthless on every level, while an 80's remake was passable, though aimed purely at the teen splatter crowd.

So-so small scale sci-fi THE TIME TRAVELLERS (1964) did what it could on a typically tiny American International budget.

Some behind the scenes shots of effects man David Hewitt at work on some models for THE TIME TRAVELLERS, with the bottom right pic nicely demonstrating the hanging miniature for the cavernous control centre (see upper colour frame).
Just love that over-the-top lobby card at top left... real American International bally-hoo


As described in previous writings, Norman Dawn was the pre-eminent name in special photographic effects dating back to very early motion pictures.  Some may not be aware that Dawn was as much a director and film maker as he was a trick shot man, with hundreds of films to his credit.  TWO LOST WORLDS (1950) though, was nothing more than a quickie programmer, made in a hurry, and packed with stock shots from other films.  Dawn himself didn't participate in the visual effects on this film and just directed it.  Dawn stated in his files that the Hal Roach effects department did all of the effects work, with Jack Glass painting some glass shots.  Recycled stock fx from ONE MILLION BC and CAPTAIN FURY - both old Hal Roach titles - were used a fair bit.


What, oh what were they thinking when the greenlit THE TERRORNAUTS (1967)??  Definitely from the'so bad it's good'school with the most over the top ad campaign imaginable!  Micro budgeted, and trying far too hard to be polished (it ain't), the film has sfx by the usually reliable Les Bowie and the bizarre casting of CARRY ON's Charles Hawtrey as a bloke trying to defeat alien invaders!  Note the glass shot where the explosion cloud passes up behind the distant planetoid!  Eeegads!

A very, very big tarantula in the backyard, from Bert I. Gordon's THE CYCLOPS (1957)

Charles Band's post-apocalyptic detective film TRANCERS (1984).  Don't know who did this shot but looks like a foreground glass shot.

When not painting mattes for his studio, Paramount, artist Jan Domela did numerous outside jobs such as this matte of a Korean POW camp from the very intense Richard Widmark drama TIME LIMIT (1957); the only film Karl Malden ever directed.  Powerful drama here.

Two matte painted shots by Les Bowie and Ray Caple from Hammer's TERROR OF THE TONGS (1961), with almost everything in the frame painted.

The low budget UK horror flick TOWER OF EVIL (1972) takes place entirely on this rock with said lighthouse, all painted by an uncredited artist.  Maybe Ray Caple or similar painter?

The low brow but popular Australian comedy THE TRUE STORY OF ESKIMO NELL (1974) utilised the services of Jim Danforth and Bill Taylor for this closing shot.

Mattes were frequently used in the endless Italian and Spanish 'sword & jockstrap' sagas, such as THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN (1961)

Another solid, well made and acted Hammer thriller that's well worth the time, was TASTE OF FEAR (1961).  The plate was shot at Black Park, near Bray Studios - location to so many Hammer films - with the matte painted by both Les Bowie, who did the left side, and young trainee Ian Scoones, who painted the right side, with both merging in the middle with an airbrush.  The painting was rendered in the living room of fx cameraman Kit West's London flat.  Kit used to shoot all of the mattes for Les through the 1960's before turning his hand to mechanical effects and Oscar glory later on.

Leigh Took painted a couple of traditional mattes for a made for television film THE TALE OF SWEENEY TODD (1997), interestingly well into the so-called digital era.

Some of the most profound impacts upon my childhood were the tv series' from Century 21 Productions - ie Gerry Anderson.  I loved 'em all - FIREBALL XL, STINGRAY, CAPTAIN SCARLET, UFO, JOE 90 and most of all above everything else, the fantastic THUNDERBIRDS!  Nothing else quite like it ever appeared on television, and even today my grandsons love it, and we frequently read the old THUNDERBIRDS annuals and such.  Derek Meddings, of course, was 'The Man', and none of those wonders could have been brought to the screen without Derek's skill, eye and sheer imagination.

Derek (left top & bottom) and fellow technicians bringing incredible adventure to the tv screens around the world for kids of ALL ages.  *Note:  the pic at right demonstrates one aspect of the cost saving attitude, with an effects staffer with hands at the ready to catch the mighty Thunderbird 2 should it break free of the piano wires and fall during a shot - which apparently it did on frequent occasions.  Call it a Century 21 safety net.

Magnificent model construction in Derek Meddings' effects workshop for the tv series U.F.O (1971)

THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (1958) - also known as THE CRAWLING EYE - was kind of fun, especially after a few beers.  Les Bowie said that he was always embarrassed whenever this film popped up on tv, especially with his matte painted mountain with a nailed on wad of cotton wool, which Les would reposition for different shots to suggest the passing of the day or night.  I enjoyed it.

The low budget Universal classic, TARANTULA (1955) was one of several highly effective big bug shows of the 50's, such as Warner's excellent THEM! made around the same time.  Clifford Stine and David Horsley created the special photographic effects, with Ross Hoffman as optical cinematographer.  Oh, and yes... that is Clint Eastwood flying the fighter plane.  "Go ahead arachnid....make my day!"

One doesn't normally equate fifties British television with pirate shows, but here is one:  THE BUCCANEERS (1957), with mattes by some long forgotten artist.


Another Hammer picture, and not with the slightest horror undertone.  THE UGLY DUCKLING (1959) was a highly amusing comedy - the sort they just don't make nowadays.  Les Bowie painted the matte shots, with Kit West  on board as matte cameraman.

Two more Bowie mattes from THE UGLY DUCKLING (1959).  It's likely that Les' young assistant, Ray Caple, had involvement too.

A rip-off Jules Verne adventure, VALLEY OF THE DRAGONS (1961) was a Columbia cheapie that stole every single effects shot from other films such as Universal's BAGDAD and a ton of quality work from Hal Roach's ONE MILLION BC, including big lizards, volcanic eruptions, lost valley mattes and the excellent Roy Seawright 1940 lava flow devouring cave people.  Do they pay to use this stuff?

Time for another prosthetic make up effect.  This one is a cooler than cool shot of David Prowse - sans Darth Vader get up - having a massive calibre flintlock blast a hole the size of drain pipe through his belly!  The movie was VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1971), with Les Bowie, once again, providing effects.  Les was so versatile; trained as a matte painter by the legendary Walter Percy Day, he branched out into model work, gore fx, practical effects, explosives and all manner of work as required.  He passed away just as he learned he (and others) were to receive the Special Achievement Award' for the visual effects on Richard Donner's still essential SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE (1979)

Bert I. Gordon again, with these shots from WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (1958), with the versatile Bert involved in all aspects of production, including the trick shots.

The barely watchable comedy THE WIZARD OF BAGHDAD (1960).  L.B Abbott was fx boss, with long time associate Emil Kosa jnr on matte shots.

If you are seeking an effects filled witch hunt-time travel chase extravaganza, then WARLOCK (1989) may well be just the film for you.  I can't remember much other than it had good visual effects by a large team which included Bob Scifo as matte artist, Jeff Matakovich on opticals and Laine Liska on stop motion, among others.

The eerie and highly effective little horror picture WHITE ZOMBIE (1932) had much atmosphere courtesy of British born matte artist Conrad Tritschler.

Enterprising Italian film makers churned out dozens of these thrifty science fiction actioners through the 80's, few of which are worth celebrating.  WARRIORS OF THE YEAR 2072 (1984) starred American action star Fred Williamson and was helmed, surprisingly, by notorious gore-meister Lucio Fulci, in a change of genre from his usual zombie flicks.  This shot was however very effective, executed by Polish born matte painter Joseph Natanson, who had been one of Percy Day's matte team at Shepperton before shifting to Italy in the mid-fifties where he was never short of work on films such as CLEOPATRA.  I'm thinking this shot may have been a foreground glass painting.

Also from WARRIORS OF THE YEAR 2072 are these very Bladerunner inspired shots, probably miniature set up, as were a couple of other sprawling future city shots.

Full matte painted shot, complete with animated lights, from the Benny Hill comedy WHO DONE IT? (1956) made by the beloved Ealing Studios in England.  Geoffrey Dickinson had been Ealings' in-house photographic effects expert, usually credited with 'Special Processes', though he passed away the year before so may not have been involved here.

Some of the impressive matte shots as seen in Roger Corman's quickie WAR OF THE SATELLITES (1958).  Never one to miss the chance to make a quick buck, Roger cashed in here on the recent launch of the Soviet sputnik satellite.  Irving Block painted the mattes, with associates Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt putting it all together.  The film was a hit and some of the fx shots would turn up for years in other films and tv shows.

Television matte shot from the show THE WILD, WILD WEST episode NIGHT OF THE INFERNO.  No effects credit but possibly contracted to the Howard A. Anderson company.

Another long forgotten tv matte shot; this being from the popular THE UNTOUCHABLES, which ran from 1959 to 1963.  Once again, I think it was a Howard A. Anderson job, using some freelance matte artist like Luis McManus or similar?

There's no getting away from Rabin, Block & DeWitt in this blog!  VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT (1957) I have never seen but do have copies of the numerous mattes.

WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II (1988) featured a few in camera glass shots to make things look a little more grand.  Pony Horton was glass shot artist.

Pony Horton on location with two in progress glass shots.  I corresponded with Pony some years ago and he kindly regaled me with tales of his days as a beginning matte painter and general assistant at Van der Veer Photo Effects.  He even mentioned rattling around looking at old glass mattes in a storeroom when he accidentally knocked over a couple (CAPRICORN ONE was one matte as I recall, and maybe KONG was the other?) which were smashed to pieces, with Frank van der Veer and Barry Nolan rushing in with a "What the hell happened here?"

The utterly charming and unique WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME (1988) was definitely a one-of-a-kind experience by the enthusiatic and highly creative indie film maker Mike Jittlov.  The feature was an extension of an earlier short subject that Mike had made a few years earlier.  A delight to view, the simplistic little film is wall to wall visual effects and trick shots - some harking back to the silent era.  Several genre celebs appear such as the great Forry Ackerman and seasoned effects man Jim Danforth, who also contributed to the many optical fx shots.  Jittlov was known for his unique ability to 'animate' himself in camera to highly amusing effect - (an old silent movie gag that would also be used superbly in the 1970's by the BBC for the quite brilliant slapstick classic show THE GOODIES).  Mike would later contribute similar 'self animation' work to the mega-hit GHOST with Patrick Swayze.


One of those movie-of-the-week tv films, WHAT WAITS BELOW (1984) had several matte shots by Mark Sullivan, with David Stipes on the fx camera.

A young Mark Sullivan finishing off the matte for the shot above.


Donald O'Connor starred as a most unlikely Aladdin here in this 1961 Italian desert fantasy, THE WONDERS OF ALADDIN .  Directed by Mario Bava, who, as previously mentioned. was also a most adept visual effects artist on many of his films, this one included.  Bava created some amazing vfx shots for his cult classic DANGER DIABOLIK, which I will cover in a separate blog.

One of several excellent British sci-fi pictures was this Hammer film X-THE UNKNOWN (1957) where much is brought to the screen for very little money.  Les Bowie supervised he effects and painted all of these shots, with optical cinematographer - and long time Bowie colleague, Vic Margutti - adding in electrical explosions and interactive lighting to a 2 dimensional Bowie painted landscape with power pylons.

Like Japan, South Korea also - for a time - delved into monsters stomping around Seoul.  This epic, YONGARY, MONSTER FROM THE DEEP (1967) followed all the same formula, and was a bit of a giggle.  Lots of miniature sets split screened into live action plates, and things exploding.

More catastrophic calamity from YONGARY.  Send this big bastard to North Korea I say!  Incidentally, I love modern era Korean cinema and find it so damned good, after largely predictable American crime thrillers etc.  The number of outstanding Korean films I've got is way up there.  Such dark masterpieces as I SAW THE DEVIL;  THE ROUNDUP-OUTLAWS 2;  BATTLESHIP ISLAND;  THE GANGSTER, THE COP & THE DEVIL; ESCAPE FROM MOGADISHU and PARASITE are some prime examples.  Man, can they make some great films!

I did say William Castle made some oddball films from time to time... ZOTZ (1962) was a strangely uninvolving comedy of magical powers and casting spells.  One rather nice extreme perspective matte shot from an unknown artist, and an amusing Columbia logo bit where the Liberty Lady turns her head and winks at director Castle - unquestionably the high point of the film.  *Note- Columbia weren't afraid to make fun of their logo and did similar things in many films such as the friggen awful disco flick THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY made in the late 70's where the famous lady strikes up a disco pose and boogies her buns off!!



***This post, and all 176 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


Hopefully this sums up this thrilling blog post!!


Do give me your feedback...it's always appreciated.
All the best
Peter




KEEP 'EM LAUGHING: Mattes & Trick Shots in Comedy Films - Part One

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'Tis the season to be jolly, or so they say, so here we are back again with yet another blog that's absolutely jam packed with cinematic wonderment.  My previous blog on low cost film effects proved most popular, with much feedback and comment (and a couple of corrections).  I still plan to do a follow up Low Budget blog at some point, as I missed a bunch of great little films with really nifty trick work such as the sci-fi cult item FIEND WITHOUT A FACE among others.  Stay tuned, as they say.

Today we will be embarking on the first of a large two-parter on mattes and trick effects seen in movie comedies.  Naturally the potential here is vast, so I've hand picked literally hundreds of wonderful special effect shots and sequences (would you expect anything less?) from a huge cross section of titles.  My own personal preferences tend to be old time comedies rather than the recent stuff, though I do span the decades fairly equally I feel.

I'm a massive fan of The Marx Brothers for example, so they just have to be included.  Likewise, the old Abbott & Costello comedies, which while sometimes being quite hit-or-miss, often contain eye poppingly ingenious visual effects work from the likes of John Fulton and David Horsley.  For old timers out there, you should enjoy some classic Laurel and Hardy, W.C Fields flicks and even the amazingly under-valued Olson & Johnson material, which really deserves rediscovery, remastering and reissue!

I've got a ton of wonderful British comedies in here as well, with some classics from The Boulting Brothers, Ealing and Norman Wisdom, and even have an all time BBC tv gem The Goodies, though these Brit entries might be completely fresh to most American readers.

There are the more 'modern' shows here too, such as The Naked Gun and Hot Shots series and such-like, and a mixed bag of latter day comedy flicks that have traditional matte, model and optical mastery.  If it ain't 'photo-chemical' then it really doesn't fit here.

I love movies, so forgive me when I more than occasionally drift off track with obscure facts, critique, raves about fave actors or directors, off-tangent film references, in jokes and so forth.  I can't help it.

As with my usual 'sales pitch', I'm certain you'll discover shows you've absolutely never heard of; shots you've never noticed; and technical wizardry that will dazzle even the most jaded viewer who only normally watches the latest DC/Marvel/Star Wars reboot dross (when will that tiresome trend ever be dead and buried, I ask you?).  Well, with a whole stable of fresh enemies now guaranteed, it is high time to venture down that boulevard of movie magic, and rediscover the movie comedy.  All feedback greatly appreciated.

Enjoy

Pete from New Zealand  :)


***This post, and all 177 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


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Probably the most successful and widely praised of their many A&C features, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) was a winner all the way.  Hilarious, scary and a wonderful tribute to all the old Universal monster flicks.  David S. Horsley was effects supervisor here, and did some incredible work on other A&C films, documented later.  Pretty sure this is a Russell Lawson matte painted castle, possibly blended with miniature foreground dock and later row boat.  Cel animated bat flies into shot.  *I recall my mother telling me they retitled it ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE GHOSTS here in New Zealand back in the day.

Follow up matte painting by Lawson.  Film also has some groovy transformation sequences, done via inked cel animation.

From the other side of the Atlantic came THE AMOROUS MR. PRAWN (1962).  No idea who did the various matte shots of the Scottish stately home.

A telling before and after executed by Illusion Arts for THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)

The inevitable sequel, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1992) used much matte (left) and miniature (right) work to great effect.  Again, Illusion Arts, under Syd Dutton and the late Bill Taylor handled all of the mattes, while I recall fx cameraman Jim Aupperle once telling me he looked after the miniature shots such as that at right.  Love that exaggerated perspective on the extreme downview matte painting!

More matte art from ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES.  The films were quite good in fact, largely due to the perfect casting of the late Raul Julia as Gomez.  Best line, uttered by Morticia:  "Oh he's quite a lady killer", with Gomez's delighted response: "Yes...acquitted!"

A full frame painted matte vista, with circling buzzard added.

Back to another old Universal Abbott & Costello frolic, IN THE NAVY (1941).  Lots of fx shots by John P. Fulton, with mattes painted by John DeCuir and Russ Lawson.

Same film, with brilliantly done near collision between warships.  Long time Universal model exponent was Charlie Baker, who worked closely with Fulton for decades on hundreds of films.  Jim Danforth told me he had fond memories of working as a fresh young trainee under Charlie in the early 60's on films like FATHER GOOSE. 

Another IN THE NAVY matte shot.  John DeCuir's son told me he still has a bunch of ancient before and after 35mm trims of this and many other Uni matte shows his father painted on.  I'm still vaguely hopeful to see these some day....please!

The most unlikely pairing of Doris Day with Richard Harris(!) in the silly swinging sixties spy spoof CAPRICE (1967) included this very nice CinemaScope matte by Emil Kosa jnr.

England's beloved Ealing Studios turned out scores of much loved classics.  This one was BARNACLE BILL (1957) - which was renamed ALL AT SEA for the Yanks.  Highly amusing tale of crusty seaman - Alec Guinness - who is afraid of the ocean and gets seasick, so sets up a sort of non-ocean going 'vessel' on an English pier.  Some great miniature work, possibly by an uncredited Syd Pearson or Cliff Richardson who worked a lot at Ealing.

Destructive comedy from BARNACLE BILL.
I'm not sure whether this photo is from the fx stage of BARNACLE BILL, though it does look very similar?

More maritime hi-jinks, this time in Technicolor and VistaVision.  THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON (1957) was a Shepperton production, with Wally Veevers overseeing a number of matte and model combination shots of the ship, it's demise and the island setting.  Bob Cuff was matte artist, and Veevers usilised his preference of split screening miniature ships into actual ocean with painted skies.

Rocco Gioffre supplied this toxic dump matte for the forgettable John Candy vehicle ARMED AND DANGEROUS (1986)

Definitely one of A&C's lesser efforts, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE KEYSTONE COPS (1954) is however noteworthy for some incredibly well executed photographic effects gags.  I had to stop and rewind this bit several times to analyse it.  Lou in path of oncoming express train, with foot jammed in track, just manages to leap to safety with a second to spare!  I figured the stunt guy nearly got nailed at first until I reviewed it very carefully.  David Horsley and fx cinematographer Roswell Hoffman actually perpetrated a flawless travelling matte here, with the character photographed on location minus locomotive, presumably in front of a large neutral grey toned (or black?) canvas, whereby a travelling matte could be isolated as the actor/double went through the action. The train speeding toward would have been safely filmed either before or right after the 'gag' fall, based upon the identical sunlight in both elements.  Absolutely superb, with barely a matte line detectable!  In an interview Horsley described such a staple trick as a standard in the John Fulton department, dating way back to the early 1930's in things like THE INVISIBLE MAN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN - in which David was a key collaborator.  You can keep all your CG stuff guys... this stuff was boss!

Another Horsley gag from the same A&C film.  Plane narrowly misses car in a carefully composited travelling matte, with what I'm sure was a miniature plane.  Love it!

Same film, with crazy slapstick.  Russell Lawson matte art with doubled in horse & buggy.

Ahhh, yes... one of my fave films.  The phenomenal BLUES BROTHERS (1980) - a film which, pardon the pun, hit all the right notes for me!  Fantastic music, dry deadpan humour, car wrecks-a-plenty, weird cameos and a couple of show stopping Albert Whitlock shots such as this beauty!  Best line in film, as uttered by the great Charles Napier:  "You're gonna look mighty funny tryin' to eat corn on the cob... with no fucken' teeth!"  Classic!

BLUES BROTHERS wizardry, described in detail in previous Bill Taylor tribute article here.


Back to the UK here... a wonderful matte from the popular comedy BLUE MURDER AT ST. TRINIANS (1957), with matte art by a rarely credited (but was here) Albert Julion - one of Vincent Korda's favourite matte painters and a long timer in the Shepperton photo effects department with Pop Day and Wally Veevers.  I have reason to believe that Julion may very well have been mentor to Albert Whitlock, based on research I've done.

British film maker Lindsay Anderson turned out some seminal pictures from the late 60's onward, such as IF and the wonderful O' LUCKY MAN.  The shots here are from Anderson's last(?) film BRITANNIA HOSPITAL (1982).  Matte by Charles Stoneham who started under Cliff Culley in the Pinewood matte dept in the mid 1960's.  Great work here as I'd hate to think how difficult it must have been to render that vast mirrored structure.

The film is impossible to categorize, and is as free-wheeling as they come.  Unforgettable set piece in operating theatre sees a rebuilt, patched together Malcolm McDowell who accidentally gets his head torn off (don't even begin to ask!!).  Phenomenal special make up effects by Nick Maley, who also did remarkable work on Tobe Hooper's ridiculous LIFEFORCE - the likes of which were totally fresh to audiences of the day!  And to think all the 'gore' was dusted off in the previous blog.... You fools!!!

Another Charles Stoneham matte, with Roy Field on fx camera duties.

A pair of uncredited mattes from Chaplin's classic CITY LIGHTS (1931).

Rocco Gioffre painted a number of mattes for Billy Crystal's CITY SLICKERS (1991).  I'm not 100% sure about the top left but suspect it to be Gioffre.

I'm a devotee of old Bob Hope comedies.  This one, CAUGHT IN THE DRAFT (1941) being a winner.

Two more of Jan Domela's matte shots from CAUGHT IN THE DRAFT.

ABBOTT & COSTELLO GO TO MARS (1953) sounds like it couldn't go wrong, but never really worked.  Tons of effects shots though, from extensive Russ Lawson matte art, many optical gags and model shots abound.  Also has a bevvy of Martian 'hotties' of some note!

Same film:  David Horsley was photographic effects chief.

The climax involves a multitude of fx shots as rocket roars through New York skies and down avenues and tunnels - all solid work with much, much rotoscope artistry by Universal veteran Millie Minebrenner (who was with the studio for many decades from Fulton through to Whitlock).  Neat gag here with Liberty Lady ducking out of the way of out-of-control spaceship.

Same A&C film:  classic Lou Costello set up, with delectable young lass planting kiss, then transforming into old grandma - mid smooch!

Bing Crosby starred in the popular musical/comedy version of Mark Twain's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT (1949).  Lots of effects supervised by Gordon Jennings, with matte art such as this rendered by studio veteran Jan Domela.

Another Domela matte.  Film also used the newly designed motion repeater for a couple of bold shots where vast camera pan crosses expanse of live action and up onto painted castle (not this frame).

The most unimpressive DRAGNET (1987) feature from the old tv series at least had this excellent matte shot, worked on by both Al Whitlock and Syd Dutton - with Bill Taylor providing a camera move.

Haven't seen this in years, but recall THE DUCHESS AND THE DIRTWATER FOX (1976) as being a real hoot, largely due to comic chemistry of George Segal and Goldie Hawn.  A few mattes, possibly done by Matthew Yuricich?

Very controversial back in the day, and got an MPAA 'X' Rating (mainly due to scenario being a brothel), THE BEST HOUSE IN LONDON (1968) was pretty funny (especially bit with John Cleese in a cameo).  Many matte and model shots, with Shepperton's resident painters Gerald Larn and Bryan Evans on matte shots, and Ted Samuels on model work.  Above is a masterful before and after by Gerald Larn of Victorian London.

BEST HOUSE IN LONDON (1968) matte shot.

Gerald Larn described the matte workload to me a while back, with this being one more of his.

Not one of Bob's better shows, though CALL ME BWANA (1963) does have the luscious Anita Ekberg in it, so what's not to like!

CALL ME BWANA mattes by Cliff Culley.

The enormously popular UK comedy THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIANS (1954) with Alastair Sim and George Cole.  Nice mattes start things off, painted by George Samuels (above middle).

The Carry On series was extremely popular here in New Zealand, and also other former British colonies, with the sense of humour being most agreeable.  CARRY ON CLEO (1964) was a riff on Fox's mega budget bust CLEOPATRA and cost just pocket change.

CARRY ON CLEO mattes by Pinewood veteran artist Cliff Culley.

Another CLEO matte by Culley.  Cliff started off at J.Arthur Rank back in the 1940's and worked alongside a young Al Whitlock in the matte department.

And my choice for the perfect 'desert island' DVD would be the all time classic DUCK SOUP (1933) starring the four Marx Brothers.  Outright masterpiece, bar none!

The brothers only made less than a dozen features, and the later ones were highly variable, but the ones that hit bullseye, were, and still remain, all time classics of American cinema.  One such was DUCK SOUP (1933) - a biting, sarcastic anti-war satire (that actually flopped back in '33 as audiences just didn't get it).  I've probably seen this film around 30 times and never fail to laugh out loud.  DUCK SOUP packs more laughs into it's compact 68 minutes than you'd think possible.  Above are two matte shots by Jan Domela.

Although The Marx Bros were never heavy on special effects shots, their preference being brilliant and endlessly quotable verbal sparring, the mute Harpo would often pull some hilarious trick out of his bag, sleeve, harp, horn, or in this case, tattoos!  After showcasing his various tat's to Groucho (a very funny scene in itself), Harpo proudly shows off his tummy tat - complete with barking dog!

War breaks out in DUCK SOUP - a ludicrous war declared just for the hell of it.  Audiences of the day were lost to the notion of 'anti-war' themes, or satire on such a shattering event that had a much more patriotic meaning back then.  Much later audiences, especially during the anti-Vietnam era just lapped it up and rediscovered the masterpiece.  Incidentally, the best scene, and one not even involving any camera tricks was the famous mirror sequence - likely THE funniest set piece ever filmed.  Find it on YouTube or one of those cyber net things.

From the sublime mastery of the Marx's, to the loud silliness of Rodney Dangerfield.  CADDYSHACK (1980) made Bill Murray a star.  Here are two mattes by Rocco Gioffre, one with the prestige country club and grounds, and the other with mass destruction (painted in) after gopher hunt.

The hit Danny Kaye comedy THE COURT JESTER (1956) had a number of memorable scenes and much charisma from it's leading man.  Several mattes too, such as this beautiful Jan Domela shot.

Another Marx Bros movie, A DAY AT THE RACES (1937) is also an all time favourite of NZ Pete.  I've lost count of the number of times I've seen this, either on the big screen as a kid on Marx double bills; on tv; on 16mm; VHS and DVD.  So repeatable, and with so many side splitting sequences and interactions.  Their biggest budget film, as they'd been woo'ed by MGM by now, and their biggest hit.  Warren Newcombe's department provided this matte.

Oh, man... the classics just keep on a comin'.  Another bona-fide masterpiece, the great DR STRANGELOVE-OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964).  Wally Veevers handled the model effects with Shepperton's Doug Ferris and Alan Maley rendering mattes, and Vic Margutti on travelling mattes.  Best line in film, from Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffly(!): "Gentlemen...you can't fight in here...this is the war room!"
Veteran vfx cameraman Wally Veevers standing bottom right, with the miniature bomber set up fro Stanley Kubrick's timeless masterpiece, DR STRANGELOVE.


These big cast roadshow/race films were very much the 'in thing', with THOSE DARING YOUNG MEN IN THEIR JAUNTY JALOPIES (1969) being a typical example from the period.  No idea who painted these mattes, but much of the production crew were Europe based.  The film was retitled MONTE CARLO OR BUST for America, and did star 'Peter Cook', though not this Peter Cook who scribes before you.

A Cliff Culley shot from CARRY ON UP THE KHYBER (1968).


Jan Domela matte art from the Jack Benny version of ARTISTS AND MODELS (1937)

I like political thrillers, and though this film, DAVE (1993) is political, it's really a sly sort of comedy of errors, though a good film.  An astounding array of vfx scenes feature in it, with Harrison Ellenshaw supervising the extraordinary work at Buena Vista Visual Effects.  Lots of remarkable, yet invisible matte painted shots abound, with highly skilled painter Paul Lasaine largely responsible.  Many shots of The White House had to be rendered on glass from various angles and composited with partial sets, back lots and such, to excellent effect.  Here we see Paul at work on one of his incredible glass paintings.

The final shot is utterly convincing.


Another of Paul Lasaine's mattes in progress and final comp.  Staggeringly well done.


Also from DAVE, with this extensive painting with minimal live action plate.  Paul was one of the truly under appreciated artists who came into the industry in it's final couple of years of traditional 'paint on glass' methodology.  Harrison Ellenshaw told me he holds Paul in very high praise.  Paul was highly instrumental in the VFX design and 'look' of Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, with his conceptual paintings being so close to the final scenes.


The British heist comedy CROOKS IN CLOISTERS (1964).  No effects credited.

Hammer not only produced horror pictures but also knocked out just about every genre you can think of.  DON'T PANIC CHAPS (1959) was a low budget b&w comedy, with a reliable cast of well known Brit character actors.  Interestingly, the original glass matte art still survives to this day.  It was painted by Albert Julion, presumably done in colour so as to serve as a stock painting for future films if needed.  New assistant matte artist Doug Ferris told the story of being interviewed by Wally Veevers around 1962 and shown through the matte storage room.  Wally told Doug he could choose any one of the matte glasses if he wanted.  Ferris picked this one and took it home.  At the time, there was quite a collection of vintage Shepperton mattes and models, though in time they all seemed to vanish, and nobody knows where.

Detail of Albert Julion's glass painting.

A Newcombe department pastel matte made for Woody Van Dyke's ANOTHER THIN MAN (1939), though it doesn't appear in the version I have on DVD, sadly.

Ronald Reagan and a chimp... yeah, BEDTIME FOR BONZO (1951) was the film.  Matte art by Russell Lawson at Universal.  I recall when Reagan was elected as US President, they re-released this film here in NZ at Auckland's old Hollywood Cinema in Avondale for a laugh.

ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (1951) really should have been at least nominated in the best visual fx category, as the work was terrific!

Among the myriad invisibility gags and pratfalls was this extraordinary sequence that stands out in a class of it's own where Bud and Lou have a poker game with the invisible dude.  So much finely tuned and superbly composited optical work here with cards being shuffled, dealt, flipped over, chips counted, etc... It really is a great scene.  David Horsley deserves kudos for orchestrating this elaborate multi-cut sequence, along with optical cameraman Ross Hoffman and roto artist Millie Winebrenner.  A winner!

Same film, with a terrific sequence showing the guy becoming visible.  Horsley worked on similar scenes with John Fulton for a couple of the old INVISIBLE MAN pictures.  Interestingly, I recall that just one of that series was ever nominated for it's vfx.

Much superimposition, cross dissolving layered anatomical artwork with Roswell Hoffman's optical printer.

Syd Dutton painted this atmospheric view of New York for Richard Pryor's frantic CRITICAL CONDITION (1986), complete with customary drifting clouds, rising smoke elements and animated lightning cel overlays.

Another Dutton matte from CRITICAL CONDITION where much set extension has been painted in along with other elements. 

A surprisingly late traditional matte for ALMOST HEROES (1998), made well into the digital era.  Rocco Gioffre was matte artist here.

Very entertaining and enjoyable yarn that couldn't miss with that cast, BROTHERS IN LAW (1957) made by the very successful Boulting brothers.  Tom Howard oversaw the effects work.

A Robert Stromberg full matte from DENNIS THE MENACE (1993), with Illusion Arts as effects contractor.

Another Illusion Arts matte from same film.

The prehistoric comic extravaganza, CAVEMAN (1981) with a grunting Ringo Starr and wife to be Barbara Bach.  Lots of David Allen stop motion, with other effects input from Jim Danforth.  I think Rocco Gioffre may have painted the backing and blend in here.

While not a patch on the first film, AIRPLANE II (1982) had it's funny moments, especially William Shatner totally taking the piss out of his Capt James T. Kirk persona.  Production designer and conceptual artist Mike Minor painted this matte shot.  *These films were titled FLYING HIGH (1 & 2) here and in several other countries.

A later entry by iconic Laurel and Hardy was this one, AIR RAID WARDENS (1943) made by MGM.  Warren Newcombe would have supervised the matte, which is well up to the high calibre we have come to expect from his department.

The very enjoyable fast talking Howard Hawks comedy BALL OF FIRE (1941) starring the great Gary Cooper, and penned by Billy Wilder no less.  A Goldwyn Picture so matte artist a mystery.  May be someone like Jack Cosgrove or Jack Shaw?

The 1970's saw a whole slew of spoof fairy tale flicks, most of them sexploitation, and CINDERELLA 2000 (1977) fits the bill precisely.  An odd mish-mash, shot in Scope and reasonably ambitious, for a 'C' grade movie, but what else would you expect from an auteur as 'out there' as the late and highly productive Al Adamson, who made tons of biker flicks, shoestring 'B' horror and miscellaneous Grindhouse 42nd street fare!

One of a series of 'Maisie' comedy adventures from MGM, CONGO MAISIE (1940).  A nice before and after Newcombe pastel matte shown here.

Laurel and Hardy's BONNIE SCOTLAND (1935) featured many mattes and optical gags to good effect.  A Hal Roach film, Roy Seawright was vfx supervisor and most likely Jack Shaw or Luis McManus would have painted the mattes, as the studio's in house matte artists.

More shots from BONNIE SCOTLAND, where thousands of stinging bees have been released and go crazy.  Many excellent shots here with cel animated bees added in by optical cinematographers Frank W. Young and William Draper.  Terrific sequence.

A high rez pic of an original Newcombe pastel painting made for the film CAIRO (1942).  The black area will have water doubled in for the final shot (see below). Beautiful artwork.

Matte work from the adventure/comedy CAIRO (1942) with the completed shot with water shown at left.

The biting and cynical (some might even say savage) satire, THE APARTMENT (1960) really just had a single matte painting - that of the actual apartment exterior which appears at the start.  Interiors of the massive insurance offices were, if I recall from the disc commentary, built in an extreme forced perspective, I think with kids in the background at tiny desks.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

ABBOTT & COSTELLO IN THE FOREIGN LEGION (1950) had a few mattes and shots by David Horsley, such as this mirage gag - a gag used a dozen times over the years.

Cliff Culley painted set extensions from Norman Wisdom's amusing  A STITCH IN TIME (1963).


Harrison Ellenshaw painted this splendid matte for the film CABIN BOY (1992) - a film that Harrison said was "an unwatchable piece of garbage".  I never saw the film myself.  He also shared a number of personal recollections on the ill-fated production which shall remain 'unpublished'(!)

Jan Domela mattes and composites from Mae West's BELLE OF THE NINETIES (1934).

Another Laurel & Hardy flick,  A CHUMP AT OXFORD (1940), which interestingly also featured a young Peter Cushing as a bully(!)  Roy Seawright looked after the Hal Roach effects unit, with either Jack Shaw or Luis McManus likely as matte painters.

Jack Benny was a one of a kind comic personality, both on screen and on the radio.  Always self-effacing, Benny made some great comedies.  This one's BUCK BENNY RIDES AGAIN (1940) with Gordon Jennings on effects, and long time artist Jan Domela painting mattes.

Several Newcombe mattes from another Marx Bros picture, AT THE CIRCUS (1939).  Not the best of their output, sadly, but has it's moments.  Their early Paramount pictures were quite economic affairs - and all the better for it - with no studio interference, so the boys could literally cut loose and go wild.  The later MGM shows were very structured as Louis B. Mayer simply didn't 'get' the Marx sense of humour... it was beyond of his pay grade.

Ken Marschall was the greatest matte artist you never heard of (unless you frequent this blog of course). Together with cameraman and collaborator Bruce Block, Ken created hundreds of utterly invisible hand painted matte shots over a 20 year career before it all went digital.  This terrific matte is from CRAZY PEOPLE (1990) starring Dudley Moore.  The film needed fake billboard ads around the city - some quite funny - but Ken didn't want to simply plonk in a 'new' billboard advert' as it might be obvious as if a paste in.  He found over years of experience that to black out far more of the plate and paint in a considerable deal made for a more credible final result.  Man, can Ken paint!

Bob Hope was one of Paramount's 'cash cows', with dozens of hit movies and a legion of fans (me included). CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT (1954) was a giggle, and had a few Jan Domela mattes.

I never went for these stupid BILL & TED films - they reminded me too much of those god-awful Cheech & Chong dope head flicks of yesteryear.  This one, B&T's BOGUS JOURNEY (1991) had at least a couple of my fave actors in it, the fine British character actor Joss Ackland, and the Foxiest of all Coffy coloured Sheba's, the wonderful Pam Grier!  Mattes by Matthew Yuricich, with these rare original paintings discovered, I believe, in a dumpster in LA.

Another 'junked' BILL & TED Yuricich matte, and the final shot.

Two great MGM Warren Newcombe shots from THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE (1933)

The versatile and highly experienced Ralph Hammeras was a pioneering visual effects exponent in all facets of the artform.  Ralph was a skilled matte artist, effects cameraman, miniatures technician and stop motion man on films such as the original silent LOST WORLD and many, many others.  These shots are Hammeras glass shots from 20th Century Fox's CHARLEY'S AUNT (1941).  According to Matt Yuricich, Ralph was supposed to head the Fox effects dept but fell out over bad blood with Fred Sersen or some higher up exec at some stage.

As already mentioned, the British CARRY ON series were enormously popular, with a great financial return on the low budget series.  These mattes by Pinewood's Cliff Culley are from CARRY ON HENRY (top row) and CARRY ON JACK (bottom row) from the early 70's.  I particularly like that harbour with sailing ship full painting.  Very nice indeed!

The tangled stories surrounding the production of the mega-budgeted spy spoof CASINO ROYALE (1967) are legend.  Some six (yes 6) directors helmed this, and by all accounts it was an out of control, freewheeling rollercoaster of excess.  That said, I quite enjoyed it.  Phenomenal cast, cool music, groovy art direction, some great gags scattered here and there, scores of mini-skirted swinging sixties dolls and more! How many films have Woody Allen, Jean Paul-Belmondo, George Raft and Orson Welles in the same cast??? I reckon Mike Myers must surely have watched this 100 times before doing Austin Powers

A number of effects guys were involved with CASINO ROYALE, with Cliff Richardson of mechanical gags and several matte painters, Gerald Larn, Peter Melrose and Les Bowie on board.  Star Peter Sellers was so intimidated by having to work with Orson Welles that he demanded all of his shots in lengthy scenes with Welles be filmed on his own, minus Orson, with the editors having to figure out pulling it all together in some coherent fashion in post (amazingly, they did!).  Sellers finally stormed off the set and never came back, with his character just 'absent' for the remaining story line.

A marvellous matte, which I'm certain was painted by Albert Whitlock, from the very enjoyable COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963).  This shot has all the hallmarks of Whitlock.

Speaking of Al Whitlock, here's another of his shots, from Mike Nichols CATCH 22 (1970) with Al painting in an Italian town where none actually existed on the Mexican location.

CATCH 22 was a sensational, though massively expensive black comedy, deserving of repeat viewings to take it all in, not to mention the dream cast of pro's and newbies, all at the top of their game.  This frame is a from the show stopping scene where a low flying plane cuts a guy in half.  In fact, the sequence was a most ingenious mix of mechanical effect (a dummy of the actor stuffed with animal entrails) and some superbly subtle optical work by Albert Whitlock.  See below...


Director Mike Nichols really wanted more than just the usual 'splat' death scene and tasked Whitlock to come up with something different.  Nichols wanted the lower half of the sliced actor to gradually wobble on unsteady legs before toppling very realistically into the sea.  The stuntman held a special mirror across his upper body, reflecting the sky and obliterating his form.  As he teetered and finally toppled backward with legs akimbo, Whitlock's in house rotoscope artist Millie Winebrenner carefully roto'd out the now visible torso and upper body with consumate skill.  Whitlock's cameraman Ross Hoffman and assistant Mike Moramarco also deserve a pat on the back.  Masterpiece!


England's much beloved Norman Wisdom was the UK answer to Jerry Lewis - and far funnier and far less bloody irritating!  In this show, THE BULLDOG BREED (1960), Cliff Culley and Roy Field provided several neat mattes and a funny cel animated set piece.

William Powell was always superb, and Fox's THE BARONESS AND THE BUTLER (1938) was an agreeable ride.  Fred Sersen in charge of fx, with one of his many matte painters doing these nice shots.  Artists at Fox included Emil Kosa snr and his son Emil jnr; Hector Serbaroli;  Menrad von Muldorfer; Ray Kellogg; Ralph Hammeras;  Gilbert Riswold and Fitch Fulton among others.


Feature length film based upon the popular board game, CLUE (1985), with Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton providing several mattes.

Another atmospheric CLUE matte with drifting clouds and lightning overlay.

I can't really take the American comedy actor/writer Albert Brooks, with this vehicle, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE (1991) being a tedious affair indeed.  It did have some excellent mattes though, from the always reliable Dream Quest.  Ken Allen and Bob Scifo were artists.

Close ups of the magnificent matte art.

Two more of the numerous DEFENDING YOUR LIFE mattes.

Arguably Eddie Murphy's best picture was John Landis' tremendous COMING TO AMERICA (1988). Illusion Arts provided several mattes including the jaw dropping opening flyover which integrated extensive Syd Dutton-Al Whitlock matte art with miniature terrain by Apogee (with jungle canopy assembled using broccoli I recall).

The whole opening shot is shown as a complete, apparently uninterrupted fly over, closing in on the courtyard of the African palace.  The late Bill Taylor explained to me in detail how he managed to pull this off, with the short version being a number of different (and very large) matte paintings being photographed motion control, with very clever 'cheats' where separate takes were merged together.

Syd Dutton's actual and substantial matte painting with area that would serve as a rear projected live action element.  Albert Whitlock was matte consultant on this film.

A rare unused Illusion Arts matte painting intended for a dream sequence in COMING TO AMERICA where the John Amos character imagines opening one of his 'MacDowells' fast food joints in Africa.

The MGM Clark Gable war comedy COMRADE X (1940) was a remarkable special effects showcase.  The great Buddy Gillespie devised a whole array of fantastic miniature tank sequences, with long time associate, the equally great miniaturist Donald Jahraus.  Gillespie's grandson still owns at least one of the original model tanks!  The extensive model work worked so well as Gillespie shot it all outside in sunlight, with cleverly hidden control mechanisms, all expertly photographed by Maximillian Fabian - MGM's specialist cinematographer.  Warren Newcombe's department supplied several painted mattes to extend the settings to Russia.


Veteran Shepperton matte and optical artist Doug Ferris with one of his evocative glass paintings from ERIK THE VIKING (1989).  Doug would as often as possible paint in his name amid architecture and such, and has done so here at lower right.


Visual Effects supervisor Kent Houston of London's Peerless Optical, told me that artist Bob Cuff was his absolute favourite and he'd employ Bob whenever possible on his assignments.  The matte shots in ERIK THE VIKING are the only memorable asset, sadly.

Before and after by matte cameraman John Grant.


ERIK THE VIKING employed three matte artists; Bob Cuff, Doug Ferris and Bob's daughter in law, Joy Cuff.  This shot is a winner.


Before and after from the late John Grant's show reel.



A Russ Lawson matte from Abbott & Costello's LOST IN ALASKA (1952)

A beautiful matte that was spliced into LOST IN ALASKA that was actually a stolen Jan Domela painting from Paramount's THE GREAT MAN'S LADY made back in 1941

More from LOST IN ALASKA, though one at right may be a cyclorama?

David Horsley engineered composite with matte art and blue screened actor from LOST IN ALASKA (1952).  VFX cameraman was Universal's Ross Hoffman who was employed by that one studio for around fifty years.

Roman Polanski's films always come to my attention, with many being outstanding works.  That said, I never much cared for THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967), which was also known as DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES in some lands.  For me, the film never worked, though the vfx work was outstanding.  The memorable opening shot remains a staggering event even now.  From an extreme close up on the moon, the camera does this massive pullback and finishes on a snowy Transylvania.  Brilliantly designed and orchestrated, with an unusually crisp finished effect that doesn't at all cry out 'dupe' or 'manipulation'.

Peter Melrose painted elements making up the scene on 3 or 4 separate glasses, with careful camerawork (likely by Peter Harman and John Grant) and optical composite and blending by Doug Ferris.  An animated bat flying through the shot helps hide the division between two of the paintings during the very bold camera move.  Astonishingly accomplished shot in a mediocre movie.

Behind the scenes photo showing Peter Melrose at work (far left) on the above glass painting.  Fellow matte artist Bryan Evans is also shown here appearing to work on a glass, though I was told by Gerald Larn that the photo was an in house studio publicity pic, with Bryan pretending to paint on what was in fact another of Peter Melrose's mattes this production (see below).


Same film.  According to Doug Ferris, Polanski initially shot the film 'flat' - ie not widescreen.  A decision was made into principal photography that Roman wanted it to be anamorphic 2.35 ratio, meaning matte artist Ferris and co had to extend certain shots sideways by painting in extra scenery to make for scope presentation.
Same film, with matte additions by artist Peter Melrose of castle and also the left and right sides of the scope frame.  The horse and buggy passes behind the tree and never comes out the other side!  Am I the only nerd who spots things like that?


An uncredited piece of matte mastery by Albert Whitlock as seen in the very average Dick Van Dyke film FITZWILLY (1967), with almost the entire frame being painted in.

Paramount's delightful haunted house spoof THE GHOST BREAKERS (1940) with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard.  Photographic effects by Gordon Jennings, Paul Lerpae and Farciot Edouart.  Jan Domela was matte painter.

Jan Domela mattes from THE GHOST BREAKERS

More ghosts, with this one being Ivan Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS (1984).  Matthew Yuricich at work on the central venue for all sorts of spooky shit, and fx cameraman Neil Krepela taking a light reading for composite photography.

Final giant pullback shot with small patch of live action on skyscraper terrace.

One of the terrific apparitions courtesy of Richard Edlund's EEG effects house before it became BOSS Films.

I loved the wacky cel animated neutrona effects shots in GHOSTBUSTERS.  Looked and sounded so damned cool on the giant cinema screen in Dolby Stereo back in the day.

A carefully drawn out matte that will be one of those 'blink and you'll miss it' fx shots (see below).

Final comp using above painted city, with matted in miniature ghost building and much pyro.

Same show, with multi part composite.  Live action, marshmellow puppet, cel animated rays, painted buildings and miniature street.  Matt Yuricich was chief matte artist, with friend Michele Moen assisting on painting along with former Disney artist Deno Ganakes.


The follow up, GHOSTBUSTERS II (1988) was filled with effects shots, this time supplied by ILM. The top frame is a miniature Titanic and surrounds, with ghostly passengers superimposed in.


I've never seen HEXED (1993) and only know of it by way of matte painter Ken Marschall. Now here is an amazing shot which I, as one who's really keen on extreme perspective painting, can appreciate.  Frames at left show the action as character leaps from one rooftop to another.  When I conducted my marathon 3-part career interview with Ken and fx partner Bruce Block back in 2015, there was confusion as to who actually painted this shot.  Ken and Bruce's little two man company Matte Effects were overloaded with matte work at the time and brought in one or two artists to help out.  I know that painter Rick Rische worked on a couple of shows with Ken, and it's possible Rick painted this?  I know we all discussed the matter and I don't recall anyone being certain.  If I'd painted this beautiful matte I know I'd sure remember it!

Also from the film HEXED is this before and after which was painted by Rick Rische.

A bizarre shot from the wacky Don Knotts comedy THE INCREDIBLE MR LIMPET (1964).  No fx credit but could be the work of someone such as Lou Litchtenfield?

An odd little screwball comedy EARTHWORM TRACTORS (1936) that was fairly amusing and featured a number of miniature sequences amid the antics.

Splendid before and after frames from Norman Jewison's GAILY, GAILY (1969), which was titled CHICAGO, CHICAGO here and in non-US territories.  Albert Whitlock was matte artist, with this flawless shot being one of many non-Universal assignments Albert contributed to over his career.  Noteworthy shot as Whitlock would repeat the same basic trick effect in at least three movies, with THE STING being the most famous.

Another before and after from GAILY, GAILY (1969).

Mae West made many films for Paramount, and most of them had a few mattes or model shots.  KLONDIKE ANNIE (1936) with miniature cargo ship and Jan Domela painted locale.

Steve Martin made many really funny films in his early career, with THE LONELY GUY (1984) being particularly noteworthy.  Albert Whitlock matte shot here opens the film, with that unmistakable Whitlock moonlit sky.

The film that put the 'little tramp' firmly onto Hitler's shit-list... THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940), was a wonderfully witty satire and a true classic.  Effects work by Ralph Hammeras and Jack Cosgrove.

The 70's produced so many memorable and timeless comedies from Great Britain. I lived for shows like THE TWO RONNIES, MORECOMBE & WISE, MONTY PYTHON, SOME MOTHERS DO HAVE 'EM,  DAD'S ARMY and most of all the utterly insane THE GOODIES which ran from 1970 to 1982.  The BBC series was always a treat, with it's wonderful homage to old time silent era under cranked slapstick madness.  Creators/stars Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie went all out with utterly off the wall plots and situations, many of which nearly exhausted the BBC visual effects unit when it came to requirements ranging from 'Kitten Kong' ravaging London; The Loch Ness Monster; Jack and the Beanstalk and all manner of absurd free wheeling narratives.  I don't know if THE GOODIES ever made it across to the US, but feel it may not have found an audience there.  Enormously popular here and in the 'former British Colonies'.  I still remember sitting down with my grandmother watching these and splitting our sides with laughter.

THE GOODIES was packed with simple, yet highly effective gags, the most common being the brilliantly executed jump cut substitute of a life-like dummy so precisely for the actor for some nonsensical moment of family friendly violent slapstick, just as the silent comedians did so well.  Main vfx guys were Peter Day, Ron Oates, Len Hutton and John Horton.  Occasionally, the shows used glass shots and split screens.  Here is a great behind the scenes look at the creation of a Gladiatorial arena for one episode.  Done as a very straight forward and quickly rendered glass painted shot.  Roger Turner did some glass shots on THE GOODIES so that might be him laying in the artwork as the cameraman lines up the shot. Those were indeed the days!


Peter Sellers starred in the satirical HEAVENS ABOVE (1963), made by the talented and successful Boulting brothers.  Here is one of Bob Cuff's matte shots, made under Wally Veevers' supervision.


More high quality HEAVENS ABOVE matte work.  Doug Ferris said he assisted with some of these shots, having just been with Shepperton for a short duration.  *Note the signage shown in the left tilt down matte shot!

Paramount's almost indescribable farce, INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (1933) with matte art by Jan Domela.  This film folks, is probably the only chance you'd ever have to see W.C Fields, Bela Lugosi, George Burns and Cab Calloway - and early television being seen in the same film!!

The saddest thing about the rather feeble FIENDISH PLOT OF DR FU MANCHU (1980) was that it was Peter Sellers' final film, rather than the previous Sellers picture, the utterly brilliant Hal Ashby film BEING THERE (1979), which if an actor ever wished to be remembered for a 'great' final curtain call, then the Ashby film must be it, hands down.  Anyway, I digress...  That's a young and eager Leigh Took on the brushes there painting Fu's mountain fortress which in the final shot is beautifully matted into an actual alpine setting by Cliff Cully.


Jan Domela painted shots for Paramount's GOIN' TO TOWN (1935) with Mae West starring.

GOIN' TO TOWN Domela matte.


Jena Holman painted this alpine setting for the misguided movie reboot of the famed 60's GET SMART series, THE NUDE BOMB (1980), also known as THE RETURN OF MAXWELL SMART.  David Stipes was effects cameraman.

English comic Will Hay both directed and starred (in a dual role no less) in Ealing's THE GOOSE STEPS OUT (1942) - a very amusing and frantic paced parody on Nazi's and that prick Hitler. The film is packed with trick work, from split screens, opticals and a huge amount of miniature action involving planes, a train and an aerial mishap in London.  

Some of the miniature action in THE GOOSE STEPS OUT which I covered in detail in an older blog.  Roy Kellino was special effects chief, and did fine work on many Ealing films.  I'll bet though he'd have wished he'd never introduced his wife to actor James Mason.... She ran off with Mason and ended up marrying him!  Ya' heard it here first...

Superb miniature work in THE GOOSE STEPS OUT.  Cliff Richardson may have also been on board as he worked at Ealing and specialised then in model work.

Warner Bros made the fun but fatally overlong and overwrought THE GREAT RACE (1965).  Tons of special effects abound, ranging from ingenious mechanical rigs and gimmicks, through to miniatures and many matte paintings such as this shot made on the back lot.

An exceptional matte from THE GREAT RACE, painted either by Cliff Silsby or Albert Maxwell Simpson - both of whom worked on the film.

For the closing scene of THE GREAT RACE, effects supervisors Linwood Dunn and James B. Gordon chose a very simple and cost effective means to destroy Paris' Eiffel Tower.  Dunn purchased a toy model kit off the shelf and shot a frame by frame demolition which was then matted into an actual plate of Paris.  Simple, yet totally effective, and one that Dunn would often regale at lectures I'm told.

An ancient matte from the second Marx Bros feature ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930), probably the work of Jan Domela or maybe Hans Ledeboer who was also painting at Paramount in the early days.

The crazy, camp sci-fi/comedy/musical/love story EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988) was actually quite a smirkfest, though hampered by too much discotec sub plot.  The film certainly pushed the 'PG' rating to it's limit, and 'politically correct' film makers today would never get away with what Julian Temple did with this film.  The MPAA must have nodded off when this was screened.  Anyway, Dream Quest provided the visuals and Bob Scifo did the interplanetary matte art. Oh, and for any'aliens' reading this article, yes... Earth Girls apparently are easy, if this flick is anything to go by! 

I've not seen HERE COMES COOKIE (1935) with George Burns and Gracie Allen , so don't have a 'final' shot, but do have this matted plate and the subsequent Jan Domela matte painting, courtesy of Jan's daughter.

Mel Brooks' films were often hit or miss, with BLAZING SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN being classics.  I never felt HIGH ANXIETY (1978) as shown above, was as good as it could have been, given the opportunities of spoofing Hitchcock.  Never one for subtlety, Mel provided some laughs but mostly just too broad, heavy handed and obvious.  The mattes were done by longtime Hitchcock collaborator Albert Whitlock, who in a great turn, also featured in an acting role in the film!

HIGH ANXIETY tilt up effect.  Possibly a model foreground with painted sky?

Closing shot from HIGH ANXIETY was this extensive pullback from the window and outward.

Charlie Chaplin's  A KING IN NEW YORK (1957) was a clever little satire on consumerism and social standings, and was mostly notorious for being 'banned' from American screens until the early 1970's as supposed 'anti-American sentiment' or some such codswallop, no doubt brought about by that wanker Senator McCarthy, who got far too much airtime.  Anyway, film is good, with the best sequence being an hilarious spoof on the CinemaScope wide screen movie 'fad'!  Bob Cuff painted these superb, and highly detailed matte paintings which occupy practically the full screen.  Wally Veevers oversaw the effects including several 'joke' billboards in Times Square.

Rare to find Abbott and Costello in full colour, but JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (1952) did just that!  Not a very good film and missing the edge of their Universal pictures of old, the film had numerous photographic effects courtesy of matte painter Jack Glass who did a great deal of work on smaller independent films through the 1950's that would usually sit on the bottom half of the proverbial double bill at the Drive In.

Nicely rendered matte shots by Jack Glass from JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (1952)

Oh now, here's a favourite 70's flashback for NZ Pete, and one that has bugged me for over 40 years!  FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974) with Alan Arkin and the late James Caan is a hoot.  The flick - a darker than dark black comedy -  predates all those awful 90's 'buddy cop' movies, such as the Lethal Weapon's, Tango & Cash and all that stuff by far, with the sheer number of violent action set pieces, stunts, busted noses and wanton damage to public property!  What's not to like?  Now, for decades this sequence had me baffled... the Arkin-Caan car crashes off a freeway overpass and down through the bedroom in a shitty tenement building, disturbing some elderly breakfast session in bed.  Classic, iconic 70's moment. I'd figured some optical trickery had been perpetrated, though how and by whom was unknown..... until now!

To achieve this show stopping stunt, Warner Bros turned to Albert Whitlock and his vfx crew over at Universal, much as they had on numerous occasions in the past when facing special photographic requirements.   The actual freeway overpass and the apartment building were filmed in completely different areas of San Francisco, with meticulous calculations made by Whitlock and his cameraman Ross Hoffman.  The driverless car was jettisoned off the freeway ramp into wasteland beneath the actual freeway. The two locations were flawlessly matted as one via a seamless split screen.  To complete the trick, Whitlock's in house rotoscope artist, Millie Winebrenner carefully traced the vehicle outline for the final 15 or so frames of the stunt to allow the car to pass across the corner of the separately filmed building and even pass partway through the wall.  A brilliantly executed, uncredited trick shot.  *Footnote:  I know this film so well that I once had the misfortune of seeing it on TV in America, with all the violence cut out (and there's a shitload of mayhem), and so much dialogue looped to change the 'God Damns'into 'Gosh Darns'!  American tv censorship... oh boy!

Russ Lawson or Jack Cosgrove matted set extension from Universal's THE GOOD FAIRY (1935)


Ken Marschall painted this hospital for Steve Martin's FATHER OF THE BRIDE II (1995)


Another largely forgotten Hollywood classic deserving of rediscovery is HELLZAPOPPIN (1941) - a film I've discussed often in other blogs.  Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson were a sort of cut-price Abbott & Costello or Martin & Lewis, though not without their own one-of-a-kind totally bonkers stylings.  Complete insanity prevails in their films (which are near impossible to find, sadly).  Non stop sight gags, in jokes, sly Hollywood references, cameos and material seemingly just made up as the cameras were rolling.  John P. Fulton looked after the vast and often ingenious photographic effects and optical gags.  Russell Lawson painted the mattes.

One of my fave gags is this one where they literally stop the film and review the plot via a matte painting that just happens to be lying around!  Who writes this stuff?  Hilarious.

Among the substantial roster of visual effects in HELLZAPOPPIN is a terrific sequence where our duo dispense with half of their bodies - one upper the other lower - and cause havoc.  Brilliantly filmed and played by the boys who carefully oversaw all of their gags.

The crazy sequence continues...  Naturally, this sort of thing was absolute gold when it came to the legendary (though notoriously difficult) Fulton, who just loved making shots like these work.  I assume John used his old Invisible Man technique where the set is filmed without actors, then separate takes made on set with actors but all key props and set draped in black velvet, as well as parts of the performers deemed 'invisible'.  High contrast mattes would be pulled from the second take, with final composites made on the optical printer by David Horsley and Ross Hoffman.

I assume the actor pulled a black velvet blanket down over his head and upper torso for that wonderful 'organic' disintegration, which was far more spectacular than some duped mechanical looking wipe made on a printer which would look naff.

What astounds me are the incredibly clean final composites that don't for a moment spoil the fun with thick matte lines or other tell tale flaws one might expect.  So damned good.

But wait.... there's more!  The two comics run about as separate transversely sectioned bodies (google it!) - jumping on chairs and trying to kick the other guy's ass.  Must have brought the house down back in '41.

To conclude, our idiotic duo 'join' hemispheres and attempt to 'be as one', though naturally the legs are on backward, making walking a great punchline.  David Horsley returned to this gag for the final scene in ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN about a decade later.

Another A&C picture, HOLD THAT GHOST (1941) with a great haunted house... or is it?


It's not too often The Duke, the one and only John Wayne, appeared in a comedy, albeit a light one.  LADY TAKES A CHANCE (1943) was an RKO picture.  Effects by Vernon L.Walker, with mattes possibly by Albert Maxwell Simpson or Chesley Bonestell.  These mattes are interesting as practically everything in each frame is pure brushwork, with just a tiny slice of 'real' action.


Alec Guinness both wrote and starred in THE HORSE'S MOUTH (1958), though it starts off well, the momentum runs out way before the end credits.  A Shepperton production, with Wally Veevers effects unit comprising painters such as George Samuels, Albert Julion and Bob Cuff on the brushes.


Another matte from THE HORSE'S MOUTH, this full painting was part of a big zoom out.

Comedy from the nineties here, HOT SHOTS (1991) was, when I last saw it, pretty darned funny.  Lots of great gags and some cool effects shots such as this bit of miniature catastrophe, I think, done by Dream Quest Images(?)

Here we have an amazingly invisible piece of wizardry from HOT SHOTS.  The aircraft carrier was a beautifully detailed glass painting by Bob Scifo (right), with unpainted patch where live action would be rear projected in for the ultimate big camera move pull back.

The sequel, HOT SHOTS, PART DEUX (1993), was, I thought, hilarious.  Charlie Sheen acquitted himself well and the gags come thick and fast.  Has one of the all time great movie in jokes:  Sheen on Navy patrol boat going down river in 'Nam.  A second Navy PBR approaches from the other direction, and as they draw close we see it piloted by Charley's father Martin - in full APOCALYPSE NOW regalia - with both Sheen's shouting to each other "I loved you in WALL STREET!"   They both played in that same film for those not in the know.  Well, I found it hilarious!!!

One of Mike Pangrazio's mattes from HOT SHOTS, PART DEUX.

Detail from Pangrazio's matte.

Another Matte World shot from that same film.

One of the real British comedy classics was the pitch-perfect satire on trade unionism I'M ALRIGHT JACK (1959).  Probably Roy & John Boulting's best picture, and they made many great films.  Peter Sellers was just wonderful, as were the accomplished cast of familiar UK thespians such as Richard Attenborough, Ian Carmichael, John Le Mesurier, Liz Frazer, Terry Thomas, Dennis Price and the always great Irene Handl.  Matte shots were done by Bob Cuff at Shepperton Studios.

Another I'M ALRIGHT JACK matte by Bob Cuff.  One of the great Brit comedies!


The Chevy Chase movie FUNNY FARM (1988) wasn't bad, as far as Chevy movies go.  It did have a few very clever matte shots in it that Albert worked on with Syd Dutton.  This seemingly unassuming sequence where a truck approaches a bridge was in fact a rather complicated visual effect.  The late Bill Taylor told me how complex it was, so in brief, it was a VistaVision set up panning with the truck, and stopping the pan at the point where the non existent bridge was to be inserted.  The matte painted bridge and forest was photographed separately, with the 'pan' shot completed on the optical printer to appear as though one uninterrupted camera move had taken place.  The sort of illusion that nobody ever suspects.  Bill said he used that trick often. 

A later shot where the bridge has collapsed involved a large miniature by Grant McCune in front of a traditionally painted backing, rendered by Al Whitlock.  Bill told me that Al really seemed to enjoy painting that backing, which brought him back to his early years as a scenic artist back at Gaumont Studios in England.  That's fx cameraman Mark Sawicki setting up the shot.

Another Abbott & Costello film here, IT AIN'T HAY (1943) with a Russ Lawson painting, accentuated with bi-packed live foreground foliage by fx cameraman Ross Hoffman.

A film jammed with monumental matte art, but the film itself was anything but monumental.  Mel Brooks' HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART ONE (1981) was a bit of a shoddy affair, comedy wise, though establishing shots such as this mighty matte by Syd Dutton made for essential viewing alone. I'd love to have this one hanging on my wall, but didn't want to risk shipping glass mattes right across the world! 

Same film, with this epic matte by either Albert Whitlock or Syd Dutton.  Masterful work!

Two mattes from IT HAPPENED ON FIFTH AVENUE (1947), a lower budget Allied Artists film that has Frank Capra intent.  No fx credit.

One of Ealing Studio's most beloved pictures, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949), with this extensive glass shot by Geoffrey Dickinson.

MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979) was moderately controversial back in the day in certain countries.  Not as good as M.P & HOLY GRAIL (their best feature, as 'pure' Python) but their most successful and oft quoted.  Several matte shots were painted by artists contracted by Kent Houston's Peerless Optical in London.  This was a Bob Cuff matte.  A second Cuff matte was rendered but was ultimately cut.

Ray Caple was also brought on board, and painted this and other mattes.

LIFE OF BRIAN tagging in ancient times.  I'm informed by one of the Peerless fx staffers that Ray Caple painted these two shots live on location as in camera glass shots.

The LIFE OF BRIAN audience lapped this up when I saw it back in '79 at the not very glamourous Odeon theatre here in downtown Auckland.  Miniature spaceship (and early prototype) shown at right.  The big crash vista wasn't a matte painting as many think, but was a cut & paste up photo collage, hand retouched, with animation stand spaceship added.

Another Chaplin feature, this being LIMELIGHT (1952), though not really what you'd call 'a comedy' as such, still a rewarding experience.  No credit for matte work, but shot on the Paramount lot I think, so perhaps Jan Domela did this shot??

The highly uneven spoof on Church and greed, IN GOD WE TRUST (1980) with Marty Feldman had some nicely placed mattes by Albert Whitlock and his department.  This one was a Syd Dutton shot.

A sharp tongued British political satire with a great cast, LEFT RIGHT AND CENTRE (1959) included a few uncredited high quality matte effects shots, including the big tilt up at right with actors on street, others matted into balcony and fireworks added in the night sky.  Very impressive.


A pretty amusing made-for-tv western, EVIL ROY SLADE (1972) had these shots by Al Whitlock.


From the 'Carry On' stable came FOLLOW THAT CAMEL (1967).  Cliff Culley was matte supervisor, possibly with Charles Stoneham assisting.

More classic British black comedy here.  Such a great cast all playing at peak, THE GREEN MAN (1956), with Shepperton's lead matte artist George Samuels painting this shot.

By no means a classic, but Eric & Ernie were always great together, with such chemistry that the material didn't always matter.  THE INTELLIGENCE MEN (1965) was one in a whole slew of spy spoofs, riffing on Bond, made throughout the sixties.  Not without merit, with some solid laughs.  Mattes by Cliff Culley at Pinewood Studios.


Although I'm sure this multi-part matte must have been painted for a different film initially, it did show up as a RP background in the Bob Hope comedy GIVE ME A SAILOR (1938).  Career Paramount matte painter Jan Domela did this one, with long time associate Irmin Roberts on fx camera.

As written earlier, Ken Marschall was possibly the finest matte painter you never heard of.  Ken painted hundreds of mattes over a 22 year period, a great many without screen credit, on so many films, tv shows and commercials, his total output is amazing.  I did a massive 3 part blog on Ken and his matte work with associate Bruce Block back in 2015.  These frames are from THE GEORGE BURNS COMEDY WEEK (1985) - a television special.  Ken is very well known however for his work on Titanic research and under sea exploration and has illustrated coffee table books on the subject.  For the first of my three part interview with Ken & Bruce, click here.

An all-star cast with Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman and Liza Minnelli, LUCKY LADY (1975) was a stylish, beautifully shot and action packed period comedy, mostly shot on the high seas.  No effects credit but may have been Matthew Yuricich or Louis Litchtenfield on matte painting?

George Hamilton made for a very funny Count Dracula in the parody LOVE AT FIRST BITE (1979), with perfect feel for the storied vampire and great comic timing.  This painted shot comes at the end.


The Marty Feldman take off on the classic Foreign Legion story, THE LAST REMAKE OF BEAU GESTE (1978) was a real laugh-fest when I saw it in the cinema (The Plaza, in Queen street, Auckland), though it doesn't hold up as well today.  Visual effects supervised by Albert Whitlock, though most curiously, this clever sequence involving silent footage matted into modern colour footage was apparently done outside of the Universal matte department by persons unknown.  I quizzed Bill Taylor on this and he said they didn't do the sequence and had no idea where it was done.  Bill did say though that working with Marty, as director/actor and writer was a dream! 

Same film, with the two characters from the previous scene riding off to 'Hollywoodland' as the sun sets.

Gene Wilder was a wonderful comic actor (never call the guy a 'comedian' as it really pissed him off!!).  Gene did some solid work through the seventies and beyond.  This film, HANKY PANKY (1982) was directed by Sidney Poitier and as an action innocent-man-on-the-run type thriller it worked, but the comedy side never did.  A couple of nice matte shots by Ken Marschall and Bruce Block, such as this one where a vast underground secret plant is revealed by villain, the always excellent Richard Widmark.  Superb matte work.

Bob Newhart; I've always liked his very dry humour.  His old comedy albums are hilarious, and his 70's tv series was great too.  He had some hysterical roles in things like Catch 22 as well.  This film is FIRST FAMILY (1980), and while not especially good, did have it's moments.  Dream Quest did the visuals, with Rocco Gioffre painting several mattes.

Also from FIRST FAMILY where giant vegetables spring up all over Washington.

More Rocco Gioffre matte art from same film.

Although I've not seen this one, here are some Syd Dutton mattes from EIGHT HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG (1997) that a reader sent to me.

These things were so popular through the 50's.  FRANCIS (THE TALKING MULE) IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1956) with effects supervised by Clifford Stine who worked way back on the original 1933 KONG and later did sensational work on EARTHQUAKE (1974)

One of the hall of fame special visual effects films, the wild Jack Benny comedy THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT (1945) was a fiesta of dazzling photographic effects.  Not at all surprising as Warner's were absolutely top of the game throughout the 1940's when it came to astonishingly creative trick effects that would leave other studios flailing in the dust.  Along with the usual matte art, models and opticals, HORN boasts some incredible motion shots with extreme flyover camera moves across vast expanses of, in this case, Heaven filled with harp strumming angels.  Warner's were never afraid of pulling phenomenal sequences out of the bag with films like MARK TWAIN, RHAPSODY IN BLUE, THE FOUNTAINHEAD, YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN and best of all the staggering YANKEE DOODLE DANDY - all of which I've discussed and praised here before.

Another Warner Bros picture, though a much lower key one after the previous title.  LARCENY INC (1942) is a genuinely hilarious little gem of a heist movie with the great Edward G. Robinson.  Very funny film, with a few great mattes transforming the WB back lot into Attica Prison and New York city skylines.  A couple of quick cuts of actors in medium shot reveal back lot without any painting.  Artists then at Warners were chief painter Paul Detlefsen and others like Mario Larrinaga, Vern Taylor and others.

Also from Warner Bros was the lightweight Doris Day romp LUCKY ME (1954) - an early CinemaScope entry for the studio.  Effects by Hans Koenekamp, and matte art probably by Lou Litchtenfield.


The financial and critical disaster that was ISHTAR (1986) was easy to understand if you ever saw the film.  Off target almost all the way.  Several mattes were designed and painted for the troubled production, with artists Mark Sullivan and Rocco Gioffre busy with these only to have some dropped mid-way through painting and other completed mattes jettisoned in an attempt to re-edit the film into something coherent.  I happen to have a half finished ISHTAR painting here at home that Mark was told would no longer be required as "that sequence has now been dropped".  The above Sullivan matte though did make it into the final film.

Another of my favourite old time comedies was the Cary Grant-Leslie Caron WWII desert island show FATHER GOOSE (1964).  An uncredited Albert Whitlock would have painted this wonderful sky and distant island.  A young Jim Danforth also worked on the film as assistant to Charlie Baker in Universal's miniature department building Japanese warships for a night sequence.  Great little film and I reckon one of Cary's best (along with OPERATION PETTICOAT).




***This post, and all 177 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

No, sadly... 'tis not I, but some imposter by the same name.  I'll have my lawyer look into this matter pronto and clear my name.

Well folks, that's about it for this entry, and this year as a matter of fact.  I still have as many films again to cover in the second part, come New Year 2023.  I hope you found this enjoyable, enlightening and irreverent.
All the best for the Xmas holiday season wherever you happen to be, with a special'Best Wishes' directed to the people of Ukraine, whose sheer strength and courage in the face of brutal genocidal aggression has the entire free world's support.

Pete








KEEP 'EM LAUGHING: Mattes & Trick Shots in Comedies - Part Two

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Hi there friends and followers of the sublime, lost art form of traditionally rendered matte painted shots and miscellaneous motion picture wizardry. It is indeed that time again,

Delays in getting this up and running have been due to near apocalyptic weather conditions, with the worst cyclone descending upon New Zealand from the tropics ever recorded, with floods and destruction the likes unseen here since records began.  Whole communities wiped off the map.  My home was partially flooded, though luckily just a spare bedroom and annexes in the basement, though, unfortunately, that just happened to be where I store a vast collection of movie memorabilia such as classic one-sheets, lobby cards, slides and the rest of it.  I managed to save 3/4 of the stuff, but had to throw away a considerable amount of posters and stills.  That said, it's minor compared to the entire districts here wiped out, and that doesn't even come close to what they're going through in Turkey and Syria.

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So, before embarking on today's mammoth blog post (would you expect anything less?), here are a few important mentions that traditional matte fans simply cannot overlook.  My Texas based friend and like-minded matte fanatic, Thomas Higginson, has been doing the hard yards in assembling an entire series of excellent featurettes for YouTube on the matte effects work of Albert Whitlock at Universal and Syd Dutton at Illusion Arts.  https://www.youtube.com/@TraditionalMattePaintings/featured

Utterly essential viewing, one and all, with the link right here.


Working directly from Universal's matte department's well preserved 35mm demo reels, as well as a mass of donated material from Syd Dutton and the late Bill Taylor - among others - Thomas has put together several superb, deep dissections of specific matte effect shots and sequences, which, at the time of this writing, have included the sci-fi tv movie GENESIS II; THE TWILIGHT ZONE tv series; the incredible dust storm from BOUND FOR GLORY and the invisible maritime trick shots from SHIP OF FOOLS.  Nowhere will you find a more detailed inside look at some great visuals as you've never seen them before.  I understand others in the works will include THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, THE THING, the unrealised 80's version of THE LOST WORLD project and one of my all time matte faves, the incredible COLOSSUS-THE FORBIN PROJECT among others.  Essential viewing!

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In my previous post I featured a shot from Charlie Chaplin's classic CITY LIGHTS (1931), which I described as being a matte painted shot.  An anonymous reader has 'put me straight' on that, with it actually being an elaborate and flawless foreground hanging miniature, with very rare photos from an incredibly comprehensive Chaplin website in Italy (The Charlie Chaplin Archive Site) displaying the effect in progress.  See below for breakdown...


I can't even begin to tell you how much I love to discover images such as this.  Extremely rare, especially for the period, for any film maker to openly reveal his secrets.  At left is the foreground miniature rigged up, with the crystal clear image at right - having been photographed on the set with a still camera - showing the extensive trick work married up.  The actual CITY LIGHTS 35mm movie frame is tighter and more accurately aligned, whereas this 'production still' is slightly mis-aligned, with depth of field focal issues evident, but still a marvellous record of such a time.

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"Brother, do I need a break.  A few hours on Pete's blog will do quite nicely."


So, now is the moment where we take a break from the daily grind, sit back in a comfy chair, crack open a Jack Daniels & Coke, and enjoy another extensive journey down that well travelled cinematic road, where hundreds of amazing shots have been lovingly assembled and celebrated, and hopefully will be appreciated on a decent sized 'real' screen and NOT on a godammed cell phoney type toy.

Enjoy

Pete


***This post, and all 178 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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First up, is this extremely rare uncredited Albert Whitlock matte from and equally rare cinematic artifact THE PHYNX (1970).  I've never been able to find the film and have always wanted to see it - despite the universally dire reviews.  Everyone who's anyone was in this flick, from Kentucky Fried Col.Sanders to Richard Pryor and a whole gaggle of celebs and walk-on cameos.   Frame on right is from Albert's 35mm show reels and has suffered significant colour loss over the years.  A technically complex shot with multi split cloud drift, sunlight slowly creeping across the castle walls and grass, and a most intriguing 'parallax shift' involving soft splits and painting movement in stages, much as Whitlock did with a shot in SHIP OF FOOLS five years previous.

Judy Garland and Gene Kelly's comedy musical FOR ME AND MY GAL (1942), with many fine mattes from the famous MGM Newcombe department.

Steven Spielberg's rowdy epic 1941 (1979) wasn't especially funny but did lay on a great cast of character actors and non-stop special effects shots.  A massive effects show, filled with entirely 'old school' trick work, such as a ton of Lydecker style miniature sequences such as the scene here, with P51 Mustang buzzing Hollywood Blvd and doing crazy barrel rolls etc - all entirely in miniature.  Old time fx veteran A.D Flowers (Adlia Douglas Flowers) was right in his element here, having been one of Buddy Gillespie's assistants back at MGM on Oscar winning films such as the great 30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO and others.  Logan Frazee (shown lower left) was hands on with the many model 'flying' sequences.  I saw this on the huge cinema screen in scope back in '79 and it was fantastic, action wise that is.

More mayhem from 1941, with giant Greg Jein miniature sets and props.  Film was nominated for the FX Oscar in '79, and was a very strong contender, probably should have won, but the film was a bomb at the box office so that pretty much was the nail in it's coffin.  Great effects work throughout!  My full detailed blog article on 1941 can be read here.

A very young Matthew Yuricich is shown here at work at Fox on his first film as fully fledged matte painter, CALL ME MADAM (1953).  Matt said that departmental head, Fred Sersen, was very critical on his draftsmanship for the lower shot with the wine vat and spiral staircase.


The rather delightful Deanna Durbin starred - and sang some very catchy ditties - in the very pleasant MAD ABOUT MUSIC (1938) for Universal.  Russell Lawson would have painted the numerous mattes.

Mark Sullivan's before and after matte from the Kim Basinger flick, NADINE (1987).

MAISIE WAS A LADY (1941) was one of a running series of Maisie comedies from MGM, with the usual excellent Newcombe matte work, rendered with pastels and goache on artists card.  The illuminated theatre facade was an MGM specialty, and one of my own fave 'genres' of matte art.


Probably the least known and sorely under credited exponents of matte work was the highly talented Ken Marschall who, along with colleague and cameraman Bruce Block, created hundreds of invisible mattes for movies, tv and commercials all through the 1980's.  This is one of Ken's from MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK - aka JOHNNY ZOMBIE (1993)

Another wonderful Ken Marschall matte from the same film.


MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK,  low brow teen fluff, astonishingly, directed by the extremely talented and always watchable character actor, Bob Balaban - so memorable in things like Catch 22, Close Encounters, Prince of the City and Report to the Commissioner.

Two Newcombe shots from the hilariously funny, all time classic Marx Bros show A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1937).  The shipboard 'stateroom sequence' remains an all time comedy gem. Trust me.

Jan Domela matte extensions for the W.C Fields comedy-musical MISSISSIPPI (1935).

As a kid, MUNSTER GO HOME (1966) was one of - if not the - favourite movies of mine, and I never missed an opportunity to catch it on a variety of double features at local movie houses, often with stuff like The Ghost and Mr Chicken, or McHales Navy Join The Air Force.  Matte by Albert Whitlock.

Hey, even the great Alfred Hitchcock gets a slot in this blog with the very dry, black comedy MR AND MRS SMITH (1941), with this expansive winter matte under the supervision of RKO's Vernon Walker.  Matte artist may have been Chesley Bonestell, Al Simpson or Fitch Fulton?

Another RKO show, MR BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948), with effects supervised by Russell Cully.  The bottom matte never appeared in the film but was in the trailer(!)

Universal's MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940) with Russ Lawson and John DeCuir both painting in the matte department.


Illusion Arts' dual plane matte stand set up for the teen comedy MANNEQUIN TWO - ON THE MOVE (1991).  The main painting at the rear will feature a simulated cloud move across the screen, achieved through soft split screens. The foreground glass has partial elements that will line up with the main rear painting in the final shot, while allowing the moving clouds to pass realistically behind these elements (trees and tower etc).  Final composite shown below.

MANNEQUIN TWO mattes by Syd Dutton at Illusion Arts.

Comedy westerns were definitely a thing in the late 60's and through the 1970's, with Universal's ONE MORE TRAIN TO ROB (1971) starring George Peppard being one such film.  Highly enjoyable, rollicking heist yarn, made all the more so by Albert Whitlock's numerous and exquisite mattes.  I had hoped to include an image of the original painting here, but alas, 'twas not to be  :(

Another of Whitlock's wonderful mattes from the same film.

I've always been a sucker for the old Bob Hope pictures he did at Paramount, and he did a lot.  This one, NEVER SAY DIE (1939), was penned by the comedic genius of Preston Sturges (younger blog readers won't have a clue of whom I'm speaking, I'm certain!), the film is a giggle and what's more, has a number of great matte shots by old timer Jan Domela, who started at the studio in 1926 and kept on painting mattes till the mid 1960's!  That's a s***load of matte work in anybody's book.

The quaintly wacky British comedy MOUSE ON THE MOON (1963) directed by Richard Lester. No effects credit, but likely Pinewood or Shepperton providing the shots.

More Jan Domela matte shots from Paramount's MIDNIGHT (1939) - a classic of the time, co-written by a young Billy Wilder.

Danny Kaye loved doing these 'twin-look alike' comedies, and ON THE DOUBLE (1961) is typical of the genre, and often laugh-out-loud.  The legendary John P. Fulton was Danny's favourite trick shot man, and worked with him on many films.  This sort of thing was Fulton's forte, with ingenious split screens with matted out body double's arms outstretched and bold interaction between the two Danny's.

John Fulton again supervised the work on the Martin & Lewis spoof, PARDNERS (1956), with Jan Domela painting this vista of 1910 era New York.

The massive, star packed, out of control extravaganza IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) was a bonanza as far as mechanical effects (by Danny Lee) and stunt gags go, with the hefty photographic effects component saved for the extended action climax. The action centres around this street, town square and high rise - all of which were rendered as highly complex visual effects shots.  This wide view is a beautifully painted matte by industry veteran, Howard Fisher.  Note the odd hinge running down the middle of the large masonite panel.  This was inserted years later by Linwood Dunn so as to make the matte art portable for when Dunn conducted numerous SFX seminars, where various miniatures, mattes and a carefully assembled 16mm reel of before and afters would be run (for those too young, there was a time before video tape, digital files, MP4's and cyber things; 16mm celluloid with lots of sprocket holes was the medium of instruction)

Close up detail of Howard's brushwork.  Fisher was an old timer, and very experienced, who began decades before as one of Warren Newcombe's stable of artists at MGM in the 1930's.  Howard painted on many pictures over the decades such as GREEN DOLPHIN STREET and FORBIDDEN PLANET.  Effects men Jim Danforth and Matt Yuricich both knew Howard and said he was quite a character.

The final composite made on 65mm film at Dunn's Film Effects of Hollywood. Around 11 separate elements went into this comp, with a number of different live action plates flawlessly matted in, as well as a huge optical pull back added later.  One of the most memorable mattes of the 1960's.

A revealing before and after shows extensive matte art added into the back lot action.

More complex visual effects work, with large miniatures, matte art, stop motion people and ladder, all assembled meticulously on Cecil Love and James B. Gordon's optical printer.

More MAD WORLD madness, with model work, matte art and great animation cuts by Jim Danforth. Incidentally, I did a full blog report on all of the effects shots in this film previously, which can hopefully be foundhere.

Establishing matte shot from Charlie Chaplin's last silent picture, MODERN TIMES (1936) - a veritable masterpiece that never dates.  Although without spoken dialogue, the film has a great soundtrack comprising insanely exaggerated industrial sound effects as well as music.

Arguably one of Chaplin's most famous sequences, the incredible roller skating scene, where the little tramp skates repeatedly perilously close to the edge.

Although I somewhere have a behind the scenes pic of the set up, but can't for the life of me find it, I'm sure this wonderful sequence involved a carefully designed and placed foreground miniature of the lower structures, with the close to camera saw horse and plank concealing the rig(?)  Marvellous scene.

More Bob Hope shenanigans, this time it's MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE (1946), with Jan Domela's mattes for effects boss Gordon Jennings.

Illusion Arts provided this cliffhanger shot for the overwrought MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY - aka MONEY MANIA (1987).  The old MAD, MAD WORLD formula was attempted, though failed miserably.

A pair of nice Russell Lawson mattes from the comic fantasy flick MR PEABODY AND THE MERMAID (1948)

Bob's back, and this time with the exquisite Hedy Lamarr, for Paramount's MY FAVOURITE SPY (1942), with this exotic North African setting furnished by Jan Domela.

Another all time comedy classic - Universal's hilarious MY MAN GODFREY (1936) with the irrepressible William Powell as Godfrey the butler.  The title sequence along rates mention as an elaborate photographic effects piece.  A vast panoramic matte painting of NYC was photographed with a slow pan across, with all of the cast and crew names gradually illuminating as glistening neons - complete with flickering reflections on the (artifical) rippled water!  Bravo to the great John P. Fulton for orchestrating this, even though it seems somewhat excessive for a moderately budgeted Universal screwball comedy.

Must have been a nightmare to choreograph this set up for each take.

Presumably long time Fulton staffers David Horsely, Jerome Ash, Charlie Baker, Russell Lawson and Roswell Hoffman would have been all involved with this.


This gives you the idea of the neon signage sequencing.  Marvellous.

The massive pan ends on live action of a depression era camp.

More composite shots from MY MAN GODFREY (1936)

I found those Naked Gun movies pretty funny myself, with NAKED GUN 2 1/2 shown here. Lots of excellent matte work from the tiny two man operation called Matte Effects - that being artist Ken Marschall and cameraman Bruce Block.  Almost all of Ken's mattes were done as original negative, with Ken and Bruce both huge admirers of Al Whitlock's methodology, though this one was an optical as a pan and push in was needed.

Close up.  Note the painted cops.

Another fine Ken Marschall painted matte from NAKED GUN 2 1/2

The bad guy's oil refinery matte from the same film.


Detail from above.

Totally invisible matte shot for the daytime view of same.

An incredible original negative matte painted by Ken for NAKED GUN 2 that never made the final cut, sadly.

Original matte for above, painted in acrylic upon special German manufactured artists card.  Ken always painted very small and told me he could never understand why other matte artists preferred enormous glass or masonite panels for their shots.

Ernst Lubitsch was the master of subtle, understated and seductive comedy,  NINOTCHKA (1939) is a fine example.  Very witty dialogue, with my favourite line from Greta Garbo's very much pro-Stalin Soviet agent:  "The last mass trials were a great success.  There are going to be fewer, but better Russians".  One of the funniest lines of the era.  Warren Newcombe's guys did the matte shot at MGM.

When he was at his best, W.C Fields was a comic genius.  NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (1941) was an utterly indescribable, insane pastiche of sight gags, hilarious lines and stuff seemingly made up on the spot.  Lots of effects by John P. Fulton and matte artist Russ Lawson.

Jack Lemmon and Mickey Rooney starred in Columbia's OPERATION MAD BALL (1957), along with the always delectable Kathryn (7th Voyage of Sinbad) Grant.   Mattes, presumably supervised by Lawrence Butler and cameraman Donald Glouner.

Same film.  No idea about artist, but I know that for a short time Matthew Yuricich was 'laid off' by MGM and was snatched up by Donald Glouner over at Columbia around this period for a little while.


A Syd Dutton matte painting from the Steve Martin film L.A STORY (1991), which demonstrates the classic 'donut' night sky that Syd picked up from his mentor, the great Albert Whitlock, who so often painted this sort of cloud arrangement.


The old Abbott & Costello films were often loaded with trick shots - some of which were quite amazing (see later in this blog post).  PARDON MY SARONG (1942) was a pretty enjoyable tropical romp with a number of Russ Lawson mattes to fill out the backlot frame.

A rather nice Lawson matte shot that I bet extended the artificial Universal 'lake' on the studio back lot to South Seas locale.


Nowhere near as good as it's immediate predecessor, THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN (1976) featured several mattes and various opticals.  A definite mixed bag, effects wise, with the producers being unhappy with some of the original matte effects done at Pinewood by Cliff Culley, and appointing Matthew Yuricich to re-do certain shots.  Exactly which ones, I'm not sure?


Same film.

From PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN is this major vfx sequence where the deranged Herbert Lom (incidentally a superb character actor who made hundreds of films!) fires off some laser thing and disintegrates the UN Building in New York.  Matte art with much hand inked roto cel animation.

The UN building is no more.  What appears to a full matte painting, and one I'd bet Yuricich painted.

Remade around four times, the evergreen classic THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1979) worked best in it's thirties incarnation with Ronald Colman me thinks.  This version here had Peter Sellers in one of his last roles, and a very disappointing saga it turned out to be.  Only really of value for the excellent visual effects work of Albert Whitlock, Bill Taylor, Syd Dutton and their crew.

Beautiful matte work abounds in ZENDA, with this hands down classic Whitlock (or Dutton?) 'donut sky' and rotating windmill being my favourite in the film.  I well recall seeing all of these shots as before and afters on Al's 35mm show reels when I met Syd (by accident) here in Auckland in 1986.  Blew my mind!

Bill Taylor and Dennis Glouner assembled many great blue screen composites of the two Peter's for many scenes, using tried and true old tricks were also used in the older versions.  Bill told me that the director was one to partake in alcoholic beverage during lunch breaks, making afternoons less than productive!

Before and after from the end of PRISONER OF ZENDA with Whitlock pictured here displaying original painting at an A.M.P.A.S day long seminar in the 1980's.  Looking at the painting next to Al, it appears that almost all of the crowd of towns people have also been 'painted in'.

Abbott & Costello in RIDE 'EM COWBOY (1952), with this Russ Lawson matte shot for effects head David S. Horsley.

Another Abbott & Costello show, THE NAUGHTY NINETIES (1945)

Mel Brooks made a few classic comedy spoofs in the mid seventies, but his later material is somewhat lost.  ROBIN HOOD-MEN IN TIGHTS (1993) was very poor indeed, with barely a smirk.  A major multi-painting matte was included as the closing shot, starting off from a castle and zooming out (for no apparent reason) up into the sky, through the clouds and into space(!)  Illusion Arts did the shot with at least 4 separate paintings merged together through dissolves etc as one continuous 'pullback'.  The shot was a waste as, in the actual film they plastered all of the damned end credits over the top of this complicated effect, thus making all that work lost amid the endless list of 'Honeywagon Wranglers', 'Electrician's Wife's Best Friend' etc.

Leslie Nielson was a hoot in the first of THE NAKED GUN series back in 1988.  For the sports arena climax, several mattes were painted, though not all were used.  Ken Marschall and Bruce Block did the matte shots from their base at Gene Warren's Fantasy II, though more often than not, Ken would paint his mattes on his dining room table at home and then deliver the final art to Bruce for compositing.

Ken's stadium grandstand matte art.  Slot gag animation was employed to simulate 'crowd action' at strategic places in the art.


Tests and temp marry up of an ultimately unused matte for THE NAKED GUN


More filled in stadium matte work.

A fully dressed matte from THE NAKED GUN.  Incidentally, one of the funniest lines ever was Nielson's "Mmmmm, nice beaver" and Prescilla Presley's reply "Why thank you...I just had it stuffed".  Had me laughing for days!.

The David Niven - Doris Day marital 'bliss' saga, PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES (1960) had a single matte, this tilt down of a rundown old villa.  Mostly painted, with old time artist Lee LeBlanc on the brushes.  FX cameraman Clarence Slifer composited the shot. 

LeBlanc's original matte, which still survives to this day, along with a number of Lee's other mattes from things like BEN HUR and others in an art gallery dedicated to his extensive gallery and wildlife art.

Lee LeBlanc at left, with lower pic of him at Fox around 1950.  Details here of the DAISIES matte.

Another Bob Hope picture here - THE PRINCESS AND THE PIRATE (1944), with Clarence W. Slifer in charge of photo effects.

An inexplicably popular film that I absolutely did not care for one bit was THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987).  Several effects groups were connected with the film, with this shot being a Bob Cuff matte.

Bob's daughter-in-law, Joy Cuff, also painted on PRINCESS BRIDE, as did Doug Ferris on some shots.

Also from THE PRINCESS BRIDE was the final closing shot which was farmed out to US based providers, Matte Effects, consisting of Ken Marschall and Bruce Block.  Here is Ken's original almost full frame painting at left, and the separate sky painting.

Don Knotts was a unique, one of a kind comic talent, that's for sure.  I grew up on his crazy antics. THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT (1967) had at least one - and possibly two - effects shots by Al Whitlock.

MIRANDA (1947) was a British comedy about a guy and his very own mermaid.  This shot looks suspiciously like a hanging miniature to me, and it's possible that Albert Whitlock may have been around when they did this, as he was in the employ of Gainsborough Pictures and did work with foreground miniatures, among other things, before embarking on matte painting.

The first of the extremely popular 'Road' pictures for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940) had this matte shot by Jan Domela.

Peter Medak's film THE RULING CLASS (1972) was a tour-de-force for Oscar nominated Peter O'Toole, in what is an indescribable smorgasbord of satire, anti-establishment, sacrilege and song & dance(!)  Overlong by a long shot, but worth the time for risk takers like me. 

The final scene from THE RULING CLASS within the Houses of Parliament, though mostly consisting of a considerable set extension just above the lighting fixtures.  Possibly a foreground glass painting(?), with effects not credited, but may be someone like Ray Caple perhaps?

A delightfully daffy and completely off-the-wall, pre-code laugh-fest, MILLION DOLLAR LEGS (1932) occasionally had me splitting my sides through its roughly one hour running time.  W.C Fields starred, and the whole thing reminded me of those very early Marx Bros pictures where pretty much anything goes, if it'll get a laugh.  The matte painting is absolutely wonderful, though I've spotted it in several other Paramount pictures around that decade.  Jan Domela was matte artist.


The 20th Century Fox made Danny Kaye vehicle ON THE RIVIERA (1951) once again had Danny in dual roles as well as a couple of nice mattes such as this one.  Emil Kosa jnr was chief matte artist under Fred Sersen.

Two more mattes from ON THE RIVIERA

Universal's ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS (1940) was a musical comedy that introduced Bud Abbott & Lou Costello as secondary characters in what was their first film.

Matte shot from PARDON US (1931), where Laurel & Hardy end up in the joint! Remade as Midnight Express.... nahhh, maybe not?  ;(

Paramount's MY FRIEND IRMA (1949) started off with this invisible matte shot by Jan Domela.

The savagely witty James Coburn political satire, THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST (1967) had this massive wide pan across the frame, from a night time cityscape, up and across a hill, to a highly suspect and villain ridden lair.  Albert Whitlock did the uncredited matte work, along with long time cameraman, Ross Hoffman orchestrating the composite and move on the optical printer.

A closer look at the first part of the wide pan...

...and the latter part of the shot.


While most of Abbott & Costello's films were made by Universal, some were done elsewhere, with THE NOOSE HANGS HIGH (1948) being an Eagle-Lion show.  George Teague was a process specialist and was, at the time, Eagle-Lion's head of camera effects.  Teague used to be Universal's process projection specialist, and for a short time, actually headed up Universal's effects department, but that didn't last.  Mattes at Eagle-Lion were painted by Jack Rabin who, later, would establish his own effects house with friend Irving Block, working mostly of low budget and 'B' pictures.

Extensive matte additions here by Jack Rabin.

The enormously popular THE PALE FACE (1948) starring Bob Hope, was a heap of fun.  Jan Domela furnished the Technicolor mattes with his long time cameraman Irmin Roberts.

This scene from the exceedingly strange Dan Aykroyd film NOTHING BUT TROUBLE (1990) is mostly matte art.  Ken Marschall was painter.
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE mostly painted.


NOTHING BUT TROUBLE before and afters.


W.C Fields was a uniquely, multi-talented comic performer from vaudeville and silents, and proved enormously popular with audiences once Paramount set him up in the thirties.  This Jan Domela matte is from POPPY (1936).  Among his all time classics - though minus matte shots - were the incredibly funny IT'S A GIFT and THE BANK DICK.  Sheer insanity, and all the better for it.

Peter O'Toole gave one of his all time best performances as a sort of fading Errol Flynn-esque boozing shag artist in Richard Benjamin's MY FAVOURITE YEAR (1982) - a delightful play on the era of live television.  For this 50's depiction of New York's live tv district, Matthew Yuricich painted in the appropriate landmarks and neon marquees of the period.  According to Yuricich, when director Benjamin saw this completed matte shot he gasped with disbelief that the production had needlessly located and shot much in NYC, whereas they could have had Matthew just paint the necessary shots.

Yuricich's former apprentice matte artist, Rocco Gioffre, created three very memorable shots for the very funny Chevy Chase road movie NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (1983).

The second Gioffre shot from the same film.


Probably Rocco's most famous rendering of his career was this gorgeous reveal of the fictional 'Walley World'.  Rocco told me that this painting is proudly in the ownership of director J.J Abrams (whom I was told once has been a purveyor of this very NZ Pete blog site, as well he should!)


Don't bother going to California to visit Walley World folks... it's just a matte shot!

Phenomenally convincing matte trickery by the ever impressive Ken Marschall from the less than phenomenal teen comedy MOVING VIOLATIONS (1985).

More remarkable Ken Marschall matte art from the same film.

Detail from another of Ken's mattes from MOVING VIOLATIONS, proving the old adage that superb matte effects don't make a 'dud' film any better.


Bing Crosby and Bob Hope made a great team, with several 'Road' pictures together as well as other films, usually with Bing being the doorstop for a quick joke cameo.  These shots are from the hit comedy ROAD TO MOROCCO (1942).  Gordon Jennings was Paramount's effects chief, and by all accounts, was an incredibly nice guy to work for.  Jan Domela, as per usual, was matte painter.


Also featured in ROAD TO MOROCCO were several ingenious opticals and some wonderfully accomplished 'talking camels', achieved with meticulously rotoscoped cel animated lip-sync cartoon elements and eye rolling etc.  Almost certainly executed by Anna Osborne, on the Duo-Plane system which was developed for the series of Oscar winning short subjects 'Speaking Of Animals', which is covered later...

The only 'Road' movie made in Technicolor was ROAD TO BALI (1952), again having mattes by Jan Domela and opticals by Paul Lerpae.


Bob and Bing's ROAD TO UTOPIA (1945) was, if not their best film, but certainly their biggest visual effects show.  Absolutely jam packed with mattes, miniatures, opticals and more 'Duo-Plane' animated talking animals.  Could easily have been an effects nominee that year, with solid work throughout.  The Jennings photographic effects department were kept very busy.
"Holy shit Bing.... it's that friggen Cocaine Bear, and he's talking!"  

High quality matte art by Jan Domela from same film, where everything is painted here except the small pocket of folks mid frame.  The number of painted mattes in ROAD TO UTOPIA is substantial, with several invisible shots only evident when seen on BluRay.


Things are looking grim.... ROAD TO UTOPIA.

Lt. Frank Drebin was back for the final in the series, NAKED GUN 3 (1994), with Illusion Arts providing a couple of traditional painted shots as well as some oddly rushed looking digital shots late in the film.  Robert Stromberg painted this one with brush and pigments.

Robert's original matte art on masonite/hardboard.

Dramatic tilt-down shot from NAKED GUN 3.

An interesting matte from NAKED GUN 3 that most people never spotted was this extreme down view from atop the 'fly tower' and grid area high above the stage in a theatre, as characters cling to guy wire.

The Hope-Crosby 'Road' pictures had pretty much had their day by the time ROAD TO HONG KONG (1962) was made.  Not especially memorable, though Dorothy Lamour still looked great and the film had a hilarious bunch of 'A list' cameos, especially Peter Sellers.  Unlike the previous films, this one was a British production, made at Shepperton Studios.  A number of mattes were used, with Bob Cuff being principal matte artist for Wally Veevers.  This shot is interesting, with the exact same live action plate being used for this matte of India and a later matte (below) for Hong Kong!

Same plate locale used for this HK matte shot.

Very interesting shot here from ROAD TO HONG KONG, with what almost appears to be one of Percy Day's mattes, maybe unused, from BLACK NARCISSUS, though upon reflection I think Bob Cuff probably painted this from scratch, as the man loved painting!

A closer view...


NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989), with uncredited effects by the always reliable Dream Quest.

A selection of vintage Jan Domela shots from PARIS HONEYMOON (1938).


An atmospheric night vista that was painted at Illusion Arts, though not included in the final cut, of the film SPEECHLESS (1994).  Love that very, very Whitlock inspired cloudscape!

The eighties spurned a whole slew of completely unwanted and often idiotic 'baby' themed so-called comedies, with this Diane Keaton flick, BABY BOOM (1987) being slightly better than average.  Noteworthy, for some astonishing matte work by artist Ken Marschall and associate Bruce Block, with this jaw dropper of a matte painting being the best excuse to see the film.

The final, totally realistic original negative composite, and a close up of Ken's very small artwork.  Ken told me that this was his favourite among the hundreds of mattes he did, and still has stored away.  He was especially pleased with how the painted balloons turned out.  There were other mattes as well, but those didn't survive the final edit.

HIGH SCHOOL HIGH (1996) was dismissed by the critics, yet had me chuckling throughout.  This matte painted school is one of Robert Stromberg's, at Illusion Arts.

Detail

HIGH SCHOOL HIGH final shot.

Matthew Yuricich did so much uncredited and overlooked work over the decades, with this unique before and after from a show called OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS (1990).  Note detail of art at right.

The Ronald Colman classic, IF I WERE KING (1938), a beautifully photographed 14th Century escapade.  Mattes by Jan Domela and effects cinematographer Irmin Roberts.

Another matte from IF I WERE KING, a film in which Ronald Colman is so good.

A great before and after from Paramount's IF I WERE KING (1938)

Silent star Marion Davies was a pure delight in the mistaken identity farce BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK (1926).  Great fun, with some interesting vintage mattes and early Dunning composite shots. No mentions of 'Rosebud'here please!  ;)

Early matte work from BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK (1926).

BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK was bold for the day with closing sequences processed in 2-Tone colour, with this shot probably being an in camera glass shot.  

British comic Norman Wisdom made many low budget flicks through the 1960's mostly, with THE EARLY BIRD (1965) probably being his biggest film, shot in colour with tons of stunts, pratfalls and visual effects shots.  This is a Cliff Culley matte, and is one of the first on-screen credits Cliff actually received after being in effects work since the mid 1940's.

Poor ole' Norman has many a misadventure in THE EARLY BIRD, with this extended bit involving a runaway lawn mower destroying a millionaire's estate.  Lots of clever puppet and miniature work as things go completely out of control.

Pity the shiny Rolls Royce, flattened by falling tree, all in miniature.  I presume Pinewood guys like Bert Luxford, Jimmy Snow, Frank George and John Stears must have been involved with all the model work.

Cliff Culley matte art coupled with miniature fire ladders, animation and smoke overlays.

Final scene in THE EARLY BIRD has Norm crash a fire truck into milk factory, with the whole building cracking apart via cel animation atop matte art.


Syd Dutton painted this superb imaginary palatial HQ for wacko evangelical religious zealot, Peter Boyle, for Marty Feldman's spoof IN GOD WE TRUST (1980)


Another Charlie Chaplin classic from long ago, THE GOLD RUSH (1925) had several mattes or glass shots as I think this one to be, as well as other complex trickery.

One of the effects sequences in THE GOLD RUSH involves a character trapped on a gradually slipping away ice cap.  Done as a miniature set with the actor added either by the Dunning or the Williams travelling matte composite method.  

The partial translucency of the actor tends to suggest the Dunning matting process may well have been used, with this artifact often seen with that technique.


Another memorable moment from Chaplin's THE GOLD RUSH has the two guys desperately attempt to prevent their cabin from toppling over the abyss.

I don't know how Chaplin pulled this off, other than with large miniature chasm set and cabin, and excellent optical composite photography adding the people into the shot.



Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida starred in the Universal film STRANGE BEDFELLOWS (1965), with Albert Whitlock providing this uncredited matte shot.

A typically spectacular Newcombe shot from the film TWO FACED WOMAN (1941), though I'm not sure if this daytime view was in the final film?

Mattes from TWO FACE WOMAN (1941) with Greta Garbo.

Here's another Norman Wisdom comedy from the UK; THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN (1960) - not to be confused with the excellent Kirk Douglas western of the same name made a decade later.  This is a wacky one, even by Wisdom's standards, where the US are conned into shifting an entire English town and rebuilding it in a more preferable locale. Several fx shots including painted mattes and miniatures, not credited but possibly Cliff Culley or the Wally Veevers people across town.

One of the many uncredited mattes that Al Whitlock did over his long career was for SOME KIND OF NUT (1969), with Dick Van Dyke, whom I can tolerate only in small doses.

The first Bob Hope Pale Face film was a massive hit, so naturally Paramount mounted a sequel, SON OF PALEFACE (1952), and a variety of trick shots and mattes were needed, such as this Jan Domela matte of the town in the distance.

Silly gags abound in SON OF PALEFACE, but nobody complained.


The sweltering desert offers a 'cool' respite, with an ice-capades mirage.  Hope, in a single uninterrupted shot, drives from hot, sandy environs into an arctic environ, complete with ice skaters, and then out the other side back into the desert heat!!  A cleverly devised and very complex visual effect sequence, designed by Gordon Jennings, involving moving split screens by ace optical man Paul Lerpae, with exterior location and interior set combined on the optical printer.


SON OF PALEFACE concludes with this multi-element composite by Paul Lerpae.

One of my all time favourite Syd Dutton matte paintings, created for the exceedingly mediocre Mel Brooks spoof SPACEBALLS (1987)

Close up detail of Syd's loose and impressionistic brush work. Love Syd's backlight.

Also from SPACEBALLS was this push in shot, I think painted by Robert Stromberg, of the galactic diner.

Albert Whitlock rendered this delightful homage to a certain monkey movie classic, for the ending of SPACEBALLS.  "Damn you all to hell".

For the John Landis spy spoof SPIES LIKE US (1985), Ray Caple painted this view of Afghanistan.

Derek Meddings miniature effects from SPIES LIKE US.  Incidentally, Derek appeared in a cameo, as did a whole truckload of film guys like Ray Harryhausen and various director friends of Landis.

Probably the funniest thing in STRANGE BREW (1983) was this neat title sequence.

STRANGE BREW matte paintings by veteran Matthew Yuricich.

More Yuricich matte work from STRANGE BREW

The Sandra Dee lightweight romantic comedy THAT FUNNY FEELING (1965) had a couple of nice mattes by Al Whitlock, but it was the work of effects house Project Unlimited that really stole the show.  See below...

It may not look like much but this remarkable brief scene is a masterpiece of movie magic.  A rude and obnoxious driver of a red speedster roars through the traffic, cutting off other cars and causing a pile up before speeding off down the freeway.  Fabulous work here, designed and executed largely by Jim Danforth.  See below...

From Jim's memoir, Dinosaurs, Dragons & Drama, comes this excellent breakdown.  A miniature freeway side was constructed at Project Unlimited, with model cars animated via stop motion, with Jim concentrating upon the main red car, while other staffers worked on secondary traffic.  What sells this is the absolutely bullseye matching of the actual LA location and the miniature set, with perfect line up, perspective, lighting and above all else, combined with subtle matte art blending as latent image on original negative.  According to Jim, the studio were so 'wrapped' with this sensational shot that they had it spliced into a continuous loop and screened it over and over.  I rate it as one of the all time great visual effects moments.

Another of Albert's mattes from THAT FUNNY FEELING.

Mattes from the Rank comedy starring Alec Guinness THE CARD (1952).  Bill Warrington, although not a matte artist, was in charge of the matte department, with various artists working under him such as Les Bowie, Albert Whitlock and Cliff Culley.

Don Knotts did this quite amusing remake of the old Bob Hope classic, The Pale Face, with THE SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST (1967).  This wonderful matte was the work of Al Whitlock, with a quite considerable amount of the frame here being pure paint, with just the folks with the three partial mock up carriages in the background being real.  All else was painted, including the foreground rolling stock, the station interior, the background left carriage and the luggage trolley and even the group of people at extreme left!  I'd love to see Al's actual painting for this.

An entirely matte painted shot, with the massive thousand seat movie house, The Grand - seen in better times - from the utterly delightful British comedy THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH (1957), which for reasons that escape me was retitled BIG TIME OPERATORS for American  release(!).  Bob Cuff was one of Shepperton's finest matte artists, and not only did he do the mattes for the film but also got an on-screen credit - although in smaller font, under Wally Veevers' name - but a credit, is a credit, as they say.

A second full frame matte, also by Bob Cuff, shows the Grand burnt to the ground. One of the great old British comedies, as well as being a loving and sentimental tribute to the days of old time movie houses; Saturday matinees, double features, film breakages, cartoon & travelogue preceding the main show, wonky projection and that unmistakable aroma of old popcorn and Jaffa's that these places used to be known for.  Very fond memories by your blogger of all such things, from a movie crazy childhood and beyond.... all now but a distant memory, sadly.  Screw multiplexes... The Devil's work!

Time for some astonishingly good trickery from Abbott & Costello's TIME OF THEIR LIVES (1946), where ghostly goings-ons with spirits from 1776 cause mischief in the 1940's.  An absolute rollercoaster ride of extremely well done optical effects by veteran Universal photographic effects men David Stanley Horsley and Jerome Ash.

Highly complex travelling matte combination work was carried out for a number of quite eye popping set pieces, such as this one where an elegant lady spirit loses here attire, piece by piece, during a confrontation on a staircase.  Many frames needed to demonstrate the work...

Who get's the biggest surprise, the ghost or the real woman?  Both run screaming for their 'lives', so to speak.  The ghostly gal runs down and then back up the stairs, with items of garment being thrown off as she goes...

I've no idea how Horsley pulled this one off, other than via travelling matte and much roto support?

Possibly achieved as per the old Fulton method by draping the set and stairs in black velvet, with body double suited in black beneath the elegant attire, allowing high contrast mattes to be pulled on Ross Hoffman's optical printer?


Now it's just down to 'her' stockings and long lace gloves running up the stairs!

The sequence in full, though of course you'll need a REAL computer monitor to properly appreciate such magic as presented here by NZ Pete.


But wait!!...There's more!  Also from TIME OF THEIR LIVES is another spectacular visual effect where Lou Costello and lady friend 'survive' a hit and run as the car simply passes through them, or did they pass through the car??

Again, I'm baffled by this terrific scene.  Definitely has some degree of matte line on the upper right edge of both actors, though whether that's roto work or from photo-chemical composite photography, I don't know?


I'd love to see the original elements in a break down.

I'm presuming it to be a combination of travelling matte achieved right there on the exterior set, isolating the actors; a second take with the car, without the actors, and a great deal of careful hand drawn and inked rotoscope mattes made on cels.  Millie Winebrenner was Universal's long time rotoscope artist (and, as Syd Dutton told me, a good cartoonist/caricature artist) who had worked as far back as the John Fulton days and onward well into the Whitlock era as a permanent staffer in the matte department.


Universal's veteran optical cinematographer, Roswell Hoffman was also one whose career stretched back to the early Fulton days, being an employee from 1931 through to 1974, with probably a thousand fx composites under his belt.


Welcome to the Pearly Gates - the final matte from TIME OF THEIR LIVES (1946)

A Les Bowie shot of a collapsing bridge in THOSE FANTASTIC FLYING FOOLS (1967) - made at a time when titles such as this were all the rage.

The cheeky Hal Roach ghost comedy TOPPER RETURNS (1941) was a bit of a hoot.  Lots of funny bits, especially here with the always great Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson and Marlboro puffing spectre.

Roy Seawright was the in house Hal Roach photographic effects man, with Jack Shaw painting mattes and William Draper and Frank Young on opticals.  Matte here from TOPPER RETURNS 

Also from same film is this very nifty bit combining miniatures, matte art and real water.

A pair of Jack Shaw mattes of The Riviera from TOPPER TAKES A TRIP (1939)

Peter Melrose painted this shot from Blake Edwards' TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER (1982) - a film comprised of out takes from unused footage from the earlier Sellers films.

A great cast of UK comics in SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (1960), though I don't know who did this matte shot for Tom Howard.

Jan Domela painted this matte for the Clark Gable comedy TEACHER'S PET (1958)

This was apparently Albert Whitlock's first matte shot for Universal.  The film is THAT TOUCH OF MINK (1962) starring Cary Grant.  I had hoped to demonstrate the original matte art with this, but it wasn't possible as things turned out.

I don't go much for Terry Gilliam's films myself, with TIME BANDITS (1981) being a real drag.  Mattes painted by Ray Caple, with this shot being especially good.

Also from TIME BANDITS was this shot by Caple, which I believe Gilliam was never happy with, and was constantly asking for the 'broken glass' to look better.

One of the great cinema classics was Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942) starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard.  Bold, for the day, to mix serious drama with out and out hysterical comedy in the same film.  Many wonderful lines and bits.  Effects overseen by Lawrence W. Butler, with this anonymous matte of the theatre district in Warsaw, Poland, being a set extension for the upper half of the frame.

Another favourite film of NZ Pete was Preston Sturges' UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948), featuring a never better Rex Harrison and his elaborate attempts to kill off his wife.  Much funnier than it may sound, with the smooth as silk 'fantasy murder' completely coming apart when carried out as 'the real thing'.  Side splittingly funny, I laughed till my spleen exploded!  Here's a matte by one of Fred Sersen's artists.


A key scene in UNFAITHFULLY YOURS has orchestral conductor Rex drift into his long planned fantasy of knocking off his old lady.  What is most fascinating is just how in the hell Sersen and DOP Victor Milner pulled off this amazing shot?  Shot starts in long shot, and slowly pushes in (not a zoom, mind you...a push in) and eventually goes right up to and virtually into his eyeball!!!  If any cinematographers are reading this, I'd love to know how the focus puller managed to make this work so well.   Perhaps shot in reverse, as a pull out?  Hitchcock did something similar a decade before with YOUNG AND INNOCENT with the drummer and his 'twitch'.  Very impressive.



Although the overlong, yet bouncy Julie Andrews musical-comedy THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE (1967) had some inexplicably poor quality work from the usually reliable Albert Whitlock, at least this shot was of high enough standard to slip by unnoticed.

The Naval comedy SAILORS THREE (1940)  from Ealing Studios, had some nicely done model work and matte art on a very, very tight wartime budget.  Roy Kellino was Ealing's effects man.

As far from the master, John LeCarre as one could hope to get; THE SPY WITH A COLD NOSE (1966) about a dog employed by MI5, had matte shots by Gerald Larn (main image) and Doug Ferris at Shepperton. Not by any means to be confused with the brilliant SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD with Richard Burton.

These huge cast of international star 'round the world' roadshow epics were very much in vogue in the sixties, with numerous along the same lines.  THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES - OR HOW I FLEW FROM LONDON TO PARIS IN 25 HOURS AND 11 MINUTES (1965) - and they all had absurdly long titles as if to lend more grandeur to the event!  Cliff Culley was matte artist, possibly assisted by Charles Stoneham, with Roy Field on fx camera duties.

Painted Paris and onlookers from same film.

Period riverboat antics, THREE MEN IN A BOAT (1956) from Shepperton's fx dept.

Dramatic closing shot from the hit Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor action comedy SILVER STREAK (1976).  I was told once that Louis Litchtenfield probably painted this .

Stunning matte art is all that I can recommend for the utterly dreadful SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES (1960).  L.B Abbott was photographic effects chief, with Emil Kosa jnr painting mattes.

Some more quality mattes from the same diabolically awful film.

The Ritz Brothers were a budget variation on the great Marx Bros, though not in that same league by any means, and here they play up in one of many versions of THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1939).  Fred Sersen's matte artists included Ray Kellogg, Fitch Fulton, Ralph Hammeras and  Gil Riswold.

The pre-code classic TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932) from the great Ernst Lubitsch, was a sophisticated, sultry, sexy and very smooth affair - with Herbert Marshall perfectly cast.  Paramount's Jan Domela would have painted the matte shot.

Producer Jerry Fairbanks made a whole series of very popular one-reeler short subjects SPEAKING OF ANIMALS in the early 1940's, winning an Oscar for one of them.  They must have really been a hit back in the day as they still look incredible today.  Cleverly edited animal footage supplemented by intricate rotoscope work and cel animated lip sync for hilarious voice overs and popular songs of the day.

Anna Osborne was key animator for the SPEAKING OF ANIMALS series, and her team deserve a bow for such high quality work.  I still have a VHS collection of all of 'em.

The bull in baritone singing  'The Cow-Cow Boogie' - brilliant stuff that had my kids wrapped back in the eighties.

James Garner and Doris Day were fun in THE THRILL OF IT ALL (1963), as was Carl Reiner.  Matte shots by Albert Whitlock.


Matte art and much creative Buddy Gillespie model work in the Clark Gable-Myrna Loy flick TOO HOT TO HANDLE (1938)


Another Clark Gable picture from MGM, THEY MET IN BOMBAY (1941), was entertaining and seemingly exotic, though all foreign locales were furnished by excellent Newcombe mattes expanding the MGM back lot.

The crazy Laurel and Hardy misadventure, SWISS MISS (1938) from Hal Roach Studios, had a few mattes by Luis McManus.

The Danny DeVito satire THE RATINGS GAME (1984) had Dream Quest as vfx contractor, with artists Rocco Gioffre and Mark Sullivan sharing brush duties.

Mark Sullivan told me about this effect: "Rocco and I were creating some shots, at Dream Quest, for a Danny DeVito directed HBO film called THE RATINGS GAME.  One day, a Hill high speed camera was being used at the facility to film some falling coins, for another Dream Quest project. The camera was capable of running at some insanely fast frame rates, for extreme slow motion effects. Rocco seized the opportunity to shoot some elements for this stormy sea scene. While the camera was screaming along at 400 frames per second, Rocco tossed about a quarter cup full of powdered coffee creamer up into the air, into frame, in front of a black background. He later tossed some powdered hand soap for the rain element. Everyone was amazed in dailies at how effective these elements were. Along with Rocco’s high speed elements, this shot was a combination of a glass painting, (the ship) and a background painting on panel (the sky). I did the painting work.  Bob Bailey did the photography, which included a motion control camera move to simulate the shot being taken from another boat in rough, choppy seas. The rain and wave were back projected and shot on a separate exposure, so the camera could photograph them with the same motion as it did with the painting passes. The back panel sky painting was shot as multiple split screen passes, moving at different rates, to suggest the clouds were churning."

Some uncredited mattes from the Bob Hope comedy THEY GOT ME COVERED (1943), made by Samuel Goldwyn Studios as opposed to Bob's usual 'home' at Paramount for some reason.

A mod update of the old Gunga Din story, with the Rat Pack on the loose, SERGEANTS 3 (1961) was a United Artists show, with no effects credit.

The insufferable UNDER THE RAINBOW (1981), concerning the alleged making of The Wizard Of Oz, did at least have this clever use of a matte painting, by Matthew Yuricich.  Carrie Fisher did look so sweet though.

Peter Ustinov wrote and directed VICE VERSA (1947) - an overlong but highly imaginative fantasy of role reversal, that was remade some 40 years later.  Some excellent trick shots, supervised by Rank's then chief of effects, Henry Harris, such as this wild head twister of a shot which surely must have influenced William Friedkin when he did The Exorcist(??)  Film is worth viewing for the wonderful, old fashioned title sequence, done as a series of vintage lantern slides, and painstakingly set out and phrased in very Victorian era text, such as: 'Ices and nectarines may sometimes be obtained from smartly uniformed attendants by request';   'Director of Kinema-Photography, Mr Jack Hildyard';   'Associate Producer and Factotum Mr Paul Sherrif';   'All Wonderful & Extravaganza Effects by Professor Henry Harris';   'Continuity & Feats of Memory Mlle. Tilly Day';   'Sound Editor & Tricks of the Ear Dr Harry Miller; and my fave 'Editor in Charge of Magic Lantern Decoupage Mr John Guthridge'.  I'm sure the great wordsmith himself, Mr Ustinov must have been behind the delightful title cards.    

Michael Curtiz' WE'RE NO ANGELS (1954) used motion mattes for some tilt up and down shots, which was not something that Paramount did very often, even having their patented Motion Repeater.  John P. Fulton was in charge, with Jan Domela on mattes and Irmin Roberts as FX cameraman.

An excellent VistaVision Domela shot from WE'RE NO ANGELS.

Same film, with this interesting shot that I suspect involves foreground miniature set; ship and background painted on glass, and a process projected sea element

A majestic painted sky forms a major tilt down for the opening of the Ealing charmer WHISKEY GALORE (1948).  Most likely that Geoffrey Dickinson painted the mattes, as Ealing's artist in residence.

Three matte comps from WHISKEY GALORE as well as what I think to be a foreground miniature (lower left) shot.

I only ever liked Dudley Moore when he was paired with comic genius Peter Cook (no relation) in those old things like the hilarious Bedazzled and various tv and radio specials.  This shot is a great matte by Matthew Yuricich from the abysmal, barely watchable parody WHOLLY MOSES (1979).

Two more Yuricich shots from the 'to be avoided at all costs' WHOLLY MOSES.

The very funny murder mystery with Abbott & Costello, WHO DONE IT (1942).  Dizzying matte work featured at climax, with both Russ Lawson and John DeCuir on the brushes.  I do love extreme perspective matte art.

Two barely noticeable matte top ups from the Frank Capra picture YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938) from Columbia Pictures.  No effects credit but may be someone like Chesley Bonestell or Ted Withers?

I kind of hammered Mel in previous examples from his films for his weaker than usual latter day output.  YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) however harks back to the days when Mel could do no wrong.  Brilliant, pitch perfect retelling of the Percy (Mary) Shelley horror fable.  Superbly made, and thankfully shot in B&W as it damned well should be!  I'll bet Fox had arguments with Brooks about that choice!  Incidentally, when I saw this on first release here in my teens (at the Plaza theatre, Auckland) I was bitterly disappointed to find the film not in colour, especially as all of the front-of-house stills were in damned full colour!!

The classic castle on the rain soaked hill top from same film, as painted by Matthew Yuricich.  In my oral history with Matt he mentioned that the painted, completed glass got broken before photography.  He thought that perhaps one of his boys stepped on it, but couldn't recall.  He managed to repair the cracked glass, and by all accounts, it was an excellent fix.

Two more Yuricich shots from YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.  Incidentally, Gene Wilder was never better than in this movie.

Another Matt Yuricich shot, this time from the Tom Hanks flick VOLUNTEERS (1985).

WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER (1957) was quite a clever satire on commercialism.  L.B Abbott's matte artist Emil Kosa jnr was no doubt responsible for the shot.

Frantic screwball type vehicle for pop icon Madonna, WHO'S THAT GIRL (1987) had some good effects work such as this prison matte by Rocco Gioffre.

Before and after look at Mark Sullivan's rooftop matte painted shot for WHO'S THAT GIRL 

Some vintage Albert Whitlock shots here, from the J.Arthur Rank comedy YOU KNOW WHAT SAILORS ARE (1953), when Al was head painter at Pinewood before heading across the pond to the States a year later.

Other Whitlock shots from same film.  Noteworthy for old time character actor Akim Tamiroff - an incredibly busy actor in a thousand flicks - who's hilarious in this.

Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper in a weird psychic/mystical adventure with Peter Falk, VIBES (1988), with mattes I think, by Matthew Yuricich.

I've always had a liking for the films of Woody Allen, especially his 'earlier & funnier films' (Take The Money and Run and Bananas still being fucking hilarious!) as well as his books and old 1960's stand up records.  Woody's pseudo documentary, ZELIG (1982) was a masterpiece in clever fakery and seemingly convincing historic recreations where Woody's mysterious Leonard Zelig mixes and mingles with everyone from Hitler to Herbert Hoover, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth and Chaplin among others.  Brilliantly photographed by the legendary Gordon Willis, with subtle and seamless optical trickery by R/Greenberg and Associates, with Joel Hynek supervising, not to mention amazingly good photo retouching.  The fake marry-ups far outshine similar shots ILM did much later for Forrest Gump, which were strictly show-pony shots and a gimmick-fest, and little more. Superb work in all ZELIG departments, and a magnificent score too.  *Note, The shots with Hitler above have Woody/Zelig flawlessly inserted within the footage, with top right frame having Zelig in background interacting 2nd from right.  The other lower Hitler frame has Zelig with arm outstretched, waving to the newsreel camera of Leni Riefenstahl.

I didn't care for it back in the day, but looking at WRONG IS RIGHT (1982) recently, it was a more satisfying experience. Sean Connery headlines in this Richard Brooks film.  Several effects contributors, with an uncredited Ken Marschall painting and providing these opening shots.

More from WRONG IS RIGHT, (which out of interest was titled THE MAN WITH THE DEADLY LENS here in New Zealand and other foreign territories, complete with ludicrous Bond styled ad art and posters to look like a 007 flick!  No shit!)  Anyway, the top left matte was by Joe Musso, while the other optical combination shots of NY being destroyed were done (not well) by Fox veteran Bill Abbott.

Two Jan Domela mattes from WEDDING PRESENT (1936).

The Duke, sans horse or six shooter, in the romantic comedy WITHOUT RESERVATIONS (1946). Some interesting matte work with what I took to be an extensive painted railway station for the lower frame.

Syd Dutton supervised the rendering of this new age church and environs for the film WAYNE'S WORLD 2 (1993).  Only worth it for a highly amusing extended sequence with a purposely badly dubbed James Hong, which, if you're anything like me, you grew up on badly dubbed Hong Kong action flicks, which this spoofs to perfection. Hilarious!

The final composite, with moving clouds and sunlight breaking through.

A typically exquisite matte from one of Warren Newcombe's many artists, for the film THE WILD MAN OF BORNEO (1941).


***This post, and all 178 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/





Well, that's about it for this blog post.  Hope you found it fascinating.

Peter




MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part One

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Greetings friends and myriad enthusiasts of 'old time' traditional special photographic effects, mattes, miniatures, trick shots and all such 'lost' art forms of days gone by.  It is time for yet another journey down that ever fascinating path of wonderful motion picture magic, that we all love so much.
Today, I've assembled a very broad cross section of films, from across the cinematic spectrum - from science fiction, western, swashbuckler, jungle adventure and epic desert romance genres - all here in the one packed blog post.  As usual, I've included a few worthy titles that few - if any - may have heard of, let alone seen.  Any younger readers probably haven't heard of any of the seven titles profiled here in depth.  There is nothing as thrilling for NZ Pete than discovering some heretofore 'lost' or forgotten flick that not only is a revealing trick shot show, but also a highly enjoyable film in itself to top it off, and that reward came with at least one of the movies here today.

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Before we dive deep into the roster of effects films I've lined up, I must once again, bring to the attention of all readers out there the ever expanding You Tube channel, 'Albert Whitlock's Matte Department & Illusion Arts' in which my friend Thomas Higginson has spent endless hours/days/weeks with his eye lids propped open with matchsticks, and endless cups of strong coffee, tirelessly putting together a series of tremendous behind the scenes matte shot reels from a selection of films.  Films such as GENESIS II;  BOUND FOR GLORY;  THE TWILIGHT ZONE tv series; SHIP OF FOOLS and BUCK ROGERS have thus far been highlighted in great detail, with the BUCK doco being my particular favourite thus far.  I'm sure I speak for all of us who love this medium of magic that we are extremely grateful to Tom for taking on this project and preserving and presenting these valuable pieces of celluloid photographic effects history and making so much available to the public at large, rather than archived away in some Lost Ark styled warehouse, and never seeing the light of day again. 


As of this writing, several more are in the works, or nearing completion such as the Bond picture DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (due out any day now); the unrealised 80's remake of THE LOST WORLD; sci-fi classic COLOSSUS-THE FORBIN PROJECT; disaster epic EARTHQUAKE and many more.  Absolutely essential viewing (and re-viewing) that any fan of Al Whitlock and Syd Dutton and the warehouse full of remarkable shots these guys turned out (in the several hundred!).   Find it here!!!
Also well worth a look on the same site is a touching memorial video and photo tribute to the late Bill Taylor, with some wonderful anecdotes and most touching and occasionally quite funny tributes from some of those who knew Bill.  I most strongly recommend it.



So, as per usual, it is time to board the interstellar ship for our journey through that galaxy of wonder that we recognise and appreciate as the traditional matte painted trick shot...and a healthy bounty of miniatures as well just to balance things out nicely.  Oh, and do forgive me for slipping off topic on the odd occasion - going on about certain actors or directors or things seemingly unrelated - as I have a habit of doing.

Enjoy the ride
Peter

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Now.... on with the show


***This post, and all 179 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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Curiously, HEARTBEEPS (1981) was itself a planned 'making of' YouTube project but for various reasons the original Whitlock 35mm fx reels from Bill Taylor's collection weren't able to be digitized, despite a plan to do so due to lack of funding, for what is a very expensive exercise.

I didn't at all care for the film back in the 1980's, though, as I enter my twilight years I find myself mellowing somewhat and can now appreciate it far more as a cute, sweet natured fable, though certainly flawed, it definitely has it's heart in the right place. I'll talk more about the film's director, Allan Arkush shortly, but it's worth noting that Allan himself stated that he hadn't really been a special effects fan as such, and found this aspect in HEARTBEEPS - what with make up fx, mechanical devices and of course mattes - somewhat intimidating to say the least.  Allan confessed to an interviewer that looking back, he never felt he used 'special effects' in this film as well as he should have.  Unlike all of us reading this post, Arkush confessed that he never ever 'dissected' effects movies!

Basically, a gentle sci-fi love story set in the very near future, HEARTBEEPS sees a pair of robots fall in love and abscond from the vast android factory.  A well cast Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters were the besotted mechanised pair, under significant and beautifully designed Stan Winston make up appliances.

Albert Whitlock oversaw the many mattes and photographic effects shots, with uncredited assistant, Syd Dutton providing a number of mattes.  Interestingly, in addition to fx cinematographers Bill Taylor and Dennis Glouner being screen credited, assistant grip Henry Schoessler got his name up there, as did Al's son Mark as general assistant.

Al Whitlock with trusty tied down and rock steady matte camera.

A snapshot of Whitlock and his crew on location for the film MACARTHUR, made some four years previous.

Universal Studio's resident masters of illusion, Albert Whitlock, Syd Dutton and Bill Taylor.  Note:  The top left pic appears to show the Mitchell matte camera mounted on a Nodal Point camera head.

The opening extremely wide pan shot - or at least a portion of it - with matte assistant Mark Whitlock in costume and added into an already very complex composite as a blue screen element.  Mark would himself become a talented matte artist a few years after and painted on a number of films and tv shows including at least one shot for this film.

The very broad pan across a large painted setting and robot factory.  A highly complicated multiple composite shot integrating live action elements, paintings, miniature props, animation and cel overlays, to brilliant effect.

Partial before and after...  I spoke with the late (and very generous) Mr Bill Taylor some time ago about this shot which has intrigued me.  As was Bill's typical way, he went out of his way to describe and illustrate the process to me:  "The HEARTBEEPS shot is one of the few made with our 'Super Lens', originally created for DUNE but never used on it.  The Super Lens let us put a 2:1 squeeze on the long dimension [width] of the VistaVision frame, giving a 3:1 aspect ratio, which gave us more real estate for optical pans.  The optical quality of the lens was okay at small apertures; it was a prototype and could have used another iteration in the design.  The spinning whirly-gig was the only miniature element.  The heatwaves in the final shot on right were built into the original negative shot - though too broad I think.  The foreground chap who goes right over the painting is Mark Whitlock, shot on our blue screen stage.  The Super Lens was also used for the opening matte shot of THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS".

The latter part of the wide pan across the fictional setting.
Al's phenomenal painting.  Syd told me that the work was split between the pair of them, with Al handling all of the exterior/outdoors scenes and Syd painting all of the various factory interiors.

A splendid close look at Whitlock's magnificent piece, with all of the classic attributes Al was so respected for, such as his evocative feeling of how light plays upon objects, especially with a three-quarter backlight and long shadows.  Al's sense of depth and expanse of distance through quite simple brushwork with his receding light.  A master of the art form.

Al with his massive painting, which I believe was auctioned off a while back and is now proudly in the ownership of one of the effects industry's VFX supervisors.  You'd need a vast wall space to accommodate this beauty!  Note: the blacked out area at right was for addition of a large miniature prop and a full size painted wall facade, which will all blend in perfectly in Bill Taylor's final composite. Bravo!

Nicely detailed and mobile miniature satellite dish, built by David Merritt, and roughly painted facade backing behind Whitlock which will blend invisibly with the separately rendered matte painting in the very complex finished shot.

Three integral members of the Universal matte crew;  grip and highly resourseful modeller, Lynn Ledgerwood.  Long time Universal matte camera operator, Mike Moramarco, and optical and matte cinematographer Dennis Glouner - who happened to be the nephew of old time Columbia effects cameraman Donald Glouner, with the Glouner family name going way back to old time Hollywood.


Close up detail.

The first of several matte painted interiors rendered by Syd Dutton.  Syd told me he didn't at all mind being lumped with these chores:  "I was quite happy to do the more tedious work".

Another quick matte with actors Randy Quaid and Kenneth McMillan added in via travelling matte.

Syd's original matte art for above scene.  See below for breakdown.

The basic set and masked off half frame prior to Syd's painting being added.


The final shot with matte art and live action, shown here before the introduction of blue screened in foreground live action which in the final cut obscures much of Syd's painting.


Another from the succession of Syd's many mattes, with the distant factory facility being painted in. 

A wonderfully constructed matted set extension done as a cost saver to the production, though the budget was some $12 million.  All of the windows, scenery, flooring and distant racking was Syd's.

A split shot here with half real set on left and the other side all painted on glass.  Lots of perspective drawing needed here.

A key matte illusion in HEARTBEEPS was the beautiful sunset sequence as viewed by our two robots as they ponder what lies beyond the confines of this enormous mechanical workshop.  The effect was far more involved that might seem at first glance, with this important matte painting appearing several times in one extended sequence.

Al's multi element sunset painting, combined with a real interactively lit foreground tree, comped as a blue screen shot with the stage set and actors.

Whitlock's beautiful original matte art, which I'm thrilled to say I own and admire each time I enter or exit our bedroom, with it gracing the wall outside the door.

Closer detail reveals Albert's love of the Hudson River School of 19th Century painters such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt.  Al was a huge admirer of these painters and that was reflected in many of his own personal 'fine' paintings that are still in circulation and private ownership.  Interestingly, when asked in an interview way back in the early 70's about his own non-matte painting interests,and how much he turns out, Al responded: "Well, not much, as by 4pm here at the studio, I find that I'm all painted out".

More detail from Al's sunset matte, with magnificent violet and cobalt hues receding into the distance.  Al was an absolute master of light and it's effect, which was why so much of his work was undetectable.

Subtle, yet quite labour intensive work as Al discussed in 1981 while finishing the matte work on HEARTBEEPS:  "I think it's generally considered that film only has a perception of 4 f-stops.  A camera has a constant iris, unless you are changing that iris while shooting, there is a certain fixed f-stop that limits the film as we know it today, to about 4 f-stops.  The eye of course constantly has the iris going in and out when looking at brighter or darker phenomena, so film has to have a limitation.  The paintings have to have that same limitation.  Reaching into a very shady landscape, regardless to what's on the sky, invariably it burns out that sky, so that's the limitation of film".

Albert continued:  "Our setting sun was done with a light.  Then we'll fade the painting out and fade some overlays in, which I've already done, of detail, so that the light appears to be gradually going off of the trees.  For the wider master shot a real tree was blue screened into the left corner, with sunlight playing on the gently moving foliage.  The clouds in the sky will be moving using soft splits, so the movement playing over the painting will lend a greater sense of realism - it'll be more persuasive you know.  The sky moves almost imperceptibly, but if it didn't, the whole thing might look static".


Albert demonstrates the manner in which acetate cel overlays will sell the finished shot:  "The overlay of detail on trees, fading just slightly, before the painting itself fades - a very small matter, but enough to add up, all in all, to a much more interesting scene.  They couldn't get the shot for real, so we go back our 4 f-stops theory.  I'm cheating here.  The sky would burn out if you saw that much lower detail in the landscape, but since it's a painting I can cheat it a bit you know, and bring the tones more together.  The sky won't burn out, or the lower portion will not go into a total silhouette, which would happen if you were exposing expressly for the sky".


Albert's original on NZ Pete's wall  :)


The droids start to question their place in their man-made confines and wonder what lies beyond...

Syd Dutton interior set extensions with a thunderstorm outside.  Very nice interactive shadows of heavy rain seen within the painted areas, presumably done as animated cel overlays.


Breakdown showing limited extent of set and invisible additions painted in.


Frame #1:  The storm subsides and the first rays of daylight break through the clouds.  Another of Whitlock's extensive mattes, with soft split screened cloud movement, painted cel overlay animation for sunlight and interactive light hitting the valley floor.

Frame #2

Frame #3

Frame #4

Frame #5

The movie was directed by Allan Arkush - himself a most fascinating fellow.  Allan began his film career - along with friend Joe Dante - as trailer cutter for Roger Corman's New World Pictures in the 70's.  Now, as a firm fan of 'B' pictures and low grade exploitation flicks myself I'm quite familiar with most all of those cheesy flicks, and even more so with the incredibly 'in-your-face' coming attractions trailers for them that Allan and Joe concocted - each one a mini masterpiece of lurid showmanship!  Breasts, bums; the same explosion that appeared in a ton of trailers but never in any of those films; shotgun blasting vigilantes, airplane decapitations, bikers and shackled Filipino chain gang gals...all packed into 3 amazing minutes for titles like T.N.T JACKSON; CAGED HEAT; SAVAGE SISTERS; NAKED FIST and the unforgettably 'Z' grade BURY ME AN ANGEL: ("a howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog, twisted by torment, a sadistic she-devil, leading a pair of perverts on a roaring rampage of revenge").  Classics none of my blog readers would ever have heard of!  Special mention here for the voice actor of the CrimeBuster robot in HEARTBEEPS who was voiced by former New World trailer narrator, the great Ron Gans - the all time king of bass-baritone trailer voice-over artistes, bar none!!  Both Allan and Joe impressed the hell out of Corman so much that he gave them their own feature to direct - so long as it cost $10 bucks and came in on time.  They made the wonderful HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD (1976) for pocket change by raiding the New World film vaults and 're-purposing' a ton of sequences from previous Corman films - all shows they knew like the back of their hands from their trailer work - and cut into an entirely 'new' full length plot(!!)  It's a hoot, especially if you know those numerous 'stolen' sequences like I do.  This is probably far more info than any reader cares to know, but I did say that I tend to drift off topic, didn't I?

Subsequent shot is this glorious view of the whole valley in bright sunlight, complete with drifting clouds.

Close up

Although we only get to see the daylight view through the factory window, it's still a wonderful shot.  Note the addition of rainbows painted onto a separate glass and presumably superimposed after the filming of the cloud soft splits as a separate run through Bill's matte camera.  The foreground set was then combined as a blue screen travelling matte to the paintings.

Albert sets a matte in camera with the assistance of Michael Moramarco - a long time member of Universal's matte department stretching back to the Ross Hoffman era and very early Whitlock tenure.

A wonderful vista of the robot factory off in the distance, as painted by Albert, with the matte extending as far down as the lower tree line.  Crystal clear image fidelity as Al was the world's biggest advocate of original negative latent image matte shots, which is why they all look so good.  Beautiful sense of backlight - a phenomena I've always loved about his work, which was Al's forte, and an asset I tend to feel he likely picked up from the great Peter Ellenshaw while at Disney.

Among the oddball characters - both human and 'bucket-of-bolts' in the flick, was the wonderful concept of having a stand-up comic android - as one does, with Catskill (top left) being just such a mechanical jokester.  Catskill's non-stop one liners were written by real life Borsch Belt comic Henny Youngman, and voiced here by Jack Carter - complete with auto 'drum roll & cymbal ding' for each witticism!

Now, as a lifelong movie buff, with interests in ALL aspects of the game, I've always had a great respect for the acting profession, and none more so than what would be termed 'character actors'.  So many great films over the years are memorable not just for the lead players but more so for the small part character actors (I could name a hundred such!).  HEARTBEEPS hit bullseye with several small roles played by tried and true great character actors.  Top left: Randy (Midnight Express) Quaid with Kenneth (The Taking of Pelham 123) McMillan.  Top right: the legendary one of a kind Dick (The Terminator) Miller.  Bottom left: the always memorable Mary (Death Race 2000) Woronov.  Bottom right: the highly talented director-actor-writer Paul (Eating Raoul) Bartel.  Also in the flick are reliable old pro's Kathleen (Blues Brothers) Freeman and Richard B.(The Anderson Tapes) Schull in small walk ons.

A matte that many missed, of the spare parts wrecking yard of old robots.  Note:  rotoscope work evident as the two robots heads pass above the matte demarcation line, with Kaufman's head being slightly translucent for several frames.

Albert's painting for the robot junkyard scene.  The very contrasty trees may have been hold outs for separately painted tree texture, though why go to the trouble, I don't know.

A curiosity here.  This is a mystery glass painting rendered by Syd Dutton, which all indications suggest was made for a sequence that landed on the cutting room floor.  Syd did however recall painting something similar for a tv commercial which featured a robot rebellion or some such.


Now, this late in the narrative shot proved most interesting, and was a trick shot I'd never noticed until this recent re-evaluation on BluRay.  On a few repeat rewinds I felt compelled to question the view as a likely matte composite.  I asked Syd, who was fairly sure it was a regular production shot.  We begged to differ, so we asked Tom Higginson if there was any archived evidence one way or the other.  See below...

...and here it is.  Mark Whitlock painted this apparently quick, though totally effective rendering on glass which slotted in nicely with the location footage above.  Note, the characters visible far off atop the hillside in the finished scene must have been doubled in as a bi-pack element, or may have been a cel overlay animation gag?  Syd, my friend... you owe Pete a beer  ;)

Special make up designer Stan Winston (right) with associate Zoltan Elak.


Dreadful alternative ad-campaign by Universal to try to sell an admittedly difficult release.  Oh, and that 'Crimebuster' there is the one voiced by the great Ron Gans - trash drive-in trailer voice over artiste bar none!  As an aside, Ron did some great parody trailers for John Landis' KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, with the hilariously unforgettable 'Catholic High School Girls In Trouble' and the pseudo Hebrew-blaxploitation spoof 'Cleopatra Schwarz'.... though, as usual, I digress.



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Time for a distinct change of pace here.  CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER (1951) was an excellent, big budget period action adventure packed with special effects, with a number of technicians credited, and at least one important creative individual omitted completely!

Although a Warner Bros release, it was in fact entirely filmed in the United Kingdom, though with a mix of British and American staffers.

As grand a title opener as one could expect, though the four SFX men credited all deserved kudos, a name missed out here really was an unfortunate omission, as we shall discover...


The effects team was split between Brit experts and experienced career Americans.  Shown here are the two English mechanical & miniature effects supervisors, the legendary Cliff Richardson (left) and George Blackwell (right).  Cliff - pictured here in 1951 finessing a trigger gag to one of the miniature cannons for CAPT HORNBLOWER - was considered the grandfather of physical and model effects in the British industry, having entered it around 1923.  He would spend a great deal of his career working at Ealing Studios, among others, and became one of the most respected technicians in the business.  Cliff's son John followed in his footsteps and himself became one of Britain's most in demand experts.  George Blackwell was another very well known model specialist in the UK industry, with decades of employment at Rank-Pinewood and other studios where he displayed a special ability with hanging miniatures and aircraft.  George's work on the still brilliant WWII true story DAMBUSTERS saw him receive an Oscar nomination.  The pic here shows George with one of his miniatures for the film YANGZE INCIDENT.



Another important contributor to the film, and an uncredited one at that, was the remarkably talented Peter Ellenshaw.  This film was one of several Peter painted for between his years with mentor Poppa Day at Denham and his subsequent profitable tenure with Disney on the UK productions and beyond.

The great Peter Ellenshaw at work in various periods of his long career as premier matte artist.  The bottom left pic is in the matte room on THE BLACK HOLE while the bottom right photo is a mystery to me, as it is to Peter's son Harrison.  It's stamped with the Disney logo so must be one of their shows like IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS or 20'000 LEAGUES?  Though it could even be from CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER, though not a Disney film, the foreground glass painted sky over a model tank set up is most interesting.

The opening shot is this wonderful Ellenshaw matte painting - with old sailing ships being a specialty of Peter's for a time with his gallery art.

Along with Cliff and George, two American effects guys were on board, so to speak.  Veteran mechanical effects expert Harry Barndollar had a very long career in trick work, having started off as an artist rendering title paintings for silents as far back as 1918.  Harry later found gainful employment in physical effects at Warner Bros and worked on miniatures at Paramount for WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE among others.  CAPT. HORNBLOWER was Harry's final film.  Also on effects was Arthur Rhoades who, among other films, built the life sized mechanical dinosaur heads for the Irwin Allen extravaganza ANIMAL WORLD.

Although the superb sea-going sequences all have the appearance of being shot in actual ocean environs, they were all, most surprisingly, filmed in a large specially constructed tank at Denham Studios outside of London

Peter Ellenshaw has painted the set here from just above the doors on upward.

A fine example of miniaturisation and mechanics here, with not only a splendid model sail ship in tow, but model rowboats complete with automated puppets working the oars.  Top notch.

More splendid Ellenshaw matte art here - all highly atmospheric.  A later scene uses the same basic painting, though with an altered sky and different ship on the horizon (see below...)

Same painting, re-jigged for two different scenes.

I'm fairly sure this is a miniature with a skillfully matted in lower area with actor clambering on board under the cover of darkness.

A follow up shot from same sequence, which while it might be a mock up ship on the stage, I tend to think some matting has been executed here due to ever so slight depth of field focus issues.

Reverse view from same scene, which once again I feel is a very well combined split screen of either a miniature or matte art?  Very impressive, as are all of HORNBLOWER'S trick shots.

Now here folks is one very bold visual effects shot courtesy of Peter Ellenshaw.  A multi-element trick shot comprising actual sea with rowboat, an extensive matte painting of the ship and other details, and a very cleverly combined live action element inserted into Peter's painting comprising of the deck of the ship and the actors - shot on a sound stage.  All in all, some courage here in producing this shot.  I may be wrong, but I vaguely recall maybe Alan Hume - the esteemed future D.O.P - may have been Peter's matte cameraman here (or Les Ostinelli)?

Before and after.

Two part comp, with Denham tank foreground, and what I'm sure is Ellenshaw's painted distant ship and sky matted in.

Presumably miniature just before the shootin' starts.

Tank and glass painting again.

In author John Brosnan's utterly indispensable book, Movie Magic (an absolute must!), Cliff Richardson described in detail working on the model effects for this film.  "When my contract with Alexander Korda expired, I went free-lance.  At the time I was about the only free-lance fx man in the business.  The first film I worked on was CAPT. HORATIO HORNBLOWER RN in 1951 for Warner Bros.  We spent eight months on that.  It was made at three different studios - at Teddington, when Teddington was the UK Warner Bros. studio; at EMI, which was then Associated British Pictures, and also at Denham Studios.  All the miniatures were shot at Denham.  Actually, the place had just folded, Rank had moved out, and we were the only picture shooting in there".

Cliff continues:  "We spent a couple of months up at what they call 'city square' on the Denham lot shooting all the miniatures in an enormous tank that they built just for the picture.  It was a big tank by any standards - some 300 feet long by 200 feet wide and 6 feet deep.  The man responsible was Peter Duco, who is quite a well known construction manager.  The tank was made of timber, and the floor and interior walls were covered with asphalt".

Some of the best marine model work ever done in my opinion.  All beautifully staged and shot - and out in daylight which makes all the difference.  More recollections from Cliff Richardson:  "We had rostrums built all around the sides of the tank, for the many wind machines that were capable of 12'000 horse power.  But we would start a shot of our miniature fleet sailing majestically down the tank with the sails billowing beautifully from the wind created by these machines and a slight natural breeze would come from the opposite direction and blow the sails inside out, which ruined our shot".

Cannonballs fire from all sides...

Cliff Richardson:  "It was a bad summer that year with a lot of rain, and our shooting was often delayed.  Scenes with model ships, in my opinion, present some of the greatest problems.  The density of the water is not proportionate to the scale of the models so we have to put wetting agents into the tank to reduce surface tension".

On scale, the models were substantial:  "Our model ships in HORNBLOWER were built on quite a large scale - they averaged some thirty feet long and carried forty square feet of sail.  We had three men on each ship.  Their job was to handle the auxiliary engines - we had to have engines to give the models more speed as we were filming with high speed cameras - and also to fire the guns and tack the sails".



Mayhem at sea in the Denham miniatures tank.  In his 1974 interview Richardson elaborated:  "I always remember at that time we hadn't got around to using squibs - these little explosive charges that we now use for blowing holes in cloth and bullet hits.  So, we found the best way to create the effect of a cannonball going through the sails was by using ordinary number 6 detonators.  I had steel plates made to go over the top of the effects guys in the hold, but on some days it was very hot weather and I always used to make a point of shouting out 'Are you chaps covered up?', before I fired these things, and they would say 'Yes', whether they were or not.  I remember that several of them got hit by fragments of copper from the detonators exploding in the sails.  Nothing that serious, but they often had the unit nurse picking pieces of copper out of their backs."


The sprawling 18th Century harbour filled with vessels is a Peter Ellenshaw matte shot with more painted than you'd think.


Richardson spoke of the Denham tank: "The tank was dismantled after the picture.  Most big tanks are built outdoors but there's one big indoor one at Shepperton". Cliff's then very young son John recalled visiting the special effects tank as a kid, with a crew member taking the boy across the miniatures tank in a rowboat to see the sailboat models - which presumably stoked the trick shot blood flowing through his veins.  John recalled the huge and noisy system his dad was using to lend realistic waves to the tank work: "He acquired three Mosquito airplanes from the RAF - they had a few they weren't using any more.  He chopped their wings off and mounted the remaining aircraft bodies on rigid frames which were firmly attached to the ground.  Cliff then employed three RAF mechanics to actually run the engines". 

More superb miniature work.

A great miniature is only as good as it's fx cinematographer.

Combination shots using model set ups and star Gregory Peck added in via travelling matte, presumably as blue screen, though England was very big on yellow backing sodium composites probably around then, with Rank leading the game.

Cannonballs everywhere courtesy of Cliff Richardson's tiny explosive devices and careful timing.


Another trick shot as rendered with oil paints on glass by master matte artist Peter Ellenshaw.  Almost all of this shot has been fabricated in Peter's matte studio.

Carnage, and an insurance nightmare for Lloyds of London.

The closing shot is, once again, a complete fabrication - entirely painted, including the man with the telescope - with just the fluttering flag being an actual live element added in later.


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I'm a huge Western movie fan ever since I was a kid, and it's a joy to discover one that I've never heard of, and, is a good show, and, has ample matte work to boot

A 'Fox' film - before they became 20th Century Fox - WILD GIRL (1932) was highly promoted for it's 'all on location' production at Great Forest Sequoia National Park, though in truth, a considerable amount of grandeur came about through matte and glass shots.

Between takes on WILD GIRL


No FX credit, though most likely supervised by either Fred Sersen or Ralph Hammeras - both formative trick shot exponents at Fox, and each immensley talented in all aspects of movie magic, from matte painting and opticals to model photography.  The pic in middle is an old snapshot taken on the Fox back lot with Sersen standing up front, as his crew of matte painters work on three massive glass shots.  It's quite possible those paintings were made for this film?  The fellow at right is long time Fox matte artist Fitch Fulton - the father of famous effects man John P. Fulton.  Fitch had painted beautiful mattes for an earlier Fox western, the epic 65mm classic THE BIG TRAIL (1930), so it's highly likely he worked on WILD GIRL as well.


Opening shot is a very wide pan, beginning on this view where the entire upper half of the set has been extended as a glass shot.  See below...

The full pan, done as a series of painted glasses, side by side, and disguised with posts and bits of foreground architecture - an old trick that Sersen's department would excel at in countless films.

Again, painted rooftops and redwood forest.

The sort of glass shot one would never notice, and must have been quite tricky, with the painted extension covering more of the set than one might expect.  Note, the raised hand of 'froggie voiced' character actor Eugene Pallette which vanishes through the painting.  See below...

Same sequence, with guy waving his hat through the matte line.

Start frame of another very wide pan across the town, presumably a back lot set, augmented considerably with matte art.  See below...

The wide pan with multiple painted glasses set up on the Fox lot, with posts concealing the glass edge supports.

The rather delectable Joan Bennett - the Wild Girl of the title, in all her pre-code honesty.

Matte or glass shot here.

Glass shot.  Note just how little of that huge tree was actually 'built' as a prop, with the matte line just above the doorway, with the rest on upward all artwork.

I'm of the opinion that most or all of the trick shots were done on set as in camera foreground glass shots as opposed to composite photography mattes due to the constant steadiness of all of the painted shots, with no discernible camera 'jiggle'.

Like the aforementioned THE BIG TRAIL, this film too benefitted enormously from matte work.  Another matte artist who worked in the early Sersen matte department was Russ Lawson, so he may have been on WILD GIRL as well, before eventually joining Universal.

Mattes and general trick work from this era has always interested me, and my personal favourite decade for matte shots and imaginative effects work was the 1940's.  

I think the era had a certain palpable sense of romanticism in the matte work that was quite appropriate with film making approaches of the day.

As much as the studio would have you believe, not all of the spectacular locales were genuine.

My favourite shot in the film, where by close examination it appears that practically all of the shot has been painted, with just a small unpainted part of the glass allowing the horseman to ride by, though it cuts just before he passes through the painted tree.

The hero gets the gal... and what a gal, and they saunter off into the painted sunset.



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The epic French-Spanish co-production, SHEHERAZADE (1963) was a lavish and beautifully made costumer, retelling the age old tales of the Arabian Nights.  The lovely Anna Karina stars, along with a large mixed European cast with names such as Fernando Rey.  Obviously money was spent here, with the production being lensed in 70mm 'SuperPanorama' no less.

The film features a number of matte shots, made as foreground paintings and hanging partial miniatures courtesy of one of the greats in the visual effects domain, the legendary Spanish maestro, Emilio Ruiz del Rio.  Emilio worked on fx and sometimes production design as well for around 400 movies throughout his very long career, with several big Hollywood productions using his skills and literally hundreds of European films and tv shows.  The pictures here are not from SHEHERAZADE, but are intended to illustrate Emilio's techniques on other productions.

Emilio, pictured here on the set, lower middle (on the right, next to art director Enrique Salva) was the undisputed master with high quality matte shots, usually rendered in-camera as suspended foreground paintings - usually done on aluminium or wood, and sometimes on glass.  Here we can  see his extensive painted 'top up' of the Arabian city set, probably built in Spain or at a studio such as Cinecitta in Rome perhaps.  

Emilio's matte as completed and shot all in-camera and on the original negative with the live action.

A following shot, made as a slight pan across.  The nasty looking spiked post at right conceals Ruiz' rigging supporting his matte extension.

Another very spectacular vista courtesy of the immensely talented Emilio Ruiz.  Among the 400 odd films he worked on were DUNE, THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, RED SONYA, SOLOMON AND SHEBA, EL CID, CLEOPATRA and THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD to name but a handful.

Top photo from SHEHERAZADE, while the other two are from CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS and DESERT OF FIRE, both of which illustrate the methods he employed so successfully since the mid 1940 through to, virtually, the end of his life aged in his eighties. 

A different view of the city, though the somewhat obtrusive 'post' in the mid frame - holding up the large and weighty matte panel - was a little unfortunate.

I'm fairly certain that most readers here will never have heard of this film, with it not being well distributed outside of Europe.

Flawlessly rendered ancient city atop a hill as seen from the approach in a key sequence.  The big rock is concealing Emilio's support system.

The same city on the hill as seen in a reverse angle, just after the shit has literally hit the fan, and the desert is littered with the 'metabolically challenged'(think about it... it's clever!)  Note the ever present 'post/obstacle', as well as a fair proportion of dead being matte art too!

As a side note, the film had some quite surprising nudity for a 1963 flick - something quite the norm in Europe but would have seen censors reaching for their scissors elsewhere!

Anna Karina.... need we say more?




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MGM's lush, big budget Technicolor remake of the old silent classic, SCARAMOUCHE (1952) was a hit film of the day, thanks in no small part to it's winning casting.




The film contains a dozen matte shots, made under the steely eye of Metro's matte department boss, the eccentric Warren Newcombe.  This illuminating before and after is a wonderful example of the incredible talent within Newcombe's very secretive matte department.

The quite splendid final shot in all its Technicolor greatness.

Here we have another rare before and after using one of the standing sets on one of the vast MGM back lots which really were a magical kingdom back in the glory days before it was all eventually bulldozed and sold off to greedy real estate tycoons.

The final shot.  I love studying the old MGM mattes just to try to spot the often incredibly well integrated matte line.  It's visible here, but more often than not, Newcombe's chief matte cameraman, Mark Davis, did wonders in blending things together to perfection, usually with soft splits running through the least likely parts of the shot.

One of MGM's matte art specialties were those massive, grand Royal Courts, elegant ballrooms or spectacular opera house interiors.

For decades, Newcombe's department had been very active in rendering their mattes using very fine pastel crayons over goache - sometimes with pen and ink fine work.  This painting seems to be an entirely 'painted' matte using more commonly applied methods, ie brush and pigments.  It's a near full frame matte with just a tiny slot of live action doubled in at the top between two trees.  See below...

Here we have a fantastic image of that original painting, which is in the collection of a fellow matte shot enthusiast and friend of mine, located in Germany.

Close up detail of matted area.  I don't know which medium they used here - oils or water based pigment?  It has an 'oil' look to it from my observations from afar.

More detail in close up...  Thanks so much for these pics TT.  :)

Detail of tower.  Based on the two MGM mattes that I own, they were generally quite small in size, and always painted on thick artists' card, which allowed easy drilling out or cutaway gags for certain shots as required such as glittering theatre marquee neons and the like.  

MGM had the biggest matte department around this time, with a number of artists coming and going over the years.  Key matte artists were Howard Fisher and Henry Hillink, with Lou Litchtenfield, Henry Peter McDermott, Irving Block, Norman Dawn and others.

The action packed climax takes place in a packed grand opera house during a performance, where our swashbuckling hero, Stewart Granger, pits his rapier against bad guy Mel Ferrer.  Several matte paintings are featured showing the setting from various vantage points as they slug it out.  Noteworthy here as about half the frame is painted in, with many carefully selected 'slot gags' - that is, tiny cut away holes within the masses of painted people - where a moving interference device behind the painting is illuminated and this 'distraction' lends a sense of 'movement' to the otherwise static, fake audience.  An old gag but one in constant use right through to the very end of the so-called 'traditional era' of matting.

Live action bottom stalls and first row balcony, with all above being painted in, including the columns, curtains and two other balconies of audience.

More of the same sequence.



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Universal Studios picked up several of these Japanese monster shows in the sixties and distributed dubbed versions of them with new American footage spliced in.  I was a firm fanatic for Forry Ackerman's great Famous Monsters of Filmland, and took great delight in the generous pictorial coverage of each and every Nippon Monster flick.  In fact, I still possess a horde of ancient scrapbooks filled with pics cut out of FM and other similar mags from the early 1970's.

KING KONG VS GODZILLA (1963) was one of an endless parade of Japanese-guy-in-a-monster-suit- stomping-on-Tokyo epics that quickly became rather tiresome.

Eiji Tsuburaya was the extremely busy Japanese film industry's go-to guy for anything'special' or 'trick shot' related.  The local industry there, as well as the huge film going public, had enormous admiration for Eiji, who attained something almost of a cult status.

A rather nice matte painted shot here.  Many of the Japanese sci-fi films had some good matte work, though never credited.  Akira Watanabe was usually the visual effects art director on these, so may have had a hand in the matte painting work?

The story basically copies the old classic KING KONG, right down to the Skull Island wall and a bunch of misguided natives.

Matte painted environs may have influenced Peter Jackson here in NZ for his version of Skull Island?

Explorers take to the mountain trail in an almost entirely matte painted shot.

I can't recall what the giant squid had to do with the scenario, but here he is with blue screened in natives all getting wayyyyy too close.

Didn't I tell you to stand well back from this tentacled bastard.

Actually quite effective, done with wire work and puppets.

Sunset painted in.

Train journey disruption on a monster scale!  There will be a temporary disruption to our scheduled service.  Sidenote-  I was in London once, on the fabulous underground, and not far ahead apparently, a person was actually run over by a train!   The punchline was, that in true understated British fashion, an announcement came over the intercom along the lines of "Piccadilly line disruption as a passenger had taken ill".  No, I'm not making this up!


Selected action set pieces and behind the scenes miniature stage at Toho.  Although Eiji already had been involved in cinematography in silent Japanese cinema, and had a thirst for experimentation with things like multiple exposures and basic trick effects, it was a chance viewing in Kyoto of the classic KING KONG in 1933 that firmly left an indelible impression on the young film maker, as it did with so many others in the international movie industry - and rightly so.

KONGZILLA - the battle of the Century... or at least till Toho make yet another carbon copy.  Note the behind the scenes photo showing the full miniature stage in detail.

I always found the monster stuff in these things a tad boring, but always enjoyed the miniature work, with Tsuburaya's model makers being extremely skilled (and highly productive), constantly churning out brand new props, buildings, vehicles, towns and landmarks.

One big drawback was shooting these things under artificial light as opposed to natural light, and worst of all, too much zoom lens usage which immediately killed the shot once the depth of field was buggered.

The one I remember seeing often as a kid was KING KONG ESCAPES, which always seemed to be showing on one double feature or another at Saturday matinees here in Auckland.  Must have seen that one a dozen times, once with ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS as I recall.

In an interview, Eiji recalled: "When I started to work at Toho, it was 1939.  At the time I was the only person in the special techniques department.  Not only that, but tricks were considered to be top secret, so I couldn't get any help with special effects.  There was no one to depend on but myself.  The traditional people in the studio were indifferent toward me. I had to get into the studio secretly".

The Japanese made a bunch of rather good science fiction yarns, with things like LATITUDE ZERO being especially good and crying out for a decent BluRay edition.


A selection of behind the scenes snapshots of Toho's special effects team at work on various productions in the 1960's.

Most of this view is a matte painted shot.

"It wasn't the Mitsubishi Zero's that got him.  It was Geisha who killed the beast"

Very nice and atmospheric painted Mt Fuji.  I went there in 2015.  Great country, Japan.

Model coastal town in calmer times.  One of my favourite Japanese effects films was the out-of-this-world fx heavy epic BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE (1959), which contained so many effects sequences and some bold and wild action set pieces.

Fine detail work, though I have a bad feeling about those two duelling giant beasts up on the hilltop!

Don't say I didn't warn you...

Down-scaling water is one of the most problematic aspects to miniature shoots.

The massive torrent washes down the hillside...

The village is swallowed up, and once again the insurance pay out for all the wreckage is just enough to meet the budget of the next Japanese 'stomping monster movie'.


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I've covered a number of these Maria Montez-Jon Hall 'sarong' adventures in other blogs, with this one, WHITE SAVAGE (1943) being pretty much production line run-of-the-mill fare.

Strictly minor stuff - manly shark hunter falls for exotic South Sea island princess, with Indian boy sidekick along to balance things out.

The stunning Maria Montez made a career at Universal playing the same roles over and over, until her early and sudden death put a halt to her popularity.  She was Uni's answer to the far more talented and drop dead sexy Dorothy Lamour over at Paramount, who had far wider range over and beyond the dozen or so 'jungle princess'she starred in.


The uncredited special effects were created by one of the industry greats - John P. Fulton.  John was a three time Oscar winner for best visual effects, and was responsible for a number of the best effects sequences of all time such as the tiny people in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, the landmark work in THE INVISIBLE MAN, the parting of the Red Sea in DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the massive effects show THE NAKED JUNGLE and one of my all time faves, the remarkable transformation in SON OF DRACULA where someone turns to wisps of smoke and permeates the bars of a jail cell (much better than it sounds)!!

The film has a handful of matte shots by Russell Lawson and an earthquake sequence at the climax.  This shot is of course extensively painted, with the live action probably shot at the studio lake at Universal.

More Lawson matte work.  I've discussed Russ before, but as a refresher, after a short stint at Columbia and Fox, he was Universal's matte painter for several decades, from the 1930's through to around 1962 or so where Al Whitlock took over the department.

The third of the three Lawson matte shots.  Ross Hoffman would have photographed and composited these, as Universal's very long serving fx cinematographer from around 1930 and all the way through to the mid 70's Whitlock era.

For the earth shaking climax, John Fulton supervised the miniature destruction and did a fine job at that.  John had a bad reputation unfortunately for being extremely difficult to work with (The late Bill Taylor once told me that he'd never met anyone who had a good word to say for Fulton, which he found so sad as the guy was a huge talent).  

Fulton was, however, multi-talented.  He was skilled with miniatures, optical composite cinematography and pyrotechnics.  

Shooting models outside in actual daylight was always a good decision, and John did just that, with the results paying dividends when cut into the finished picture.

Charlie Baker was Fulton's miniatures expert, and he also held a long career in the field at Universal, again, right through to the late 1970's.  Apparently, Charlie was one of the few personnel who got along with Fulton without confrontation.

The miniature must have been quite a decent scale, as the demolition looked great.

Fred Knoth was a key veteran mechanical effects man at Universal for a long time as well, so may have had a hand in this. Fred had been with Hal Roach Studios for years, working on things like ONE MILLION B.C and many Laurel and Hardy pictures before coming to Universal in 1942 where he remained for decades, working big shows like LAND UNKNOWN and John Wayne's very spectacular oil well firefighter actioner THE HELLFIGHTERS.

John Fulton left Universal for Samuel Goldwyn Pictures around 1944, with John's long time optical fx assistant David Stanley Horsley assuming control.  Fulton only stayed on a couple of years with Goldwyn then took up a headship over at Paramount.  John died quite suddenly in the mid 1960's while beginning miniature effects design for THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN - a dream project os his.


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***This post, and all 179 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/



Well, that's about it for another post...
I hope it was both enjoyable, informative and even a tad irreverent at times.  Any comments and feedback is always greatly appreciated.




MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Two

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Hi Guys and Gals.... it's matte magic time once again, with a healthy round up of films and genres, from a wide spectrum indeed.  I've got 'B' grade monsters, big budget Technicolor fantasy, gritty British WWII action, a thirties comic classic, a VistaVision epic, a wonderful Disney true story, and to top it off, a biopic of the late Tina Turner!  Plus, a long forgotten and previously unidentified matte shot by Albert Whitlock when he was in England in the 1940's is also in today's line up!  And as if that weren't enough, I've got a cavalcade of rarely seen Matte World paintings that are currently being auctioned off.  You can't accuse Pete of shirking his vfx responsibilities!  There is nothing worse than an online search that leads you to some disappointing venue where you get not much more than a paragraph of text and 3 pictures (if you're lucky).  Not so here.  It's an 'all or nothing' kind of a gig for Pete.

There's something here for everyone (well almost everyone)... though, please make the effort to view on a proper sized monitor/screen/laptop.  If I find anyone viewing these blogs on a damned cellular phone toy thing, I will find you, and, mark my words, 'go full Liam Neeson on your sorry arses'!  ;)

***Oh, and just before we begin the thrilling ride, an important disclaimer:  None of the following (nor preceding blog posts for that matter) have been created through 'AI' - Artificial Intelligence (some might dispute the term "intelligence" in any respect with my blogs, though I digress...), nor through that godammed CHAT-GPT, whatever the hell that is!   It's all the real deal... a labour of love, from Pete.  All 'old fashioned, traditional, hand crafted blogging'... just like those old matte shots I love so much.  'AI'.... well fuck 'em I say!

Enjoy

NZ Pete

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YOU TUBE SERIES ON THE WORK OF AL WHITLOCK AND SYD DUTTON

Firstly, I must do my duty and make mention (and firm recommendation) of my pal Thomas Higginson's ongoing YouTube series of excellent documentaries on Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton.  Absolutely essential viewing for all who are fascinated by traditional matte and trick shot wizardry.  A number of doco's are online thus far, with many more in various stages of completion.  I was most honoured to be invited to participate in a few of these, with SHIP OF FOOLS and the James Bond film DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER being two I've provided my '2 cents worth' already online.  Click here for the nine videos available to date, though likely to be more by the time you read this. 

Incidentally, as thorough and magnificent a job as Tom did in assembling all of the DIAMONDS material, he seriously slipped up in omitting one of the key 'visual effects' from the show altogether(!)  Said incredible 'visual effect' may be found at the end of this blog post.  I've had harsh words with Tom over this sorry omission and he assures me this slip up will never happen again.  ;)

A clip that never made the final cut for the DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) doco demonstrates the state of the original 35mm Whitlock showreels, that even though the material was stored in a temperature controlled environment, suffered significant colour loss, with a magenta bias having to be painstakingly colour corrected by Thomas.

Close up view of the fictional Whyte House skyscraper in Las Vegas, was a full matte painting by Whitlock, augmented by subtle outdoor elevator ascending to Penthouse, done as either stop motion miniature element or as an animated painted cel overlay, which was Albert's traditional approach.

A montage of DIAMONDS frames from the devastatingly complex Chinese nuclear missile battery shot, with a massive amount of time and energy put into, not just the completed scene, but Tom's own reconstruction of the multitude of elements required for this white cel rotoscope travelling matte.

A terrific before and after from the most recent featurette on Tom's YouTube site.  This is from the George Kennedy, Jan Michael Vincent tele-movie DELIVER US FROM EVIL (1973)

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A LONG FORGOTTEN ALBERT WHITLOCK MATTE SHOT

Some years ago, my Madrid based vfx friend, Domingo, sent me a mystery matte before and after that had apparently been posted online (see below) somewhere by Al's grandson.  The mystery film as it turns out is an ancient British 'Boer era gemstone western' set in 19th Century South Africa(!), titled DIAMOND CITY, made in 1949.  Oh, and Whitlock also painted that Gainsborough logo as well.

Rare Whitlock before and after matte from DIAMOND CITY (1949).

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RARE ORIGINAL MATTE PAINTING AUCTION

Every now and then an auction house comes forth with a selection of original painted mattes, made available for the very first time to collectors and interested parties.  Prop Store currently has a number of never before seen mattes for auction, with almost all appearing to be from Craig Barron's company Matte World.  The auction pages can be found here.  Below are several of the most intriguing examples.

While a fixture at Matte World, in Northern California, the incredibly talented Michael Pangrazio rendered many superb mattes for film, tv and commercials.  Here is a before and after of Mike's amazing burnt out homestead from FAR AND AWAY (1993).

Close up detail.

Now here's a ripper.... Brian Flora's sublime matte from the Francis Ford Coppola version of DRACULA (1992)
DRACULA final comp.

Also from DRACULA was this beautiful Bill Mather matte.

Final comp of Bill Mather's painting.

Michael Pangrazio painted this chilly vista for a film titled PRANCER (1989)

Another Pangrazio matte from a show titled STEAL THE SKY (1988), possibly a tv movie, though I've never heard of it?

An atmospheric matte from the erotic-thriller MALICE (1993), probably by Mike as well.

The comic book hero actioner THE SHADOW (1994) had a substantial matte and effects load, with the chores being split between Matte World and Illusion Arts.  This is a Matte World shot, and though the Prop Store page says it's a Pangrazio matte, I seem to recall in correspondence with fellow MW artist Christopher Evans, that it was his matte.  Great flick BTW.

Detail.  Note the unpainted strip which was intended to facilitate rear projected street traffic action.  Note:  A second, very spectacular and extensive wide overview of the Empire State viewing deck and city surrounds - also painted by Chris Evans - was sadly reduced to tiny shards of broken glass in a handling accident at Matte World.  The Horror.............  :(

Now, this one's definitely interesting.  It was painted on the rear of the SHADOW matte - hence the scraped away strip for RP - though the sheer vandalism here is unforgivable!  Does a new sheet of glass really cost so much to break the sundries budget for Matte World?  The auction site say's it's from THE SHADOW, though it doesn't resemble any scene that I can recall?

Also from Matte World was this matte for BATMAN RETURNS (1992).  Bill Mather was artist.

BATMAN RETURNS finished shot.


No, not from Matte World this time, but from Matt Yuricich!  A wonderful canyon with busted down bridge as seen in the excrutiatingly awful teen sci-fi mess, SOLARBABIES (1986).

Close up detail...
Matthew Yuricich with brush in hand...

Another shot from the mind numbingly dire SOLARBABIES, though this one I strongly suspect was the work of Michele Moen who was Matthew's long time friend and assistant matte painter.  The technique doesn't suggest Yuricich's style.

This one's from the still popular (original) GHOSTBUSTERS (1984).  The final shot was a multi-part effect, with miniature street, guy in Stay-Puft suit, painted tenement buildings, foreground live action and nice cel animated elements.  The final close up of the Marshmallow face may have been a puppet.  Matthew Yuricich was chief matte artist, with Michele Moen and Deno Ganakes assisting.




***This post, and all 180 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

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Long before Disney got entwined with often silly kiddie fare, the studio produced some solid, mature dramatic pictures.  THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE (1956) was one such film.  

The grand CinemaScope true story of Civil War rivalries and subterfuge, was a beautifully photographed, well written and directed affair, with often edge of the seat moments of action. Beautiful etchings too for the nice title sequence.

Peter Ellenshaw was matte artist, with a screen credited Albert Whitlock as assistant matte painter.

Various images of Peter at work, with the top right image of Peter in his Disney office whereby a key matte from the opening scene in GREAT LOCO is seen on wall behind him.

The spectacular opening shot was a full Ellenshaw painting of mid 19th Century Washington DC.

Now for a sensational examination of Ellenshaw's original 1956 matte - still in pristine condition - as it was presented for auction recently from the Ellenshaw family collection.

Detail 1

Detail 2

Detail 3

Detail 4

Detail 5

Detail 6  Note the construction work on the Capitol dome.

Detail 7.   According to Peter's memoir, the whole painting took about 5 days to complete.

I know that most - if not all - of the mattes in GREAT LOCO CHASE were made as in-camera foreground paintings on location, with some on glass and others on hardboard, or Masonite as the Yanks call it.  All of the shots are rock steady making me wonder if this was the case, with only the final matte being an obvious dupe, and completed in post production.

I asked Peter's son Harrison, and he was pretty certain the shots were all done as original in-camera shots on location with the large painted mattes mounted in front of the camera.  Instant composite.

Probably a full painting, as I don't recall any live action here.

This is a great shot that nobody ever noticed.  The true 'invisible trick shot'.  As explained and illustrated below by the film's director, Peter supplied an entirely painted second story to the partial set.  But who'd have ever known?

Director Francis Lyon with Walt.  Note the semi-built facade beyond, awaiting Peter's matte art.

Some amazing frames taken from a very rare 1956 newsreel - probably made for the Disney tv series - where we can see Peter arrive at the location in a very, very tiny car, (I half expected 15 clowns to hop out!) with matte art roped to the roof(!)  Subsequent footage shows Peter lining up the painting with the set, with assistant - possibly Whitlock - making final touches to blend the matte art with the set.  I sent the video clips of this time capsule to Peter's son Harrison and asked him some questions about it.  Harrison was of the opinion that his Dad likely didn't have a stand alone matte studio of sorts on the Tennessee location, but more likely just had his stack of Masonite panels, glasses, brushes, oil paints and turpentine on or in the grip truck nearby.  I mentioned to Harrison how astounded I was at the apparent flimsiness and rough handling of the painted matte panel as Peter hauls it off the car, with it flexing and flopping all over the place(!)  Harrison said that the oil painted artwork would have been quite flexible at that stage, and only dangerous and likely to cracking and peeling when aged and brittle.  Oh, and he also mentioned that the helper seen working alongside Peter was most likely not Albert, and more likely just a grip, as Peter didn't take his assistants onto shooting locations as a rule.  I do wonder though, as heavily unionised as is/was the US film industry, if a mere grip would be permitted to so much as pick up a paint brush, let alone apply pigment to a matte painting, without there being a huge hull-a-balloo and an all out strike!  I've heard of union walk-outs on a stage when a cameraman moved a lamp a couple of feet to the side!!

Another great in-camera composite, made right there on location, where Peter has extended a small physical setting of a few tents, to a vast Confederate battalion and surrounding Southern countryside.


Another flawless foreground glass shot (see below).  Not just the sprawling township had been painted in, but also the near foreground sheds and partial rail track on the grass.  Neat.

The specially constructed and secured raised platform with matte crew.  A deep set up as they were shooting CinemaScope, with huge anamorphic lens and limited focal depth and inherent optical distortion at the edges, which were a limitation of the early Scope process, with the painted matte of the distant town etc positioned at an appropriate distance to ensure focus on both artwork and actual scenic setting. I recall reading in Peter's memoir that a train came along during the night when nobody was around, and knocked the huge trestle tower down!  Presumably the glass painting wasn't yet installed? 

As mentioned, Al Whitlock painted on this - and many other Disney shows.  In later years Albert would regale Bill Taylor as to how much he learned from watching Peter paint.  Al said:  "Peter never taught me.  He just allowed me to observe him".  Albert was able to pick up many of the short cuts such as the 'big brush' to sell a good matte from Ellenshaw, and said his own style loosened up considerably as a result then, whereas his early days in England Al's style, by his own confession, was "so tight, I'd be tied up in knots all of the time".

Ellenshaw's wonderful Civil War era trestle railway matte painting.

On location snapshots of Peter lining up his rough block in of the trestle train bridge for the above matte, and all in the sweltering summer Southern heat.

One of the hazards when working with early CinemaScope, as mentioned, was a depth of field issue.  That is apparent here as the foreground painted town and second floor hotel are slightly out of focus, probably due to a too wide an f-stop and not enough light.

A virtually full matte painted setting of the Confederate Prison.  Just a part of the courtyard was actual, with all else being artwork.  I think the painting still exists in the Disney archives, as I've seen pics of it on the wall of the Buena Vista Visual Effects matte room from the mid 1990's.  Here's hoping!

The final matte, and the only one that looks as if it were a post-production composite, likely made as a rear projection comp, with a broad 90% entire painted scene, and a group of soldiers matted into a small 'pocket' mid frame.  It has a very 'second generation' look about it, as opposed to the other work in the show.  Still, a really good film from Disney, and like 20'000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, made two years prior, represent the Mouse Factory at it's best in my humble opinion.  (Are my 'opinions' ever reallllly 'humble'?  Nahhh, probably not, but whatcha gonna do?)

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I learned years ago as a kid attending endless Saturday & Sunday double bills, to always be wary of over zealous one-sheet artwork.... It still never stopped me from buying my ticket and watching the flick though!  Damned movie advertising departments!

The unwieldy tongue-twisting original title got shortened to VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT (1957).  One of Roger Corman's earliest features, and as far as $10 flicks go, wasn't too bad, and the production value on screen somewhat exceeded expectations.


Familiar names in the budget conscious world of 'B' pictures, Rabin, Block & DeWitt were constantly called to furnish cut price mattes, opticals, process shots, animation, models, titles and more for a hundred pictures from the late 1940's and well into the early 1980's.  Jack Rabin (top left) was an old hand in opticals, camera fx and matte painting, having worked with legends like Jack Cosgrove at Selznick, and other periods at Warners and 20th Century Fox under Fred Sersen.  Irving Block (top right and bottom right) was a veteran matte artist from MGM and also Fox, where he met Rabin and teamed up to open their own independent effects house with title artist Louis DeWitt (not pictured).


VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT may have been a rush job, as most Corman pictures of the day were, but it did make good use of photographic effects on a slim budget.

The band of spear wielding bikini clad Bronze Age babes are inspired to journey to the ends of the earth when witnessing this apparition in the sky, where the clouds form a sort of Viking galleon.  Nice full matte art.

The journey commences, with some surprisingly good rear projection supplementing their sound stage tethered vessel.  Note the behind the scenes pic of process set up and stage hands armed with hoses.

The demon beast of the North Sea makes his appearance.  The puppet was dressed around the arm of fx artist Irving Block and filmed in a small tank.

Probably would have looked cool at the Drive In when canoodling in your Chevy convertible with your gum chew'n bobby-soxer back in '57

Tragedy strikes, as does lightning, which sets their miniature galleon alight.  Too late to remember the 'maritime safety drill' girls!

Irving Block's full matte painting of the Viking village and castle.  Nice shot.

Following up, the gals and some burly 'surfer dude' looking Vikings, approach the castle.  A substantial matte painting here, with not only the castle but the foreground trees, wall and archway all painted in.  The actors' heads all get 'chopped' beneath the low hanging painted foliage though.


The actual paintings by Block are surprisingly crisp and sharp, while in some cases like this, the live action plate is washed out and soft, suggesting possibly rear projected composite? 

Another interior set extension, with frantic 'Go-Go dancer' from days long gone.

Hand puppet manipulated by matte artist - and general jack of all trades - Irving Block.

A beautifully atmospheric matte by Irving, who, as an aside, the year before wrote the original screenplay for the big budget MGM sci-fi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET.


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Time now for an expensive, lavish, Technicolor, major studio spectacle... And I do mean spectacle!  THE BLUE BIRD (1940) received a completely deserved nomination for Best Special Effects that year, and to me, it was the strongest contender.  More about 'Oscar injustices' later...

Arguably the biggest box-office sensation of the thirties, and on into the early forties - Shirley Temple was 20th Century Fox's answer to printing their own money.  A phenomenal draw card.  THE BLUE BIRD (1940) was a sweet natured, vividly designed and lushly photographed family fantasy.  This was the second of at least 3 versions of the film, with the first being a silent back in 1918, and the latter being in 1976.

I'm assuming the film must have been a very expensive affair, what with the sets and the very extensive special visual effects requirements, a significant portion of the film later on is literally wall to wall effects shots, without let up!


Yes, I know I stated it was a lush, saturated Technicolor affair, but bear with me, THE BLUE BIRD does commence in black & white - as did a similar film THE WIZARD OF OZ in Sepia-tone - but the story switches into all of the colours of the rainbow once the magic kicks in. This opening sequence is a gem, and one that passes by completely unnoticed as a trick shot.  The Austrian alpine town was a substantially large matte painting mounted on set as a foreground glass shot so as to permit a natural, fluid camera move as the characters walk through the woods.  Naturally, being wartime in Europe in 1940, no scenes could be shot on location, nor would it be expedient to ship Miss Temple all the way across the pond for just a couple of establishing shots.  See below for more...

  

The impressive glass shot with camera move (shown twice in the film, both moving to, and away from the distant village).  Fox were absolutely 100% gung ho about carrying out trick shots using this method, with the legendary master Fred Sersen being a firm believer in the gag, as engineered on countless Fox films over the decades, and all with absolutely convincing, first generation quality. The foreground trees strategically conceal the rigging for what must have been a very large painting.  Love this stuff!

Matte shot made on the Fox back lot for THE BLUE BIRD (1940)

The flick kicks into full steam ahead Technicolor once the kids are given the mission to seek out the 'Blue Bird of Happiness'.  A nice optical transition here, no doubt overseen by Fox's long time optical department head, James B. Gordon.

The kids on their journey into a magical otherworld, filled with matte art, optical combinations, miniatures and absolutely eye-popping devastation that must have given kids nightmares back in the day!

As I've written extensively in my blogs, Fox had a huge photographic effects department, and certainly one of, if not the best in Hollywood.  Fred Sersen ran a very tight ship, and didn't suffer fools gladly.  Sersen himself was primarily a matte painter, beginning in the 1920's, and ventured into effects cinematography.  Fred was nominated for the Best SFX Oscar some 8 times and won twice.

Sersen's long time right hand man and assistant, Ray Kellogg, was key matte painter on BLUE BIRD, with Ray being instrumental in a great many fine effects films produced under the Fox banner for some years, eventually becoming head of the effects department in the early 50's.

Painted in ornate ceilings were very much a part of the golden era of matte work.  A cost saver and a means of concealing the bothersome rigging and lighting fixtures above the main set.



The kids, the kindly old guy and the evil Gale Sondergaard (you just know she's gonna be trouble as soon as you see her name in the credits!) enter the forest where all hell breaks loose. Many matte painters worked at Fox at the time this was made.  Names such as Ralph Hammeras, Clyde Scott, Joseph Serbaroli, Hector Serbaroli, Emil Kosa snr & jnr, Gilbert Riswold, Fitch Fulton, Menrad von Muldorfer, Chris von Schneidau, Ray Kellogg, Barbara Webster, Charles W. Hulett and Max DeVega.

Delightfully fanciful matte painted top half of set.

The tranquil forest is deceiving.  A mega storm rolls in and much trouble comes with it.  An excellent vfx shot here, with miniature trees and a brilliantly orchestrated raging storm forming above, with lightning and all.  Don't know how Fred did this shot?  I'd guess a separate 'storm plate' with perhaps time lapse clouds, lightning animation optically added, and this all rear projected behind a miniature forest mounted horizontally, with the process 'flash' catching naturally upon the model tree props?

And so begins one of the most superbly executed and complex photographic effects set pieces I've ever seen, and one that lasts for several minutes of non-stop screen action.  The static frame captures don't even come near to illustrating the dynamic, state of the art vfx sequence.  Seriously!  

The violent thunderstorm and lightning strikes and causes a catastrophic firestorm that devastates the entire forest.  One of the finest effects sequences ever committed to celluloid, with each and every shot being a manufactured Sersen department effect.  Miniatures, mechanical fx, pyrotechnics, mattes, roto animation, optical combinations, process, and often all of these merged in single shots! The shot above has the group running for their lives as lightning brings down a massive tree just as they pass under it via perfect frame by roto work.  One of numerous jaw droppingly complex shots that saw the film nominated for the FX Oscar.  All carried out with large miniature forest set, with actors added in through travelling mattes... and in 1940 Technicolor!  

More of same, with vast miniature set with falling trees crashing down just short of crushing our young cast through precise rotoscope matting.  

When viewed in motion, the work is sublime, and one can but wonder of the time spent on the lengthy sequence (much more still to come...)

Travelling matte comp at left, with highly effective RP comp at right.  Sol Halperin was Fox's process specialist, and he had a life long association with the studio.  

The only film I've ever seen with comparable model trees uprooting and falling down was the outstanding Academy Award winning work of Arnold Gillespie and Donald Jahraus for GREEN DOLPHIN STREET (1947), though that wonderful work was in black and white.

Superb miniature cinematography, with the good depth of field suggesting a very sizable miniature set, probably occupying a substantial piece of back lot acreage, much as Sersen did for epic effects films like THE RAINS CAME and IN OLD CHICAGO - both astonishingly fine fx films.

The scale of the pyro and actual fire physical effects suggest very, very large model trees.  I'd hazard a guess at these being some 8 to 10 feet in height(?)

Again, the realistic scale of flame enveloping the falling tree is so impressive.

Effects cinematographers at Fox included Artilio 'Til' Gabbatini, Al Irving, Lenwood Ballard (L.B) Abbott, Ralph Hammeras, Edwin Hammeras, Harry Dawe, James B. Gordon & Paul Mohn. 

Outstanding composite optical photography.  I don't know what method was used to shoot and isolate the actors and create silhouette mattes, especially given this was early 3-Strip Technicolor?  The optical line ups and associated roto enhancements, where required, are still mind blowing.  Did I mention that this was all nineteen forty and 3-strip Technicolor?

BLUE BIRD was one of some, amazingly, 14(yes, fourteen no less) films up for the Best Visual Effects Oscar in 1940(!!!)  The line up was an odd mixed bag of titles and studios:  BOOM TOWN (MGM); THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE (Universal); DR CYCLOPS (Paramount);  FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (United Artists); INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS (Universal);  THE LONG VOYAGE HOME (United Artists);  ONE MILLION BC (Hal Roach);  REBECCA (Selznick);  THE SEA HAWK (Warner);  SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (RKO);  TYPHOON (Paramount);  WOMEN IN WAR (Republic) and THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (Korda) which won the Oscar.  Now, I've seen 12 of those films, and as good as THIEF OF BAGDAD was, I don't feel it should have taken that Oscar.  The travelling matte work and miniatures in BLUE BIRD were exceptional in my book, and should have been rewarded.  Among the others here, BOOM TOWN would have been a runner up in my book - outstanding trick work by Arnold Gillespie, Warren Newcombe and Irving G. Ries.

Absolutely terrific rear projection work supervised by Sol Halperin.  No mean feat as RP work in Technicolor was usually dreadful, with ghastly washed out process plates, unstable images and lacklustre colour.  Very 'slow' 35mm film certainly hindered things, but the work here in BLUE BIRD stands head and shoulders above the rest... and it was 1940!  I don't know if Halperin had any sort of double or triple head projection gear as other studios did, but I assume so due to the richness of the plates as combined with the action.

Spoiler alert:  The scheming and snarling Gale Sondergaard gets too close to the conflagration.  Superb miniatures, physical effects, camerawork and optical compositing.  Oscar worthy alone.

I'd so love to see a breakdown and behind the scenes pics from this film.  If you've got any, you know who to contact  :)

Again, excellent process work, and mind bogglingly bloody good miniature/optical combination work.  It don't get much better than this folks.... and at risk of repeating myself, this was nineteen-fucken-forty, not 1980, and bulky, cumbersome old 3-strip Technicolor to boot!

I did lighten up some of these shots a little, as the sequence is at night and the copy I have is quite dark, hence some matte lines here which aren't visible in the actual film as it runs.

Who ever said that lightning never strikes twice?


The 'kids in peril' aspect must surely have frightened young audiences of the day.

Made all the more devastating with the sound editing by Edmund Hansen and Roger Heman, who, as was the Academy nomination selection system for decades, the sound supervisor or sound fx re-recording guy, were always automatically co-nominated with the visual effects guy.  It always seemed so strange an arrangement.

Other celebrated effects films from 20th Century Fox that also utilised extensive 'insertion' of live actors within miniature settings via travelling mattes included THE RAINS CAME (which won the Best FX Oscar in 1939); IN OLD CHICAGO; THE BLACK SWAN; SUEZ;  CRASH DIVE; DANTE'S INFERNO; THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR and many more. The Sersen unit really were leaders here.


Oh, brother... what a breathtaking shot!

Words fail me...

Probably the best fx shot in THE BLUE BIRD, with this completely out of control, raging inferno almost enveloping our fresh faced cast. Man, this must have looked a million dollars up on the big screen at the local Odeon back in the day.


Too many frames do I hear you mutter?  I don't like to do these things by halves, and fine visual wizardry absolutely deserves as complete a coverage as possible.  Agreed?


A stray fireball ignites and brings a huge tree down, almost obliterating Miss Temple and pals.

You can practically feel the intense heat from here!


I'm incredibly impressed with how well the physical fire aspects of these shots were handled.  The utmost in carefully designed and executed 'miniaturised pyro' - not an easy element to control.  The scale factor here is as good as anything else I've ever seen.  Really should have taken home that elusive Oscar that year!

The trio escape the conflagration and drift downstream to where the most exquisite of 'good fairies' has a meet & greet.  Mostly painted shot here of course.

After all the big budget commotion that preceded it, the kids finally get to go home and find their Blue Bird of Happiness right on their doorstep.  And they all lived happily ever after... excepting Gale Sondergaard, who was spectacularly burned to a crisp, but she deserved it because she wasn't really very nice at all.

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Oh yes... I absolutely love a good WWII flick, with the British action true account THE SILENT ENEMY (1957) being a solid, gripping, worthwhile event.

A Shepperton Studio production, the film is packed with special effects, mattes and miniature work, all supervised by veteran Wally Veevers.  

An impressive opening shot of a huge fleet in the port of Alexandria, Egypt, was a superb matte painting, likely by Bob Cuff, who described painting on this film.  Bob was one of Wally's foremost artists and worked on scores of notable British films such as HOBSON'S CHOICE, MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, MACKENNA'S GOLD, COLDITZ STORY, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN.  Bob also worked on Kubrick's 2001 with Wally, whereby as a change of pace, he created forced perspective physical moonscape miniature sets.

A serene maritime setting just prior to a major underwater demolition job.  An entirely manufactured visual effects shot utilising Wally's preferred method of matting miniature (or painted) ships into real water, complete with a superb painted sky.  I can't be certain whether these ships were models or painted, but feel after several viewings they are likely matte painted, almost certainly by Bob Cuff who just loved intricate, highly detailed work such as this.

Same harbour setting in a subsequent day shot leading up to the dramatic action piece.  Once again, not entirely sure but feel the ships possibly painted on a separate plane to the painted city and sky beyond.

Frames from the moment of destruction, with excellent cel animation supplemented mine explosion.

Complex shot with an already multi-element composite further extended with additional matted in explosion element.

I think it's a really impressive photographic effect, even considering the bottom of the 'explosion plate' set up is clearly evident here as still frames, but never visible really in the actual sequence.  Probably some soft roto mattes around the water eruption to excellent blend result.

Wally was himself, an experienced vfx cinematographer, with a substantial catalogue of films and trick shots under his belt.  For many years he was matte cameraman to the legendary Walter Percy 'Pop' Day, and they worked together until Day's retirement, at which point Veevers assumed command of the Shepperton effects department around 1952.  Wally had a knack for inventing devices and equipment for effects shots, usually at home in his workshop where all the tools were at hand.  He developed important 'motion repeater' devices for shooting mattes and models on films like THE BLACK ROSE and BATTLE OF BRITAIN and contributed enormously to Stanley Kubrick's 2001. 

The second destroyer blows sky high as well.  Again, a very complex combination visual effect scene here, and to add the icing to the cake, Wally has this second ship sway violently from the blast, coming close to a capsize. Absolutely superb fx design and execution here, and my hat's off to Wally and his unit.

Again, I'm trying to figure whether it's model destroyer action or painted, with the otherwise static glass painting tilted frame by frame to suit what will be an explosion element doubled in later.  Note:  Many years later Al Whitlock also used a similar 'frame by frame tilt' of a large painted glass of the HINDENBURG zepplin, hand cranked one frame at a time, for the shot at the climax where the airship explodes and drops down a few degrees at the mooring mast in New Jersey.  This SILENT ENEMY sequence is incredibly well done, though if my reader(s) are more of the 'DC'/'Marvel Universe' bent, then this will all be so nil interest, sadly.

The Rock of Gibraltar and harbour filled with warships, as viewed from an airplane, was a full matte painting, again likely another of Bob Cuff's mattes.  Bob was a highly respected technician in the UK film industry.  I was sharing some emails with Kent Houston, whose fx company Peerless Optical in London, would always try and go out of his way to try to secure Bob's services for any matte assignments on film, tv and commercials.  Kent told me that Bob was an absolute gentleman, as well as the finest matte artist he'd been involved with.

Matte painters also working alongside Bob at Shepperton at the time included Albert Julion, David Hume and head matte painter, George Samuels, the brother of Ted Samuels, who was chief physical effects man for many years.

Massive maritime miniature mayhem.  Sadly, the high speed photography wasn't anywhere near 'high' enough to scale down the boom sufficiently.  I don't know what high speeds were possible back in the 50's.... probably not much more than 72fps - at most - I'd imagine?

Plane shot down was a split screen job with model plane in tank with painted backing at Shepperton, while the foreground ocean is the real deal, matted in, as Veevers often did, to lend an authentic scale to the sea.

Looks like the exact same 'explosion' element used for the ship scenes earlier on.

Matte art from just above Laurence Harvey's head.

A full matte painted night scene with real ocean plate added in.

More midnight mass destruction in miniature, though as mentioned, the shots didn't quite have a slow-enough motion to bulk it all out.  Wally's effects cameramen, with him for many years, were John Mackie and Peter Harmon.

Split screened in foreground action with an extensive painted view of the ship and background vessels.

Multi-part composite:  Real foreground water, painted ships, and various explosion elements strategically placed to excellent effect.

Gibraltar harbour chock-filled with ships.  The ships are all matte painted, and I assume the Rock itself and sky could be too, but I might be wrong?  Possibly an actual live plate of Gibraltar and port, with just the Navy painted on glass, which on reflection I'd tend to think is the deal here.

Now, this shot is very cool.  Practically a full screen matte painting - even the close foreground with even the jetty and rope, as well as all of the sea traffic!  Just a portion of 'real' ocean matted in for about the mid quarter of the frame.

Large miniature, filmed in the tank this time.

The Merchant Navy suffers yet another blow...

A single frame - with each successive frame being dramatically different - from the cel animated underwater mine explosion.  Looked good in final shot.

Final scene, possibly a mix of foreground miniatures in tank(?) and extensive matte art for rest of it.  The distant ships are all on a single moving glass, as all travel in unison at the same speed.

So, all up, a great movie if you're anything like NZ Pete, who loves these 'special commando/saboteurs on dangerous mission' type scenarios.  I read tons of true life accounts and have many books on WWII.

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Paramount's grand, Technicolor costume extravaganza, OMAR KHAYYAM (1957) was a pretty hokey affair, but then most of the 'desert romance/high adventure' flicks of the day weren't much more.

As with all preceding Paramount logo's, this grand, widescreen rendering for the studio's VistaVision high resolution camera negative process, was painted by old time matte painter Jan Domela.

John P. Fulton was in charge of the photographic effects, which included mostly matte art and a bit of miniature work at the end.  Farciot Edouart always made damned sure he got his name up on screen on every Paramount film, even though in this case it just amounted to one or two process shots.  I was told a funny story about Edouart.  As well as being quite arrogant and self important, he was determined to remain with the studio long into the break up of the special effects department, when Gulf & Western were cutting costs in all departments.  Every time the 'suits' from the head office in NYC came to the Hollywood lot, Farciot would run off and literally hide in little 'boltholes' he knew about, scattered around the lot, in an effort to save his neck from the hatchet-men and their metaphorical axe!  They caught him in the end, and I'll bet he was lead away kicking and screaming(??)  Only in Tintseltown!

Quite a number of painted mattes were used for OMAR KHAYYAM, with the usual duo of fx cinematographer Irmin Roberts (extreme left) and painter Jan Domela providing the shots.

The first matte was this view of the Holy city - a matte that was originally painted by Jan the year before for Alfred Hitchcock's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956).  Jan has altered and repainted small details here for the more 'historic era' context of OMAR KHAYYAM.  See below for the original version for Hitchcock's film.

The original Hitchcock matte art, seen at two different times of day.  Note in lower frame the matting in of Muslim prayer guys on Minarets etc, as well as small cranes and refurbishing construction equipment, all of which was painted over for the OMAR film.

A grand establishing shot, also entirely painted.  Jan Domela would get upset with how some of his carefully chosen hues would show quite skewed when composited.  Jan's daughter told me he would complain about "cameramen and their use of filters that altered his colour schemes".  For evidence, see below...

A rarity indeed, inasmuch as no Paramount Studio mattes are known to still exist, unlike MGM for example, where hundreds are floating around out there.  In Jan's daily studio diary he mentioned pulling the matte from storage and 'filling in' the blacked out area for it to be used as a 'stock matte' for subsequent productions.

Detail 1

Some peeling and chipping of Jan's oil pigments evident.

More detail.  Note Jan's gentle colour scheme when compared with the off-kilter final production comp.

Some fine close up detail.  The matte is in the care of Jan's daughter, and she said "he just came home with it one day".

Evening outside the palace.  Note the oddly off-centre tower at right??

Our swarthy hero, Cornel Wilde, rides toward the impressive mountain top fortress of the strange cult lead by Michael Rennie (so good in many other films such as the brilliant THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, though, I digress...)

Unfinished test from Jan's album.  Looks like the 'craft service' wagon at extreme right?

It was a solidly built, near indestructable fortress ... though it did have one fatal flaw!

A very nice matte here.

The luxury penthouse atop Michael Rennie's 5-star, high rise, sacrificial, religious cult pad.  Groovy baby.

Militia encampment at dusk, as per Domela's matte art.

The sunrise strikes the golden dome.  Matte painting with an added glow effect, maybe as an optical superimposition?

Things turn for the worst, as the attackers discover a clever ploy to destroy the mountain from within.  Possibly a matte painting here with miniature upper part, or an entire miniature set up?


The Fulton department were still likely running on a high, having won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects the year before for DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

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Laurel & Hardy's feature length films were often something of a mixed bag.  Seemingly unrelated 'sketches' or irrelevant set pieces tacked loosely together to form an ill fitting hour and ten minutes of mischief. Still, I'll always watch 'em as I like old time comedians, though the utter brilliance of The Marx Brothers will always be my 'desert island' box-set choice by a country mile. 

Produced by the small Hal Roach Studio, A CHUMP AT OXFORD (1939) had it's fair share of laughs and clever bits by the highly experienced duo.  Roy Seawright was in charge of Hal Roach's photographic effects department as usual.


For a small outfit, the Seawright department at Hal Roach made every cent count, and the on screen results time and again were impressive in many films such as ONE MILLION BC, TOPPER RETURNS and BONNIE SCOTLAND - all effects heavy films.  Pictured here (main photo) is Roy Seawright with matte camera, and Jack Shaw, old time matte painter on scores of films for Roach, Selznick and Warner Bros.  Top right; an overview of the effects workshop in 1939, with Jack Shaw at left with a horizontal matte stand; optical cameraman William Draper in middle and Seawright with optical man Frank W.Young next to optical printer.  Bottom right:  Draper, Young & Seawright with matte set up.

England's illustrious Oxford University, as depicted on the Hal Roach studio lot, with Jack Shaw's matte painting.

A very funny extended set piece has our dumb duo trapped in a hedge maze, courtesy of student bully played by none other than the great Peter Cushing in his first screen role.  Now, if you look carefully (forget it if you are on a fucking cellphone... worthless for these blogs!) you'll spot a superbly integrated flock of birds flying across the painted matte to lend some life to the effect - probably as a bi-pack element.  Now, this was extremely rare in those days, and I can only think of a couple of other examples where animated birds have been introduced into a static matte or matte composite.  KING KONG, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, SHE, and possibly the original LOST WORLD did it too.

A second view of the hedge maze, with practically all of it painted.

The matte painted clock tolls at midnight...

Night view as Cushing and his bullies get into their ghostly get-up for a prank.

Bully gets jettisoned out of window, with Jack Shaw's painted Oxford University matted in.

Final matte, as bully-boy hits the pond.



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Now, to round this all up, as a small tribute to the recently departed songstress, Tina Turner, I have the two mattes from TINA: WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993).  Incidentally, I liked Tina but never cared much for her later career stuff.  Give me Proud Mary, River Deep Mountain High or the exceptional Nutbush City Limits any day of the week. Man... that gal could hold a tune!

The Ken Marschall-Bruce Block vfx operation Matte Effects handled the contract for this film, though due to heavy commitments at the time they brought in another matte artist for this shot.  Embarrassingly, neither Bruce nor Ken could recall who did this painting.  Ken thought it was fellow matte exponent Rick Rische, who did some work for them at times, but I'm fairly sure Rick said it wasn't his shot.  Anyway, a totally invisible matte, made, as was their motto at Matte Effects, on original negative. 

The second matte was one of Ken Marschall's, and as usual, it was absolutely superb.  Here is the original Los Angeles plate photography, the conceptual painting by a member of the film's art department, and the plate masked off for Ken's painting to transform the LA neighbourhood to one of St Louis in the early 1960's.  See below...

Ken's magnificent matte painting, rendered with his usual exacting attention to detail and photo-real finish, much as a fine art illustrator would do, quite the opposite to other notable artists of the traditional era such as Whitlock, Yuricich, Ellenshaw jnr and Dutton, who would use a far more impressionistic approach, with liberal brushwork and broad block ins.

The flawless, finished original negative composite, from Ken's own 35mm sample reels. Incidentally, the work went uncredited as did so much of their matte assignments. 

A closer view, with Ken's hand deliberately shown to demonstrate the very small size of his painting.  Ken told me in my exhaustive 2015 three part career piece how he would usually paint his mattes while sitting down, on art card, laying flat atop his dining room table at home, in acrylics usually, though when needed he would use coloured pencils, vivid marker pens, sometimes airbrush and whatever else needed.  Unlike other matte guys, Ken would use the tiniest brushes available on the market, and could never quite get his head around 'the big brush technique', nor the thought of standing at an easel for hours on end.  Ken and Bruce's little two man effects house was an industry secret.  They never went looking for jobs, most just came as word of mouth, often from Gene Warren jnr.  For 20 plus years they had more than enough work to keep busy, and always wanted to remain 'below the radar'.

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***This post, and all 180 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/


POSTSCRIPT OF NOTE:

As promised... a key special visual effect in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER was the magnificent Lana Wood - younger sister of the late Natalie Wood.  One of my fave Bond films, with screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz giving Lana a wonderful introduction to Sean Connery at the blackjack table.  LANA:"Hi... I'm Plenty"SEAN:  "Why of course you are!"LANA:"No, I'm Plenty...Plenty O'Toole"SEAN: "Named after your father perhaps".   Cracks me up every time I've seen this flick... and that's about 30 times.
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I hope this blog post proved interesting, illuminating, entertaining, irreverent and educational...
Do pass on your feedback or comments as I always welcome that.
Oh, and keep tuned for Tom's YouTube documentaries.

Peter



MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Three

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Hello there folks.  I know it's been an eternity since one of these substantial and value for money(!) blog posts on all great things matte related, but I have had other things to do, such as home renovation work after the destructive cyclone and floods here last January (yes, it took 7 months for the damned insurance to come through... with 50'000 odd claims, most far more serious than ours!)
That aside, as mentioned ad nauseam over the fourteen or so years that these bloggings have been rolling off the cyber presses, I've just got to be in the exact mood to tackle 'em.  It's a matter of waking up and the somewhat rusty brain issuing instructions that 'Today, is indeed the day'.  I could never work to a 'deadline' type scenario.... simply does not compute I'm afraid.

Anyway, here we are, and what a 'bumper issue' as the saying goes that I have for rabid fans of traditional painted mattes, miniatures and old hand made cel animated gags that we all love so much (if you aren't a lover of this stuff, then this blog most definitely ain't for you!)  None of that CGI crap here. It's all old style roll-your-sleeves-up,  hand made, sweat-off-the-brow, gut instinct movie magic, just how they used to do it, and we just loved it.


Among the fabulous retrospectives on show here today - and I defy anyone to lay claim to have seen or even heard of 50% of the titles reviewed, such is my penchant for digging out lost and forgotten gold - I have a lushly extravagant MGM musical comedy;  a long forgotten thirties disaster picture;  a hokey feline spy thriller(!);  a sweaty & lusty Brit potboiler;  a very dark PG rated Disney flick; a taut James Stewart WWII drama;  a run-of-the-mill Errol Flynn CinemaScope costumer;  a now confirmed Albert Whitlock matte from long ago, AND, best of all, a long forgotten, filed away dossier of rare Jan Domela mattes and behind the scenes photos from many Paramount assignments I've never seen till now!!

So, if that isn't enough to wet one's appetite then I don't know what is.

Enjoy... 
Pete

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***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 181 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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A PACKAGE OF LOST & REMARKABLE MATTES BY JAN DOMELA:


I am always grateful when somebody sends me artifacts or images that they know will tickle my proverbial fancy, and never more so than when a literal parcel is delivered to my mailbox (the actual mailbox, not the cyber one) from afar.  The parcel in question was sent to me by the daughter of long, long, long time Paramount matte and glass shot artist Jan Domela, and contained a bounty of extremely rare, never seen before 35mm clips, tests and proof sheets. You can easily imagine the thrill for NZ Pete to have possession of such a treasure trove. **Photo top right shows Jan seated while effects cinematographer Irmin Roberts (at left) and an unidentified grip set up an in-camera glass shot on a location, circa 1930-33.  More of that below...


Jan's daughter Johanna has been extremely helpful and generous over the years with a ton of old stills and transcribed letters of her Dad, and I cannot thank her enough.  I have put together a selection of matte shots as enlarged from these 35mm trims (Nitrate!!! Somewhat a dodgy proposition in itself, though I'm certain that only those of us of a 'certain age' will even know what that amounts to).
Many of the later colour negs and trims from the sixties were in really bad shape, so couldn't be included, though here is a pretty fair representation of this lost collection, with most titles a mystery.

On location, circa 1933 based on the ancient envelope included, with a 3 cent Geo.Washington stamp and 1933 postmark addressed to Domela at Paramount. Love this old stuff so much.  Top left is Jan with matte camera minus mag.  Middle pic is veteran Paramount effects cameraman Irmin Roberts, while at right we see Irmin setting a rough 'gaffer tape' outline upon the glass according to Jan's instructions as he lines up the prospective glass shot.

Irmin Roberts, ASC with matte camera.  Irmin had a mammoth career with Paramount, from around 1927 through to the 1960's, on big shows like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, WAR OF THE WORLDS and one of the best vfx movies ever, George Pal's THE NAKED JUNGLE, with later forays into process cinematography and 2nd Unit on things like SHANE; IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD; TORA, TORA TORA; AIRPORT and his last film, SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION.  Irmin was the inventor of the now popular 'reverse zoom' so-called trombone camera gag for Hitchcock's VERTIGO, and many years later utilised extensively by guys like Spielberg to brilliant effect in JAWS as Roy Scheider witnesses the shark eat the kid on the boogie board!

The glass rigged awaiting for addition of painted elements.

That may be Para's chief of effects, Gordon Jennings at left(?).  Note the temporary 'shack' rigged around the glass to eliminate unwanted reflections etc.

Glass matte art from both sides.  Domela has painted in an array of buildings to conform to the cliff edge as well as a fleet of ships out in the bay.  With these snapshots being taken out of line-up, the ships appear to be 'in the sky', but will all conform nicely for the final shot.

An interesting snapshot at left of Domela by the 'grip truck' - in fact a studio car crammed to the limits with flats, supports, clamps, screws, rostrums, tripods, magazines, camera gear, and presumably the vital paints, brushes and turpentine!  Shot at right shows Jan with his grip/assistant posing in front of finished glass painting.  The actual on screen shot is shown below in a bit...

Possibly Gordon Jennings at left.  Jan at right eyeing up the shot.

This 'old stuff' is absolutely fascinating to this writer/researcher.

Before and after snapshots taken on a stills camera.  See below.......

The finished glass shot as it appeared in an unknown film.  If anyone can i.d it, or any of the others featured below, then you know who to contact!

One of the old 35mm trims was this nice shot from A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1932)

A beautiful matte from a mystery film.

Another from what looks like the same film.

Cityscape painted in for mystery film?


Very nice matted set extension from IF I HAD A MILLION (1932)

Unknown

Romantic Venice, as painted by Jan for, you guessed it, a mystery production, circa 1930-ish.

Yes...the exact same shot, though it was hard getting a decent scan from the 35mm clip so I included 'em both.  **Incidentally, just trying to buy a slide & neg scanner was a bloody nightmare.  Tried (repeatedly) the utterly 101% useless Jeff Bezos' (Bozo more like it)Amazon - which used to be soooo reliable and user friendly (especially the UK store), but no more!  Ordering from that godamned company is almost impossible these days, with the various order purchase steps, payment etc carried out only to get a notice after all that at the very end of the process "We are unable to ship to your country/destination.  Please choose another destination".  Yeah Jeff.... ship it to damned Uganda or Iceland and I'll pick it up from there!  Wankers one and all at the pitiful Amazon!  No I'm not making this up.

With that off my chest, here's the same as a romantic moonlit scene.

Forboding looking penitentiary by Jan Domela from an unknown picture.

A wonderful matte, possibly from the same film?  I also have various night views from the same setting.

Unknown

This one's a beauty... it's from GERONIMO (1939).  The thirties and early forties are my favourite era's for matte shots.  There was just a palpable sense of 'romance' to the art form that I still find utterly irresistible.

Also unknown

Ahhh, this one I do know:  LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932)

Extensive painted additions, above the pedestrian's heads.  Film a mystery though.

I do wonder if this belongs to the film with those prison matte shots?

This one I recognised from Paramount's DANGEROUS TO KNOW (1938)

Not sure about this one?  I did wonder if it might have been from SHANE (1953) ??

Several scope/anamorphic trims were in the package too, with a pair from this film that I failed to identify.  With the colour all but gone I can't make out the supposed 'period' of the setting.  Maybe Renaissance Italy or something?  I know that Fox needed help and hired Jan to paint some mattes for the Charlton Heston epic THE AGONY AND THE ECSTACY in 1965, though I don't recognise this, nor the following shot as being from that film.  May have been left on the cutting room floor?

From the same film.  I made a monochrome copy from the slide so as to better observe the setting, but to no avail sadly.

Also included were a whole bunch of takes, tests and finals from the mammoth George Stevens epic THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965) on which Jan worked on alongside Matthew Yuricich.  Some fascinating clips, though mostly pretty much buggered as far as rejuvenating any form of colour. I'm always fascinated with out takes and tests such as these.  The inscriptions scraped into the emulsion by Jan himself would be a means to keep a track of the process and repeat takes or rejects.

An extremely rare look at one of Jan's paintings and takes that never appeared in the final print unless it did in the original very, very long cut as did other deleted mattes I have on file before the film was trimmed.

Test frames from a superb matte that did make the cut, interestingly known as the 'gun sight shot Jerusalem' for some strange reason?

Domela's final matte as it appeared in the BluRay edition of THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.


Some interesting notations made by Jan relating to some of the other shots he made, with references to "retake to eliminate dust", and make alterations to mountains etc.  Fascinating and then some!

Thank you for these wonderful artifacts Johanna.  I do hope those misplaced before and after slides of Jan's work for VERTIGO turn up at some stage. 


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DU BARRY WAS A LADY:  a lavish Technicolor musical comedy from MGM

DU BARRY WAS A LADY (1943) was a funny, enjoyable romp, with a nice time travel twist. Grand production values, great mattes, eye-popping Gene Kelly dance routines and some amazing Tommy Dorsey orchestral showpieces, including a couple of fantastic Buddy Rich'going crazy on his drums' bits that positively demand rewinding and repeat viewings!

The cast were great, and even the usually 100% insufferable Zero Mostel had his moments to shine!

Warren Newcombe was credited for 'special effects', though as was common knowledge, Warren never painted any of the shots himself. He was however, a grand manager and overseer when it came down to the high quality matte effects that came out of his incredibly talented stable of artists and cameramen, easily among the best the industry had at any one time. 

Top ups and grand ceilings etc were the bread and butter for budding matte exponents throughout the golden era of mainly studio sound stage bound movie production.

A phenomenal matte out of Newcombe's department for DU BARRY WAS A LADY.  I heard from Matthew Yuricich that during the war years many studio technicians were abroad fighting for the good, so studios were forced to hire temporary artists etc to fill the gaps, with many coming from a 'technical illustration' background.

A spectacular matte composite.  I always admired the MGM shots as the matte lines were almost always impossible to detect, with clever use and application of soft splits and expert blending.  Mark Davis was chief matte cameraman, with key painters being Howard Fisher and Henry Hillinck among others.

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JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG - Confirmation of Matte Artist

The brilliant and powerful Stanley Kramer picture JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961) has long had me wondering who painted the sole matte shot which opens the film.  Now we can confirm Albert Whitlock provided this shot, as I had suspected all along, as per a set of typed documents found among the papers held by Syd Dutton.


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THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII - Making the earth move, 1930's style

Pretty much the entire crew and trick shot talent behind the legendary KING KONG and it's sad sequel SON OF KONG were on board for THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1935).  Note, the publicity paste up's above were somewhat more exciting than anything the film delivered, such was film promotion of the day.

Hand coloured front-of-house stills like this probably did wonders, probably made for a re-issue.  Scenes like this were scripted but dumped due to budget concerns sadly.  Tremendous and substantial cut and paste job here by some ambitious publicity guy.

Likewise, a mind blowing, though way over the top PR job againIncidentally, Cooper and Schoedsack had initially intended to make the film in Technicolor, but the cost was just too great.


The great Willis O'Brien headed up the creative team of KONG veterans such as glass shot artist Byron Crabbe and optical supervisor Vernon Walker.  Harry Redmond had a key role in the physical aspects of the destruction, while uncredited miniaturist Gus White and matte cameraman Clarence Slifer - both KONG staffers - played an important role as well.


Willis O'Brien with one of the miniature galleons built for POMPEII.  For readers unfamiliar (I find that hard to comprehend!), O'Bie was a certified genius in the pantheon of visual storytelling, with many hats to his name, and as many unfinished projects as there were finished and celebrated films.  O'Bie did some amazing trick work even before his monumental classic KING KONG in 1933, with things like the never completed CREATION and the spectacle THE LOST WORLD - both silents from the twenties.  O'Bie was a visionary, a talented artist, sculptor, stop-motion animator, cameraman, modeller and matte painter.  He had a grasp of all aspects of the 'fantastic' and how to create the impossible.  Sadly, Willis was often sidelined, over ruled and eventually put out to pasture, despite his enormous talents, with later shows and dodgy producers simply cashing in on his name to sell a picture, many of those 'B' at best.  So many future effects guys owe their lot to the great Willis H. O'Brien (go on...you know who you are!)


Three key players in RKO's 'Camera Effects Department'.  Left:  Vernon Walker.  Mid:  Willis O'Brien.  Right:  Linwood Dunn

O'Bie, as he was known, shows off two of the miniature sets built by Gus White, another KONG alumni.

Matte painter Byron Crabbe at work on a vast glass shot of the Gladiatorial arena that would ultimately not be fully utilised to it's best advantage in the film, unfortunately.  Byron would paint on many films around the thirties, often with friend Jack Cosgrove on various projects.  Crabbe started designs for matte work on GONE WITH THE WIND under Cosgrove, but died suddenly during pre-production.

A pre-production concept sketch rendered by Mario Larrinaga who had a solid association with O'Bie and Crabbe, going way back.

O'Bie with cameraman Eddie Linden who acted as both production cinematographer and overall effects cinematographer on POMPEII as he did on KONG, which was quite unusual for the time, and rarely occurred at all even after the fact!

A nice relaxed moment for O'Bie and his miniatures unit, one of whom must be W.G 'Gus' White who made the memorable model sets for KING KONG.

RKO's resident sculptor, Italian born artisan John Cerasoli and his hand made figurines aboard the Roman vessel.  John did similar assignments for the two KONG films with skillfully sculpted figures and tiny props.

The opening shot was this multi-layered optical/matte with various planes of glass art, projected smoke, real water and a foreground with actors added as a travelling matte element, possibly via the Dunning double matting process.

Before and after multi-plane glass shot from an article in a technical magazine of the day, I think it was Popular Mechanics which occasionally had this sort of article.

Byron Crabbe's rendering of Pompeii combined with water shot off San Pedro.  This original production blow up is good, but the shots when seen in the film were less crisp.  With the many exposures required once the live action was added with the people on the boat, the shot suffered with excessive grain and contrast, which was unavoidable due to the number of runs through Linwood Dunn's optical printer.  Cinematographer Eddie Linden wrote in American Cinematographer at the time about the visuals: "One of the first tasks was making the Vesuvius smoke and the threatening clouds.  In the case of the smoke, we shot it in different ways at several different speeds ranging from four to twelve times the normal speed, and in shades ranging from black & white, and just a thin, lazy wisp, to a magnificent roaring volume.  Thousands of feet of negative were exposed on smoke alone.  At 700 feet or more per minute it doesn't take long to run up a lot of footage!  Then we would get into a huddle in the projection room and pick the best takes to use in our various composite shots.  You'd be surprised at just how much argument there is in just plain smoke!"

The title page from an old 1935 issue of American Cinematographer where cameraman Eddie Linden explains the numerous processes used.  I will include various quotes as captions henceforth.


Glass shot of the Temple of Jupiter if I recall.



Closer, sharper reproduction of the matte shot of the temple as seen in one of O'Bie's fx photos of 1935.

Upper part of the frame painted in as a cost saver and to hide stage fixtures.

An invisible matte painted set extension.  See below...

Before and after tells all.

The spectacular Roman estate and sprawling hill suburbs of Pompeii as it appears on screen.

The actual Roman estate large scale miniature by Gus White minus the matted in water.
 Note the painted background.


Meticulous detail on White's miniature.


An excellent addition to a minimal set courtesy of Byron Crabbe's paint brush.

A hauntingly atmospheric vista of literally Biblical proportions!

Multi-element fx shot with actors added as a travelling matte component.  At the time both the Williams Matting System and the competitor Dunning Double Printing System were in use in Hollywood, though which was employed for POMPEII I don't know.  Both had their advantages, yet both had failings under certain conditions.


A wider view of the Temple of Jupiter and the crowded square.  See below for matte art!!


An incredibly rare artifact here is this high resolution picture of the original Byron Crabbe glass painting for the above scene.  I must thank profusely my fellow matte fan Steven way over there in New York for sending me this amazing image.  Very much appreciated my friend.

Close up of the detailed brushwork rendered by Crabbe.  Magnificent.

Not sure about the shot at left.  May be a full set as too large a shot to be 1935 rear projected well, and no fringing detectable as a Dunning shot.  Frame at right is a multi-layered vfx shot though.   A miniature of the huge Colossus statue, a glass painted arena, projected 'people' in the stands, a smoke element also projected, and this all provided as a plate for the addition of the foreground action as a travelling matte.

Composite shot down in the arena just before the shit literally hits the fan!

Before and after with Gus White's miniature set etc.

Crabbe at work on his arena glass painting which sadly is never shown to full advantage in the final cut.  We only ever get to see a heavily cropped version with barely any matte art visible in the finished edit.  The pic at right is a test that only appears in the film with much additional close foreground action obscuring the matte composite.  The editor should have used a full cut before cluttering up the view.

'Thar she blows...'

The volcanic blast and subsequent earthquake cause mayhem.  Colossus cracks apart and falls upon the panicked Gladiators in this combination miniature/live action shot.

Another of the KONG alumni, Clarence W. Slifer was on the unit for POMPEII.  Slifer was matte cinematographer on the film and would go on to be a major 'backroom talent' on a hundred or so films at various studios over the next 45 years, as effects cameraman at Selznick International, 20th Century Fox and mostly at MGM, though rarely credited.  According to his long time friend (and occasional nemesis) Matt Yuricich, Clarence just loved being in his optical room and devising new and improved systems for his optical printers and camera equipment.

Members of Gus White and Harry Redmond's effects crew shoot high speed take of the Colossus biting the dust.



A faded 1935 colour snapshot of Willis in front of the majestic Temple of Jupiter miniature, all carefully wired and rigged by Harry Redmond for what he hopes will be a successful demolition (it was!)

O'Bie with loudspeaker shouts 'action' with his twenty man crew all knowing their roles. The model comes down by means of a mass of hidden wires and a series of concealed metal rods within the actual columns that could be literally slipped out in stages thus allowing the pre-scored column structure to self collapse.  See below...

An excellent composite with miniature starting to shake and a hundred Roman extras fleeing as a travelling matte element, probably through the Williams Matte Printing Process.  As I understand it, such a wide shot would have needed a vast amount of orange light upon the actors, with a blue screen at the back, to facilitate hold out mattes through the Dunning Process.  The alternative Williams Process could avail a more simple bright 'white' illuminated backing (or sometimes black) behind the actors to pull high contrast silhouette mattes which would later be combined as bi-pack elements.  Later developments by Frank Williams - with John P. Fulton - utilised a blue screen backing and white lit actors.

Cameraman Eddie Linden spoke about this in the 1935 American Cinematographer article on the film's effects: "One of the finest examples of miniature building was The Temple of Jupiter, constructed under the supervision of Willis O'Brien by Gus White and his assistants.  It was one of those nerve-racking shots for it had to be made, and made right, in just one take.  The slightest slip up on the part of any one of the 20 men who worked on this shot would mean weeks of hard work rebuilding and re-shooting the scene, not to mention the thousands of dollars extra spent by the studio". 

Linden:  "We made tests of all of the effects shots except the actual crash of the temple - the most important effect and the only one we couldn't test'.

Linden:  "Thanks to the efficiency of Harry Redmond's 'effecters', only minor changes were needed.  A little less smoke here, a little more flame there, and so on. Then, the four cameras were again tested for steadiness, as the real people and the horses had to be processed in later, and even a movie earthquake couldn't explain a background that jiggled while the foreground didn't".

Linden:  "The tests were made and projected, and the final minute changes are made.  Zero hour is now at hand.  The order 'Hit 'em' is given by Willis.  The lights blaze on.  Flames and fire pots are lighted.  Hundreds of smoke pots are timed electrically.  Everything is ready".

Linden:  "Camera!  Let 'er go.  The rocking motion of the quake starts.  The wires start the building to crumble, and 'go' she does".

Linden:  "Aaaah... all hands sigh with relief.  Perfect the first time.  Does it look real?  There were some who saw the rushes who wouldn't believe it was done in miniature."


A great full size physical effect by Harry Redmond as the ground opens up and swallows folks.  Similar gags were applied by Fox in THE RAINS CAME (1939) and at MGM to outstanding effect in both SAN FRANCISCO the following year, and the epic GREEN DOLPHIN STREET in 1947 which deservedly won the Oscar for the effects work (as did the aforementioned Fox film).


Pompeii's property values suffer a considerable slump!

A behind the scenes pic of O'Bie and associate on the miniature set all rigged up for the great outpouring of lava (note cylinders, piping and pumps at right).

A still taken on the miniature set as the deluge of lava is unleashed.  The final shot will include many additional elements such as smoke, fire, foreground debris falling and of course, actors, all assembled on Cecil Love and Linwood Dunn's optical printer under Vernon Walker's supervision.  Lava frames to follow...

Presumably a split screen shot with model destruction.

Probably a full sized bit of mayhem?

Another layered photographic effects composite with much going on.  

Eddie Linden wrote:  "We had one scene in the film - the long shot of the destruction of Pompeii - which required seven separate exposures.  Two were made at six times the normal camera speed; one at ten times normal; three were stop-motion exposures; and the seventh was a normal 24 fps shot.  In any of these exposures camera movement, or even vibration, which would pass unnoticed in a normal shot, would have ruined the entire job as a complex effects shot". *Note= the stop-motion Linden mentioned wasn't animation per-se, but was frame by frame miniature rear projection of specific elements into shots.  Pete

Miniature action combined with travelling matted extras.  In several instances some of the actors become 'invisible' or 'fade out' due to the inherent difficulties in pulling moving mattes from a vast crowd where blue (or orange) spill onto actors would bleed out parts of the action.


'Pompeii............ oh the humanity'.  Not unlike Gaza today as it is pummeled to death by it's illegitimate neighbour, though I digress

The lava flow envelopes the citizens of Pompeii.

Cleverly devised set up with stunt performers doubled into O'Bie's miniature destruction, with some rotoscoped lava wrapping over the people to good effect.

The optical printer(s) and operators sure got a workout on LAST DAYS OF POMPEII.

High speed photography with actors matted as a static matte shot behind some rocks.

Unavoidable matte line fringing around the people, but the cuts are rapid and nobody really notices.

Live action in a tank, combined with glass paintings and added smoke and fire.  

Large miniature collapses onto hapless doubled in extras with good final results.

A highly complex shot, as explained by cinematographer Eddie Linden:  "Unwanted camera movement of any vibration meant extreme care had to be taken with the cameras being conditioned, tested and tied down securely.  We were fortunate in only having to make one take of this shot.  We had to keep people from even walking across the stage floor when we were shooting!  Ordinarily, a well constructed stage floor would be regarded as a pretty solid piece of construction, but our tests showed that ordinary footsteps walking across the stage floor produced enough vibration to endanger our shot.  Therefore when we made our shot, we had to rope off the stage so that nobody but the crew actually needed for the shot could approach within 30 feet of the cameras.  The city and volcano, which were glass paintings, were lined up in their proper relation.  The smoke, clouds and the foreground water were projected into their proper places by stop-motion rear projection.  The flames - well some of them - were also projected in, and others were painted in on yet another glass, carefully lined up with the others.  Of course partially silvered mirrors were employed in some instances, to simplify the physical grouping of all these various elements.  Obviously, the shot had to be lined up very carefully, and many tests were made to make sure that the smoke didn't roll from the wrong place, or some other mis-alignment didn't occur".

At left is O'Bie posing for a gag photo with a Marcel Delgado built marlin, which was intended as a part of the film where the Gladiator's arena gets flooded and this great swordfish goes amok.  It never got filmed, though would have made a sensational bit, much like the lost spider canyon sequence that O'Brien did on KONG.




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THE WARRIORS, aka THE DARK AVENGER - in like Flynn

Depending upon where you live, this film was released under two titles, THE DARK AVENGER and some prints as THE WARRIORS (1955).  I presume the former title was the British and Commonwealth one as that's a UK Quad poster there at left.

A minor though passable time filler with a good cast and quality production values, including several mattes in CinemaScope by person or persons unknown.  I like Errol Flynn, and reckon OBJECTIVE BURMA was probably his best and most exciting film - even if it did stretch the truth somewhat.

Much matte painted detail in here, though no effects credit, the flick was a British made show so must have been assigned to either Wally Veevers at Shepperton, Cliff Culley at Pinewood, or, my best guess would be Tom Howard at MGM-UK.

A very elaborate, almost full frame matte painted shot, with just a small slice of live action in the middle of the frame.  I'd love to know who did the work.

An expansive wide-screen matte of medieval battle and a rather flash homestead.  See below for an interesting revelation...

Top frame I recall I found in another fifties British period piece, KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, which nicely matches to the identical setting as seen in THE WARRIORS-DARK AVENGER, though with extensive painted additions.  The KNIGHTS picture was a Tom Howard job at MGM-Boreham Wood, so I suggest the latter film discussed here is also a Tom Howard assignment.  If so, Tom's matte artist at the time was Judy Jordan.

More quite extensive matte trickery where much of the setting has been added in with the painter's brush, including the entire foreground and castle.  Peter Ellenshaw was always bold with this sort of thing - painting just about everything, right up to the tip of the audience's nose!

Just a tiny sliver of actual film here in the middle of a sprawling matte painting.

Partial set with painted extensions to flesh things out.

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THE MORTAL STORM - the rise of Fascism




A marvellous drama from MGM that still packs a punch today.  THE MORTAL STORM (1940) tells of the stealthy rise of Nazism in the early thirties, Germany, and it's effects on various day to day folk.  Beautifully acted and photographed.


MGM's famed Newcombe department contributed several glorious shots to THE MORTAL STORM, mostly being various establishing shots of the small town and surrounds.

A nice crane down shot over the church and onto the town was possibly a dual plane matte shot with the steeple etc painted on a foreground glass, or even more likely, a miniature foreground as there is a nice parallax shift as the camera moves down.


A magnificent night matte of the James Stewart abode - a full matte painting with added smoke element.

A later wider shot which looks like an actual 2nd unit plate with the central area painted in, possibly directly over a large photo blow up, which Newcombe's department did quite often.

A brief miniature sequence with steam train rolling through the snow covered countryside.  MGM's resident model genius was the incredibly talented Donald Jahraus who did jaw dropping work on so many films at MGM over his career, with Oscar winning fx shows like 30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO and GREEN DOLPHIN STREET being 100% standouts.

Not sure about this beautiful shot.  It may well be a straight out production shot with doubles for the actors, or some sort of extremely well done trickery.  Probably the former.

Now this is one sensational effects shot!  The sun rises over the Austrian Alps.  I don't have any idea how this was done.  Possibly a miniature set with carefully controlled interactive 'sunlight' to cast a natural spread of light across the tips of the hills and trees, with shadows being the real deal?

A glorious vista during troubled times.

Once again, most likely an actual location, secured as a large format photographic still, with the matte artist painting directly onto the enlargement the village etc.

Same thing I suspect, with our leading man and friend skiing to freedom.  Great film, well worth a look.



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SPY HUNT - Espionage with a feline twist


A bit hokey, but a generally satisfying Saturday night's viewing was SPY HUNT (1950) - a noir styled chase flick with danger at every front!

Fairly minor, but had a number of good visual effects sequences including an excellent runaway train miniature and several matte shots, all supervised by David Stanley Horsley - a long time Universal photographic effects man who had worked at the studio since THE INVISIBLE MAN and FRANKENSTEIN back in the early thirties, through to all those trick filled ABBOTT & COSTELLO features and sci-fi flicks like THIS ISLAND EARTH.  Horsley was called back in his old age to do some miniature shots for THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY in the mid seventies.

The espionage scenario starts off with a couple of effective matte shots by Russell Lawson where an entire railway shunting yard has been painted in very effectively.

Really an invisible trick shot.  Note the smoke coming from the stack of the train down the track.

A subsequent variation where the train has already passed by.  Fine work by Russ Lawson.

The plot revolves around a circus panther with some sort of highly desirable microfilm hidden in his collar, which the Commies want verrrry badly.  The big pussycat is just the start of their problems!  Shot here has a guy out back of the train unhooking the coupling to free up the wagon with the big cat.  Nice travelling matte work, with guy nearly falling onto tracks.

The rear wagon is released.  Outstanding miniature work by Universal's reliable Charlie Baker, who, along with other fx staffers, had been with the studio most of his life, from the 1930's right through to EARTHQUAKE in the seventies, and the last AIRPORT pictures.

Models shot out in daylight was always the way to go for convincing shots.


Possibly filmed by Horsley himself, or maybe Roswell Hoffman?

Sadly, I never had a model train layout as a kid  :(

The train wagon looks a decent large scale.

The wagon tumbles down the gully, and yes, you guessed it, the panther in question makes a dash for it, leading all manner of good guys and bad guys to seek out the aforementioned pussy (as one does!)

Tracking down the cat, the isolated farm house holds a few secrets.  **Note - it's always an issue trying to get acceptable matte grabs from older Universal films.  Reason being that, firstly, the mattes are always dupe shots, thus a bit degraded to start with; and secondly it's almost always the case where mattes are establishing shots of one sort or other and inevitably occur within an optical dissolve - yet another layer of duped to death degradation of the original shot.  A decent lab would intercut the awful duped dissolve quickly into the (interpositive?) original with just a slight flicker where one generation cuts to the other better generation, A&B rolls and all of that.  Universal - shame on them - almost always 'held' the mega-duped matte from the dissolve literally until the action cut to a different shot/scene, thus we the viewer are stuck with the shittiest looking matte shot - no fault of the artist at all who must pull his hair out when it's screened.  Worst of all is when you get a dissolve to a matte comp, and a superimposed title card over the top... that's like 4 fucken' generations!  Take a look at the Audie Murphy war picture TO HELL AND BACK (1955) to see what I mean when they go to Rome!!!  Having just watched a bluray of Uni's SIGN OF THE PAGAN and others, the otherwise competent matte painting work looks absolutely awful directly as a result of cheapskate lab practices.  If I were the matte artist or fx cameraman of the day I'd leave a pile of burning dog shit on the doorstep of Technicolor labs, though as usual, I digress.

Much treachery afoot in this seemingly homely mountain lodge.

Howard Duff and Marta Toren spy the aforementioned panther down below in this multi-piece matte shot by Russell Lawson and Ross Hoffman.


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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES - Not all the usual Disney sunshine & happiness.

Great poster art for a quite interesting, though not altogether successful 'adult' film from the Disney organisation which is worth rediscovery.  In the most bizarre of coincidences, I was in communication just yesterday while in the midst of writing this, to Harrison Ellenshaw, who acted as vfx consultant on the picture.  To our mutual amazement just a week or so ago the Disney Studio sent out an invitation to former staffers - one being Mr Ellenshaw - to come along to the screening room to view, oddly, the original unreleased rough cut of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES not unspooled since 1982(!!)  You can't make this stuff up!  True story!

Based on a Ray Bradbury story SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1982), has the feel of an old Rod Serling TWILIGHT ZONE type story stretched out to 96 minutes.  That said, it's worth the time and showed a watershed moment when Disney went 'dark' and 'diabolical', and all the better for it.

The effects miniatures unit with visual effects supervisor Lee Dyer at left and effects consultant Harrison Ellenshaw in the middle. The fellow at right escapes Harrison, to his embaressment. The miniature climax involved the entire Dark carnival being literally sucked up from the Earth to who-knows-where.  The entire set was rigged on the ceiling, with structures and carnival rides all pre-set to fall away, though photographed inverted to provide the illusion of all and sundry sucked skyward.  The photo at right shows Harrison finalising the quite extensive rigging required for the effects shoot. Incidentally, my pal Harrison found the film to be an utter 'snoozefest' - no matter which cut one sits through.

Michael Lloyd was one of the two matte artists on the film.  Michael is shown here painting on the later DICK TRACY.

Jesse Silver was associate matte artist and contributed a number of vivid renderings.  Some matte art was also done by Harrison Ellenshaw during Silver's absence due to illness.


The film opens with an expansive rural matte painting as Tom Fury, played by actor Royal Dano - a wonderful and reliable old time character actor of 1000 westerns - drifts into the small town.  Reportedly, some 16 or so mattes were painted for the film, though some evidentally never made the final cut.

Same sequence, as Tom glances back over his shoulder to spy somewhat dodgy clouds moving on in.  Matte painted shot with the actor added in, probably as a sodium vapour shot which Disney swore by.

A follow up shot is a closer push in on the matte where it appears a great deal of the scene is in fact a painting.  Disney almost always relied upon rear projected plates to form their matte shot composites, though often these were a bit washed out.  

The mysterious carnival arrives by steam train in the distance.  Entirely an effects shot rendered as a complex series of some four painted glasses by artist Michael Lloyd and photographed in multi-plane fashion. The foreground houses were on the nearest glass;  the the train on a second glass;  the distant town on a third and the far horizon and sky on the forth glass. By using multiple glasses, a subtle simulated camera move inward was able to be carried out, allowing a natural looking perspective shift on the foreground artwork.  Reportedly, initial expensive attempts to render the arrival as experimental early computer 'wireframe' generated animation failed and were done but rejected.  Apparently, the bulk of the film had been shot and in the can as they say before any visual effects work was even planned, let alone commenced(!)

A dramatic pull back shot from the carnival appears to be a multi-plane glass or miniature/painting combination.  The last frame with the trees at the edges certainly looks like painted glass.

A matte shot with the dark carnival in the fields which was the ultimate shot preferred over the initial version illustrated below.

The elaborate fx scene that was abandoned.  If the reader has a decent computer screen the original Cinefantastique caption would be so easily readable.  

The carnival holds a great many secrets and can grant one a wish or two.  This one legged fellow will soon need to have twice as many socks to wash!  See below...

Don't say I never told you so....  Travelling matte with some roto articulation cured all his ills.

Don't know about this... may be genuine, may be some of Mr Dark's mystical magic... or could be a bit of well executed Disney trickery?  I suspect the latter.

The Merry-Go-Round sequence was a ripper, and surprisingly creepy for a Disney show.  Originally the sequence was done in a very straight forward fashion involving substitution of the actor each time the Carousel comes around.  Deemed inadequate, later re-shoots were somewhat more complicated, with highly effective optical 'stutter' introduced to create a nightmarish cascade-like effect.  The scene was designed by Lee Dyer and as far as I know, farmed out to an optical house called Symmetricon. Each individual 35mm frame was repeatedly superimposed with five consecutive frames, each at slightly different printer light values, which created an impressive strobe result.

Other shots had the two boys matted into the foreground which lent an even more un-earthly feel to the event.

Mr Dark, as played most effectively by Jonathan Pryce.  Why is it that the best ever screen villains are played by Brit thespians?  I'm thinking Laurence Olivier in MARATHON MAN; Richard Burton in 1984; Charles Laughton in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY; Maurice Evans in PLANET OF THE APES;  Herbert Lom (actually Hungarian) in every picture he appeared in... etc etc.

Remember, this was the old photo-chemical days with optical printers and actual film (celluloid stuff with sprocket holes down both sides)

Originally, the film had no planned visual effects, let alone elaborate optical jigsaws.

One of my favourite actresses and queen of bad-ass cinema throughout the seventies, the incredible Miss Pam Grier shows up as a particularly mean spirited - some might say downright evil - the Dust Witch (you have a hell of a lot to live down if your parents named you Dust Witch!)

In an elaborate vfx set piece, the Dust Witch sort of breaks free of what I suppose to be a glass tomb(?)  Great cel animated effects work by Disney's animators.



I'm an absolute sucker for old time hand drawn cel animated work.  Disney, naturally, had the market cornered, and deservedly so.  The cel work on things like 20'000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA;  LT ROBINSON CRUSOE, USN; DARBY O'GILL & THE LITTLE PEOPLE; THE GNOME MOBILE and MARY POPPINS of course.  I could watch those showreels back to back for a year!

...and here arriveth the incredible, though shamefully underused, Pam Grier, in all her magnificence (for now, at least).

Pam... we love 'ya baby!

No doubt a first for a Walt Disney picture... a character in the electric chair getting his brains fried.  The film is set in the fictional Green Town.... more like the freakin'Green Mile thinks I.

Pam is not one to be crossed!  Believe me, I've seen all her movies!!

A Michael Lloyd matte painting of the neighbourhood where some diabolical stuff goes down...

A peek inside the matte room some years later when it became Buena Vista Visual Effects. Matte painter Paul Lasaine (with ponytail) shows new artist Justin Brandstatter some of the old mattes, including the Lloyd rendering of the house.  In the video clip Paul is pointing out some odd perspective choices in the painting.  *Note, on the wall behind is the surviving big Southern prison matte art from THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE.

Subsequent matte shots by Lloyd and Silver with animation doubled in.


Now, this sequence, though subtle, I found most impressive.  Mr Dark's Jonathan Pryce confronts Jason Robards and rips pages from a book, with each page bursting into a bright other-worldly glow. Great cel animated work by Gale Fox, who also added subtle interactive rotoscope 'glow' to the faces of the two actors. 

Traditional cloud tank physical effect combined with matte painted carnival and surrounds.  This storm really means business.

The ever lovely Pam Grier gets a literal 'bolt from the blue', and is impaled on a lightning bolt.  I couldn't actually figure out what this was all about, but here it is anyway...

Pam proves utterly electrifying...

Once again, some 'A-Grade' cel animated work.


'She wasn't all that tough after all, or so it would seem...'  Mind you, in all her other flicks she's toting a pump action shotgun or 357 Magnum.  Street vigilante Pam was far more resilient in days gone by than any stupid fantasy Dust Witch.  'Motherfuckers... watch out!'

Probably a matte painted shot, with cloud tank footage added(?)

Mr Dark's horrendously malfunctioning carousel goes completely banana's and self destructs.  The best carousel out-of-control sequence since Hitchcock's brilliant STRANGERS ON A TRAIN many years ago.  Classic!

A most grisly demise for our Mr Dark, thanks in no small part to the Disney fx animation department.

Originally planned and even filmed minus any visual trickery, and just animatronic and make up effects devices.  Test screening to the exec's saw the vote to spice this (and much more) up considerably with optical and various trick shots.

Oddly, first attempts to re-do with cel effects work were farmed to an outside provider due to the Disney people all tied up with mega-work on TRON.  The sub-contractor's efforts were resoundingly rejected outright, and the shots were ultimately redone by Disney animation staff.

Decidedly horrific for a Disney picture as Mr Dark's entire being deflates and dissolves away.  Much animatronic puppeteering supplemented with optical overlays.


Make up effects engineered by veteran Robert Schiffer.  I miss the days of physical appliances, real on set make up fx and such like.  Geniuses like the great Dick Smith, John Chambers, Jack Pierce, Rick Baker, Nick Maley, et al.  Today's CG can't come close to stuff Dick Smith did on the actors in front of the camera.

I guess it's just going to be one of those days!

The entire Dark carnival self destructs in rather dramatic fashion, and, to put it crudely, literally disappears up it's own fundamental orifice(!)   ;) 


Miniatures supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw perched atop a scaffold, high in the rafters of a Disney stage as he gives the "go" on the inverted destruction of the carnival.  Shot high speed with 4 cameras, it looked good in the final film.

An effective tornado, created in a large water filled tank, as per the standard system for years.  Possibly some optical manipulation there later to further stir up the converging vortex and such like.

Nice composite shot here with cloud tank physical effect combined via travelling matte by old time effects cameraman Art Cruikshank.  Art had been with Disney since the days of FANTASIA, and worked on scores of films in an uncredited capacity.  In the mid 1960's he moved over to 20th Century Fox and at last started to get some recognition.  He provided grand optical cinematography duties for the Oscar winning FANTASTIC VOYAGE among many other Fox films.  Art died shortly after completing his assignment on SOMETHING WICKED.

Eerily atmospheric - no pun inferred - with excellent use of of sound editing to compliment the visuals.

Terrific shot as the vortex sucks all to oblivion and beyond.

Cloud tank presumably, combined with matte painting.  The tank itself was some 9 feet wide, 6 feet deep and 6 feet high.  The clouds and vortex were created by injecting standard Tempera paint in varying mixtures and configurations.

All's well, that ends well.  The morning after the night before where we are back in the lush storybook Disney environs we all remember as kids.  An extensive matte painting combined with a VistaVision live action plate as a rear projected element, as per standard Disney photographic effects methods.

Further, the camera pulls out for a wider view.  Jesse Silver discussed the methods employed where he used airbrush techniques, oil pigments, acrylics as needed in his various mattes, from storm clouds to landscapes.  Disney uses YCM separation masters - that is black & white records of the print system, yellow, cyan and magenta.  Using separation masters the artists are able to re-balance and alter the colours in various ways to match the original live action plate.  Disney was not an advocate of the original negative technique which arguably provides the finest results as all first generation is as good as it gets.  Some early effects shows from the studio did work on the original negative such as DARBY O'GILL for some shots.

The vfx people behind the scenes...

I think I may have made vague mention of the legendary Pam Grier... sadly wasted (literally!) in SOMETHING WICKED with very little to do.  Pam was the all out queen of 1970's action, blaxploitation & W.I.P cinema.  Classics like THE BIG BIRD CAGE; COFFY; FOXY BROWN; FORT APACHE-THE BRONX; BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS; BUCKTOWN; THE ARENA; BLACK MAMA WHITE MAMA; THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and years later the decidedly mainstream Tarantino tribute piece, JACKIE BROWN and more!!  They don't make 'em like that any more folks.  Just the mere fact Disney hired her was a statement in itself.  (*W.I.P= women in prison movies)


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SHE PLAYED WITH FIRE - FORTUNE IS A WOMAN:  fooling around with the wrong gal.


The always reliable British actor, Jack Hawkins had his hands full with this 'fire-bug' babe in SHE PLAYED WITH FIRE (1957), which was also released as FORTUNE IS A WOMAN.

An interesting little British potboiler with some effective matte shots painted by long experienced George Samuels, under the direction of old hand Wally Veevers.  There were just a handful of trick shots, but I thought they were quite successful.

I only have a DVD copy so I made the best I could of the effects shots.  Top a nicely rendered set extension, pretty much half the frame painted in invisibly.  Bottom, another effective shot where the mansion house and it's immediate surrounds have been added in by George Samuels.  I had to replay that shot a few times to be sure it was what I thought it was (it was!)

George had a long career with Shepperton Studios, initially as one of Percy 'Pop' Day's artists.  When Day retired in the early fifties, Samuels became chief matte painter and oversaw a team of artists.  Pop Day's former cameraman, Wally Veevers, would head the special photographic effects department.  Samuels died suddenly in 1963 and was replaced by a young Doug Ferris.

The chick that Jack is messing around with is a nut-job with a penchant for lighting fires.  A good effects sequence where Hawkins escapes the conflagration as his stately home burns to the ground.  The fire elements are separately shot and carefully matted into the windows.  A brief shot lower right shows Jack's head pass under the otherwise undetectable matte line.

Either a matte or a miniature of the destroyed mansion house, with Hawkins matted in.

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**FINAL COMMENT:

My sincere thoughts and wishes go out to the Palestinian people, of the State of Palestine, as they are faced with the relentless genocidal destruction of their homeland and people, yet again.
The legitimate population of the State of Palestine have suffered endlessly since 1948, with the brutal, fascist jackboot of Israel pressed aggressively against their collective throats for over seven decades.
The swaggering sense of Israeli superiority, emboldened no doubt by their cocky self assurance as being the protected de-facto 51st State of America, whereby any and all extrajudicial acts and state sponsored multiple daily abuses of any and all normal accepted human rights are treated with utmost impunity - even in times of what could loosely be termed 'peace' - yet go, happily, unpunished, and are in fact, militarily supported. 
Enough!

Pete




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***This vast and exhaustive post, and all 181 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/




MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Four

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 Greetings to all and sundry,  it's now 2024 believe it or not.  It sounds so odd when saying it, and even more so when typing in "2024".  Shouldn't we all be living like'The Jetsons'(a cool futuristic Hanna-Barbera cartoon series of the sixties for those too young to get the reference).  Where are the flying cars, transporter beams and such like?

Anyway, here we are again with a veritable bounty of all great things matte, model and old time trick shot wizardry, in what I'm confidant will be enjoyed by many (hey there my Dutch matte shot friend William, I'm talking to you!).  I've collected some amazing material here, with so much never before seen, and the usual (and unusual) assortment of motion pictures that I'd bet the majority of readers will not have seen nor heard of, but are well worth the time and energy to discover, or re-discover I really should 'clip the bus ticket' as they say and get a percentage from studios or something for bringing lost gems of filmdom to fresh new audiences!

Now folks, among the line up today are some really breathtaking pieces that have fallen into my lap from afar.  Among them, a selection of never before seen original matte paintings by esteemed maestro of the artform, Matthew Yuricich.  More about that in a minute.  Also in this vast and most comprehensive article/post are some amazingly ingenious trick shots a-plenty from a wonderful British war film; some magnificent Technicolor Newcombe shots from not just one but a pair of classic Elizabeth Taylor films;  a mystery Albert Whitlock painting of unknown title;  a ludicrously miscast WarnerColor period epic;  a sinister B&W Sidney Greenstreet drama;  an absolutely unique Polish-Soviet fantasy adventure;  a couple of quality westerns;  a massive bio-pic of a certain General Custer and if that weren't enough, a longtime horror flick anonymous matte shot puzzle now finally solved!  Also, to round it all off, I'm drawing readers attention to a fantastic and long running magazine (yes, the real kind, printed on paper and bound between heavy covers!) that fans of genre pictures would do well to seek out.  More about that shortly.  God damn  folks... who could ask for more?? Seriously!! 

So, as I sit here dripping from the 98% summer humidity, trying not to fry the laptop keyboard with sweat, I will divert my thoughts away from the horrific ethnic cleansing being perpetrated upon the People of Palestine by the war criminal Netanyahu, and focus entirely on the wonders, illusions, ingenuity and fascination with all things motion picture magic.  

Enjoy the ride....

Peter


***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 182 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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Matthew Yuricich's Matte Collection.

I have had considerable good fortune of late.  In my previous blogpost I detailed the wonderful package of vintage mattes sent to me in the post by the daughter of old time matte painter Jan Domela.  Well, whoever said lightning doesn't strike twice?  I've been having a number of communications with Matthew Yuricich's son Dana, contributing some essays and such for Dana as part of an upcoming auction of a small selection of Matt's original effects art.  Well, to cut a long story short, it turns out that the wider Yuricich family still own almost 80 original matte paintings - many of them being Matthew's work.  Naturally my curiosity went 'through the freakin' roof' with this new found knowledge.  

Two photos of Matthew, with the one at left from an exhibition of paintings some years ago (note the NORTH BY NORTHWEST matte there - one of many in the collection).  The pic at right was probably taken at Boss Films or EEG, at which Yuricich would work often.

Well, as something of a Christmas gift for NZ Pete, Dana very kindly sent me a vast set of images - mostly high rez - of the entire collection.  You can well imagine my sheer delight/thrill not no mention heart palpitations when receiving these wonderful artifacts.  As something of a 'teaser', I'm including a few here today, as well as a couple of others scattered amongst this article where appropriate.  I will add other fantastic images in subsequent blog posts as I don't want to 'shoot my load'(!) too soon, especially as there seems to be a declining readership in matters 'matte', sadly.  :(

So, shown below are just a sample of incredible paintings from the wonderful, talented, amusing Mr Matthew Yuricich, whom I had the pleasure of publishing a substantial career oral history with back in 2012, with the very much appreciated help of Craig Barron in making the interview happen.  

Now, the oddly effective American International horror flick THE DUNWICH HORROR (1969) had forever had me baffled as far as the couple of matte shots went.  I wondered if this one was a Whitlock shot as that sky really had me going Albert's way?  But, no..... after all these years of head scratching it turns out to be an uncredited Matt Yuricich shot all along!!!!  The effects for the film were contracted to Butler-Glouner, as were some others in Matt's incomplete filmography. 

Not only is the true provenance known, but here is Matthew's glorious original painting which the Yuricich family still hold in safe keeping, and in fine condition!  God, almighty... when I saw this piece among the collection I admit uttering a very loud profanity - possibly too loud as the neighbours complained!

Close up detail from this terrific piece.  Matthew's sky is jaw dropping.  The one factor that had me quizzing whether Whitlock may have done it was that the clouds were static, and Albert wouldn't have stood for that for a minute. Still, a classic matte that would look very nice hanging on my wall, if I had any space left.

NZ Pete gives matte fans their money's worth... another detailed close up!  How many 'matte and fx' web sites would do that?  ;)


Here is an odd one.  This Yuricich matte was prepared for the Yul Brynner Aztec era actioner KINGS OF THE SUN (1963) and it looks wonderful.  Oddly, for reasons unknown, the director J. Lee Thompson eventually settled for the exact same shot, though used the initially unpainted'plate' photography for this scene.  Instead of utilising Matt's beautifully rendered sky, tree line and additional painted Aztec warriors, they just chose the shot minus Matt's evocative sky brushwork.  Note:  Although a United Artists picture, the two mattes were obviously farmed out to MGM as the telltale method of painting onto large photographic blow ups was a standard practice under Clarence Slifer and J.MacMillan Johnson.


KINGS OF THE SUN closer look at Matt's excellent sky.



Here is another film that has been a mystery to me as to the ownership of the brushwork.  The terrific James Stewart-George Kennedy-Kurt Russell 1920's set comedy action flick FOOL'S PARADE (1971) was a fun treat all the way.  This matte has had me mystified for years....... until now!

And here it appears, as a long stored away artifact among the family of Matthew Yuricich.  Another wonderful piece that slipped by almost undetected in the movie.  This was another Butler-Glouner effects show, so Matt was doing a lot of freelancing through those years.

Closer look at the brushwork of Matthew.  Great little flick by the way, well worth rediscovery.

I will cover more from this amazing collection in upcoming blogs, but there is a special bonus below...


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A Mystery Albert Whitlock Matte.

Among Matthew's collection were several paintings by other artists;  a Jim Danforth one, some Howard Fisher pieces and a couple of Henry Hillinick's from the old MGM days.  Also stashed away is this extremely rare Albert Whitlock matte painting which Matthew said he picked up when doing an assignment at Howard Anderson's effects company.  Any clues on this one?

This rare Albert Whitlock matte is a real baffling one.  It won't be from a Universal film as it was one of Al's freelance jobs done at Howard Anderson, probably late 1960's or early 70's.  Probably not for a tv show due to the 'Scope' dimensions.  I wondered whether it might be from MAROONED (it wasn't) or something like that, but no - plus that was a Butler-Glouner fx show, though Al did a fair bit for them as well.

Closer view of what Matthew said was "the Gemini rocket on the launchpad".  He said that the painting was"just kicking around when I was at Howard Anderson", so he did the decent thing and rescued it - as well he should as such things were routinely thrown in the skip and lost forever.  Any identification on this would be welcomed.  You know who to call.  ;)


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The Bookshelf:  Recommended Reading.

The era of the 'monster mag' is long gone - or so we thought!  Many of us grew up on things like Forry Ackerman's utterly essential Famous Monsters of Filmland as well as the numerous spin offs, rip offs and later on some pretty damned impressive fanzines that filled many a gap in highly impressionable teenaged minds for those among us (or, 'who walked among us'! ... egads!!) who thrived on genre movies.  Old time horror, sci-fi, animation, monsters, aliens, creature features and all of it. Film maker and author Ted Bohus has been putting together quality journals along these lines for a number of years now, with the earlier SPFX mag being a solid read back in the day.




Ted's CANDID MONSTERS comes with my highest recommendation for those with their feet firmly rooted in films of old along the lines of those described above.  Ted has covered, in the 21 or so issues thus far, so many of the films we love:  THE INVISIBLE MAN; THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD; WAR OF THE WORLADS; THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL; THE TIME MACHINE; KING KONG (naturally); everything Ray Harryhausen ever did, and even an all time fave of mine, I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (much better and scarier than it sounds!)  All the movies we know and love.
The latest issue sent to me even has a vast and worthy 40 page piece on the VFX work on MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, by some fellow called 'Peter Cook'(!)



The 21 or so journals to date are jam packed with rare photos - all high quality reproductions, the interviews with cast, directors and many key participants are all fascinating and very revealing to say the least.  Each issue of 150 odd pages is a solid 'cover to cover read' as far as I'm concerned.  I hope Ted sends me more issues, these are great.  Highly recommended.
Contact Ted here for further info etc.  

The cover art is all commissioned expressly for Candid Monsters, and it's great.



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An Odd Find in my Archives.

In going through my quite extensive archive I dug out an old photo I have from years ago that is of some significance.  Famed matte artist Al Whitlock was a close personal friend of the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock, with very early interactions as far back as the 1930's, and much later reunited for all of the Universal films Hitch made.  Hitch was a devotee of fine art and would often ask Albert to 'copy' a genuine masterpiece so that he could hang it in his West Coast home.
Hitchcock was also a first class practical joker, so whether he requested Whitlock to paint this 'revised' view of Mt Rushmore, or Al took it upon himself is not known.


Now, I read the other day that a high percentage of American youth have not a clue who those chaps are on Mount Rushmore....  But only one murdered Janet Leigh in the shower... but which one?

So, now on with the matte shot retrospectives...

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ANGELS ONE FIVE - recreating the Battle of Britain with extensive trickery.

I'm a sucker for old war films, and this one is quite a remarkable feat of impressive cinematic knowhow and extensive trick photography.


ANGELS ONE FIVE (1952) was a massive success in Britain and in her colonies such as here in New Zealand, though probably remains unknown in the US and such.  A moderately budgeted affair, the film is packed with an extensive array of trick shots, and some very complex ones at times.  Miniature expert George Blackwell and optical cinematographer Bryan Langley deservedly got screen credit for their huge contribution.-


One of the UK's most respected effects men, George Blackwell, had experience in all manner of physical effects but was most often drawn toward miniature work on scores of films.  Oscar nominated for the still essential classic DAMBUSTERS, George did superlative work on shows like CAPT. HORATIO HORNBLOWER, NIGHT OF THE DEMON and the Ray Harryhausen film ONE MILLION YEARS BC among many others.



The film is absolutely loaded with vfx shots, so many in fact that it takes a keen eye to spot them all, such is the quality.  This seemingly 'actual' stunt, where two Hurricanes barely miss each other on a runway due to miscommunication was a superbly done composite with the one real plane taxiing, while the second plane was a miniature combined flawlessly by travelling matte.


This film was one of the most extensive to utilise the travelling matte process to combine miniatures and occasionally painted aircraft into action sequences.


The now out of control plane comes down hard and plows straight off the runway and into a building.  Excellent miniature photography combined, presumably, through very good process projection.  See below...

The filming of that plane as it skids into camera on a miniature set at Elstree.


I wonder whether this was a blue backing shot, as the article mentions it.  It's far too crisp and evenly 'projected' to be a back projection shot?



As for actual aircraft, by the time they shot the picture there were only two flyable Hurricanes in Britain, and absolutely no German bombers at all, unsurprisingly.  Models were needed extensively.



Shots like this were most effective, as they introduced a subtle aerial 'drift' so that they weren't all in a sort of 'glued in' formation.


A formation of German bombers - painted on glass - coming in to create havoc.  Note the animated flak explosions in the air.  One of the few other war pictures I can recall that relied almost entirely on matted in fighter planes and such was the 40's picture THE NORTH STAR - a film absolutely bursting at the seams with trickery, and one that saw Clarence Slifer nominated for his marvellous effects work.  I covered that film in great detail here a few years back.

The full scale mechanical fx on the ground were impressive too.  This sequence is typical of the ingenuity of Blackwell and Langley, with the Heinkel added in later on Bryan Langley's optical printer.

The producers stated that a considerable amount of consultation with "the boffins"- as they termed it - in the photographic effects industry had to be carried out way before the green light was given due to the difficulties in recreating such scenes on a medium (by UK standards) budget.

Example of excellent optical work, with German Heinkel miniatures 'marionetted' in front of a blue screen, with the guide wires purposely painted blue to permit optical elimination when added to footage of Jack Hawkins and explosions etc.  Very impressive.


Optical cinematographer Bryan Langley was an old hand in the UK film industry, having started off as a camera assistant on silent pictures before graduating to full 'lighting cameraman' (or D.o.P as the Yanks call it).  Bryan got involved early on with the Schufftan Process' - of using partially silvered mirrors to combine live action with miniatures or artwork.  Later on Bryan became an expert in all facets of the travelling matte process at J.Arthur Rank's Pinewood Studio, under the Independent Frame ethic.  


Bryan Langley specialised in the yellow backing sodium process, devised at Rank by George Ashworth with his specially built beam splitter camera, and used very extensively on their films in preference over rear projection. The sodium method was later exported by Disney to the States and used on practically every Disney picture.


Another very effective bit where miniature planes were matted over the rooftops, with the roar nearly giving the lady a coronary.

Excellent full scale physical effects, which I first thought to be a miniature truck, but on repeat rewinds reckon it was real.

There was a detailed article about the making of this film in a British industry journal whereby they state some seventy travelling matte shots were made - the most for any picture up until 1951 - with many of those having multiple elements combined into a single shot.  The producer said that"this film would have been impossible to make without the TMP" - the travelling matte process.  The stated that the actors were going goggle eyed performing constantly in front of blue screens for all of the cockpit sequences, as it wasn't common at the time as it is now.

Probably the most impressive shot in the film was this seemingly straightforward shot.  Aerial cameraman Stanley Grant's live plate of the English Kent countryside has had a formation of German bombers added flawlessly.  All the planes were painted on glass and shot against a blue backing, though what sold the scene was the cloud bank that partially obscured the planes as they flew through.  A superb optical assembly by Langley and his assistant Reg Johnson.  Producer John Gossage loved the shots and wrote:  "The actual location background used included a certain amount of cloud, and the 'boffins' were able to matte the studio effects shot so that the planes actually appear to fly in and out of clouds".


The big disadvantage the film makers found was the extreme time delay from shooting to finally seeing completed effects shots.


The article stated:  "The use of models was extensive.  The larger ones had practical propellors, guns and bomb releases - all electrically controlled with the current passed down the wires they were suspended from, hung from a mobile cross tree very similar to that which puppeteers use".


Another extremely impressive sequence has a British fighter dive down and blow the shit out of some German formation.  An incredibly well photographed and composited sequence which combined live aerial footage - very smoothly shot - along with several German Heinkels and ME109's flying at differing altitudes and directions, with all of this combined as an eagle eyed POV from the Hurricane pilot.  


Apparently they did a great deal of experimentation with different background plates and alternate model action before settling on the perfect, multi-layered result.  Outstanding!  Some shots were made up of several layers: the 2nd unit landscape below; multiple German aircraft flying around; a separate constructed cockpit window and panel for squibs and bullet hits; and lastly the actor playing the pilot filmed simply sitting on a stool in front of a blue screen.  Langley and Johnson married all of those elements together beautifully.

Bryan Langley worked on a number of films with extensive optical requirements such as the original 1984 starring Michael Redgrave; the Royal Navy story THE GIFT HORSE, THE LAVENDER HILL MOB and was co-screen credited alongside Albert Whitlock on the sci-fi show THE NET (aka PROJECT M7).


Daring do over the Kent landscape.  It was indeed 'their finest hour'.

As Freddie Mercury once famously sang: 'Another Kraut bites the dust'.

An evocative matte painted sky with added squadron in flight.

The closing sequence is a massive pullback starting on an interior set at Elstree and extending way out. The set merges into a detailed painted matte - artist unknown - and subsequently moves back over a multiplane glass shot.

Matte painted ruins...

The massive pullback using either multi-plane glasses or painted cut-outs.

detailed view

Not sure what they were trying to achieve here.  Maybe the aerodrome runway beyond, although the perspective is way, way off, or a more representational stylised interpretation, I dunno?

All up, a great movie, little known today.  And you can never go wrong with anything starring Jack Hawkins, now can you?

Truer words were never spoken... The great Winston Churchill, whose 1100 page life story I'm currently reading.  Amazing fellow, sadly 'dumped' by the Brit's after the war despite all he did.


From the action packed trailer.

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RAINTREE COUNTY - The Civil War is lost by battling, buxom Southern Belles.

MGM's epic scaled, but tragically overlong RAINTREE COUNTY (1957)

MGM's answer to David Selznick's vastly superior GONE WITH THE WIND, at least had a strong cast, and Monty Clift was always a bloody fine actor who passed away far too early (see him in JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG).  RAINTREE was shot in the celebrated Camera 65 format that MGM was starting to use - that is 65mm negative for maximum fidelity of image.

The film is surprisingly scarce in the matte art department, which for a Civil War epic isn't really on!  Very little 'broad scale' in the film, though the couple of mattes worked nicely.  Old time MGM veteran Henry Hillinick painted on this film, assisted by Matthew Yuricich, to whom Henry was mentor.  This establishing shot is nice, combining a rural locale with some MGM backlot and a good deal of matte art to tie it all together.

I've zoomed this in for a closer look.  

The second, and only other confirmed matte in RAINTREE COUNTY was this undetectable view at the end of the very long 3 hour shmooze-fest, with the train pulling out of the town.  Half the frame here is painted (see below), and blended beautifully by MGM's vfx cameraman Mark Davis.  *See below for a real treat, courtesy of Pete...

From the Matthew Yuricich collection comes this wonderful original Henry Hillinick matte, still in pristine condition.  Matthew said that when that Kerkorian megalomaniac started to bulldoze all the old MGM backlots and departments in the early 70's to flog off as real estate - the old matte department included - Matthew grabbed a bunch of old mattes and saved them, this being one.  He said it broke his heart to see all those decades of artistic talent basically dumped and carted away, though somewhere along the ways a great deal of those fell into the hands of others and have subsequently shown up at various auctions etc.  I have a couple.

Some of the detail that I just know you want to examine... Henry was an all round ace painter, and Matt held him in the highest regard.  Henry had worked as far back as the original KING KONG doing backings and things.  Like most matte guys, he never had an on-screen credit.

More sublime detail.  Henry definitely wasn't one of the 'big brush' school of matte exponents.  His work was fine, detailed and exacting - probably because head of department Warren Newcombe demanded such.  This detailed piece is important as this was where Henry taught Matthew how to use a razor blade to create a nice textured effect, by gently scraping the blade over the surface of the painted stone and brickwork for the desired texture - something Matt used often and passed on to others like Michele Moen and likely Rocco Gioffre too.

I can't confirm what this is from.  The scene doesn't appear in RAINTREE COUNTY but the painting has the same 'feel' to it to my eyes and may have been an unused shot.  Whatever, here it is in all its glory, and a magnificent piece it is too!  Feel free to thank Pete any time now for including this beauty,  regardless of its certainty!  ;)

Detail of the brush work.

More detail.  If anyone can clarify, or put me straight on the possible film, then let me know.


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CATTLE DRIVE:  Down on the Ranch with Joel McCrea.


I enjoy old westerns, and with the great Joel McCrea one really can't go wrong.  *If any twat asks "who is Joel McCrea", I swear I will hunt you down and horsewhip you!  See SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS for his finest film, though he stated he always preferred acting in movies with horses, tumbleweed and cactus!  True story!

Actually a really good little 1951 western, with top notch performance by the young Dean Stockwell (didn't he die quite recently??)


The film has a handful of good matte shots in it by Russell Lawson, with one shot in particular being a real standout (I show that one in a bit...)  This one is intriguing.. a well rendered full frame painting that does not include a railway track, even though a second cut shortly afterward appears to use the same painting, this time modified somewhat, and now with a railroad track!  It's like the damned Twilight Zone in that valley - another dimension!

Before and after Lawson shot, with train.

Larger view of the matte with the train rolling on and some modified bits of scenery.

Now friends, this is one terrific matte shot, and one that is so bold.  Some folks dismiss Russ as just a brush for hire, but the guy did some inventive things over his very extensive career, mostly at Universal.  He, and fx cameraman Roswell Hoffman, weren't afraid of running matte lines through the sky - that is painted sky to actual sky - as I've seen in many examples.  Here is a prime one.  See below...

The same shot broken down (as best I can do it, sadly).  Real train, real people, real water spout, half sky real while other half painted.  Large water tank, ladder, mountains, roof of train carriages all painted in!  Russ has run his matte line around the edge of a cloud, which unless you were really paying attention, you'd never spot.  Lawson and Hoffman did this on many shows to excellent effect. 

Two more CATTLE DRIVE mattes with mountain range and skies added in.


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ROBIN HOOD - Starring the Biggest Box Office Name of the Silent Era.

Silent classic ROBIN HOOD (1922).  Yep, Douglas Fairbanks was the biggest star of his day.  The Tom Cruise of the twenties, except that Fairbanks could act.  Like Tom, Douglas was a little fella, and as the great 'Hedley Lamarr' said in Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles, "How did he do such incredible stunts, with such little feet".

Fairbanks on the set leaning against the biggest godammned megaphone ever constructed!

ROBIN HOOD (1922) was a beautifully shot adventure and includes a number of stunning matte and glass shots.  Matte artist was the uncredited Ferdinand Pinney Earle - a pioneer in the technique, though a pioneer who seemed to always be in lawsuit battles with his competitor Norman Dawn, over just who invented it (my money's on Dawn).  These shots show Earle and his assistants busy at work on glass shots in his specialist studio.

Before and afters of the most recognisable ROBIN HOOD shot by F.P Earle.



Ferdinand Earle at work, plus an old article on his trick work from one of his lost films.


Of note to film buffs - Alan Hale co-starred both here in the 1922 film and again alongside Errol Flynn in the 1938 Technicolor remake - each time as the exact same character!  Not to be confused with his son, Alan Hale jnr, who starred in tv's 'Gilligan's Island'.  Now remember that fact in case the question comes up when you are facing The Governess on'The Chase'.

The film opens with this gorgeous glass shot.  Must have been on glass as the painted clouds are moving across the sky.  Several mattes have the same cloud movement.


A beautifully done soft dissolve from one painted castle to another.

The intertitles are very poetic.

From one matte painted castle to another...


Further soft dissolve brings us this ruin.  I do wonder if this is a model or at least a partial miniature set up.  The sky is moving too.

The production design was most impressive and the sets were the most talked about and documented of the day.

The master shot of the castle and battlements remains an F.P Earle masterpiece.  The actual standing set was immense even before the matte art was added.  The clouds here also drift across the sky.

A breathtaking interior set extension.  Apparently Earle was one tough customer and not an easy fellow to live with, or so I once read.  His son became a background artist on 1940's Disney animated features.


Ferdinand Pinney Earle was classically trained in the fine art academies of Paris under first rate painters such as Bougereau - as some other matte exponents did at the time such as Jan Domela, Hans Ledeboer and I think Spencer Bagtatopolis, Emil Kosa and maybe Walter Percy Day too.

Other notable matte artists got their start under F.P Earle such as Paul Detlefsen who went on to head the Warner Bros matte department and later over at RKO in it's final days.

Earle found fame with his illusions by creating motion pictures with exotic locales almost entirely within the silent era studio through carefully planned use of his matte art techniques whereby seemingly impossible scenes could be brought to the screen by merging glass paintings with separately filmed actors shot against black velvet, though sadly many of those films are lost today.

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SAMPO:  Finland's Fanciful Fairytale

I've seen a number of Nordic-noir thrillers from Finland but never before have I come across an effects filled fairytale like this.  SAMPO (1959) was a visual feast with competent and often astounding trick work.  I bet you've never heard of this one.

No, your eyes aren't fooling you... Apparently some jerk US distributor bought the rights and recut and retitled the Finnish flick as, get this, THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE (yeah... really!) and released it some years later!  Sadly, the Americans had a habit of doing this sort of thing to foreign films!

I'm thinking that might be an effects credit, 'Trikki..." something or other.  It has to be a vfx credit.

The film was a grand extravaganza, filled with colour, imaginative vista's and amazing art direction such as shown in this matte shot which was made with a pan across to left making me think it was a glass shot mounted in front of a studio tank.

I understand SAMPO was a Finnish-Soviet co-production.  Actually, the Soviet film industry were highly adept at produced some amazing photographic effects work on a great many films - at least from the few examples I've managed to see.  The matte artist was Zoya Morakova, who would paint on scores of Soviet films over a long career.  *Some other examples are shown at the end of this SAMPO piece.  

This one appears to be a simple perspective gag, with the actor positioned some distance behind the foreground miniature set, a-la DARBY O'GILL.

Much matte painted set extension here, and beautifully designed too.  The story was kind of hard to follow, but had much to do with magical rainbows and a delightful character attempting to stop some devilish witch from stealing the sun - or something.  Very popular in its homeland of Finland I believe.

More matte art here, used to add in much of the set above the heads of the cast.

Filmed in 2.35 CinemaScope, or 'SinemaSkop', or 'Dyaliscope' or even 'VistaScope', depending on which advertising material you come across and who you believe!

Excellent model work for this snow storm, which presumably formed the basis of the severely re-cut, dubbed and disemboweled American release version THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE!

Part of an exquisite fx sequence where the Northern Lights appear in the night sky.

Wonderful matte painted composite with gentle light in the sky added.

Film critic and author Tim Lucas, who used to put out the excellent review mag Video Watchdog back in the 90's called SAMPO"an impossibly beautiful film".

I'd be most intrigued at how many MatteShot blog readers have heard of, or even seen this mysterious, yet fascinating film.

I'm particularly fond of this matte shot.  Photographic effects cameraman was Lev Dovgvillo who did fine work with combining Zoya Morakova's wonderful matte art.

Miniature boats with both the ice flows and the sky being matte art.  The film was directed by renowned Russian film maker Aleksandr Ptushko.

Another great shot from the film has our character braving the ferocious snow storm in this very nicely done partial set augmented with matte painted rooftop and trees.



Although these three images are not from SAMPO, I decided to include them as examples of Zoya Morakova's matte art from other films.  This is from WALKING OVER THREE SEAS.

Detail from a Zoya matte for the same film.

A before and after Morakova matte from LOVE FOR LOVE, made in 1983.  I think I got these images from my friend in Madrid, Domingo.  If so, he knows far more about Euro-Russian fx than I do.



Mexican poster for SAMPO.

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THE MAN FROM COLORADO:  Great Cast and Fine Matte Art


What could be better than a good, solid old school western starring both Glenn Ford and William Holden - THE MAN FROM COLORADO (1948) fits the bill nicely.

Columbia were often under rated for their product, no doubt as a result of the tight fisted rule of studio boss Harry Cohn, whom nobody liked and many regarded as a total thug.

Although they rarely put up a screen credit for effects, let alone matte work, Columbia by this time had the legendary Lawrence W. Butler running the effects department, with long time vfx cameraman Donald Glouner and, shown above, experienced matte artist Juan Larrinaga - the brother of Mario Larrinaga who was over at Warner Bros.  Both Juan and Mario worked together on KING KONG (1933) and its sad sequel, SON OF KONG over at RKO.

The flick is a compact and exciting little western, and for cowboy buffs like Pete, it was a good nights viewing.  Several matte shots were used to expand the settings, with this painted venue being an important part of the plot.

Now this shot is an outstanding matte.  One of the best of its era in fact.  Everything above the people has been added in superbly.  Beautifully rendered, presumably by Juan Larrinaga, the feeling of light, depth and hue - not to mention the outstanding soft blend marrying the art to the set, one could almost be forgiven in accepting it as a 1970's Albert Whitlock o/neg shot as it's that good.

While not as effective as the previous sensational matte, this still works.

A closer matte view of the canyon where things are about to 'kick off'.

Lawrence and Donald ran the Columbia effects dept for many years before finally branching out and establishing their own specialist effects house, Butler-Glouner.  Larry's father William Butler had been a key optical effects man for Warners back in the late silent days, with Larry joining him when aged only 15.  Larry had a massive career, gaining an Oscar for THE THIEF OF BAGDAD in 1940, and would run Warner's famed 'Stage 5' trick department for many years, whereby that studio's best and most adventurous visual effects work was created with jaw dropping shots on things like RHAPSODY IN BLUE, ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN, HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT and my all time fave fx show, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY.  Even in his old age Butler was being sought after for effects consultation.  Spielberg hired him as advisor for CE3K long before Trumbull and co came on board, and as a small tribute, Steven even named a character 'Larry Butler' in the final film!  True story.


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RUTHLESS:  Sinister goings-ons and treachery afoot


A rip roaring and moody noir-esque melodrama that few today would have heard of, RUTHLESS (1948) was a winner for NZ Pete.  An outstanding cast, with Zachary Scott better than ever.  Plus, any film with Sidney Greenstreet is a must see for me.   

No effects credit but being an Eagle-Lion show I'd offer an educated guess that Jack Rabin and Irving Block were likely involved as their visual effects shop, Studio Film Service just happened to be right there on the Eagle-Lion lot.

A dark and at times malevolent drama, especially when Greenstreet is around.  The femme lead, Diana Lynn, was an absolute honey, and thus gets her lovely picturesque self immortalised forever in this blog!  Sexist?  So, sue me!

There are just a half dozen mattes in the film, but it's always been my brief to bring 'unknown' or forgotten flicks to life through my blog.  This is a great shot actually.  Practically all painted, with the addition of an animated lighthouse beam high atop the frame that is constantly revolving.

Putting a roof on a set was forever the most common requirement for a matte shot, be they a vast cathedral, a ballroom or just a plain flat ceiling to hide the studio lights and rigging, the matte guys did a million 'top ups' over the years, and most you'd never notice.

Reverse angle with all painted in from midway up the frame, including the 'candle' illumination.

Nicely rendered sky in what is pretty much a 50/50 matte to actual exterior.

Jack Rabin and Irving Block had very long careers in effects.  Rabin started with Jack Cosgrove at Selznick, with Rabin and Block meeting up at Fox in the 1940's.  Block went on to MGM as one of Newcombe's staff of matte painters and eventually both got back as business partners - with title artist Louis DeWitt - and set up their own optical facility, specialising in low (and extremely low) budget assignments for guys like cheapskate Roger Corman.  They did do the occasional prestige job though, such as Charles Laughton's classic NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.


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NATIONAL VELVET:  Liz takes the micky out of Mickey(!)


Star chemistry, and then some!  The very young Elizabeth Taylor and the massively talented Mickey Rooney..... what could go wrong?

The massively popular family film NATIONAL VELVET (1944) still stands the test of time.

Interestingly, the actor Jack Nicholson was once interviewed and asked who he thought was the best actor ever.  He quickly responded, "Mickey Rooney".  He said that Rooney could do anything - and he did.  Right from a small kid, through to song and dance, comedy, drama, thrillers, the number one box office draw for several years...you name it, the little fella was mega talented, but must have lost a fortune with so many divorces among his 8 (count 'em eight) wives! Jesus!!  Oddly, I think Liz Taylor went through as many husbands as Mickey went through wives.... that's like 16 divorces between them! Though, I digress.........

The family film is loaded to the gills with so many matte shots.  I almost lost count.

Warren Newcombe took screen credit but as was common knowledge never so much as picked up a paint brush.  That's what 'heads of departments' get... all the credit where credit's not entirely due.  Newcombe was however, a superb manager of his large staff, and knew exactly what the director required.  As such, MGM turned out many of the best mattes in Hollywood, especially in the 1940's.

A magnificent matte painted London, complete with moving traffic on the bridge.  This matte would crop up again in several other films over the years.

What always impressed me with Newcombe shots were the brilliant blends between the art and the live action.  Rarely were there ever any obvious matte lines on show, and almost always senior matte cameraman Mark Davis seemed to use soft matte blends - and often in the least obvious of places.  

A typical example of a superb blend to marry the fact to the fiction, as I like to phrase it. This is one first class bit of matte work.

The colour matching when exposing the elements was always very good at MGM, though things tended to slip a little once CinemaScope came in.

MGM had the dough to spend and would commission mattes by the score, even if they weren't sure they were needed.  I've seen so many paintings made for specific films that never appeared in the final cut, almost as if they were rendered purely as a 'standby' just in case.

A very impressive tilt down shot where the entire thing is a large painting, with just the fluttering flag 'burnt in' later.  A number of 'drilled away' slot gags are evident in the painted crowd, where 'movement' is simulated through backlit devices behind the artwork - an old trick that the Newcombe department were masters at.

Closer look at the painting.

In a number of shots the matte art is so convincingly assembled that a few rewinds are in order to figure things out.

Key matte artists working then were Howard Fisher, Henry Hillinick, Otto Kiechle, Hernando Villa, Henry Peter McDermott and others.

As incredible as it may sound, I heard from Matthew Yuricich that the artists under Warren at MGM were never allowed to view their own tests or finals in the projection room!  Strictly heads of department to watch, and out of bounds to minions such as the poor son-of-a-bitch who actually painted the damned thing!  From those 'test' viewings the head of dept would relay to the matte artist what was wrong and where corrections needed to be made, without the artist ever having the benefit of seeing the thing on film himself!  Unbelievable!

Although NATIONAL VELVET was way before Yuricich's time, he said that according to guys like Howard and Henry, the average matte would take about 2 to 3 weeks to complete, once any problematic areas had been sorted out.  They had a draftsman named Bill Meyer who would meticulously draw in everything that was required, and the matte painter would by and large, just follow that outline and fill it in.  Apparently Meyer was very skilled with this.

A superbly invisible matte that would also appear years later in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy MONEY FROM HOME.

The big Derby with little Liz in the front.  Lots of paint here, with just the foreground, the horses and some of the mid-ground crowd being actual.

At MGM, while most artists would paint standing up with the traditional easel, both Howard Fisher and Henry Hillinick preferred to paint while seated with their mattes on drawing-drafting tables tilted down.  Howard was what you could call a 'photo realist' with his approach, while Henry tended to be more experimental at times and use a thick impasto style for certain things, possibly due to his early training as a scenic backing painter, though looking at his finely detailed matte at the end of RAINTREE COUNTY (see earlier in this post), his work could be very meticulous.

For the extended racetrack sequence at the climax, scores of mattes were employed for shot after shot, with many being invisible to the casual viewer.  All of the shots with the grandstand visible were painted, and all of the distant crowd were mere artwork (see below).

I've deliberately cropped a couple of frames here to illustrate just how much of what you saw on screen was in fact trick work.  Practically all of the onlookers were painted in, and augmented by interference gags behind the painting at specific points to simulate 'movement' where in fact there was none.
These are not from NATIONAL VELVET, rather an example of a painted crowd from another MGM picture TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME which came out a few years later.  Note the apparent attention to detail, though the people are pretty much rendered as blotches of paint, though applied in a manner that would read as the real thing on film, especially with specific 'slot gags' in play.
All painted as shown in this close up, though I only have B&W high rez photos of this, sadly.


And NATIONAL VELVET concludes with this majestic sunset.  Virtually a full painting here with just a tiny strip of gravel road with Mickey Rooney on.  Wonderful stuff.


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CUSTER OF THE WEST:  Big screen bio-pic of a larger than life legend.


Sensational ad art as was the style in the late sixties, CUSTER OF THE WEST (1968) was an epic mounting of great scale and ambition.

Among the sprawling adventure were several excellent matte painted shots, rendered by the legendary Spanish artisan, Emilio Ruiz del Rio.  Although uncredited, Emilio contributed some top notch glass shots for the big screen Super Technirama 70mm production.


Two master craftsmen in front of a large miniature set - matte artist Emilio Ruiz at left, and model specialist Francisco Prosper at right, both men enormously skilled and backed up with hundreds of screen credits between them.

Although a Cinerama film 'presentation', it wasn't filmed or projected in true 'Cinerama' as that process had been put out to pasture for some years.  True Cinerama involved complicated triple head photography and the resulting triple unit projection, spreading 3 individual strips of film projected separately in left, centre and right panels across an extremely wide screen to breathtaking effect.  MGM's HOW THE WEST WAS WON was one of the most famous.

A superb glass shot by Emilio Ruiz, filmed with a tilt up.  There is far more here painted than you might think.  See below...

A close view of substantial artwork where Emilio has added in an entire community of Indian tents as well as all of the background mountain range.

The left side has vegetation added in as well as all of the background hills and mountains.

Another of Ruiz's mattes that fool the viewer's eye as being a regular (Spanish) location.

Closer look at it demonstrates excellent brush work and quite a loose style.  Most likely done on a piece of sheet metal, mounted in front of the camera and shot in situ as a foreground matte shot directly onto the original negative, which was Emilio's tried and true method since the 1940's.

Another in camera matte by Ruiz.  Emilio worked on so many films - numbering around 400 I believe - with notable work on things like the excellent and sorely under rated GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, where CUSTER's miniatures expert, Francisco Prosper also provided wonderful model sets.

A major action set piece sees a heavily laden locomotive come to grief.

Miniatures supervised by Francisco Prosper who did remarkable work on shows like the huge KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA and BATTLE OF THE BULGE - both with substantial miniature effects requirements.

Trouble is afoot, at the foot of the trestle bridge railway.

Runaway carriage...


Fabulous work here, especially when compared to the dismal work featuring a similar train disaster in the 1977 flick THE CASSANDRA CROSSING.


Good scale model construction plus shooting in actual daylight makes for top quality sequence.


The final vfx shot is another of Emilio's painted mattes, though they decided to superimpose Robert Shaw over the shot.



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KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS:  An extremely miscast wide screen adventure.


KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS (1954) - an early venture into CinemaScope for Warner Bros. that was a tedious and at times ludicrous affair.

I love old school hand painted title cards like these - a highly skilled profession in itself.  Usually hand lettered on glass, they really were an artform in a class of their own.

No effects credit but most likely it was Louis Litchtenfield running the special photographic effects unit at Warners.  Lou was a veteran matte artist with his work appearing in films like MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE FOUNTAINHEAD and LAND OF THE PHAROAHS among others.

The first few mattes are all desert shots with oasis groves and distant fortifications painted in.

Painted in oasis as the 'collecting his pay-cheque'Rex Harrison looks on.  Rex was a good actor in many films, with the certified classic UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948) being an absolute high point whereby I split my sides laughing.  Later on he starred in the 100% dreadful DOCTOR DOOLITTLE (1968) and reportedly hated every minute of it with a pathological passion, bursting into a tirade whenever the director yelled 'cut' then resuming character for the next take, then cursing the producer again when cut was called.  Must have been a fun set.  As an aside, that dire DOOLITTLE film stole the Oscar for it's effects from the vastly superior war picture TOBRUK that year... but don't get me started on Oscar injustices.

Late in the film we shift to greener pastures and Litchtenfield provided some rather nice mattes.  Love the sky here.

Another wider view later on.  Also in the Warners matte department at the time was old time vfx artist Jack Cosgrove, so perhaps he had input as well.

Same as early castle shot but colour hue and time of day etc are different.

Excellent matte of King Richard's place of residence.  Again, I like the sky.


Well, that's about it for another post/article.  I hope that journey down the movie magic rabbit hole was fruitful, interesting and entertaining.  Your feedback is welcome.

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FINAL WORD:


My thoughts go out to the people of the State of Palestine as they face the relentless holocaust that the rest of the world (with one or two exceptions) see plainly as Israeli state orchestrated ethnic cleansing.
 
The Zionist sanctioned wholesale destruction of the Palestinian population's homes, hospitals, schools, businesses, farms, places of worship and what the fascist Israeli invaders jokingly call 'safe zones' where every Palestinian, regardless of age, gender or profession is targeted with complete and unabated prejudice. 
 
The International Criminal Court investigating war crimes will try it's best to prosecute the ultra extremist Netanyahu regime (that is rapidly looking more and more 'Neo-Nazi' as the days pass by) though we all know full well the US would crawl over broken glass to block any and all such justice from having any likelihood of ever being carried out in any international court of law.

Oh, and just to set the record straight, yes, the Jews were persecuted and murdered on a mass scale by the seriously fucked up National Socialist Germany, without question, and yes, Hitler and his entire evil band were complete and utter cunts, without exception, the likes of which the world had never seen. But none of that gives the Zionists a 'free pass' to completely obliterate the people of the State of Palestine as they have been slowly and steadily doing by decree for over seven painful decades.

FREE GAZA NOW ... Surely all that potential prime coastal real estate isn't worth the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian lives.  It's all looking more and more like another sorry 'Final Solution', this time on the part of the ultra right wing government of Israel.

Pete




 
***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 182 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 











MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Five

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Hi friends... it's autumn here now and the season is turning a different colour 'down under' (sounds like something a medic should promptly look into?)  As such, it appears that it is that time again for another vast and fulfilling exploration of all things traditional matte, miniature and optical - done the 'old fashioned way' by eye, hand, instinct, and sometimes sheer seat of the pants ingenuity to sell a shot.
As always, I have a treasure trove of material to share - much of which I'm certain will be fresh to many, if not all of my readers.  We have an astonishingly broad range of motion pictures here in need of celebration - of various vintages - as well as some hidden away gems that came my way a while back from the family of esteemed matte artist Matthew Yuricich.

So what's on the roll call today?  Well, I have a newly discovered Albert Whitlock matte from one of his non-Universal assignments that nobody was aware of;  Some rarely seen clips from an early nineties tv doco on the craft of matte painting;  The huge effects laden apirition filled 80's Ivan Reitman hit which spawned a score of reboots;  A truly spectacular MGM water-ballet musical;  A fun 70's dino-adventure flick that's true to my heart;  A Mel Brooks monochromatic spoof;  A cheezy Canadian made Lee Majors end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it show;  A Christmas comedy, albeit four months too late;  A made-for-tv disaster movie... and more!


A candid picture of two Brit born masters of the effects medium:  Al Whitlock and Derek Meddings shown here on the German set of the early nineties kiddie film NEVER ENDING STORY PART 2.  Al was there to supervise all the plate photography to later be combined with Syd Dutton's wonderful mattes back at Universal.  Derek was overall VFX supervisor, with an accent on miniatures.  I include this candid pic as both gentlemen feature in todays big blog post.  *Many thanks to Derek's assistant, Steve Begg for the photo.

There's something for everyone in this posting, though in a rare admission I have to confess that a couple of the films covered here I've not actually seen(!!)  One was just too hard to track down - and as I don't routinely dabble with YouTube and such due to abysmal 10th generation uploads which I simply cannot watch - I've just had to settle with material I already had on hand.
So, let us begin our rollercoaster ride through that magical land of mattes, models and much more.
Money back if you aren't at least 101% satisfied...........

Enjoy, and I appreciate your feedback.

Pete


***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 183 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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A BLAST FROM THE PAST


The grandfather of British special photographic effects, Walter Percy Day - known throughout the business as Pop Day - on location in France way back in 1922 for LES OPPRIMES. Pop was one of the greats of the artform, with many up and coming matte exponents trained under his steely gaze, such as a young Peter Ellenshaw, Les Bowie, George Samuels, Albert Julion, Judy Jordan and Joseph Natanson to name but a few.

Revealing historic photographs show just how enormous Day's glass shots were, which was something his future stepson, Peter Ellenshaw commented on in his memoir at how gigantic Pop preferred to make his glass paintings, whereas a third of the size would have worked just as well says Peter.  Just imagine the difficulty in handling these bloody great big framed glasses!!!  The mind boggles.

The final in-camera composite frame blow up for the Brussel's main square shot for LES OPPRIMES.  Incidentally, Pop Day disliked the label 'special effects man' and always preferred 'Process Shots'when receiving a screen credit.  Pop's now famous utterances to his apprentices "Big brush... use a big brush"  and "Don't get tickly with it" are legend among numerous matte artists with the '60 degrees of separation' from Percy Day.  Even Al Whitlock - who contrary to popular belief never worked with nor trained under Poppa, but had met him - used those same phrases, passed to him at Disney in the UK days by Peter Ellenshaw.


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CUSTER RIDES AGAIN - Redux on more trickery.


I did an elaborate piece on CUSTER OF THE WEST (1968) in the previous issue, though missed out some key behind the scenes pics, which my good VFX friend in Madrid, Domingo Lizcano had previously sent me but I misplaced (as one does).  Domingo kindly reminded me, so here they are.  As mentioned, the maestro himself, the great Emilio Ruiz was matte artist on the film (in addition to painting scenic backings), and this interesting establishing shot never made the final edit.  Here we see the Spanish Sevilla Studios built fort set, which, as shown at right, Emilio executed his favourite in-camera foreground matte painted extension (usually on aluminium sheet or wood carefully mounted and aligned with the actual physical set).  As well as painting in a desert, hills and other details to conceal the unwanted neighbourhood, Ruiz included his ingenious method of 'marching soldiers' by means of tiny figurines attached to a continous motorized rubber belt, hidden within a space in the matte art.  Ruiz used this gag often in such films as David Lynch's huge (but utterly incomprehensible) DUNE (1985)

The final, though ultimately unused shot, complete with marching 'cavalry' coming over the hillside.  all done in-camera, though this image appears to be a test as the production company have their vehicles and gear in shot!  Maybe that's why they cut it....Some 2nd A.D never removed the cars?

Another great behind the scenes look at a key CUSTER miniature set up under the supervision of Eugene Lourie - himself a master trickster when it came to model shots.

Say cheese.  Two for one!  Art Director Fernando Gonzalez smiles for the camera, while a second stills man photographs Francisco Prosper next to the miniature bridge.

Boys with their toys.  CUSTER OF THE WEST director Robert Siodmak on top with cap and a pipe, while Eugene Lourie lines up the shot with the viewfinder.


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UNCREDITED MATTE WORK FROM ALBERT WHITLOCK



A most curious discovery came about when Matt Yuricich's son, Dana, sent me a matte painting purporting to be one of his dad's pieces, he thought was from the Kevin Costner epic DANCES WITH WOLVES, though it wasn't.  The beautiful painting, still in pristine condition, was marked 'Albert Whitlock'on the reverse side, which got my 'matte-mind' ticking over.  I just knew I'd seen this somewhere before.....  And then it came to me:  CHUKA a fairly obscure 1967 western from Paramount, starring the always reliable Aussie, Rod Taylor (a terrific actor from such bona-fide NZ Pete faves as THE TIME MACHINE, 36 HOURS and DARK OF THE SUN and of course Hitchcock's THE BIRDS).


Here's how Albert's painting shaped up in the scene with rising smoke optically added. The matte opens the film in fact.


Closer detail of the burned out ranch.  This is all so intriguing to me as it's another example of Whitlock painting shots for Paramount in the late 1960's.  Jan Domela had long since semi-retired (though he did various jobs for Film Effects of Hollywood and MGM) and the matte department had been closed down in the early sixties, with a few hangers-on's still on board, such as Paul Lerpae who'd been with the studio since the 1930's, heading up the special photographic effects side of things.  

More detail, and it's classic Whitlock - dabs and dashes, with flicks of pigment - entirely impressionistic yet a completely realistic view all the same.  The full painting measures 38x46 inches and is painted on Masonite (hardboard).


Another matte from CHUKA which I feel is also likely one of Albert's uncredited shots.  Interestingly, Lerpae must have had a good relationship with Whitlock, as Al painted on several Paramount pictures around that time such as the wonderfully black James Coburn satire THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST and one of John Wayne's best, the Howard Hawks classic EL DORADO.  I'm thinking these must have been done at Howard Andersons effects company, as I think they were based on the Paramount lot then.  As an aside, CHUKA has other mattes in it, all Jan Domela shots, recycled from old Paramount shows like OMAR KHAYYAM and NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE.


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TV MATTE PAINTING DEMO FROM THE MASTER, CIRCA 1992


A fascinating television documentary came my way courtesy of one of my readers - ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD which I'm told aired in 1992 - where Albert Whitlock explains and demonstrates the art of the matte painting.

In what I suspect might be his private studio in his Santa Barbara home, Al shows us how he creates his wonderful cloudscapes, using in this example a painting he did nearly two decades previous for Gene Roddenberry's GENESIS II, and most tellingly, appears to actually apply fresh pigment onto the long since completed matte art.  He demonstrates the sense of texture he so easily renders for things such as rocks etc.  Note the ever present mirror that Albert - and some other exponents - always relied upon (me too in my strictly amateur-hour capacity!) to evaluate the overall progress by a quick backward glance where the inverted viewpoint can reveal errors, seen as a 'fresh eye'.  Some other mattes are seen around the room such as THE STING.

GENESIS II (1973) detail.  *Check out one of Tom Higginson's fantastic YouTube vid doco's on the wonders of Whitlock where the shots in this tv movie are examined in detailClick here for that.

Apparently, it wasn't unusual for Whitlock to 'correct' or alter some of his mattes, often long after they had been filmed and finished with.  Jim Danforth told me how he did just that with a particular matte for the Civil War film SHENNENDOAH around 1965, even though the film had long since been seen at the cinema!  It just bugged him, and he just had to fix something.

More detail.  The master!  Enough said.

Final composite from original tv movie.


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THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CRACKED CASTLE



Mel Brooks was always a hit or miss kind of director for me.  More duds than bullseyes, though this one, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) was his masterpiece (closely followed by BLAZING SADDLES).  A masterfully crafted love letter to the old James Whale pictures of the thirties.

As mentioned, I have a number of never before seen matte artifacts from the family of Matthew Yuricich, including this conceptual painting as well as the original now famous full matte painted opening shot of Castle Frankenstein.  Though as Gene Wilder so succinctly put it:"it's pronounced Fronk-en-steen!"

Detail from Matthew's oil sketch.


The original glass matte painting as it looks today, hanging on the wall of one of Matt's sons. Man, I love that sky! There is an interesting backstory to this... and it took some Sherlock Holmes level interogation to reveal the truth(!!)

A nice close up clearly shows a massive crack running up through the delicate glass!  Hark - what happened there I hear you ask?  In my extensive 2012 Oral History with Matthew career blog post (a must read), he mentioned a few glass breakages he'd experienced over his career, with YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN being a bit of a sore point - apparently. That special blog post can be foundhere.

Matthew originally claimed Dana had 'stepped on it' while the glass was still being finished, though there was quite a lot more to the story as explained by Dana below.....


Re: Young Frankenstein. Yes I have it, it is very dear to my heart; I was the one who stepped on it and ran a crack through it.

Matt didn't tell you quite right how it all went down. It was a full width matte glass shot, completely painted out but for a tiny window in the middle.


The shot was done, the movie wrapped, Matthew decided to save the matte as a framed painting,

I think because it works so well as a painting, and a castle is such an iconic and difficult matte to successfully pull off as it is the focus. Matt brought it home, pulled it out of its frame, laying the glass panel on the living room rug, cutting it down to a framed painting size with a glass cutter. I was hopping about, way over excited at this operation, a big toe touched the edge of the glass , and crack went like a lightning bolt right through the glass! 


My dad was not a soft tempered character and I was promptly sent to my room scheduled for extermination. Matt then finished cutting down the glass matte painting, and in doing so, managed to send a another lightning bolt split right through the painting!! I've always wondered if he did that second crack unconsciously, so he wouldn't have to beat the tar out of me.


He put a second sheet of glass on the back and mounted the whole thing in a frame. Luckily there was a competent artist at hand to touch up the finished work.

Moral of the story: don't cut glass on a rug floor, get a bench.


When my siblings and I came to divide the paintings, it of course was my first choice, as this was quite the Father-Son bonding experience.


Dana Yuricich


As it looks in the movie, with added lightning effects and a slow zoom in.


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AN AWE-INSPIRING AQUATIC TECHNICOLOR SENSATION

MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID (1952), was far better than the silly tagline on it's trailer might suggest:  "Inspired by the true story of the original one piece bathing suit girl".  Oh, brother!

No other studio had the resourses that Metro Goldwyn Mayer had when it came to enormous musical extravaganzas.  A surprisingly good bio-pic of sorts of the early 20th Century Australian syncronised swimming sensation Annette Kellerman, played by real life medal winning US swim star Esther Williams, who did a number of 'aqua-musicals' for MGM.

The famous New York Hippodrome featured prominently in the proceedings...


Opening birds eye view of Sydney, Australia at the turn of the 20th Century.  The film has many excellent mattes from Warren Newcombe's stable of artists at MGM.

An excellent yet subtle set extension where a backlot set has had a beach, the Tasman sea, cottages, sky and upper levels of the house painted in invisibly.  As usual, Newcombe's guys concealed any semblance of a matte line, usually soft blends and in the least likely of places one might expect.

More MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID re-creation of 1903 Sydney.

On her way to America.  A clever trick, and one used often by MGM.  A three part composite with a tiny piece of set (just the lower deck and ladder); a partially painted steamer; some miniature components (probably the lifeboats), with simulated wave and wake action in the backlot lake or tank, all expertly combined as one.  Newcombe and collaborator Buddy Gillespie pulled off such gags routinely on various films.

A breathtaking matte painting of The Hippodrome and surrounds.  Virtually all painted with just a small patch at left with two actual motorcars (rest painted) and a few real people (rest painted in).  The fluttering flags up top were doubled in later, all up to outstanding results.

A later night matte of the same, this time with those magical animated neons that the Newcombe dept. were so damned good at.

Matte painted neon signage.

A giant tilt down over the vast neon theatre frontage, all glittering and a glow.

The sensational visual effects are easily matched by the jaw droppingly well choregraphed water ballet set pieces.  This shot is almost entirely painted, with the spectacular 'water showcase' added into the Hippodrome stage.  Just a handful of actual people are in the foreground, with all the others being flat artwork, animated via interfearence devices positioned behind the strategically drilled out holes in the painting - an old and trusted Newcombe trick.

Esther Williams was a genuine swim champ, and was all set to participate in the Berlin Olympics in 1940, but was called off because of some complete and utter prick by the name of Adolf Hitler!

More Newcombe illuminated signage - a specialised artform all of itself with which MGM's Newcombe department were undisputed geniuses with.


Now, the massive Technicolor aquatic ballet sequences were utter show-stoppers in their day, and are still amazing to view.   MGM were champions with this stuff, and it's probably never been better showcased than in MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID.  Mel Brooks did a neat spoof of this stuff in the not particularly funny HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART ONE (1981) with his Spanish Inquisition set piece.  'What a show'.

It really is something to see folks.  Any older readers of this blog will know exactly what I mean.

The final matte in the film was this nice 1920's airfield in which half the view was painted in.  All of the crowd upper right were painted, with the usual simulated 'movement' introduced in select spots.

An untrained actress, Esther never-the-less acquited herself well on screen, and did a good job in this film.... plus she looked a million bucks in her swimsuit, which was the whole point for Louis B. Mayer.


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SO, WHO 'YA GONNA CALL? ... ENTERTAINMENT EFFECTS GROUP, THAT'S WHO.

I've been meaning to cover this flick for ages, but glad I delayed as I have a whole boot-load of matte paintings by Matthew Yuricich now.

The super-hit of 1984, GHOSTBUSTERS was - and remains - a fan favourite.  It's one of those flicks that you can watch almost every year, like DIE HARD, PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES and of course The Marx Bros. DUCK SOUP (Google it... it's brilliant!)

The producers weren't quite sure where to go for this huge vfx extravaganza, so when multi Oscar winner Richard Edlund decided to go it alone and moved out of all too corporate ILM and took over the former highly prized Doug Trumbull effects house Entertainment Effects Group (EEG), arrangements were made and deals signed.

GHOSTBUSTERS was a mammoth trick shot undertaking for all concerned.  EEG had been set up by Douglas Trumbull in the mid 70's under the brand Future General - primarily for Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (1978) and subsequently STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE (1979), and a well oiled machine it was at that.  Matte painter Matthew Yuricich (left) was already on board, though assistance would be needed for the 40 odd painted mattes required.  Matt's former apprentice Michele Moen (centre) was enlisted early on, and was well versed in the techniques, having trained on BLADERUNNER (1982) and would go on to films like CLIFFHANGER and the huge matte assignment DICK TRACY (1989).  Also recruited to help out was veteran Disney matte painter, Constantine 'Deno' Ganakes (right) whose career as assistant to Peter Ellenshaw stretched back to classics such as MARY POPPINS (1964) and THE LOVE BUG (1968) as well as later films such as THE BLACK HOLE (1980).  Deno used to be the President of the Matte Artists Union.

Two key members of Yuricich's unit at work:  the immensely talented Michele Moen, shown here painstakingly drafting out one of the many matte masonite panels with 'Spook Central'.  Also shown at right is matte cinematographer Neil Krepela with the EEG 65mm process projector, which was used to composite some of the forty-odd mattes.

An early matte shot that many never spotted was the malevolent looking gargoyles (are there any other kind?) overhanging the New York Public Library.  See below...

Matthew's painting for the scene, which recently sold at auction.

A very busy looking Matthew works his brush and pigment.

Close up detail.  Note the wonderful texture that Matt has worked into the surface of the stone.  I'm assuming he used his razor blade method to lightly scrape and 'texturize' the dried paint - a method taught to him by his protoge at MGM, Henry Hillinck, in the mid fifties.

The librarian ghost kicks off the preceedings with a whallop!  A perfectly designed and executed vfx gag integrating a live action performer in heavy make up, and a terrific animatronic puppet.  Great sound editing here too, as I am a massive fan of cinematic sound fx editing - an arena sadly overlooked by most film fans.  **Some all time greats of'sound effects editing'on NZ Pete's list would be Sidney Furie's horror flick THE ENTITY (1982);  Ridley Scott's ALIEN (1979);  the Bruce Lee classic ENTER THE DRAGON (1973); Mark Robson's EARTHQUAKE (1974); Joseph Sargent's COLOSSUS-THE FORBIN PROJECT (1969); Coppola's monumental APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) - and as odd as it may read, most of the Chuck Jones LOONEY TUNES cartoons of the 50's, courtesy of the incredible resident WB 'sound-smith' genius, Treg Brown...... though, I digress!  Phew!


This puppet aint' no mere muppet!



A key establishing matte shot across Central Park of the soon to be infamous though fictional Spook Central - not to be confused with the all too real 'Trump Tower' which has an altogether far more ghastly and demonic presence that not even a 100 piece exorcism could cure!  

A closer look...



A close encounter of the greedy kind.  

One of the key attributes that I feel sold GHOSTBUSTERS was the terrific cel animated fx work - and there was a lot of it.  Garry Waller and Terry Windell were heavily involved in the cel work.

The great notion by director Ivan Reitman of having these Nutrona Wands as they were called, be almost impossible to handle safely, without blowing shit up by mistake was a gem.  Kind of like a fire truck hose in the hands of a 5 year old!  Hilarious!  And remember folks:  "Never cross the streams"  "Why not?"   "Because it would be bad!"   "Okay, that's great safety advice"

The 'Onionhead' creature crew with levers at the ready.

Essentially Onionhead was a performer in the suit, dressed in black, and shot against black velvet.  Additional manipulation was provided by the team with cable actuated devices.  The Onionhead plates were later rephotographed with the Compsy system - Computerised Multiplane System - which I think Doug Trumbull had developed a few years earlier for his vfx opus BRAINSTORM (1982) and the incredibly complex layers of optical elements therein.  Compsy was designed for accurate repeatability of programmed camera moves, likely along the lines of the Dykstraflex and a similar set up A.C.E.S over at Disney, all of which came about in the mid 70's.

Richard Edlund had been a major creative force while at Industrial Light & Magic when it was formed in 1975 under John Dykstra's management.  Richard had been an insert cameraman back in the 1960's and was taught photographic effects techniques while at Westheimer's optical company.  Edlund would prove to be a vital member of Dykstra's inner circle on the first - and best - STAR WARS picture in 1977, as 'First Cameraman' for the miniatures unit.  His creative input for the next two Star Wars pictures proved invaluable, with multiple Academy Award wins.  Personally, I feel some of Edlund's best work was in POLTERGEIST (1982), which when I saw it on the big screen on a Sunday double bill with John Carpenter's THE THING positively blew my mind to fucken' smithereens back in the day!

Mostly matte painted here, with just the lower half being actual.  Some strange things are going 'bump' in the night in Spook Central (of course, if you name a building 'Spook Central', you really are asking for trouble, are you not?)

One major drawback in the flick was the excruitiating Rick Moranis - an actor on a par with Eddie Deezen in the'I want to throw a chair through my big screen tv' in sheer annoyance!  Moranis - as so damned irritating, he was, at least upstaged by some cool dimensional animation of the so-called Terror Dog, though I hoped like hell the hound would bite Moranis' stupid head off and spit it out then and there, and save us from any more 'Rick-schtick' for the next 5 reels.  Sadly, 'twas not the case  :(

Terror Dog - a nasty little bugger that needs a muzzle. Even the stop-mo puppet looks dangerous!

Seasoned veterans of the stop motion field, animator and fabricator Randall William Cook, and effects cameraman Jim Aupperle, work through a key sequence.  Randy Cook has provided animation on many shows such as the low budget THE DAY TIME ENDED (1979), THE THING (1982) and a fave of mine which I joke about when I chat with Randy, the sclockmeister Larry Cohen flick Q, THE WINGED SERPENT (1982).  Randy lived here in New Zealand for several years as a major creative collaborator with Peter Jackson on the LORD OF THE RINGS films and KING KONG. Jim Aupperle also has a storied background in stop motion and vfx camera work, with work on cult classic FLESH GORDON (1971), CAVEMAN (1981) and also THE THING and THE GATE, both of these films with Randy.

Terror Dog stop motion action blue screened into set.

An important establishing shot that many assumed was an actual location, but was a cleverly manufactured trick shot.  See below...


From the Yuricich family collection we can now examine the matte as it exists today.


A closer look of what was initially a large format photograph taken with high optics Hasselblad still camera from a helicopter, supervised by Richard Edlund.  From this, a large high quality enlargement was developed and mounted onto Masonite - a method Yuricich was very acquainted with from all of his years with Fox and MGM - onto which the print was hand coloured and substantial set extensions and alterations made by brush.  The 'square' format was deliberate as the eventual shot included a slow push in.



Closer detail of Matthew's addition, as well as evidence of other background buildings being altered or reconfigured.


GHOSTBUSTERS relied upon a great deal of manufactured dramatic cloud effects.  An acknowleged master of 'cloud manipulation' was Gary Platek who specialised in water tank gags using special injected dyes and 500w photoflood light bulbs, all orchestrated as required for the numerous different shots with a great deal of technical finesse, often creating different layers of 'cloud'.  Platek did wonders on earlier films such as RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) and POLTERGEIST (1982).  A genuine artform if ever there were one.  *note:  It's not a new gag.  Arnold Gillespie developed the same thing quite brilliantly back at MGM in the 1940's for films like THE BEGINNING OR THE END (1947) to create the H-bomb blasts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with frighteningly convincing results.

Matte cinematography was supervised by Neil Krepela, assisted by Alan Harding.  Neil was another ILM veteran who started off there on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980).  Neil would join Edlund for GHOSTBUSTERS and remain with EEG - which would soon become BOSS Films - for the forseeable future.

Composite shot with stage set, matte art, cloud tank gags and cel animated energy bolts.  See below...


Matthew's original painting, in this instance rendered on glass to permit the stage plate live action to be added as a rear projected element in 65mm for maximum image resolution.

This is what can happen if you don't follow the instructions when ridding the real world of ghouls from the after-life!  Live action locale augmented possibly with either a miniature or painted rooftop.  Pyro element doubled in, followed with vibrant cel animated 'zap' which causes mayhem!

Much of this is painted.  Note the advert for the 'Stay Puft' on the billboard.  An omen of evil?

Before and after shows just how much Yuricich has added in, and not where you'd expect it.  Matt mentioned the rush job on this and that he never bothered to paint the windows onto the two left foreground buildings, but nobody ever notices.  Just paint enough to draw the viewer to the main point of the matte shot, that should be enough.  Famous words from several famous artists.

More exquisite cel animated backlit fx.

I just don't like the look of those storm clouds!  Something's brewing.  A shit-storm would be an accurate description.


One of the best mattes in GB was this remarkably adept view that not even I recognised as a trick in the many times I saw the film until this painting popped up for auction several years ago.


Final shot - perfection!

Production Designer on GB was the famous John DeCuir, and this is one of John's remarkable concept paintings for an important scene with Spook Central.  As I've written in earlier blogs, John started off in the business as a trainee matte artist at Universal under Russell Lawson.  DeCuir painted mattes on many films from the late 1930's through to the mid 1940's such as ALI BABA AND THE 40 THIEVES (1942); ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942) and Hitchcocks brilliant SABOTEUR (1941).


From John DeCuir's concept art, Michele Moen would then draft in an accurate outline onto a large sheet of Masonite (hardboard to us non-Yanks) with keen attention to perspective, from which Matthew would paint over and expand.

At left, the actors on a limited set at Columbia.  Right shows a portion of the now completed painting on glass, with an unpainted piece to allow the live action plate to be rear projected by Neil Krepela and a massive pullback employed to great effect.

Matt's incredible and expansive panorama of Manhatten, focused on the dubious Spook Central.  I love extreme perspectives in matte art, and this baby's as extreme as it gets.  A classic piece!  Richard Edlund had possession (no pun intended) of it and sold it at auction many years ago.

According to Michele, Matt was an early riser, hated LA traffic and commotion, and used to come into the fx studio very early - around 4.30am or 5am - and light up his cigarette, play his very loud 'polka' music, and merrily paint away when nobody else was around!  A character and then some!  As previously mentioned, my career length oral history I conducted with Matt prior to his passing may be found here.


Close look at the middle part of the painting where the rear projection portion has been left unpainted.

Frame from the final giant pullback shot with the live action projected in.



Traditional era matte artistry.... 'ya just gotta' love it! 


Supervising matte cameraman Neil Krepela takes a light reading.




Great fx animation matched by great casting.  Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson all perfect.  I saw the immediate sequel (not bad) but never bothered with the more recent re-boots (hate the term) nor remakes.  I believe the all-girl femme version was universally vilified and boycotted etc!! I haven't heard of such out and out 'dislike' for a movie since billionaire magnate William Randolph Hearst tried to have RKO burn the negative and all existing prints of CITIZEN KANE in 1941 all for making fun of his mistress and her little'Rosebud' (!!).

Another before and after of considerable peril.


Just don't look down.... it's at least 4 feet to the soundstage floor!



Interestingly, Edlund had never worked in the large 65mm film format before.  All of the vfx photography he did at ILM was with the VistaVision (35mm) horizontal frame format.  While VV provided an excellent 8 perf frame size, the bigger 65mm frame provided an even more superior image.  At first, 65mm stock was hard to come by, but Kodak set up a production line expressly to meet Edlund's requirements.  Doug Trumbull developed an even bigger, higher resolution format, ShowScan, which I think was 70mm running horizontal(?).  I recall some rides at Universal Studios back in the day such as the incredible Back To The Future interactive ride - either ShowScan or OmniMax, I forget which, but fucking incredible experience it sure was that I came out and got straight back into the line for a repeat run, though, again, I digress!


Another wonderful matte from the Yuricich collection, painted on Masonite, thus not an RP composite intended.

The finished shot with artwork combined.


Close up of Matthew's architecture.



A miniature combined with very elaborate cloud tank effects by Gary Platek and team.  Nice interactive shadow forming onto facade as cloud swirls around.  


Another painted extension for one of the Spook Central shots, though I couldn't spot the scene.  Sky area all left blank for later addition of cloud tank elements.



Multi part composite that possibly utilises the above painting.



Actually, when Columbia were early on seeking an effects provider they looked at various possibles.  Dream Quest - an essential though smaller scaled vfx house - were very interested in getting the gig, having proved themselves on several impressive features and commercials, but they admitted the GB script featured some visuals that they didn't have enough experience with.

Partial Spook Central top up, as painted to add to an existing NYC building.

Magnificent detail work.

Real building topped up with painted upper portion, with added Platek tank clouds.

And here he comes... evil incarnate himself.. a most terrifying vision if ever there were one... The Stay Puft Marshmellow Man!!  Run for the hills. A very well accomplished shot with a performer in a rubber suit, in front of a blue screen, flawlessly matted into a New York live action plate.  I know they built and filmed several large miniature buildings for the initial Stay Puft sequence, though whether those are included in this excellent shot, I'm unsure.  Rotoscoping around the heads of the fleeing extras completed the scene.  Mark Vargo was chief optical cinematographer.

Multi-element composites here, with live action, matte art, miniatures, Marshmellow Man and clouds.

The guy in the suit with some dodgy looking cables coming out his marshmellow bum!  For the street action miniatures supervisor Mark Stetson used a few remote control model cars, with the rest being pulled quite fast (filmed at high speed) on concealed cables.

Forced perspective miniature street and park, with toy cars propelled along at speed, which when projected at regular 24fps look natural.  Some little gags like a ruptured fire hydrant were achieved with a stream of salt jetting upward, lending a very credible 'water' spray.

It's showdown at the Spook Central corral.  See below for breakdown...

GB actors in front of a bluescreen; miniature set with guy in Stay Puft suit;  Yuricich matte painting;  Final composite.

Mathew's painting that was auctioned a few weeks ago as of this writing.

Close view of the 'connecting' matte art which tied the live action and miniature components together as one.

More...



A subsequent shot of our sailor suited denizen from the very depths of hades as the boys zap him with nutrona wands - this time the streams do get crossed.  See below...


Matte painted tenement buildings by Michele Moen, which also was auctioned recently.


Before and after of complex shot.

Mark Stetson's 15 foot miniature of Spook Central and intruder.

As Bill says:  "Now there's something you don't see every day!"

GB was nominated for an Oscar for the visual effects that year, as was the long awaited Arthur C. Clarke follow up, 2010 - both of which saw Richard Edlund and team up for the gold statuette for each film, though they missed out to ILM's INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, which admittedly was a worthy win for Edlund's friend and longterm ILM associate, Dennis Muren.

I often make mention of my admiration for character actors, and there are some great ones in GB.  The wonderful William Atherton appears as 'Walter Peck'(referred to as 'Pecker' by Bill Murray).  Atherton was so darned good in countless films such as DAY OF THE LOCUST and as the anti-Nazi bomber in THE HINDENBERG - one of the best.  Also, the little known Michael Ensign, as the hotel manager.  Michael had a memorable role as the US Consul in Alan Parker's utterly masterful MIDNIGHT EXPRESS - one of the best movies of the 70's.

The climax has Spook Central's upper floors explode in spectacular fashion.  A fascinating shot as the entire city view is an elaborate matte painting, with the central portion being a large scale miniature matted in, complete with an almost Apocalypse Now scaled explosion.  Beautiful work.

The city matte painting, sans central bit where the model building will ultimately be composited.

It goes up like the Fourth of July.

It's all over quickly, so most never suspect a matte painting was used here.  The matte was sold off years ago at yet another Hollywood auction.

Matte painted city horizon, pyro elements and Platek tank sky.

Miniatures cameraman Bill Neil (left) with matte cinematographer Neil Krepela (right) shoot recreated NYC model sequences.

A full painted central Manhatten and park, with added cloud tank manipulation.

The storm clears, the ghosts and ghouls severely dealt with, and the city of NY left with a massive clean up bill.




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AN OLD FASHIONED ACTION ADVENTURE ON A BUDGET

Fabulous ad art, and I still have the original one sheet for THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975).  It may seem a yawn to the JURASSIC generation, but it remains a guilty favourite of NZ Pete since I first saw it back in '75 on the very, very big screen at Auckland's mighty CineramaTheatre(sadly long bulldozed for a damned multiplex piece of crap.  So depressing that was!) 

Effects supervisor Derek Meddings with star Doug McClure at a drinks session after the shoot.  I grew up with both guys:  Doug was a solid and very popular tv star in THE VIRGINIAN cowboy series back in the 60's, and of course Derek was my absolute hero in as far as 'movie magic' went, what with every single Gerry Anderson tv series that for a 1960's kid was as close to nirvana as one could hope to get, with THUNDERBIRDS - both the series and the subsequent big screen scope feature - being unmissable staples of my diet, with any repeats essential.

The flick was a very popular film here, though a low budget (400'00 pounds Sterling) affair, but was a great time capsule back to the popular old sci-fi adventures that came out in the 1950's like THE LAND UNKNOWN, JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH (still fantastic), MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (very under rated) and even the tragic Irwin Allen laugh-fest THE LOST WORLD.

The master, on one of his many miniature sets he created over his career - this one being the tv series UFO from around 1971 - a show I found quite frightening back in the day, but don't tell anyone!  Sadly, almost all of the vast inventory of Century 21 miniatures, props, spaceships, vehicles and sets, were brutally junked and thrown into giant trash skips on the instructions of someone higher up.  Very few original models escaped that insane episode of utter fury.  Makes one want to cry!!  In fact some of the modelmakers did, I believe. Though, I digress...

Being a low budget affair, stop motion wasn't ever really a serious consideration, probably as much to do with the incredible time factor expected of frame by frame work, which for a short production schedule was out of the question.  Roger Dicken was a highly experienced special effects man, having worked with Les Bowie and later with Derek at Century 21 on the Gerry Anderson shows.  Roger was a major collaborator to Jim Danforth on Hammer's WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1969) - sculpting and building the various prehistoric creatures from which Jim would animate beautifully.  Roger worked on a number of films, with probably his most famous being Ridley Scott's still brilliant ALIEN (1979) whereby he designed, built and operated the face hugger and the chest burster stages of that mean bastard of an intergalactic killer.  Fantastic stuff.

For LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, the monster sequences had to be done as economically and as time friendly as possible, so the only option was to create animals that could be pupeteered and mechanically manipulated with rods concealed below the miniature sets.  The final shots were a bit of a mixed bag - some looked excellent while a few were never really going to pass muster.

Some of the surviving dinosaurs Roger built for the film.  A really good career interview with Roger can be found on the blog Monster Zone, which is linked here.

The quadrupeds faired somewhat better in the finished film, with quite realistic movement of limbs and body, as opposed to the beasts with only 2 legs, which were extremely limited in any form of movement.  Hell.... I still like the flick and always have had a soft spot for it over the decades.

A truly old fashioned scenario - and I think a clever one at that.  Of course Edgar Rice Burroughs was the creator of Tarzan and other adventurer laden novels, so that's a good start.  Amicus were a sort of competitor to Hammer Films, and pretty good too, with a number of memorable films throughout the 1960's and 70's.

Derek's miniature German U-boat is up to no good...  

The scenario was neat.  German U-boat sinks British Merchant ship with the token square jawed American hero; Survivors manage to clamber on board U-boat and subdue Kraut crew and take over the vessell.  Oh, but it doesn't end there!  Things go in a most fascinating direction...

The sinking of the Merchant ship...

Filming the miniatures in the tank, with the Merchant ship visible top of image.  Note the icebergs at lower left.  These will serve the plot after a bit of a journey and a lot of double crossing and confrontation.

Top, is the leading lady, the talented and oh so lovely Susan Penhaligan who graced the screen in many a British movie (and a very good Paul Verhoeven Dutch film as well) throughout the 70's.  Lower frame is a process shot.  Interestingly the process work was carried out by Charles Staffell, and was a mix of rear screen - such as here - and some excellent front projection for the more epic scaled backgrounds.

And here are those icebergs we spoke of...

The sub has lost its way and discovers an unmapped ice continent.  Derek hired his old pal from the early Anglo-Scottish Pictures days, Ray Caple as matte painter for the film.  Both Derek and Ray got their start in the effects business through the legendary Les Bowie who operated a small vfx studio in a disused cinema with partner Vic Margutti.

A second Ray Caple view of the land of ice.  Interestingly, the film was shot at Shepperton Studios where Amicus Productions were based.  Shepperton's resident matte artist Gerald Larn told me how he was anticipating getting the gig to render the numerous matte shots, but was surprised when all of the effects work went elsewhere! 

Derek had started off as a title artist under Bob Archer - a job he hated - and being a natural artist was delighted to be introduced to matte painting.  Both Derek and Ray trained in glass shots in the late 1950's under Les Bowie, who himself trained under the great Walter Percy Day.

Confronted with a seeming solid ice wall, the submariners spot a hidden cave and submerge to navigate through to whatever awaits them on the other side.

Most of the miniature shots look good, though a little too much reliance on indoor tank artificial lighting and a few too many 'long lens' shots neither of which are particularly 'model shot' friendly.

Although not credited, I'm assuming Derek's usual cameramen Harry Oakes, Les Dear or Paul Wilson likely to be on board.

The sub surfaces on the other side to discover a lush tropical paradise of Caprona.  Just the sort of stuff a rip-snorting adventure demands.
Doug McClure starred in a whole series of these adventures and was ideally suited for the role.  He died far too young at just 59.  The director and producer really liked Doug and found him 'old school', as in turned up on time, knew all his lines, could throw convincing punches and never stormed off the set like some of the entitled pricks nowadays do!  This is a Charles Staffell rear process shot.  Charles was usually based over at Pinewood, so I'm not sure where the process shots were done, especially the huge screen front projection shots which happen later on. Maybe Shepperton had a front projection stage?

Long time veteran Charles Staffell shown here with his reflex front projection set up with the semi-reflective mirror.  Among the hundred or so pictures he worked on were all of the Bond films, THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN and practically every film made at Pinewood.  He devised special Triple Head RP units for high resolution plate projection for J.Arthur Rank as it was then.


Large miniature set (I'd like to see some behind the scenes pix), complete with pterodactyls in flight in the distance.

To the day he died - also at a very young age sadly - Derek cringed and shook his head at the very mention of the pterodactyls in this film.  More about them later.... (sorry Derek)

An elaborate Ray Caple matte painted vista with a number of additional elements matted in such as the brontosaurus in action, the waterfall and the swiftly flowing river.  I think the dinosaur was most likely some sort of in-camera gag, animated right there on the matte art itself.  Oscar winning vfx man Brian Johnson was a long time friend of Ray and told me some stories.  "Ray was a very talented but so highly strung he constantly worried endlessly about every little thing.  Ray usually rendered his mattes at his home in Maidenhead and would carry out all of his own camera duties himself".  His wife was also a matte artist, and they met on the huge matte project MACKENNA'S GOLD (1969) where he trained her.  Like Derek and Doug, Ray also passed away far too young! Man, this retrospective is fast becoming a downer :(

Derek's crew weren't involved with the 'live action' mechanised dinosaurs as far as I know, with a separate effects crew handling those sequences.  This was a mixture of hand puppet work - probably by Roger Dicken - cut in with large mechanical prop heads.  

Rear screen process set up.


Don't worry Captain... his bite is far worse than his bark.

Nice atmospherics here with miniature foregrouns and painted backings.


Another of Ray's mattes, and a very nice one in my book.  Unfortunate cropping to fit the 1.85:1 theatrical exhibition ratio loses too much 'space' in the final shot.  Note the actor swinging his coat over his shoulder as it passes through the matte line.

Here are Ray's mattes as taken from my old full screen DVD, where his composition isn't as ruthlessly compromised.

I spoke of the high quality process work, and these shots are terrific.  The very large process backgrounds were shot on VistaVision and composited in camera as front projection shots on a huge 3M reflective screen.  When done well, front projection gave the best results, with extremely crisp plates, evenly illuminated across the entire screen, with no tell tale 'hot spots' or 'fall off' so evident in bad rear screen work with image brightness too intense in the centre and 'dulling off' toward the fringes, which shows up when large screen RP is used.  Charles Staffell did well here and the producer was very pleased with the results..

Some of Dickens' prehistoric beasts manipulated from below, though the savage creatures never manage to 'charge' at the tasty looking humans.

Whereas the former shots were very disappointing, the Triceratops stuff worked very nicely, with quite realistic movements and fluid actions.  Good sound editing and front projection add to it all.

According to Roger all his scenes required a number of helpers alongside himself to manipulate the legs and so forth.


The makers found great success with LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, and turned out a whole series of likeminded family oriented adventures subsequently such as AT THE EARTH'S CORE (interesting), PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (not so good) and WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS (pretty good)

A complex multi-plane glass shot by Ray Caple, with a slow push in.  The view was painted on 2 or 3 separate planes to permit a perspective shift.  Some small live action by firelight may have been projected in.  Also, a flock of pterodactyls are seen swooping around in the sky, so this was surely another projected in element as well.

The camera pushes in further.  Brian Johnson told me about Ray's unusual home: "Ray had his own studio at his house in Maidenhead.  On SPACE 1999 with me he used a room in L&M Block at Pinewood to do stuff that was too complex for us to do in-camera on set, but I'm sure most of his work was done from his house.  His house inside was amazing.  All of the rooms were painted black - floor to ceiling.  There were pictures that he and Lyn had painted hanging on the walls and lit with spotlights.  A very striking way of lighting a room!  The paintings with very bright colours 'floated'.  Ray was very Welsh and had a great sense of humour and enjoyed driving his V12 E-type Jag".

Many years later, rod activated puppet creatures would really come to the fore with shows like David Fincher's ALIEN 3 in the 1990's.


Dicken stated that one of the benefits of using live puppeteering techniques was that the animals could easily interact directly with physical 'atmosphere' such as actual mist, fog, smoke and fire right there on the miniature set, whereas stop motion would require far more complex special photographic set ups to double in such, with the unwelcomed generational loss through duping etc.

More Caple matte art.  The action was shot in a disused claypit in Reading, UK, with Ray completing his painting at his home, then personally filming and compositing the footage.  Ray had vast experience in all facets of making mattes, having learned from Les Bowie and later working in partnership on many films with master matte painter Bob Cuff on things like THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH in the mid 1960's and went solo when Al Whitlock recommended him to Jim Danforth to help out with the mattes on WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1969).

Poor Derek will be rolling in his grave now!  The infamous pterodactyl sequence using a large life size fibreglass model wired beneath a huge crane and 'flown' through the exterior set.  The bird seems quite well sculpted but was extremely limited by not having any mechanism to move the vast wings nor neck.  The poor stuntman literally forces himself into the gaping mouth of this beast.  I was chatting to one of Derek's friends and former effects technicians, Steve Begg, just a few days ago about the film:  "As far as the Pterodactyl scene , Derek was hoping to direct any shots of that and obscure it with loads of smoke but he ended up being so busy doing the onset smoke in a very windy location, that the main unit director Kevin Connor ended up shooting it. And as they say, most directors like their own shit.  Derek got lumbered with it, but hey... he went on to bigger and better stuff like THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and SUPERMAN".    

These scenes looked great, with the beasts howling and moving their heads around as the volcanic eruption and fire sweeps through the jungle.  

Sure, in this modern era the film is very much a piece from the past, though that's no criticism, as I have an inate fondness for it and for older films of this ilk in general.  It certainly has a fifties flavour running all the way through it... and that's not a bad thing.

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THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN ... IN A SIX DOLLAR MOVIE!

Now folks, I have to confess that I've never actually seen THE LAST CHASE (1981), which for me and this blog is a rarity, as I try to see everything I can, but as I have a wonderful Matthew Yuricich matte painting image (below), I feel I should make use of it.

By all accounts this was a cheaply made Canadian actioner that nobody ever saw. The film starred former Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors as some sort of post-apocalyptic race car driver, or so I read.  It's on YouTube in a barely watchable sub-vhs transfer, but I very rarely ever go there and couldn't possibly sit through blurry, low rez copies.

Here's the wonderful original matte art that Matthew rendered for the flick.  Matt's family never knew the title so I was glad to identify it for them, along with a few dozen others that had drawn a blank.

Detail from the left side.  The photographic effects supervisor on this was James Liles, whom Matthew had very little time for.  Matt felt Jim's overall control of plate photography on a number of films they had to work side by side on was detrimental to the final quality of Matthew's shots, in fact ruined some of what Matt strived to achieve on several films and he reckoned Liles had no concept of how a matte shot should look.  There is much to be said for a symbiotic creative partnership between a matte painter and his fx cameraman.  I believe that's why Al Whitlock's work was always so damned good - the partnership between Al and his two key cinematographers, Ross Hoffman and later Bill Taylor prove the point.  

Close up of Matt's brush work.


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THE BIG ONE - ON THE SMALL SCREEN



A television film of many identities - THE GREAT LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE (1990) was also known as THE BIG ONE and as COUNTDOWN during production!


That was the era of the big 'Movie of the Week', with such things often spread over 2 nights or more, and if the particular film was a popular theatrical picture they'd go hell for leather cutting unused footage back into the show to extend and pad the things out to bladder-bursting excessive length, usually destroying the original movie in the process, though once again, I digress.

Matte painter Richard Kilroy shown here at work on a major shot.  Richard very kindly provided me with his memories of the effects side of the production:  "Most of my work on The Big One (known as, 'Count Down' while we were making it) was painting miniatures but I did have that one Universal City hotel matte painting which I was eager to do.  Albert Whitlock's work on 'Earthquake' was very influential to me - as I'm sure it was to a number of matte painters, so getting a chance to do a matte of Los Angeles quaked-out was a fun challenge."
 

The final matte painting by Richard Kilroy:  "I recall there being six matte paintings planned for the film but only three survived budget cuts.  The visual effects kept getting trimmed by first unit art department overages.  I will say this for the film, the first unit art department sets and set-dressings were terrific, all of the money is on the screen." 



Close up detail from the wonderful matte that did a curious disappearing act:  "My hotel matte painting was stolen from a display commemorating 'Earthquake Preparedness Day' in downtown Los Angeles.  The festivities were held at the Boneventure Hotel (which was a hotel featured in 'Buck Rogers') and the Mayor at the time, Tom Bradley, was in attendance.  I wasn't there but was later told that a thief grabbed my painting and made off with it in a nearby elevator.  It's never been seen since!  I was strangely flattered that my work was worthy of stealing in such a risky, public way." 
 


The final composite


Excellent additional matte art, this time by Richard's friend and longtime colleague on a number of films such as DARKMAN, Rick Rische.  This is a superb before and after. "Rick Rische did the other two matte paintings including this one, and Tony Doublin supervised our department on the show.  I recall Stephen Lebed assisted with the fire and smoke elements that were later burned into our mattes."

Detail from one of Rick Rische's aftermath paintings.


Wrecked freeway and boulevard, all shot on the same bit of Universal backlot that Al Whitlock matched his Oscar winning aftermath mattes to back in 1974.



Matte painter Rick Rische at work on his superb aftermath painting.  Note the 'before' reference photo taped to the bottom of the glass of the Universal lot.


A closer photo of Rick's terrific view of a busted up Los Angeles.  Richard said:  "Rick and I were given the mandate to make the damage in our matte paintings contrast-y and obvious so it would read better on a television screen.  This made for some areas of the paintings to be, to put it kindly, less than subtle but it's what the client wanted."


The big Hollywood sign suffers:  "I did some scenic work on the Hollywood Sign miniature as well - which was a late in the show shot for us.  There was some talk of the sequence being cut but it was a fairly simple model and a small crew to get the shots needed." 

Miniatures in progress:  "As I recall, Gene Rizzardi (Titanic) was in charge of the ABC tower models along with the pedestrian bridge model which had to break apart in the shot.  (and I would redress the damage and repaint the model between takes)  Those models were shot out in Playa Del Rey and were built by a cracker-jack model crew."   


Interestingly, Richard and Rick have both proved highly adaptable in their assignments, with not just matte painting but also miniature rigging and scenic painting, with many and varied chores on films as varied as TERMINATOR 2, TREMORS, DARKMAN, THE TITANIC and DRIVING MISS DAISY.  The duo have worked for companies such as Introvision and 4-Ward Productions, working with legends such as Robert and Dennis Skotak.



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A WINTER WONDERLAND AND GIFTS FOR ALL.


Now, THE SANTA CLAUSE (1994) might be a bit of a compromise.  I'm including it because there is some great traditional matte art from the extremely talented Paul Lasaine, but I suspect quite strongly that some shots might have been created with the sort of technology that doesn't dare speak it's name...CG

I've long admired the skills of Paul Lasaine.  He came relatively late to the effects business and really just caught the final dying years of traditional hand painted matte work.  Buena Vista Visual Effects took on Paul in the late 1980's and they never looked back.  Paul was hired by matte supervisor Michael Lloyd as one of the six matte artists on the massive Disney fx show DICK TRACY (1990) - a favourite matte show for me in fact.  

Here's Paul with two icons of the effects business - Harrison and Peter Ellenshaw.  Harrison told me that his admiration for Paul's painting ability was endless.  "Nobody could paint like Paul".  Among the BVVE shows he worked on were HOCUS POCUS, THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN, WILD HEARTS CAN'T BE BROKEN (amazing work there!) and best of all the Kevin Kline comedy DAVE (absolutely phenomenal matte work!).  I did a huge 3 part expose on Disney some years back, with many rare examples of Paul's remarkable work in progress.  Go here to read it.

Ever since that abysmal sit-com Home Improvement years ago, I've never been able to stomach Tim Allen, so sitting through THE SANTA CLAUSE was a real stretch, believe me!  Tim here is on a minimal set in front of a blue screen, with the rest all Lasaine.  See below...

Paul's magnificent full matte painting of Santa's groovy abode at the North Pole.  Awesome!  Interestingly, as with the previously discussed Randall Wiliam Cook (GHOSTBUSTERS), Paul also lived here in New Zealand for a while as Peter Jackson's visual effects conceptual artist for the three LORD OF THE RINGS epics.  His wonderful hand painted concept panels are a thing to behold, and his vision was right in step with Jackson's unquestionably, with the resulting success and critical aclaim to show for it all.  The beautifully illustrated hardcover books with his (and Jeremy Bennett's) LOTR paintings are still wonderful to look at, though again I digress...

Arresting downview of urban setting.  Not sure, but possibly might be a computer-thingy type manufactured shot?


Likewise here... possibly hand painted sky?  Reindeer composited digitally I believe.

A more fantabulous cloudscape one is ever likely to see.... but was it Paul Lasaine's work, I can't say.  If Paul catches this post (as he has in the past), do let me know.

Definitely one of Paul's hand painted mattes.  He stated he loved the painting but wasn't happy with how the final shot turned out for some reason (see below...)

Composite with Paul's painting.

Follow up shot with much painted ice and sky.

A gloriously atmospheric shot.


Another of Paul's original, highly evocative traditional mattes.  Painted in a large vertical format to facilitate a camera move up over the houses.

Close up of Paul's matte.  If anything sums up the Xmas spirit, then this must be it (at least in the Northern Hemisphere..... It's mid summer down yonder for Xmas in the Southern half, so this is all a bit unknown to us!)

Part of the scene as it appears in the film.


Elaborate camera move up and over the houses.... beautiful.

The sleigh and reindeer sweep off into the moonlit night...

And they all lived happily ever after until the sequels were churned out.

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***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 183 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 


FINAL WORD:

With the now close to 32'000 citizens of Gaza of The State of Palestine murdered to date in the relentless and extremely well funded and enabled genocide that fascist Israel persists in, despite massive global protest at the very highest of levels, even the very few international friends that country purports to have - or have ever had for that matter - are calling for an end.... and NOW!

Any degree of sympathy the Israeli State may have garnered, has long since evapourated into worldwide expressions of anger and fury from people and governments the world over.  The tens of thousands of Palestinian people - men, women, children and babies lie rotting beneath millions of tons of rubble on land that belongs to The State of Palestine.

The smell of the decomposing flesh of the innocents is only eclipsed by the stench of rampant, ultra-right wing Zionism in its most extremist and ugly form.

Strength to the people of Gaza and the entire STATE OF PALESTINE.





**And lest we forget, the similarly suffering people of UKRAINE.

MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Six

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Hello again friends and olde timey matte and trick shot enthusiasts.  It's that time again for a trip through the cinematic museum of movie wizardry and creativity from the pre-computer era.  I call this my mid-winter blockbuster, as it is that particular season right now where I am, and what better time than to dust off a multitude of visual effects wonders to feast your eyes upon. Seriously.

Well, what have we got?  An overlooked disaster epic from long ago;  A CinemaScope lightweight medieval costumer; A pair of eighties flicks about teens with special abilities; A long forgotten football hero melodrama; Not one, but two (count 'em, 2) movies about salty old whale hunters; A tribute piece to matte artist Alan Maley; Some more dazzling and extremely rare Matthew Yuricich painted mattes that have never been seen before; Another example of fascinating Whitlock trickery; Some Abbott & Costello craziness; An All Time Hall-of-Fame Matte from 90 years ago, and more!!!

As usual, there are a couple of shows that may be fairly well known, but as is my pattern, a whole bunch of films and shots most will never have seen. I try my damndest to search, seek out and discover gems of movie magic from across the spectrum and range of genres.  There is truly nothing more satisfying than discovering forgotten or lost examples of this wonderful artform.

 Do try to view this extensive blog on a proper screen, and not some godammed phone or silly 'toy' device.  I will hunt you down and flog you if I discover anyone enjoying my blog on anything less than a 15" screen (minimum).   ;)

Well, here the journey begins.......

Enjoy

Peter


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***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 184 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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NZ PETE'S HALL OF FAME MATTE SHOT - Part One

Anybody who doesn't recognise this mighty shot should excuse themselves and exit this blog with great haste and never look back!  Probably my all time favourite film, and best vfx film of all time - confirmed yet again by a repeat viewing a few days ago, for what must have been the 40th time?  KING KONG (1933) and the forboding Skull Island - made all the more forboding by Max Steiner's career best music score which goes along with my mantra, "the music maketh the matte".  This rare test frame shows a bit more on the sides of the frame than the final release prints, which is commonly the case with raw camera footage prior to dupe negs being struck.

The final shot from the release print, with Orville Goldner's wonderful stop motion birds doubled in.  The matte was painted either by Mario Larrinaga or Byron Crabbe.  *As an aside, both talented artists may be seen above on my 'blog header', working on a large dual plane glass of New York City for the same film.

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FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR:

One of the mystery paintings found in the collection of Matt Yuricich's family was this curious one.  It turned out to be a Jim Danforth matte of the Mexican locale that was rendered for the very depressing John Huston drama UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984), though the shot never made the final cut.  One or two other shots in the final film were painted by Al Whitlock.

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A VINTAGE MYSTERY MATTE NOW SOLVED:


Earlier this year I published a whole package of mostly unidentified 35mm matte shot trims from the family of old time Paramount matte painter Jan Domela.  As I enjoy old movies I knew I'd come across some of these scenes sooner or later.  The recreation of romantic Venice was an extensive matte extension above the tank on the Paramount lot for THIS IS THE NIGHT (1932)

Domela's Venice, created without leaving the studio backlot.


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A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN:  WHITLOCK'S ICEBERGS.

Some time ago one of my long time readers, Mark Wolf sent me a file of fascinating images that his friend Dave Boston had taken while on a sort of summer internship at Universal in Al Whitlock's department in 1974.  They were knee deep in THE HINDENBURG (1975) at the time, and Dave was able to observe the process (lucky, lucky Dave I say!!!)

Sadly, out of all of the rolls of Ektachrome colour transparenies, the majority had deteriorated over time (I can't recall whether it was water damage or what?  Oh, the humanity!), so only a handful remain usable.  Here we see Al busy at work on a pair of glasses in his matte studio for key shots in THE HINDENBURG.  Interestingly, at the time, the only actual daylight available for Albert was via that small high window, though I understand a few years later he had them build a full room level window with plenty of natural light.  The photo at left with the icebergs is elaborated upon below.  The other of the airship is most likely a photo cut-out, mounted on glass and hand retouched, which Whitlock resorted to for many of the different angles and perspective views of the craft as a time saver.


Al blocking in the mass with the aid of a rag and a clump of pigment.  According to Leigh Took, Leigh's mentor Cliff Culley used to often speak of Whitlock's 'rag-work' technique from the days when they painted together at Rank-Pinewood back in the early fifties in the UK.

The final shot where not only has Al matted in the icebergs 'drifting' under the airship, but he has also painted separately on another glass the mass of the zeppelin itself immediately surrounding the actors, one of whom is the excellent William Atherton... terrific actor, though I digress...

A rare squeezed anamorphic unfinished test frame from the collection of Larry Shuler.

A wider view, with dual paintings:  iceberg mass, and almost all of the actual airship rendered on separate glasses.  The passing cloud and mist is yet another element, often comprising of up to 3 'smoke' elements tri-packed through the matte camera for certain shots to lend a layered depth to the phenomenen.  

Matted set extension of the actual fabric covered airship that nobody noticed.  One of 77 mattes created by Whitlock and Dutton for the Oscar winning film - and Al personally acknowleged each and every one of his team at the awards ceremony.

"...and they sailed off into the sunset and they all lived happily ever after?"

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THE MAN FROM COLORADO:  An exciting addition to my previous fx coverage

I did an article on the 1948 Columbia western, THE MAN FROM COLORADO, back in January this year, and as often happens, vital material comes to my attention after the fact, though is absolutely worthy of inclusion.  Here is an excellent before and after set of frames which radically alter the landscape of the gold mining town.

Columbia's resident photographic effects chief Lawrence Butler supervised, with long time matte cameraman Donald Glouner shooting the matte and composite.  It's quite likely Juan Larrinaga may have been the matte artist, and the work in this film is very good.

The final Technicolor scene.  A terrific movie in fact, with what I feel was Glenn Ford's best - and nastiest - performance.


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A TRIBUTE TO MATTE PAINTER ALAN MALEY:


"Alan Maley had worked with me on In Search of the Castaways, back in England.  I thought he was very talented, and in 1965 he came over from England to work with me at Disney Studios.  Alan was given a room across the hall from mine, and there he would spend his days honing his skills until he quickly became very good at matte painting.  His room - actually more like a den - soon became very cluttered.  He seemed happiest when he had made a kind of nest of reference books, paints, boxes and old magazines.  Over in the corner would be Alan, out of sight, hidden by a large easel, on which he would be matte painting".

                            Peter Ellenshaw:  ELLENSHAW UNDER GLASS


I always like to expand upon the careers of painters and technicians from the past, as often not enough has been forthcoming about so many unsung heroes of the special photographic effects arena.  One such gentleman would be British matte painter and fine artist, Alan Maley.  *note:  the above photo was a deliberate 'gag' snapshot taken while Alan was heading the ILM matte department in the early 80's.  Apparently Alan was always bemused by pics of matte artists with what he called "impossibly small brushes", and as one trained in the 'big brush style', posing here with a mammoth DRAGONSLAYER painting and a ridiculous pin-head fine brush just for a laugh.

Alan began his film career when a young man as a backing painter at Denham Studios, UK, in the early 1950's.  Like many backing and scenic artist boys did, Alan branched out into matte and glass shots, as did fellow British exponents such as Cliff Culley, Albert Whitlock, Peter Melrose and Les Bowie among many others. A considerable number of Alan's relatives were already in, or would soon be in, the British studio, largely in fields such as sign writing and scenic work.

Alan moved between various studios where the work was, with a few years in Wally Veevers' photographic effects unit at Shepperton with fellow well established artists such as George Samuels and Bob Cuff.  One noteworthy assignment that Alan proved his skills was the magnificent Peter O'Toole-Richard Burton historic drama BECKET (1964), where Alan provided several stunning mattes such as this beautiful and expansive vista of London during the era of King Henry II.  An almost full painting with just a tiny sliver of live action upper left as the horseman gallops away up the hill.  Smoke is also added to some chimney pots.

Another sprawling vista from BECKET which is shown here in this rare original full painting.  The final sequence was optically reduced and scanned down from the castle and across the valley.  A horse and rider would be optically added going down the hillside.  Note, the rising smoke was entirely painted 'as is'.

Maley cathedral set extension also from the excellent film BECKET (1964)


One of the most famous and iconic sequences of all time was the penultimate nuclear bomb drop on the USSR in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece DR STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964).

The great Slim Pickens takes the ride of his life.  Alan painted a highly detailed massive 12 foot wide Soviet landscape with missile battery into which effects cameraman Peter Harman simulated a dramatic 'fall' and Wally Veevers added a blue screened bomb and actor to brilliant effect.

Alan also worked for a time for the opposition, Pinewood Studios, where he joined Cliff Culley's matte department, under the overall supervision of Peter Ellenshaw who came across from the States to oversee the enormous Disney visual effects showcase IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS (1962) - one of Disney's best matte shot films in my opinion, with composite work seemingly yards ahead of the comps being done back in California for some reason.  Beautiful mattes a-plenty, and all so well assembled.  Alan painted miniature backings and helped with the many mattes, as did Culley.

IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS matte.  I saw it as a kid and it completely 'had me' as far as old school adventure went.  Incidentally, I did a substantial effects blog a number of years back on this under-appreciated FX film, which can be found HERE

The IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS Pinewood matte dept jokesters all lined up as villains that only a mother could love, and made this set of mug-shots and prints etc for supervisor Peter Ellenshaw.  That's Alan at far right.  Cliff Culley is second from left and matte cameraman Martin Shorthall is next to Maley.

Accompanying the nasty row of 'mug shots' was this amusing CASTAWAYS certificate from the 'Department of Special Defects', and loaded with excuses, much to Ellenshaw's amusement.  *Thanks to my pal Harrison Ellenshaw for this little gem.

Recalling Alan's excellent work on CASTAWAYS, Ellenshaw a few years later secured Maley stateside for a permanent role in the Disney matte department when artist Jim Fetherolf left.  This Maley matte is from THE ONE AND ONLY, GENUINE, ORIGINAL, FAMILY BAND (1968).

A large number of mattes were needed for Disney's THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE (1968).

Disney had some massive effects shows around that time, with the ever popular THE LOVE BUG (1969) requiring many mattes and other trick shots.  Alan was chief matte artist around this time and headed up the department.  Peter Ellenshaw still put some time in but was mainly doing production design.  Constantine 'Deno' Ganakes was also on board and had also been in the department for several years.


Alan's wide vista of San Francisco opens THE LOVE BUG.  A small model car was pulled along in an unpainted slot toward the house.  Not a shot anybody would expect to be a trick shot at all.

Among the multitude of mattes and gags in THE LOVE BUG, this dramatic closing shot was another invisible Maley matte.  The shot starts on a crowded park and pulls back over the city before dissolving into a second vast aerial matte of San Francisco.  Interesting story here:  I was asking Harrison Ellenshaw about this matte and he mentioned that the painting had mysteriously vanished from the Disney lot many years ago, and nobody knew whatever became of it......  See below!

... and hey-presto, there it is!  The surviving matte glass, decades after the fact, mounted on the wall of one of Alan's family members.  Note the fx camera slate beside it from the 007 film THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977), on which Alan was matte and optical artist (see more later...)  

There were some beautifully atmospheric matte shots from Alan in another Disney picture, NEVER A DULL MOMENT (1968), with wonderfully rendered night time views of New York City.

Alan received an Academy Award for special visual effects - shared with Danny Lee and Eustace Lycette - for BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971)

Here's one of Alan's original matte paintings still in pristine condition at Disney.

The BEDKNOBS matte art in the special storage area at Disney, along with scores of other carefully conserved paintings on glass.  I'd like to take a look through those some day.

Another delightful Oscar winning matte from BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971).  By this time Alan would have an apprentice in the department by the name of Harrison (P.S) Ellenshaw.  Harrison told me how he learned everything from Alan, even though his own father was master matte artist, the celebrated Peter Ellenshaw.


Post Oscar celebration time 1971 as Peter toasts Alan on his Academy Award win.

A pair of Disney matte exponents in good cheer.

Among the numerous films that Alan painted on during those busy Disney years was the slapstick SNOWBALL EXPRESS (1972).

HERBIE RIDES AGAIN (1974) would be one of several clones of the original LOVE BUG, and like the former, required substantial matte work from Alan, assisted by a young P.S Ellenshaw - before he changed his name to 'Harrison' to avoid confusion with his father.  Harrison told me some great stories in my career piece I did with him: "Alan actually banned my father from coming into the matte department for a few months.  He was very protective of me and just didn't want my father to interfere.  We both laughed about it later on".

Exotic locales courtesy of Maley for THE WORLD'S GREATEST ATHLETE (1973).  Harrison told me more about Alan: "He was more than an artist, he was a superb technician, a great photographer and a film maker.  He not only taught me about painting, he taught me how to be a visual storyteller. He loved films and knew everything about films.  Alan pushed me to study reference photos and learn about architecture and nature - all sorts of things.  To Alan, if you are going to paint a street in London in the 17th Century, you'd better know all about the details of the architecture and why the buildings were built the way they were".

Probably the biggest VFX show Disney ever produced was the highly entertaining ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD (1974).  A film with a staggering number of effects shots, from mattes to models to countless travelling matte composites.  This is one of Alan's mattes, whereby an extensive painting has a rear projected live action plate of the ground crew filmed at the Golden Oak Ranch with VistaVision equipment; a photo cut-out of the miniature airship - mounted on a separate sheet of glass and animated a frame at a time - and a light bulb burnt in to simulate the brilliance of the sunrise.


A partial photograph of Alan's painting.  I did a comprehensive blog piece on this film's visual effects years ago, with a lot of background info, lengthy and detailed interview and behind the scenes material courtesy of Harrison, and that article may be read right HERE.
Before and after ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD, with painting combined with actors on a set through sodium process matting, which Disney used extensively.


One of Alan's iconic ISLAND shots, where his surprisingly loose brushwork and paint application is near impressionistic, yet worked. Harrison told me that he learned so much from watching Alan paint, who just made simple shots seem more magical.

A tremendous shot here, and probably my favourite Maley painting from the film.  Interestingly, ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD was submitted to The Academy that year for best visual effects consideration, though the committee rejected it.  Actually, EARTHQUAKE won that year.

Another of the 93 painted mattes in ISLAND, with a soundstage set extension required here.  Alan was another advocate of the 'big brush' technique, as was Peter Ellenshaw.

..."Nobody does it better"


Alan left Disney in the mid seventies to pursue a career in fine art - especially art with a Victorian and Edwardian era theme - though he was coaxed back from film retirement by his cousin, Peter Lamont, who was art director under production designer Ken Adam on many James Bond pictures.  THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) - one of the very best in my book (with O.H.M.S.S being a close runner up) - was a huge special effects project with Maley hired on by Eon Productions to furnish several spectacular mattes and split screen composites.  This view of The Kremlin in Moscow, I've always been of the opinion was a painted matte (though I stand to be corrected if anyone can confirm otherwise).  

Alan is shown here at work on one of his SPY WHO LOVED ME Egypt trick shots.  For a shot of Bond approaching a night show of The Sphinx, Maley painted in the entire scene - even the audience - and matted in Roger Moore walking across the sand behind.

Maley's final composite as put together by effects cinematographer Robin Browne.  The painted crowd were brought to 'life' through the age old method of scraping away bits of paint from the glass and introducing a rotating device in back of the glass to give the illusion of 'movement'.  An ancient gag used as far back as the 1930's, especially by MGM.

Alan and the matte crew.  Incidentally, judging by the camera slate for SPY pictured earlier in this article, more than 20 mattes were made by Alan for this show, though I've only ever spotted half that number?

The big money shot in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME was this incredible pull back from a live action helicopter and crew, a tilt up, and a slow zoom in onto arch villain Stromberg on a railing!  All done as a continuous effects shot, though quite how, I don't know?  I understand Alan used front projection for some matte combinations, so maybe it was applied here?  Nice lens flare added too!  Great stuff.

Higher rez frame #1

Higher rez frame #2

Higher rez frame #3

Higher rez frame #4

Higher rez frame #5

Higher rez frame #6.  Following SPY WHO LOVED ME, Alan briefly was brought on board the next Bond film, MOONRAKER by his cousin, art director Peter Lamont, whereby Lamont took Alan, Derek Meddings and Robin Browne to NASA for a special guided tour of the Space Shuttle, though I don't know whether he provided any effects shots in the final film, if so, without screen credit. 

 A year or two later ILM sought out Alan to take over the matte department from his former apprentice, Harrison Ellenshaw, who though a founding ILM staffer left to take on Disney's gargantuan THE BLACK HOLE (1979).  Alan supervised the numerous mattes for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), as shown above, which won the Academy Award for the VFX work.

Alan's composite from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

The truck full of Nazi's goes off the cliff in a completely fabricated matte and animation sequence from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981).  That's Alan once again joking around with his impossibly tiny brush on a massive piece of artwork!

The final project that Alan would work on before quitting the movie business for good and retreating to his true love of gallery fine art was another ILM show, DRAGONSLAYER (1982).  The two fresh young trainees now under Maley - Michael Pangrazio and Christopher Evans - would remark how much they respected Alan and learned from him.

"Sadly, Alan Maley would pass away at the relatively young age of just 64 in 1995.  I miss him terribly.  He was my mentor and a very good friend".

                               Harrison Ellenshaw


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THE KING'S THIEF:  Skullduggery and Swordplay

A fairly mediocre costume epic from MGM, with all ill-cast Roger Moore in Restoration period action.

This 1955 CinemaScope epic has a few good Newcombe matte shots, including a pair of beautiful Matthew Yuricich paintings, which have recently been shared with me by Dirk Yuricich, to whom I'm most grateful.

Strictly run-of-the-mill, but the mattes are nice.

Before and after 17th Century London matte art by Matthew Yuricich.

Matthew rescued this and a number of other of his old MGM era mattes from the studio during that terrible time when Kirkorian was on a rampage bulldozing the vast back lots and selling off all the props and artifacts dating back many decades, with the old Newcombe matte building being such a casualty, and a thousand mattes were either junked or 'lifted' by opportunists.  Luckily, a great many survived in private hands and have since shown up at various movie auctions etc.

Close up detail.


You want detail....Pete gives you detail!  I'm talkin' to you Stix!

Classic MGM draftsmanship, under the supervision of the eccentric Warren Newcombe.

Typically, Newcombe would have his artists work with goache and fine pastel crayons to render their mattes, and although that doesn't sound ideal, the results were very effective, with MGM's style of soft matte blends being among the best in the business, with matte lines rarely ever visible.

Matthew had fond memories of the pair of mattes he rendered for THE KING'S THIEF (1955)


Now, this is an interesting shot.  In fact, it's a stolen shot taken from an earlier Paramount picture FRENCHMAN'S CREEK (1944).  The original Paramount footage has been optically altered to fit the CinemaScope wide-screen format for the MGM film.  The two lower frames are from the original 1944 movie.  See below for more info...

A wonderful on set behind the scenes photo demonstrates the set up for the original FRENCHMAN'S CREEK gag.  The whole deal was a foreground miniature, with the large 3-Strip Technicolor camera mounted on a nodal head for a broad pan across the landscape onto the supposed chateau.  Interesting backstory here:  The man in the white shirt is visual effects cinematographer Irmin Roberts.  Irmin worked for around 40 years at Paramount though never liked to talk about his work.  On barely three or four rare occasions Irmin invited his family to a set to see what he did, and this was one of those ultra rare days.  That's Irmin's family up on the rostrum, and the young boy on the stool found this incredibly exciting and 'magical'.  I know, because a few years ago he told me so and sent me this photo.

Another interesting little story:  When the Paramount head office in New York heard that the production had 'constructed' an elaborate French Chateau expressly for FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, they hit the friggen' roof!  Screamed blue murder at possible cost over runs, until they were told the real story!  Though, as usual, I digress..........


A dapper, sword twirling young pre-007 Roger Moore clambers out of the bell tower and climbs down a rope.  See below.......

An absolutely magnificent painted matte by the multi-talented Matthew Yuricich.  As an avowed devotee of extreme perspective matte shots, this one's an all out winner for NZ Pete.

Detail

I know Matthew was especially happy with his work on this difficult shot.

Beautiful detail work and sense of light.

Thanks to Matt's son, Dirk, for sending me these wonderful photos.

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MEXICAN HAYRIDE:  Hilarity South of the Border.


I like the old time comedy acts such as W.C Fields, Wheeler & Woolsey, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny, Hope & Crosby, Olson & Johnson and most especially The Marx Brothers.  This Abbott & Costello vehicle is typical and good for more than a few chuckles.

MEXICAN HAYRIDE (1948), with Special Photography by veteran David Stanley Horsley.

From an old edition of American Cinematographer

The film has a handful of rather nice mattes by Russell Lawson as well as some cleverly executed optical gags by Millie Winebrenner and Ross Hoffman.  In this shot, more than half the frame has been added in by the matte department.

A dual plane matte shot, with all architecture above the heads of the extras being painted in, as well as a separate 'moving' plane of artwork with the sky.

As with the former shot, this too is a multi-plane affair, with live action foreground, painted bullfight arena and a separate painted sky with drifting clouds.

The main comedy set piece involves Lou Costello having it out with an enraged bull.  Sounds pretty straight forward but a good deal of optical wizardry was needed.  The bull has been meticulously added to otherwise safe footage of Lou through hand drawn rotoscope mattes.  Horsley was an expert at this sort of thing - following in the footsteps of his father Stanley Horsley and moreso, his mentor and former boss, the legendary John P. Fulton, to whom such optical puzzles were like 'bread & butter'.

Fairly long cuts of the comedy action must have required days (or weeks) worth of careful rotoscope work by Universal's Millie Winebrenner, with the bull charging to and fro, in front and behind Lou.  Millie was a long time veteran in the effects department, having worked with Fulton on the INVISIBLE MAN pictures, Clifford Stine on THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, Hitchcock on THE BIRDS and with Al Whitlock on countless films such as DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and EARTHQUAKE.

"So, who's on first?"  

Note the shadow under the bull, also roto'd in, but oddly facing the wrong way(?).  I did a massive two part blog a while back on Comedy Film VFX, where many mind boggling examples can be seen from other classic Abbott & Costello flicks such as A&C MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN and many others, where not just matte art but complicated optical gags are demonstrated - and they are still very impressive.  Click HERE and HERE to read the 2 parter.

Neat bit where Lou crosses his eyes and the bull does the exact same, with the aid of Winebrenner's cel animation gag.  Interestingly, Horsley had a celebrated career at Universal, with important VFX work on things like the amazing BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), and important work on all of the sci-fi and monster shows the studio pumped out.  His career came off the rails midway through THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955) when, as a result of studio politics, David was 'let go', as the Hollywood saying goes.  His former boss and mentor Fulton got him a job on the massive TEN COMMANDMENTS over at Paramount shortly after, photographing the elaborate titles.  Not much else was forthcoming until he got a gig doing blue screen shots for Fox's THE LONGEST DAY (1962) and was D.o.P on the fantasy flick JACK THE GIANT KILLER the same year.  David's last job was as miniatures consultant on THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY (1976).

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THE DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK:  All Hell Breaks Loose

Great poster art of the type never seen anymore, sadly.

A big budget, all out disaster epic with an A-list cast of pro's, THE DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK (1961) might have been a bit of an overly histrionic affair, but many of the effects still stand up today.

What do you get when you mix a devout, two-fisted, boozing Catholic priest, a horde of cute leper kids, a trio of stranded death row bandito's, a blind promiscuous native gal and a simmering volcano ready to pop it's cork??? (no, this isn't a joke...)

From the trailer

The film is packed with effects shots of variable quality, though for the most part, pretty good.  Some in fact are remarkably well done.  This shot has a (very, very large) miniature volcano soft matted onto the location set.

The huge effects roster for the film were the work of veterans Lawrence W. Butler, Donald Glouner and Willis Cook - none of whom were screen credited.  Shame on Columbia for not putting up a single credit for effects!  Pricks!

The massive 'miniature' of the volcano and surrounding landscape was constructed on Larry Butler's rural ranch.  The set proved a dual purpose.  Apparently Larry wanted to have a big artificial lake dug out for his property, so the excavations were perfect to build up the DEVIL volcano.

Miniature added via blue screen.

A look inside the gaping throat of the steaming, lava filled beast.

The flick has a number of matte paintings too, of varying quality, with some being excellent and others far less so.  Everything here painted except a portion atop the (painted) bridge for the truck to proceed.

Matte shot clapper board of Butler-Glouner


The best matte in DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK has always made me possibly suspect Albert Whitlock's hand as he did a fair bit of work over those years for Butler-Glouner.  As an aside, Al would later hire Donald Glouner's son Dennis as matte and optical cameraman for quite a few years at Universal and later at Illusion Arts with Bill and Syd.

Matted area with very well blended in slice of live action truck journey up to the leper colony.  That sky and receding light really has a Whitlock feel about it to me.

The chief benefits of building a bloody great big model volcano, and shooting it out doors in natural light.

The pyrotechnics scale very nicely, and the lava flow is spot on too.  How could Butler and Co. not get a damned screen credit here?  Unbelievable!


Volcano model matted in very well indeed, and aided further by introducing optical 'shake' on Glouner's printer.

Now folks, this sequence is a gem.  Our pissed off man of the cloth, Spencer Tracy, persuades pilot to fly a plane over the volcano and through the dust, ash and all of that volcanic shit, in search of survivors from the leper colony.  Brilliantly staged and photographed - you can see the plane there in these frames mid flight, and I assume it was a real one filmed at quite some distance for safety, with the pyro clear of the air flight danger zone.

Note the small aircraft dodging the flaming rocks and lava.  Superb sequence worthy of an Oscar nomination at least... but don't get me started on Oscar injustices, let alone fucken''screen credit' omissions. 

Now this is how you replicate a volcanic event... as opposed to example pictured below(!!)

Now folks, please keep in mind DEVIL was made some two decades before the atrocious Irwin Allen disaster laugh-fest WHEN TIME RAN OUT (1980) - aka THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED in some countries like here in New Zealand (it bombed, badly!).  Awful vfx work throughout, even from the highly experienced and multi award winning exponent L.B Abbott, who seems to have phoned this one in!  Best asset in the Irwin Allen flick was Jackie Bissett's perfect, figure hugging T-shirt (!!)


One of the cinema greats was Spencer Tracy, though he pretty much mugged his way through this one and chewed more scenery than Godzilla.  Hard to believe he filmed this the same year as the brilliant JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961)


Another matte shot with group of lepers, cons and an angry priest on their trek to safety (or not?)

All painted except tiny slot of live action.

Minor matte fix, as with the old days, just to conceal the top of the stage and the lighting rigs etc.

Another 'top up' matte, with upper rocks and such painted in as a soundstage fix job.

Combination shots, with upper involving painted foreground, live action set and big process screen miniature action.

People coming down through the bush.  Stage set with upper portion painted in, just above the actors .

Full painting augmented with some miniature vegetation in close foreground.

Largely matte painted, with areas of actual set to allow for actors to engage in death defying feats.

A rough demarkation 'between fact and fiction' as I like to call it.

Broken bridge and a lava flow some 500 feet down the canyon.  What could be easier?

At least they didn't write in a couple of retired, elderly, geriatric circus tight-rope walkers (!!) to get across, as Irwin Allen would do with his near identical scenario 20 years later!  No, I'm not making this up.

Multi-part composite involving matte art, live action set and performers in front of a blue screen, and Butler's volcano spewing as background plate.

Fine miniature work here, and well combined with live action.  

DEVIL has a huge number of blue screen shots - even for insignificant jungle trek scenes and such - with some bleed through noticeable at times, with backgrounds 'ghosting' partly through actors.

'Like a bridge over troubled lava.....'

I've written much in the past about Larry Butler.  One of the legends of the trick shot business, and part of a family long line of cinematographers and trick men going way back.  Larry was head of effects at warners for years and turned out some of their best and most memorable vfx work.  Films such as the jaw dropping THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN (1944) being a fine example that still leaves me stunned.  Butler moved over to Columbia and headed up their effects unit for many years, and formed a partnership with cameraman Donald Glouner.  Years later they set up their own independent effects facility and worked on a ton of films until they closed it down in the mid 70's.  I think all of Larry's sons became cinematographers, and notably did amazing aerial camerawork on the still fantastic TORA!, TORA!, TORA (1970).

Poor Bernie Hamilton gets the world's biggest splinter in his belly!  That's just gotta hurt.

Tracy on the left and Sinatra on the right.  Will these two foes come to some amicable arrangement just in the nick of time?  Unlikely.

Poor ole' Spence has one of those"Oh, shit" moments.  Yeah... where is your so-called God now?

Extremely good mechanical effects and staging here, for what I think is one of the all time great eruption effects sequences.  Makes most others pale in comparison.

'Yes...the Earth certainly DID move!'

It's got to be the biggest and most violent eruption since the dawn of time. 

Enormous blast that literally vapourises the entire island(!), engineered by pyro man Willis Cook, and expertly split screened into 2nd unit ocean plate.  Nice subtle 'after glow' added optically.


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KNUTE ROCKNE - ALL AMERICAN:  Bio-pic of a Football Star

Pat O'Brien and a certain Ronald Reagan star in this 1940 Warner Bros classic.

Older readers might well remember or appreciate the film and it's sporting star.

The main character was from Norway, or so the titles stated...

Good matte art starts the film off, with the Warner's back lot transformed into Voss, Norway.

Matte shot of the Westpoint Military Academy, around the 1920's.

Byron Haskin headed up the Warners Stage 5 effects unit at that time and was responsible for assembling an expert staff to create countless trick shots and outright illusions on many of the studio's films.  Haskin was already an experienced cameraman through the silent era before joining First National, which became Warner Bros. around 1930.  Byron would much later go on to direct many notable features - usually with a fantasy or science fiction bent - such as WAR OF THE WORLDS, ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS and one of my all time vfx favourites, THE NAKED JUNGLE.

In his memoir, Byron Haskin spoke highly of his talented crew at Stage 5, Warners, which included chief matte artist Paul Detlefsen, matte cameraman John Crouse, effects cinematographers Hans Koenekamp and Edwin DuPar, and matte painters Mario Larrinaga, Chesley Bonestell, Hans Batholowsky and Jack Shaw.

A montage of frames from a quite remarkable effects sequence where the entire range of seasons gradually change through a single vantage point.  (see below, and toggle through them to see subtle changes).

Frame #1

Frame #2

Frame #3

Frame #4

Frame #5

Frame #6

Frame #7      I presume this was done with a series of glass overlays, with touch up work applied?


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THE BOY WHO COULD FLY:  Matthew and Michele light up the sky.


A reasonably likeable teen fantasy flick, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY (1986) was loaded with visual effects, courtesy of Boss Films' Richard Edlund, with several terrific matte painted shots by Matthew Yuricich and his long time friend and associate, Michele Moen.

Now, until very recently, I had no idea that this regular looking street shot was anything other than a regular street shot..... until I received a vast collection of surviving Yuricich matte art from Matthew's family (see below...)

Here is Matthew's remarkable painting!  

Just look at Matt's sky.... such wonderfully casual brushwork, seemingly applied with abandon, but knowingly handled with the experience and skill of a seasoned pro who knows just what he's doing.

As Whitlock often stated: "The true special effect is the one that nobody ever notices".  Truer words were never spoken.

Moonlit night brings out the urge to reach for the stars...

Delightful matte painted sky as kid proceeds to flap his arms...

I'm not sure, but I suspect this down view is largely painted, as it would be the easiest and safest option.

Likewise with this angle.  Presumably it's mostly matte art.

..."are you sure about this?"

Multi-element shots with matte painted city in the distance and what I presume to be miniature buildings in the mid-ground to allow for a nice parallax shift.  Kids added via travelling mattes.

A very nice vista of the entire city as the kids fly across.  Nice details such as neon lights flickering and smoke from chimneys.  Matthew Yuricich and Michele Moen had a fair chunk of work to do on this film.

"Ever heard of the Mile High Club, baby?"

A staggeringly beautiful moonlit sky and cityscape.  Very poetic and 'old school' romantic.

The effects in BOY WHO COULD FLY must have looked a million bucks up on the big screen in the mid-eighties.  Matte painted suburb with fireworks doubled in, as kids perform in front of Richard Edlund's blue screen.

I can't help but think how damned awful this could look if done now in the 'everything goes' and 'let's push the computer to the limits' generation, where they just don't know when to quit, what with insane VFX art direction and suchlike.


..."I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning air...it smells like victory". (!!)

Truthfully, I reckon this chick secretly prefers a more, down to Earth kinda guy.

One of the original matte paintings.

"We really must stop meeting like this.  Air Traffic Control are starting to talk!"

Extensive matte art, supplemented with smoke and interactive light elements.


Full painting with cel animated lightning and rain element overlay.

Beautiful sky and other details from Matthew or Michele.

The boy is but a wee speck in the distance as he takes to the matte painted sky.

Totally unrelated to this film, an interesting peek at just how much an experienced matte exponent has to go through in this business (the face says it all).  I mean, this thank you card from Steven Spielberg on the 1941 set has the most atrocious handwriting I've ever seen after my own doctor, and Steven couldn't even spell Matthew's name correctly, for Christ's sake!


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KARATE KID 2:  It sure ain't Enter The Dragon, but it does have matte shots!

I never went for these insipid KARATE KID flicks - especially being a film-goer practically raised on Bruce Lee ('The Man'), Run Run Shaw, Golden Harvest and Jimmy Wang Yu epics.  KARATE KID 2 (1986) was only brought to my attention through my grandson who always sits through the end credits on movies, spotted a 'Matte Paintings' credit for Bill Taylor and Syd Dutton and, knowing my vague curiosity in such matters, relayed this vital info to me.  That's precisely what grandkids are for!

The flick takes place in exotic Japan, though may not have been shot there?  This is an unmatted location which will serve as the first of a handful of matte shots.

Here is a very rare test frame with Syd Dutton's initial, unfinished version of the temple and the sky.

Before and after with Syd's final version of the temple and gently drifting clouds.


By the time production was under way, Bill and Syd had left Universal and opened their own effects house, Illusion Arts, where their operation expanded considerably with the demand upon their services.

A subsequent cut shows the temple at a closer vantage point.

The initial frame from a very impressive bit of effects business where the kids come across the matte painted temple, as shown below...

Three part composite:  Matte painted temple and surrounds, with the pair of excited teens running across the painted composite via carefully deliniated rotoscope mattes courtesy of Catherine Sudolcan at Illusion Arts. 

Matte composite before introduction of the rotoscoped kids.

I was really impressed by this brief scene and had to run the DVD shot back a number of times to examine the thing.

Construction of the basic temple set which will also serve in part as a live action component for a quite spectacular closing shot by Syd and Bill.

The partial temple set masked off for the dramatic finale.

Test shot with slate of Syd's initial painting, much of which will be substantially modified for the final approved matte tilt down.

The first frame from the final matte painted tilt down.

The tilt continues...

Final stage, onto the live action set.


Comparison minus the camera slate in this test version, which incidentally shows far more painted information around the temple.  The final screen version of the tilt is shown below...

Final version.....Just love Syd's sky.


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Two Tales of Two Completely Unrelated Whales...

1.  MOBY DICK:  The old thirties Vitaphone version.

The timeless Herman Melville maritime tale, MOBY DICK (1930) had been made before as a silent (also with the same star), and remade decades later in colour and more grandeur, but this version is pretty good on a number of levels.

While the fifties version may have been a bigger and more exciting production, this thirties one has an entirely more convincing Captain Ahab from John Barrymore, who was ideally suited.  The latter film's Gregory Peck was sorely miscast.

Warners-First National had a formidable special effects department, which I have discussed at length on previous blog posts, the unit created many quite amazing illusions through their heyday of the thirties and especially the forties.  At left is founding effects boss Fred Woodruff Jackman, who, along with his son Fred jnr, graduated from the silent era on Hal Roach and Harold Lloyd two-reelers.  The gentleman at right is Warner Bros. mainstay, visual effects cinematographer Hans Koenekamp - a technician that future VFX boss and feature film director Byron Haskin would call "the greatest effects man of them all". Years later Koney would state that he felt his best work was in the Robert Alda-Peter Lorre horror flick THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS(1946).

MOBY DICK had a few matte shots in it, but what impressed me most were the ocean going scenes with whalers risking life and limb.

These whale hunting sequences were very impressive for the day.  Use of miniatures, some sort of mechanised or pupeteered whale and most of all, the stunningly well integrated shots where actual cast are seen in the chase boat with the huge whale ahead diving beneath the waves.  

These scenes are baffling.  The combination shots can't be rear process work as screens at that time were made of sand blasted glass, and illumination would falter badly so big.  Perhaps assembled as Dunning or Williams travelling matte composites, though very clean work it is with no sign of ghosting or bleed through.  Perhaps made with some very carefully devised soft splits matting the two pieces of action as one??  Whatever, the work is very effective for 1930, which is why I wanted to present it in the blog.

Well shot miniature sequence by Hans Koenekamp, known as 'Koney' in the industry.

The big storm sequence was also impressive.  Excellent process projection and live physical effects work with mechanical rocking set.

Now, this is neat.  Massive wave sweeps over the deck.  Look carefully and there is a crewman standing there lower right, who gets obliterated with water!  I'm inclined to think this was a good sized miniature ship deck, and the crewman looks to be a real guy added in as a travelling matte, which is then roto'd to wipe the poor bastard out!  Impressive.

More fine miniature work with both the whale and Ahab puppets articulated.



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2.  DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS:  Grand adventure on the high seas, also with a whale or two.

One of those forgotten movies that cry out for a decent BluRay release.

A terrific grand old time adventure with a sensational cast and outstanding special effects, DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS (1949) credited both Fred Sersen and his long time right hand man, Ray Kellogg for the extensive trick work.


Three of the industry's best visual effects men were Fred Sersen, Ray Kellogg and Ralph Hammeras, all of whom served for the majority of their long careers at 20th Century Fox.  All were matte artists by training though their expertise would expand through to other areas of trick work, with Hammeras excelling in effects camerawork and miniatures as an example.

The Fox backlot and tank set up circa late 1940's before they built a new tank on their ranch at Malibu.

A fine cast:  the always excellent Richard Widmark, the legendary Lionel Barrymore and most impressively, the young Dean Stockwell - one of the biggest talents among child actors in Hollywood. As an aside, Dean, who would appear in scores of films over the decades, culminating in some wacky David Lynch projects, I was most intrigued to learn that he died right here in New Zealand of all places ... though I digress.  As an aside, I reckon Widmark's all time best was the chillingly brilliant British picture THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (1965).  See it today!!!

The film is loaded with matte shots, though I do wish I had a better copy or a BluRay to gather screencaps from.

Fox had a very large matte department at that time, with many talented artists.

Ray Kellogg was Sersen's senior painter, with Emil Kosa jnr being an important figure in the department for many years until his untimely death in 1968.
 
A great shot, though it was actually lifted from an earlier Fox programmer called SLAVE SHIP made some ten years before.

Other artists in the Fox unit that time included Barbara Webster, Charles Hulett, Chris von Scheidau, Cliff Silsby, Max DeVega, Menrad von Muldorfer and Fitch Fulton.

Fox applied the tried and true bi-packing of gently blowing foliage over their mattes such as here.


Effects cameramen at Fox included Ralph Hammeras, Bill Abbott, Til Gabatini, Walter Castle and others.

Excellent whale mechanisms allow for surprising levels of articulation, complete with blow hole.  

Wave scale is excellent too in all of the tank shots, suggesting a number of small fans off to the side lending just the right amount of 'breeze'.

Good process work too, with addition of dump tank deluge upon the actors.

Very exciting sequences and so well orchestrated.  That's Harry Morgan (of M*A*S*H fame and 200 classic Fox westerns) getting crushed with the rapidly tightening line attached to the harpoon.

Just when they think things couldn't possibly get any worse, they come through the fog bank and collide with a damned iceberg.

Miniature detail.

The movie was submitted to The Academy for effects consideration that year, but oddly it was rejected.

The edge of the seat climax sees the ship wedged in the berg, with Widmark and Barrymore forced to take urgent action in literally manhandling the vessell off the ice.  A brilliant sequence as the hull of the ship is constantly swaying and violently 'washing' up against the people in death defying moments of bravery.  Terrific full scale mechanical effects done in the studio tank, and I'd say at some peril to the actors.

Splendid closing shots, possibly model work but I suspect perhaps painted ship on glass against exquisitely rendered painted skies.  Lovely shots here.

One of the original miniature rowboats now in a private collection.  Note the mechanism to simulate the oar action, and likely that of small puppet figures.

A sensational publicity paste up from the Fox marketing dept.

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***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 184 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 




Well, that ought to do it for now.  I hope matte and effects fans enjoyed this journey.
Do give me your feedback.
Till next time...

Pete




MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Seven

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Welcome fans and devotees of old school mattes, models and clever trick photography.  It's time once again for another giant of a blog post, and I do emphasize, giant!  I never do these things by half-measures and always try to cover all possible bases when examining and illustrating these amazing hand rendered moments of movie magic.

I have a vast collection of shots here, from a very broad cross section of movies.  As usual there are some very rare mattes that nobody has ever seen which should utterly delight the aficionados among you (you know who you are!).  There are a few well known films - at least to those of us of a certain age - and some long forgotten celluloid entertainments, the titles of which are largely lost to the mists of time, which isn't to say they shouldn't be celebrated.  There's some great work to be seen here even from quite minor and obscure pictures folks that I bet 99% of you have never heard of.  Also, for those who thrive on close up details, I've got some sensational hi-rez detail images from some very rare old time mattes that I just know certain matte friends out there will love.

So, we've got a never before seen Albert Whitlock matte that's simply glorious;  several very rare pieces from the family of Matthew Yuricich; a quanity of miniature and detailed matte fx shot breakdowns from an Emmy Award winning tv miniseries; several amazing before and after scenes from the celebrated Larry Butler & Donald Glouner;  a truckload of mattes from a big Warners costume epic;  a neglected RKO desert island classic .... and more!!! 

So, with that rambling intro out of the way, let us set forth on a journey of sheer wonder and amazement.

Enjoy, and I always appreciate any feedback and comments...

Pete  


***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 185 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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ALBERT WHITLOCK'S MAGNIFICENT MATTE THAT NEVER MADE THE FINAL CUT:

This awe inspiring full matte painting on glass was rendered in 1977 by Albert for the very misguided John Boorman sequel, EXORCIST 2 - THE HERETIC, though it's unlikely anyone ever saw the shot. Although completed and shot, I don't think it's in the film.  This beautiful masterpiece was hanging in the foyer of matte cinematographer, the late Bill Taylor's home, taking pride of place, as well it should.


Bill said that the matte was in a preliminary cut of EXORCIST 2 as best he recalled it, though I've seen at least 3 different versions of the flick - which is probably 3 too many - and never managed to spot the shot.  The film had a confused release back in the day, and was literally laughed off the screen.  Warner suits demanded an urgent re-cut and re-jig to make it even slightly commercial (didn't help), so maybe this shot was jettisoned.  In a former life I worked for the local distribution arm of Warner Bros and recall the 'carry-on', with prints being substituted with revised reels shipped in at the last minute, though I digress...

Anyway, the painting (detail above) is 100% classic Whitlock in all his technique, feeling of backlight, sillhoettes slinking awaay into the haze.... just brilliant.  Al's time honoured brushmanship was as good as it gets.  Breathtaking.


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TOM HIGGINSON'S LATEST ESSENTIAL YOUTUBE MATTE DOCO:


In the ever expanding catalogue of excellent online specialty video featurettes, my friend Tom Higginson has produced yet another essential documentary on the Universal and subsequent Illusion Arts matte departments, with this entry being as comprehensive a guide as one could ever need on the step by step creation of a traditional matte shot.  This video may be seen here.  

The essence of this documentary is the old 80's AIRWOLF tv series - a show that Tom seems to have an inexplicable affinity for - with detailed progress of some fine Syd Dutton brush skills and Bill Taylor composite photography.  I've seen the pilot but I don't recall whether the actual series was ever shown here in New Zealand??

The doco is loaded with clips, not just from AIRWOLF, but various before and afters from other Universal shows like TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY and various others, to illustrate Syd's amazing skills.  There are plenty of behind the scenes snapshots of the various members of the matte crew at work, which in themselves are priceless, and a dazzling slow flyover across the entire Universal Studios lot, which I found just brilliant.


Where the doco will really leave the viewer's jaw on the floor, are the meticulous and no doubt incredibly time consuming 3D recreations that Tom has rendered, to take the viewer around the Uni matte department and into the myriad of camera booths, painting rooms, showreel storage and pretty much everything except the toilet!!  This and all the other video doco's that Tom has produced may be found here.



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 THE FILMUMENTARIES PODCASTS.

In another multi-media realm, I must heartily recommend the wonderful series of movie podcasts put together by Jamie Benning in the United Kingdom.  Jamie has carried out 108+ interviews - often at quite some length - with many notable film industry folk, and in particular matte and effects people such as Michael Pangrazio, Craig Barron, Dennis Muren and (soon) Chris Evans, among many others.  His most recent podcast was an illuminating conversation with former ILM matte artist, Caroleen 'Jett' Green.  Jamie's Filmumentaries site can be found here.

Jett's honest and very open interview can be heard righthere.

The effervescent Caroleen 'Jett' Green, seen here at work on a painting for GHOSTBUSTERS 2.


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A LONG LOST MATTE ARTIFACT SUDDENLY RESURFACES.


In my recent epic April blog post I covered - among other things - a grand old MGM musical extravaganza starring Esther Williams, MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID (1952).  We can briefly revisit the big money shot here, and not because of any form of dementia on my part, I assure you.  True!

As these tend to happen from time to time, a long lost matte painting suddenly arrives in my in-box, with the sender asking if I can identify same.  Well, of bloody course I can i.d this beautiful piece... it's from MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID which I had only just published up a month or so ago!!

The matte is in the collection of another of Matthew Yuricich's family - his daughter I believe - and had been tucked away for some time.  The painting (oh brother, would I love to own this one), was not the work of Matthew as he was still at 20th Century Fox at that time and hadn't made the big move over to MGM yet.

A masterpiece of matte art, with splendid perspective lines.  I am most grateful to the Yuricich family for the masses of material they have shared.  It's quite often that a reader or someone promises to send a particular 'amazing' matte that they own, yet the picture never shows up!  This is why I am forever grateful to folks like the families Of Matthew, Jan Domela, Irmin Roberts, Wally Veevers etc, and guys like Harrison Ellenshaw (a true gentleman!), Ken Marschall (incredible generosity), Gene Warren jnr, Mark Sullivan, Gerald Larn and Jim Danforth.

Note the absent flags which were later bipacked in as live action 'fluttering' elements.

This is likely the work of Matt's friend, Howard Fisher, as Matt has several of Howard's paintings in the family collection.  Matthew was fortunate in grabbing quite a number of wonderful MGM matte paintings when the studio were demolishing the old Newcombe department in the 1970's, with so much either being junked or lifted by non-studio people who just happened upon them.

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MYSTERY BEFORE & AFTERS FROM THE BUTLER/GLOUNER DEPARTMENT.


I've been most fortunate to acquire a sizable and exciting collection of, often amazing, before and after mattes as well as numerous miniature tests and out takes from Columbia Pictures, mostly dating from the 1940's, and for the most part, from the legendary effects man Lawrence W. Butler and his long time matte cinematographer Donald Glouner.  Matte artists working there at the time included Juan Larrinaga and Hans Bartholowsky.  What follows are a few choice examples, with other significant examples illustrated further down the current blog.  I will add more great Butler/Glouner shots in subsequent blogs, so stay tuned.

Sadly, many of the reels I've got aren't titled, though some I have managed to match up.  This live action plate, masked for not one but two different matte paintings, remains a mystery to me.

Matte comp #1, where almost all of the frame has been painted in quite invisibly.

Matte comp #2 from the same film.  Obviously a Civil War picture, made in the 40's, but the title is a mystery.  Any info forthcoming from readers would be appreciated.

Another great matte painting from Columbia - also from an unknown picture. 


I always like to see the slate, or clapper in old fx shots, as we can see the matte line as well as often useful information on the slate as to director, year etc.  This era remains my favourite for mattes.

Finished composite, though as with that other Civil War film, this same 'plate' with beach and ocean will be used again for a revised version of the house, buildings and trees, presumably showing the locale at a different time in the same film.

The revised painting with many changes to buildings and foliage.


Final of the revised, or secondary matte shot.  Film unknown.

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NZ PETE'S HALL OF FAME MATTE SHOT - Part Two


In Part One, I illustrated one of the greatest mattes of them all, Skull Island from the original KING KONG.  Here is another entry in my continuing series of all time 'Hall of Fame' mattes...

After his initial tenure at Fox, Matthew Yuricich - along with fellow matte artist Lee LeBlanc and fx cinematographer Clarence Slifer - moved across to MGM.

One of the biggest projects Yuricich would ever work on was the mammoth William Wyler epic BEN HUR (1959).  Lee LeBlanc had replaced Warren Newcombe as head of the matte department and received screen credit, though Lee and Matthew split the matte load evenly between them, with this jaw dropping establishing shot being among Matthew's very best work.

As was the MGM technique, very large B&W photo enlargements of the partial set were made and shellacked onto hardboard, from whence the matte artist would paint either set extensions or in this case the entire city of Rome.

At the time, the CinemaScope optics had an unavoidable deforming artifact on the left and right edges of the frame - visible clearly when one watches old Scope films where a pan shot distorts curiously on the sides of the action.  As a result, mattes for CinemaScope had to be painted specially to accomodate that undesired optical distortion, by introducing a deliberate 'squeeze' painted into the left and right sides of the matte (or sometimes even paint the entire matte'squeezed' to begin with as latter day artist Ken Marschall would do) whereby anamorphic projection would 'unsqueeze' in near to accurate proportions.

A close up taken under raking light shows a myriad of tiny holes drilled into the Masonite to allow for simulated 'audience' movement.


The reverse side demonstrating the carefully arranged holes drilled, and sometimes covered with coloured gels, where backlight 'gags' would be introduced by Clarence Slifer when photographing the shot.  It's subtle, but as the great Al Whitlock once said:  "You may not notice it... but you do notice when it's not there".

Thankfully, the wonderful matte is still in fine condition, and in the care of one of Matt Yuricich's sons.


Strangely, BEN HUR won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects... but, and it's a big but.. that was only awarded in the 'mechanical effects, process shots and miniatures'category, (for the big sea battle sequence) and not for matte paintings!!  FX Oscars were broken down into 5 sub-categories for many years.  But don't get me started on fucken' Oscar injustices.................... Jesus!!!!

The final shot as it appears on screen.

The matte painting room at MGM in 1959.  Note the other BEN HUR paintings resting against the wall.


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ANOTHER LOST YURICICH MATTE - THE STUFF FAIRY TALES ARE MADE OF.


Time for yet another mind-blowing matte from yester year - and another that had remained a total mystery to Matthew Yuricich's family...  My first glance immediately put a name to the art, THE GLASS SLIPPER (1955).  I almost needed a defibrilator to restart my heart when I opened the very high rez photographs they sent me!  Seriously folks!!!!!

The film had several mattes, though mostly so-so photo blow ups with painted additions, though the main money shot was this terrific Cinderella castle.

A masterfully rendered Yuricich matte from THE GLASS SLIPPER that is absolutely dear to my NZ Pete matte art tastes.

Detail #1

Detail #2

Detail #3

Detail #4

Detail #5

Detail #6


Below is a wonderful letter from Dirk Yuricich, that I feel matte shot fans will really appreciate:

Hello Peter.

So nice to hear from you.

I am so glad you got the images as well as the fact that they seem to have exceeded your expectations!

Thank you for your kind words of appreciation, and thank you for championing my father's art.
Your promotion of this special art form and the individuals who created it, is such a gift to all of us.

I grew up around all these images, which I assumed to be a quite natural thing for a child.
Every night, I would fall asleep, looking at one of dad's paintings from "Forbidden Planet", showing the "Krell" graveyard and the surrreal topography of that distant planet.

This was never frightening to me as a boy, rather it was a window into another world to explore.  A window my father opened for me.

We learned to spot (decipher) matte shots in all the films (not just dad's) at the tender age of 8.  
We were taught to understand the logical positioning or need for a matte in a particular scene, as well as, understood its limitations.  
We knew that cathedral upper interiors couldn't be lit properly with the movie company lights, for a scene, so a matte was usually required to fill the pillars, and vaulting ceilings.

Dad often didn't have the time to go see other films, and check out his colleague's work.  
He would send us to see the movie and then ask us to report how the mattes looked.  
Even as teenage boys, we knew the familiar names of Whitlock, Ellenshaw, etc...

Such a part of my life.

Sincerely,

Dirk

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A GRAND CINEMASCOPE EPIC FROM WARNER BROS.

Great poster ad-art of the type never seen any longer.  I still have thousands of old classic one-sheets and lobby cards, though a chunk were lost in the flood last year.  Fucking rain!

Evocative ad campaign, plus the magnificent French actress Brigitte Bardot, who though not the star, damned well should have been 'cause I've always had a thing for Miss Bardot... though I digress.

Warner's big Scope epic - one of many they made at the time when it was all the rage.  HELEN OF TROY (1955) was okay but not the best of the genre.  It might have been if Miss Bardot had been given more screen time, or even the title role.  Oh, Brigette.... we love 'ya baby!

Matte supervisor was Louis Litchtenfield, with the highly talented Robert Wise helming the show.  Bob Wise started off cutting classics such as CITIZEN KANE at RKO and went on to direct a couple of my faves such as THE SAND PEBBLES and especially the still excellent THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN.

Top left pic shows matte artist & photographic effects supervisor Lou Litchtenfield (left) discussing an effects shot with the head of production at Warners.  Other pix show various sets and unmatted scenes.

Before and after of one of the many sets built at Cinecetta in Rome.

Helen, as played by Rosanna Podesta, with her love interest Jacques Sernas.  The delightful Brigette Bardot is shown at lower left, and on reflection is probably just too damned cute to play a conceited bitch like Helen of Troy... or is it just me?

The film is packed with matte and effects shots, with some variable results, probably due to many different hands involved with the brushwork.

Lou Litchtenfield had an extensive background, starting off in the late 1930's on GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) at Selznick International as a lowly assistant to Jack Cosgrove and would go on to flip-flop between as many studios on films such as THE FOUNTAINHEAD (1949) and AN AMERICAN IN PARIS as he could to pick up new techniques from other artists such as Mario Larrinaga, Howard Fisher, Chesley Bonestell, Lee LeBlanc and Paul Detlefsen.

It's possible that some matte or glass shots may have been carried out directly at Cinecitta during or after production, but I'm not sure.  There is a possibility that Polish born matte painter Joseph Natanson may have worked on the film?  He had trained in Britain under the legendary Poppa Day and moved to Italy in the mid fifties to work at Cinecitta.  There are certainly many different styles evident in the painted mattes.

Live foreground and painted in distant scenery and sky.

At the time this was made, old timer Paul Detlefsen - who had been with Warners since the early 1930's - had retired to follow his passion of model trains and calendar art.  Lou had been with the studio for a few years now and worked on many of their films.

Other artists active in the Warners matte department included Vern Taylor and Jack Shaw - both of whom had done significant work alongside Lou on the Academy Award winning MIGHTY JOE YOUNG.  There were also Clyde Scott and Cliff Silsby.

I do wonder whether some shots may have been foreground glasses as opposed to post production mattes?


The film has yet to see any form of HD or BluRay release.


Travelling matte comp of the massive invading armada, presumably all, or mostly, models, possibly supplemented by matte art.
The invaders storm ashore.  Split screen with live lower frame and painted upper half.



A closer view, with parts of the army passing under the matte line, but who ever notices apart from me?


The quality of the trick shots varies greatly, presumably due to dupe process used for matte composites which in cases like this, bring out lousy contrast and hues all out of whack.

Probably extended with artwork?

Quite an effective scene with thousands of warrior hordes, almost all of whom were matte painted and augmented with small slot gags and such.

It was probably the biggest effects show for Robert Wise until he made THE HINDENBURG in 1975.

The film had several censor excisions made here in New Zealand back in the day, with this arrow through the neck and a few other shots being removed.  The orgy too proved problematic ... but don't they always??   ;)

Peculiar colour scheme here where the city has taken on a whole different hue for some unknown fx reason.  The fire effects were well done, and entirely simulated as vfx elements in the mate dept, with smoke added separately.


Slightly modified matte art used in two different scenes.

Probably the best matte in the show, with wonderful light and a terrific sky beyond.  Nice.

The mythical horse of the title finally makes an appearence... and the fools fell for it, hook, line and sinker!!

The orgy at the climax.... or should that read as the climax at the orgy?  I dunno??  Anyway, much shameless decadence occurs, and according to our then NZ chief censor of films, a little too much, with the ecstatic gal carried forth on a platter scene apparently deemed a little too much for Kiwi audiences in 1955, so out it came.


I may not have mentioned it, but the utterly divine Miss Brigitte Bardot was in HELEN OF TROY ... elle est magnifique!




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INVISIBLE MATTE TRICKERY FROM A MINOR COLUMBIA 'B' PICTURE.


A minor little 'B' movie from Columbia, THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN (1946) featured a very interesting matte shot from Larry Butler and Donald Glouner which is well worth inclusion here.

More wonderful footage I've acquired from the Butler-Glouner collection, with this being especially fascinating as it's a rejected take due to severe camera jiggle.  Click on it and toggle through the frames to see the screw up.  The matte eventually did get corrected and made it into the finished film, and it's a really nice shot that nobody would spot.

Far more painted in than one might expect, and very accomplished it was too.

A very talented artist was employed at Columbia throughout the 1940's, Mexico born Juan Larrinaga - the brother of Mario Larrinaga - and this work may be his or maybe Hans Bartolowsky who was also there.


Seriously misaligned matte jiggle evident, with the actual take bouncing all over the place.

The final as seen in the movie where the negative weave has been corrected, likely using an alternate take.



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MATTES EXPAND THE CANVAS FOR MGM MUSICAL DRAMA


A very good and at times quite powerful drama set amid the musical world, LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME (1955) had a great headline cast, as unlikely as it may seem, perfectly paired.

These old hand painted lettered-titles are also a lost artform.

More old school MGM mattes from the Yuricich family, with this particular painting being a Howard Fisher rendering on masonite, that Matthew saved from destruction at MGM.

The composite shot, assembled by matte cameraman Mark Davis.

Close up of Howard's matte.

More detail.  Howard was Warren Newcombe's senior painter and worked on hundreds of mattes, dating as far back as the early thirties and forties on Oscar winning shows like the huge effects films GREEN DOLPHIN STREET and 30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO - with one of his notable works being for FORBIDDEN PLANET with that incredible Krell power plant tilt down shot - and much later worked for Linwood Dunn on IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD in the early sixties.

The Newcombe department prided themselves with shots just like this, with beautiful theatre frontages and gliterring bulbs and neons.  MGM were top of the game with this stuff, and Matt Yuricich was often tasked with drilling out the tiny holes and afixing the coloured gels at the back.

These wonderful neon theatre signs are a genre all unto themselves, and one in which I'm very fond of.  I own a lovely old 1940's Newcombe 'theatre' matte painting, and it's always a source of enjoyment to admire it and even to back-light the still coloured gel 'holes' behind the 'light bulbs'.

A wonderful daytime exterior theatre matte painting by Matthew Yuricich for LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME.  Superb and complicated perspective drawing on the differently positioned lettering, especially at far right.

Final comp of the Yuricich matte art.

Close up

Love that skilled lettering work so much.

Alternate night view with flickering neons and such.

Click and toggle between the 2 frames to see the neon animation.


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HUGE EMMY AWARD WINNING VISUAL EFFECTS MINISERIES.


THE WINDS OF WAR (1983) was a mammoth tv miniseries, or really a maxi-series as it totalled around 15 hours as I recall.  A bit of an endurance test, but pretty good as I recall.

The series featured a ton of effects, from the standard full scale physical effects, through to complex miniature combat in the skies and the seas, as well as a number of excellent matte paintings.  The small company Matte Effects, operated by artist Ken Marschall (left) and cameraman/producer Bruce Block (middle) was situated within the vfx facility Fantasy II, run by Gene Warren jnr (right).

A large tank was constructed on the Paramount backlot, exactly where a similar tank had been built in 1955 for the epic parting of the Red Seas sequence for Cecil B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.  The miniatures were built under the supervision of old timer Lee Vasque, who was enticed out of retirement for this assignment.  Jack Cooperman was in charge of miniature photography.

The miniature photography was mostly completed in a mere three weeks apparently.


Model cameraman Jack Cooperman and assistant Eric Anderson plus two grips, prep a ship for a sequence in the tank.

All round effects and production artist, Mike Minor, was vfx art director on the show.  Mike's career went back to things like FLESH GORDON and a number of low budget pictures.

A battery of fans and hoses supply a mother of a storm sequence.

Miniature air base shot in forced perspective against an actual location, and in natural light - always a bonus.

Excellent aerial sequences all carried out in miniature.  Some aircraft travel on wires - probably via a Lydecker system - while some shots used remote controlled models.

Leading man Robert Mitchum and various fx shots including a matte augmented view of London with barrage balloons above.

VFX sequence by Gene Warren jnr at Fantasy II.  Partial miniature with substantial pyro matted into an actual location.


Matte Effects was a small two-staff boutique fx operation in Los Angeles, founded and run by matte painter Ken Marschall and cinematographer-producer Bruce Block.  The company consisted of pretty much just one room in the Fantasy II effects facility where Bruce had a camera set up and solid, welded matte camera stand.  Ken, on the other hand, did the majority of his incredible matte paintings at his home, often on the kitchen table.  Practically all of Ken's mattes were painted on a special art card stock (top left), imported from Germany.  The bottom left pic shows one of the extremely rare occasions that Ken painted on another surface, in this case it's glass (which he was never happy working with), for a special 'display' glass matte for a vfx exhibit.


Plate for a Matte Effects shot:  The original scene shot at the Paramount Studios tank in 1982, with large miniatures of US and British cruisers depicting the naval rendezvous in Ship Harbour at Argentia, Newfoundland for the meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill on Aug 10th 1941.

The plate with an optical matte where the edges have formed an unexpected fringe that was difficult to deal with.

Ken's painting with airbrushed in fog banks.  More 'fog' was later added over the original photography to help disguise the matte line and add atmosphere to the scene.

Close up of Ken's matte art. All acrylics though Ken would occasionally resort to lead pencil, coloured pencils, Sharpie markers for super rich blacks, and often an acrylic gloss medium over certain areas to increase saturation and darken slightly when needed.

The finished shot with blends successful.

Gene Warren jnr wrote me a detailed piece on Ken and Bruce in 2015 which I included in the extensive three-parter on Matte Effects.  Interestingly, they first met by way of a shot brought to Gene by Larry Butler, around 1980 or so.  Butler was also instrumental in bringing WINDS OF WAR to Fantasy II.  Gene told me that a tiny and rather basic 12 x 12 foot room was built in the Fantasy II facility just for Ken and Bruce, and that was about all they needed to make amazing mattes.  The matte camera had both 4-perf and 8-perf capabilities, with the matte stand illuminated with just two baby spots (1000 watt quartz) with polarizer filters.  Gene's own Fantasy II optical department processed all the tests and did any optical reductions or other printer work.


A different view of Argentia, this time an evening shot.

For another scene in WINDS OF WAR Ken and Bruce had to create a wide view of Moscow in long shot.  Ken told me that director Dan Curtis wanted the Kremlin, which was many miles away, to look more red.  Curtis proclaimed "It's the Red Square...the Red Army...it just has to look red".  Curtis was in charge and made it known.  Ken: "So I had to adjust it, despite protests until he was satisfied, but of course Bruce and I knew that it reduced the credibility of the scene."

The concept sketch made by a member of the art department, and Ken's final painting propped up against his car.  The matte was donated to director Dan Curtis at the end of production.  The reader can appreciate just how small Ken painted his mattes, as his finely detailed brush work was quite the opposite of other matte artists who would block in and use time saving methods and a more loose approach.

From the final scene as a broad pan across.

Miniature trees were placed in front of the painting to lend a nice perspective shift, and Gene Warren added a nice lens flare as the pan crosses over.

A rough concept sketch over a frame blow up, done by a production member, formed the basis for a major action sequence taking place at Cavite, in The Philippines.

For the initial element of a row of burning buildings, a fairly basic miniature table-top set was set alight in the Fantasy II parking lot.  Ken described to me the Fantasy II facility.  "It wasn't huge, on an obscure side street in Burbank.  You could drive past it and not even know it.  I don't even remember a sign outside.  But they accomplished a lot there.  It was a family, really.  The majority of the employees hung in there with Gene and his partner Lesley Huntley for years and years, through thick and thin.  Dedication and loyalty.  Real team work.  Gene was always scurrying around, full of energy and enthusiasm.  Gene was a second generation effects man,  His father was an old time vfx man and a partner in the company Project Unlimited from the 1950's and 60's."

The live action plate matted off.

The burning miniature was optically moved to the appropriate area of the frame and split screened into the live action plate.

A new matte was then created to cover the bad match between the miniature and the foreground.  Into this opaque matte Ken and Bruce would make what they termed as an'orange base matte'

Ken's bridging matte painting - one of many patch jobs matte artists have had to contend with. The 'orange base process' used here for this shot is by painting in odd low contrast greenish-yellowish hued IP colours and photographing on IP stock, which would 'read' as normal colours once the footage came back from the lab.  This peculiar matte process was the one preferred by fx people such as Douglas Trumbull and Matthew's brother Richard, where on films like BLADERUNNER Matt Yuricich was forced to paint in wierd colour schemes, which drove him crazy, to suit the chosen intermediate duplicating film stock.


Ken's 'orange base matte' ties the model and the live action but still needed final adjustments to conceal the matte line.  Ken said he wished he could have worked with a soft matte but as this was an entirely optical printer job, that wasn't possible.  Bruce and Ken preferred to work whenever possible with latent image o/neg matte shots.

The final shot once carefully blended.  Ken said this minor matte was quite a challenge, and has shown me examples of some of the seemingly smallest or simple mattes he'd worked on over the years which proved to be so incredibly problematic.


The Red Square sequence was a close call as well.  Here's a vivid pre-production concept painting and at right is Ken's almost final drawing which had more buildings in it than would be in the eventual painting.  Note the remarks for changes and alterations, presumably from the director.

The shot would be a three part composite, with two separate pieces of live action combined and a matte painting filling out the Red Square.  The archway (left) was one live element and some of the lower portion of the other building shot elsewhere (right) were carefully matted as one.

Ken's matte art, quite different from his initial layout drawing.

Close up detail.  Note Ken's rendering of light.

According to Ken the whole shot was completed on Feb 8th 1983, just days before the television premier.  He said there must have been some last minute changes to the scene, thus the close call.

For the big Pearl Harbour sequence Matte Effects were asked to create a master shot.  Here is the original plate shoot of the miniatures in the Paramount tank.

The black matte in place.

Ken Marschall's matte painting.

Final composite with airbrushed smoke

A frame from the miniature shoot in the tank, with a large painted backing.  The fleet will be extended considerably through matte art.

A quick paint onto a photographic print guided Ken as to the requirements of the shot.

Tank footage masked off.

Matte painting.  Note the painted in 'wakes' which will marry up when double exposed in with the miniature ships.

Detail

The finished shot, sans the lightning elements.

Close ups of the two lightning elements employed as part of the above matte composite.  These were backlit and DX'd in during a second and third pass through the matte camera.

*For a very detailed history of just how Matte Effects got up and running, and an in depth discussion with Ken and Bruce on their methods, films and hundreds of effects shots, go here, here and here.
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AN IMPRESSIVE WARTIME DRAMA SET DURING THE BLITZ



An enjoyable and at times quite moving drama set in London during the bombing blitz of WWII, TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT (1946) featured a surprising amount of visual effects work by Lawrence Butler, Doanld Glouner and Ray Cory.

Almost all matte art here, with this theatre being central to the story, as The Music Box was a venue that literally would never miss a single show, despite all the mayhem going on around.  It was a symbol to keep up the morale of the Londoner's during the war.  I think it was based on an actual event.

Entirely painted signage.


Although it appears to be nothing much, this is actually a rather ingenious trick shot sequence.  The audience are watching a movie on a cinema screen.  Performers on screen do a musical bit and then march across in black & white and come off screen in full Technicolor.  Sounds a bit naff, but it's very well pulled off, presumably with carefully timed pre-shot rear projection and the same actors appearing on stage on cue in a continuous pan across.


Rita Hayworth watches the scene in disbelief.  A beautifully photographed and lit film by the way, with exquisite use of Technicolor.  Rudolph Mate was D.O.P.


Another matte painted street in London.


Before and after from the Butler/Glouner collection.  I don't think this shot made the final cut.

All painted from just above the doorway.


More of London, courtesy of Columbia's matte department.

An elaborate effects set up for a blitz sequence.

A multi part fx shot with matte painting, explosions, searchlights, and tracer fire.

It all looks great in Butler's showreels, but sadly far less so in the finished film where much of this complicated vfx work is obscured and difficult to see clearly.

As a stand alone stock shot, this was routinely recycled in other films such as George Pal's THE TIME MACHINE and others (Pal was a real cheapskate and stole so many shots from other films to flesh out his own shows!)  *Note the additional foreground miniatures or cut-outs here that have been employed to augment the matte vista and add another layer.

Longtime Columbia effects cameraman Ray Cory shot these explosion elements which would be optically combined with the big matte painting of London at night.

At left is the tracer fire element shot by Ray Cory which will also be added to several effects shots.  The tracer looked excellent, so whether it was straight cel animation, I don't know.  It looked too smooth.

As it appears in the final film, partly obscured by rooftop foreground structures, and as far as the BluRay goes, printed so bloody dark I had to lighten many night shots here just to illustrate them.  Why are so many BluRays mastered so fucking dark??  The old DVD was much easier to see.

All hell breaks loose, but the British still manage to somehow 'keep calm and carry on'.

Rear projected carnage over London.

Bomb devastation.  See below...


Butler/Glouner matte shot where almost everything above the actors has been painted in.

From the Butler showreel, these are far easier on the eye than the extremely dark BluRay edition.

Multi-element shot with live action foreground, matte painted set extension, searchlight animation and various explosions in the night sky.  BluRay frame lightened here considerably.

It's all supposed to be strictly 'blackout' time, but there's always some damned streetlights all lit up! 

Nice matte comp from Butler's reel.  Matte extends just above the shop doorway.

Much destruction after the bombing.

Interestingly, it wasn't a full matte painting as it could well have been, with a curious patch for live action visible in the middle of the frame here, even though no 'action' or movement actually occurs there.

Nicely rendered post bombing wreckage.

The pub across the street is destroyed, and so is one of our beloved main characters.

Once again, a multi-element fx shot.



I've written a great amount in past blogs about Butler, in particular his work at Warner Bros in the early 1940's on some incredible effects shows.

I've no idea why these Larry Butler showreels are monochrome for the several colour productions included, but they are incredibly fascinating.


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MATTES ENHANCE PERIOD COMING-OF-AGE PICTURE.


A very typical 'soft & soapy' MGM picture, THE HAPPY YEARS (1950) was a sort of coming of age show set at the turn of the century.


There are just a few mattes in the film but I decided to include it as I have a couple of nice original mattes from the family of Matthew Yuricich.  Matthew wouldn't have worked on it as it was way before his tenure at MGM, so Matt would have picked them up when they were junking the old matte department.  I believe this one is the work of Howard Fisher, as Matthew described it when interviewed for my oral history back in 2012.

The shot as it appears in the film, where, oddly, the virtually full frame painting has just had actual foliage added beyond where the painted section ends.

Detail

Detail


Probable matte extension here.

What a wonderful painted sky.

Although I cannot confirm it, I suspect this matte may well have been rendered for THE HAPPY YEARS and not used in the final cut.  The town and buildings look very similar.  This is another matte from the Yuricich family collection.

Some detail.




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THE ORIGINAL 1940 VERSION OF A TIMELESS FAMILY ADVENTURE


Very few realise that long before Walt Disney made his version in 1960, RKO had made their one way back in 1940.

The timeless Johann Wyss book has always made for grand adventure, and I still vividly remember seeing the Disney version at the cinema (The Civic, I think?) back in the 60's as a kid.  This old rendition is quite good, with Thomas Mitchell always a treat to watch.

Vernon Walker was head of special photographic effects at RKO until his untimely death in 1948.  Vernon worked on such classics as the original silent LOST WORLD, KING KONG and importantly, CITIZEN KANE among many others.  Vern specialised as an effects cameraman and opticals man. He was nominated for an Oscar a few times, including SWISS FAMILY for Best Special Effects in 1941 - with this film being just one of 14 pictures nominated in the category that year.

This is s largely forgotten film worthy of rediscovery and certainly remastering onto some HD format.  It's very hard to find except crappy YouTubes, though the special edition 2 disc DVD of the Disney film actually has this old version included as an 'extra'.

There are a number of excellent matte shots in the film, with veteran old time matte artist Albert Maxwell Simpson providing the shots.  Simpson was one of the very first cohort of matte painters, having worked with D.W Griffith on BIRTH OF A NATION in 1914, and DeMille's original TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1923.  Simpson also worked uncredited on scores of films such as KING KONG (1933), THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937), REBECCA (1940) and the epic GONE WITH THE WIND (1939).  For years Albert was president of the Matte Artists & Illustrators Union.

Effective process with miniature.

Split screen with painted foreground rocks above actor's heads.  Distant island likely part of the same painting with ocean a separate plate possibly projected into matte art as RKO did quite alot of complex rear projected elements into painted mattes around that time on things like THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and CITIZEN KANE.

The first of a set of wonderful before and afters, sent to me years ago by matte artist Mark Sullivan.

Final composite with Albert Maxwell Simpson's matte art.

The stranded family discover a potential piece of ideal real estate.

Matte painted tropical jungle, with much in common with a certain Skull Island.


Limited stage set masked off for a Simpson matte.

Composite

Live action component masked off for a most spectacular expanded jungle matte.

The adventurers build their new home using remnants of the holed ship.  What a wonderful cinematic jungle as painted on glass.



Probably a process shot with miniature ship in a tank projected in.



***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 185 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 


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Well folks, that's about it for this post.  I hope you enjoyed it all.  
**Oh, and if on the very slim off-chance that Benjamin Netanyahu is reading this:  "Fuck you, you evil mass murdering bastard".

NZ Pete


MATTE & EFFECTS FILMS CELEBRATED: Part Eight

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Greetings to all who are particularly partial to the long lost era of traditional, hand painted mattes and other ingenious motion picture 'tricks of the trade'.  It is indeed that time again - perhaps a little overdue according to some of my faithful correspondents - for a veritable cavalcade of amazing (and in a few isolated instances, perhaps not so flash) special photographic and miniature trick shots from across the long and wide cinema spectrum.

As is my self anointed vfx historian warrant, I've assembled a broad cross section of incredible films, with, in most cases, some terrific visual effects sequences.  There are a few films known to some; a bona fide Oscar winning classic; a cheesy 60's genre mish-mash; a couple of smaller gems that nobody will have heard of; a tiresome Technicolor musical; an expensive sci-fi mini-series from the late 70's; some more amazing Yuricich mattes that were thought lost; a selection of great Butler/Glouner shots from old Columbia pictures, and if that weren't enough, not one, but a pair of silent pictures - one a well known classic and the other a long, long, long forgotten disaster epic from the twenties that simply blew my socks off with the outstanding effects work!  Just because they don't have 'sound' or 'colour' doesn't mean they should be flagged as 'unworthy' my friends!

For the uninitiated, try to broaden your cinematic horizons and check out some incredible trick work from near on a Century ago of outstanding quality in today's post....

As this is the last post for 2024, what do I have in store for 2025?  Well, I'll be highlighting a series af never before seen matte paintings from French cinema that have just been generously shared with me.  Also, more from Matt Yuricich as well as the Butler/Glouner showreels.  I've been meaning to publish NZ Pete's 100 Best Special Visual Effects Movies (or individual shots)...  as well as a Matte Painted Journey Through Time, with a multitude of mattes from the beginning of time, as it were, through to the future!  That's a tall order, but will make for a fascinating adventure.

So, sit back, with your drink of choice, switch off that damned phone, and enjoy..........

Pete


***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 186 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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NZ PETE'S HALL OF FAME MATTE SHOT: Part Three

A favourite area of historic interest for me books and films about POW's and escape and evasion during the two World Wars.  I can't get enough regarding the infamous Colditz castle, and have many books on the topic.  There was a good British tv series back in the early 1970's and the classic Guy Hamilton film from 1957.  Today's 'Hall of Matte Fame'matte comes from that very motion picture.


This masterpiece of matte rendering was the work of long time Shepperton master matte painter Bob Cuff.  Fellow Shepperton artist, the late Gerald Larn once told me how this particular glass painting was, for a some time, mounted up on the wall of the painting room right opposite his own easel, and that Gerald found constant inspiration and admiration for the rendering.  The piece - along with various others such as old Poppa Day glass mattes like HENRY V - would decorate the walls, along with various miniatures from assorted pictures, and would occasionally be replaced with other works at odd times.  I asked Gerald whatever became of them when they came down.  His response: "I really don't know where they went.  Maybe Wally [Veevers] had them stacked under his bed?"

Before and after on the studio backlot, and matte painter Bob Cuff shown here.  Bob started at Shepperton just after Pop Day retired and Wally Veevers took over the department.  Bob continued on until the mid 1960's and then went off with Les Bowie and Ray Caple as Bowie Films and later as Abacus Films, doing a great deal of work on things like ONE MILLION YEARS BC, THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH and YOUNG WINSTONE.

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MATTHEW YURICICH:  Some more old mattes dusted off.


As covered in several previous posts, the family of Matt Yuricich have been very generous in sharing many lost and rare paintings that Matthew did, with many being a bit of a mystery.  This one was marked as 'Borneo-Camels', which suggests to me it might have been for a Camels cigarete commercial, and set on the island of Borneo?  Anybody recognise this one?  Let me know.

The famous Lincoln Memorial matte from LOGAN'S RUN (1976).  All of the mattes from this film are now in somewhat rough shape due to the fact that Matthew was instructed to paint in hundreds of years worth of aging and vegetation directly over large format mounted photographic blow ups - which normally wouldn't have posed a problem as it was common practice at Fox and Matt was a dab hand at such methods - though for the LOGAN'S RUN work, effects boss Bill Abbott demanded they use colour photo enlargements to paint over rather than the old establish B&W prints.  The dyes in the chemistry were, in Matthew's own words,"a real son-of-a-bitch"...with the red chemistry seeping through, and even the most opaque green Windsor & Newton pigments from his brush coming out like "baby-shit brindle brown!"

For comparison, here's the shot from the final film, with even here a pinkish hue leeching through.

Matthew at work back in the mid fifties.  The film here is the MGM medieval period CinemaScope Lana Turner-Roger Moore costumer DIANE (1956), and one would never suggest a matte of any sort applied here.

The original matte art on masonite panel (that's hardboard to us) still in pristine condition in the care of Matt's family, who incidentally had no clue as to it's title till NZ Pete recognised it after some initial head scratching.

Close up, though sadly much was cropped out when the final tighter framed composite was made.

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COLUMBIA MATTES FROM THE BUTLER/GLOUNER FX DEPARTMENT:

In following on from the previous blog post, here are some more impressive old before and after mattes from Columbia Pictures matte department, supervised by Lawrence Butler and cameraman Donald Glouner.


Fascinating before and after photography with substantial set extension for the film IT HAD TO BE YOU (1947).

The final, flawless composite.  Interestingly, they must have had some camera registration problems because I viewed the showreel and the first take had so much 'jiggle' along the blend that it looked like a quake was in progress!  Second take was steady and good to go.

Columbia made a shitload of low budget 'Jungle Jim' quickie potboilers, often with matte work.  This excellent matte was from THE LOST TRIBE (1948) entry in the series.

Did Weissmuller ever do an 'urban' film?

A complete mystery here.  A military establishment somewhere, with almost everything rendered by the Columbia matte artist.  

The final shot, though in this extended out-take the soldiers marching along the lower left are all 'headless'as they are partially under the matte line. Bizarre to say the least!   I assume a subsequent take remedied this?




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THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES:  A very longwinded Ray Bradbury miniseries.

I originally saw this 1979 marathon back in the day on television, spread over many nights.  Quite good in parts, and utterly incomprehensible in other parts.  I think it may have been rehashed and updated recently?

Effects wise, the series was a definite 'mixed bag'. Veteran British all round effects expert John Stears oversaw it all.  Stears began his career as a matte painter for Rank, and gradually moved into models and physical effects on shows like the R.A.F true story REACH FOR THE SKY, the first STAR WARS and all of the early Bond pictures.  Ray Caple handled the many matte paintings quite efficiently, and presumably rendered them at his home which he usually did.  The show was severely let down by the atrocious model work sadly.  For such a big budget series with big name effects staffers, the miniature work was shoddy beyond belief, as will be demonstrated...

Matte artist Ray Caple.  Ray got his start when, at the young age of just 15 he was taken aside by Les Bowie and taught the technique of matte work on early, though important Hammer shows like THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and many others.  Ray worked frequently with Les on and off up until SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE, which was Bowie's final film.  

Foreground miniature with what appears to be a large painted backing.

Some of the aforementioned model shots.  Seemingly shot all in camera with minimal - if any - depth of field, whereas second spaceship is totally out of focus.  For 1979 this was inexcusable.

Poorly lit and staged to minimal effect.

How NOT to do a miniature shoot,  with what looks to be a 500mm lens, at 48fps and at an f2.8 aperture.  Not even fx shots from the silent era were as clumsy as these, as you will see so brilliantly in subsequent coverage further on in this very blog post of THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD made in 1926 no less, though, I digress....

Overhead view a bit better.

Oh, brother... not even DAMNATION ALLEY (1977) got it so wonky as these exceedingly poor model shots.  Interestingly, the model shots were done and photographed by Bob Kindred who did similar work on the otherwise marvellous Richard Donner classic SUPERMAN (1978).  Kindred came in to do 'additional model photography' on the dam collapse sequence afterDerek Meddings and Paul Wilson had left due to start dates on the Bond flick MOONRAKER looming.  Donner, in the SUPERMAN audio commentary said how much he fucking hated those 'additional' dam shots of the 'little town', with a passion.  Same problem:  long lens, very little depth of field.

Model foreground set and painted landscape.

Ray Caple matte shot.

Rocket ship is virtually all painted in, just above the lower visible descending hatch.

Variation on same view.  *Toggle through frames to see subtle matte transformation.

*Frame 2

*Frame 3

*Frame 4

*Frame 5

*Frame 6

Caple matte painted deserted city.

All painted just above headline of Bernie Casey and Rock Hudson.  As an aside, Casey was great in schlocky 70's flicks like DR BLACK AND MR HYDE (yeah, that's a real movie!) and a later 1981 top shelf fave of mine, the Burt Reynolds actioner SHARKY'S MACHINE.  Terrific cop movie.

Rock sets out on a voyage of discovery.  Actually a fairly under rated actor was Hudson, who, among the drek he was often thrown into, turned out some top shelf performances on occasion with the astonishing John Frankenheimer sci-fi thriller SECONDS (1966) being a masterwork.

Matte art rocketships added in.

'Didn't I tell you never, ever, to shoot a model set with a long fucken lens and focal depth the thickness of a sheet of paper!'


Location augmented with much Caple matte art.

The series was divided into three separate sub-storylines, with the first one being the most coherent as I recall.

Not sure here, but suspect a miniature structure.

Rather good matte here by Ray Caple, as the trek across the alien desert begins.

Another excellent Caple matte.  Love the distorted perspective.  

More matte work by Ray as Fritz Weaver and Roddy McDowell explore the environs.  I love character actors, and Weaver was an excellent actor in films as varied as Sidney Lumet's chilling nuclear threat masterpiece FAIL SAFE, John Schlesinger's thriller MARATHON MAN the frightening AI sci-fi flick DEMON SEED and many more.


I can't remember exactly why, but the whole kaboodle goes up like the 4th of July.

"I love the smell of napalm in the Martian atmosphere..."

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MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS:  An efficient little known film noir worthy of rediscovery.


I love older films, and it's gratifying when one of my very long time blog readers recommends a title to me, just as my NYC pal Steve did with this otherwise unknown little gem.  Thanks Steve for this and all the other 'matte notifications'.  :)

Made in 1945, JULIA ROSS only has two mattes, but the key shot is excellent.  

I was lucky to find this 'before' frame among the many shots on the Butler/Glouner showreels.  The 'Cory' slated here is Ray Cory, who was a long time vfx cameraman at Columbia for many years.

A superbly gothic matte in the classic sense.  It's shots like this that make me love that particular era of the matte art medium, the 1940's.

The only other shot was this night view, which looks like the same matte printed down a few stops.


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CAN'T HELP SINGING:  Lush yet tedious song-fest, out west.

The 1944 Universal film was filmed in near retina-blasting vivid Technicolor, though in it's favour it did have a few nice Russ Lawson mattes and old time character actor, the great Akim Tamiroff - who must have made near on 1000 flicks!

Although uncredited, John P. Fulton oversaw the effects, which boiled down to a handful of mattes. At left is the film's star Deanna Durbin astride a chopper with Fulton on the Universal backlot.  At right is a later photo of John with his three Oscars (I think they might have been lost in a devastating wildfire?) for WONDER MAN, THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

Deanna Durbin - not really my cup of tea, but I'd listen to her over that bloody Taylor Swift any day.

A dual-plane matte shot with the sky rendered on a background glass and animated to drift behind the main central matte art.  Veteran effects cameraman Roswell Hoffman was with the same studio for a massive career, stretching from the early 1930's through to 1974.  When he died, I found that he left a sizable bequest to either the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) or The AMPAS Academy - I forget which.

A follow up shot from a closer angle, and again, with the drifting clouds, which was something Russell Lawson did quite often, though only in a rudimentary single 'block' of cloud drift, as opposed to much later Universal exponent Albert Whitlock, who mastered the art of splitting the sky into 'bands' and creating an incredible 'depth' in such animation as never seen before. 

More matte work, with the distant tree line and wagons with horses all painted, as well as the sky with cloud 'drift'.

Universal backlot matted with Lawson's sprawling old west landscape.


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THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD:  An incredibly well executed silent era disaster picture


I love cinema in all of it's forms and all of the technical aspects therein.  Every genre, every era, every language!  THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926) is a truly remarkable example of just how damned good film makers and technicians were in the early days of cinema. 

This amazing 1926 mini-epic (mini only because it runs not much more than an hour in length) was based on the actual real life disaster that occured in 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - a disaster of mega proportions as I saw in a History Channel doco ages ago.

Made by a Mr 'Fox'(not his real name BTW... born Wilhelm Fuchs in fact) long before he turned it all into the massive enterprise 20th Century Fox.  To think of it as '20th Century Fuchs' you are just asking for trouble!

The only tech credit was for cinematographer George Schneiderman, with not a mention of 'Technical Effects' or such, which was surprising seeing as the FX work was of the highest calibre.

Janet Gaynor.... as cute as a button!

Our square jawed hero and one of the two dames he has 'on the go'.

Johnstown in pre-flood times.  An excellent trick shot which with much study I feel was a superbly arranged in camera shot, likely a hanging miniature positioned near the camera entailing the upper floor and roof of Joe Gallager's store, across the roof line and adding in most of the buildings from about halfway up the backlot street and on up the hillside.

All of the various establishing shots from vantage points of the town were miniatures or combination shots, and all of a very high standard.  Note the train going over the viaduct.

The large dam up in the hills above Johnstown - again, a miniature set.

All miniature, complete with a model steam train passing across lower frame.

This chap, Mr Hamilton, was the slimy mill owner who cut costs on safety and had his own prosperity sole of mind, not unlike his namesake half a century later in the classic JAWS, played by, ironically, actor Murray Hamilton ("Nah...we ain't gonna shut the beaches because of some errant goldfish... Amity needs tourists, and tourists mean $$$")

Spoiler alert:  Peyton was one lying bastard.

All miniature setting with steam train.


That damned dam will cause much damage...

The miniature sets must have been constructed to quite a large scale as the water scaling is really impressive and not at all an easy thing to pull off, especially back in the day.

Now, the attention to detail in so many of the vfx cuts is quite incredible.  Outlined here is pretty young Janet Gaynor on horseback in full gallop riding the ridge of the dam as it starts to crumble.  Many subsequent shots involve complex optical burn-ins of people and models to great effect. 

The cloudburst was all it took to overfill the dam and push the mass of logs forward...

Everything, naturally, was shot in actual daylight, which is always a plus for such work.

The train vs the dam.... guess which comes off second best?

Pity the illiterate citizens of the town, for whom these intertitles will be meaningless!

Large miniature setting with steam train at lower right heading into doom...

As for what I regard as important effects sequences, I use as many frames as I can to demonstrate the efforts put in by the visual effects people.  No shortcuts or cheats on this blog site.  Note the substantial scale that really lends a dynamic, physical event to the proceedings.  Very, very impressive indeed.

Finding any research or credits for JOHNSTOWN has been a bit of a blank.  The best I could come up with was a Wikipedia page and a couple of old clippings which state the visual effects were supervised by E (Elmo) Roy Davidson, with miniatures by Jack Smith.  On Smith I know nothing, but Davidson I do.  Roy was a very experienced effects cinematographer (born 1896 - died 1962) who did some amazing work a few years later on the big budget Howard Hughes epic HELL'S ANGELS (1930), with some of the best miniature sequences of the time involving WWI airships, biplanes and ground offensives - all of them involving extensive model work and extremely well orchestrated and photographed (I must do a special on that flick as I have some great material).

The film relies quite heavily on early travelling matte optical photography, with scenes such as these where the cast are wiped out by a massive deluge, though all done optically.

Isolated frames show people being inundated with the water, and done so well as to have body parts still 'struggling' the torrent.  Jesus, this stuff was good!

As to camera speeds, I really don't know?  I assume the 35mm gear was all hand-cranked still?  Were there means to 'overcrank' for higher frame rates? Remember, this was nineteen-fucken-twenty six folks!  So impressive, and I've seen stuff made 40 years later that paled in comparison (they will be mentioned later...)


A word about the transfer.  I've seen a lot of silent era stuff, and even much of the 'remastered' and cleaned up footage of various titles never came even close to the incredible, pristine quality of the JOHNSTOWN BluRay edition.  The original nitrate 35mm elements were well protected, and the Eastman House did a jaw dropping job of cleaning up the near on 100 year old material.  Kudos to all involved.  I've seen far more 'recent' (40's & 50's) films on HD that didn't hold a candle to this one!

I guess the 'hard of hearing' in the town were out of luck when the alert was silently made(!)  Think about it,

My favourite vfx sequence sees a bunch of terrified townsfolk running for their lives as a massive deluge of foaming water and hundreds of logs come speeding down the mountain.  

It's so damned(!) impressive that I've set out a multitude of frames below to toggle through, and even better on a proper sized screen.  *Users of those idiotic palm sized devices... go and stick to your inane Tik-Tok garbage please!

Incredibly, it's a sizable miniature set - house, forest, logs and water.  The people have been added quite brilliantly through an early travelling matte process, more than likely the Dunning Composite technique, which was quite common in the twenties and on into the thirties, competing with the opposition's Williams TM process on the other side of town.

Frame 2

Frame 3

Frame 4

Frame 5

Frame 6   *(note how the people are gradually enveloped with debris - a remarkable detail and a sign of much care in the optical process)

Frame 7

Frame 8

Frame 9

Frame 10  *(note the superb 'break-away' prep work on all of the models.  Brilliant)



Part of an article by the Dunning company which appeared in American Cinematographer, 1929.


Effects director Roy Davidson went on to have a highly regarded career at Columbia Pictures, with shows like ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and LOST HORIZON among many more.  Roy then went over to Warner Bros and became director of the famed Stage 5 trick shot department for some years in the 1940's, with huge films like PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE and FIGHTER SQUADRON being two examples.

Another impressive and complex vfx sequence, again involving a large miniature setting, with a perfectly 'lined up' live action element of horse and buggy racing across the (model) bridge.  

The cuts are brief but the studious viewer will spot ghosting and a small degree of transparency visible in the live action element - an artifact often seen in early optical TM composite photography.

The father and son developers of this optical process, Dodge and 17 year old inventor Carroll Dunning always promoted their technique in the Hollywood trades as "Shoot it today, view it tommorrow", with results available in a very short timespan.

The Dunning method was used quite extensively and could be seen in films such as TARZAN THE APE MAN and it's immediate sequel; KING KONG (log sequence), THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII  and another water logged disaster epic DELUGE.


Another Dunning sequence with towns people in terror.  Scenes like this must have given audiences nightmares back in the day.

The physics of the collapse were so impressive, with a true 'weight' and bulk in the proceedings.

Once again. look at that break-away house... just outstanding.  When compared with much, much later and utterly dismal fx efforts such as AVALANCHE and the twenty million dollar flop METEOR (1979), this silent footage is in a class of it's own.

I would give my left kidney to be able to see behind the scenes photos of this work!  Screw CGI, this was real creativity, with the most basic of tools available.

I presume the reader is 'toggling through' these successive frames?  If not, why not??

Note the careful (rotoscope perhaps?) work where folks are in, under, in front of or tossed aside!  Magic!

Apparently, Davidson and Smith went to the actual locale and sized things up first before retreating to Hollywood to replicate the many sets and props in miniature at the studio.

Vast miniature set, with the raging torrent coming down onto the town.  

Water is impossible to 'miniaturise' well, so these must have been big-arsed model sets.


Arguably one of the most spectacular scenes is this where we see this massive tidal wave at the top of the street washing all away in it's path.  Oh, brother, this is a ripper of a set piece. Very similar flood/tidal wave opticals were attempted by Frank van der Veer for the extremely poor 1979 mega epic METEOR, with utterly dismal results that fooled no one, with water elements crudely doubled into the streets of Hong Kong.  


A puzzling sequence to pull off.  Partial 'town' full size, with top of nearest building added on - as with the majority of the buildings from around the midway mark - probably as a foreground miniature, suspended strategically in front of the camera.  The torrent of water has been added as an optical element, and so well done it was too!  Remember... 1926 was the year they made this.


Actually, some outstanding vfx pictures were produced around this time such as the truly epic war film THE BIG PARADE (1925), which I covered in detail a while back.  Tons of glass shots, opticals and miniatures - often all combined in single amazing shots, supervised by the great Maximillian Fabian. My coverage of THE BIG PARADE may be found here.

I do wonder whether they did extensive hand drawn roto mattes for some of this scene, to articulate the water around the people who were clearly shot 'live' on the exterior set?

Overhead view of town under water.  Note the train passing over the viaduct.

Totally convincing miniature setting with church, as the floodwaters close in...


Down comes the (packed) church.  Yeah... where is your God now?

Wedding in progress as the walls cave in.

Stunning and jarring at the same time.  Excellent application of the Dunning matting process again.

Basically, the Dunning process involved a bi-pack camera containing a special orange-dyed master positive of the background plate/action, with this positive running through the camera in contact with raw negative film.  The foreground live action was illuminated with orange light, and was filmed in front of a blank screen illuminated by blue light.  The blue light caused the pre-filmed background action on the master positive to be printed onto the negative, while the orange light reflected from the actors passed straight through the dyed master positive, and exposed the negative in the normal way.  The actors - blocking the blue light with their bodies etc - became 'living mattes', so were combined onto the negative with the background action around them.  This variation only worked with black and white films, though later on, further developments came about for colour matting techniques.  I don't know how they did the other major long shot TM's, unless the people element was optically reduced substantially?

He never even got to kiss the bride...

The logs are quite a bit out of scale here with the buildings.

As from the History Channel doco I saw ages ago, it was a mass disaster for the area.

Just when you'd think it couldn't possibly get any worse........

.....it bloody well does!!!

Survivors afloat on debris now are confronted with an inferno.

Miniatures and matte split screen work for the fire sequence.

The film ended on a bizarre comedic, slapstick note, which seemed quite out of place, and belonged in a Harold Lloyd or Laurel and Hardy short, involving a steam driven motorcar(!)  But what the hell, I was extremely impressed by this film, not to mention the eye-popping resolution of the transfer.  I'd rate it as a visual effects classic.

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THE THIEF OF BAGDAD:  The Korda classic of tales from The Arabian Nights.

The Academy Award winning THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940), helmed by no fewer than four directors; Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Zoltan Korda and Tim Whelan.  I read that Production Designer William Cameron Menzies may also have had a hand in directing.

Sabu, June Duprez and John Justin star in this 1940 version.  Out of interest, I covered a fairly obscure 1961 Italian remake a while back, which had some good matte art in it, and that can be found here while in an attempt to be complete, I've reviewed the original 1924 silent version as well, which follows on in this very post.  Note, the dreadful 1978 version I think I covered briefly ages ago, buried in some post...

A mammoth undertaking which began production at Denham Studios in the UK, but then shifted gears and relocated to the USA due to the war, which the States at that time wanted no part in.

An interesting on-set photo with, I believe, Michael Powell at left, with possibly a couple of the Korda's at right(?)  Note behind them we can see part of one of the incredible 'hanging miniatures', which were utilised extensively throughout the shoot, and to superb effect.

For the most, the huge vfx workload was carried out by British artists and technicians.  The matte unit shown here was supervised by Walter Percy Day (top left); assisted by his son, Thomas Day, who photographed the mattes (top right).  A young Peter Ellenshaw (lower left) assisted Pop Day with the painting; while another of Day's sons, Arthur, assisted with layouts (middle).  Wally Veevers (lower right), who would go on to have a long career with Poppa Day, was visual effects cameraman, specialising at that time with photographing the hanging foreground miniatures.

A most revealing snapshot from the past.  Matte artist Pop Day, actor Sabu and special effects supervisor Lawrence Butler take a snooze during a break in set ups.

A large roster of effects talent were involved, though only Butler and Day received any screen credit.  These pics are of the optical printer set up devised by Larry Butler for the many THIEF blue screen composites.  There was some discussion later as to who and where the bulk of the TM shots were assembled.

A nice candid snapshot taken 7 years later on the Pinewood set of BLACK NARCISSUS (1947), with Percy 'Poppa' Day in a rare smiling attitude, while director Michael Powell and actor Sabu look on, possibly in bewilderment.

Nice model work, possibly shot in the tank at Denham?  I don't know who built the many non-hanging miniatures.  Future effects guys like Ted Samuels and Chris Mueller were on the crew so may ahve participated?
+
Bagdad - Evocative matte art by Percy Day and staff.

Toggle these two frames to appreciate the nice cloud drift above the city, which was painted on a separate glass.

A revealing before and after, from the original 35mm nitrate takes.  *Courtesy of Susan Day

An interesting comparison with the remastered BluRay shots, where these very old and fragile Technicolor clips hold surprisingly well, given they date back around 80 years plus!  There was nothing as permanent as the old Technicolor IB process, where colour stability remained incredibly well and permanently, compared with more modern film processing which simply turned 'pink' after a decade or two.

In addition to the fifteen painted mattes that did get used in the film, Day had also rendered and composited another eleven shots such as this one that would ultimately fall to the cutting room floor, sadly.   *Courtesy of Susan Day

Another deleted matte, similar to the above shot but with the ship added.  Shame about these being tossed, as they were really good and could have been used.   *Courtesy Susan Day

Effectswise, THIEF really set a standard with the extensive use of foreground hanging miniatures, often in creative and always undetectable ways.  This frame is the start of a pan following John Justin out of the market and into the city, with a great deal of that city being a carefully positioned miniature.

Englishman Johnny Mills was in charge of all of the hanging miniatures, with Wally Veevers photographing the set ups.

Revealing before and after.

Another on set snapshot showing the sparse physical set which the suspended 2 Dimensional miniature facade will eventually 'fill' and expand successfully.

A Percy Day matte shot which extends the view considerably.  See below...

Before and after matte extension.

Hanging miniature perfectly merged.

More hanging miniature work by Johnny Mills and Wally Veevers.  The method allows for camera pans and tilts once a special nodal head is utilised with the taking camera.

Latent image Percy Day matte shot.  See below...

Before and after originals from over eight decades ago, which to my eye, look better than the various video and other incarnations which I've seen, some of which looked awful.   *Courtesy Susan Day.

We pause briefly in our vfx coverage to momentarily take in the ethereal beauty of our leading lady, June Duprez.

...and now, we return to our advertised vfx coverage.  A matte painted set extension to cover up the lighting rigs and studio roof.  See below...

Before and after Percy Day matte.   *Courtesy Susan Day

An unused alternate take.


City at night via hanging miniature.

Panning across a hanging miniature.

A great cost saver.

Before and after Percy Day matte, though I don't think it's in the film.   *Courtesy Susan Day.


The quite magical 'toy palace' sequence where the bad guy, Jaffar (Conrad Veidt) entertains with his tiny dancers.  A multi-part set up here, with a pair of matte paintings, performers and this rear projected into the 'magic box'.  See below...

Before and after for the first view of the 'toy palace'.   *Courtesy Susan Day

Before & after for a second view.



Palace interior with painted top up.  Peter Ellenshaw had been working for Day for about six years at this point, though he would break things off not long after THIEF in order to join the RAF in World War II.  Upon his return after the war Peter resumed the working relationship for a bit but found it somewhat strained, and went off on his own.  The rest, as they say, is history.


Matted in top up on set.

The Sultan goes for the ride of his life on an automaton magical horse.  Soundstage set and backing, extended with matte art, and completed with the blue screened in horse and rider.

Set up for the above shot, where we can clearly appreciate the need for additional minor matte work to conceal the soundstage walls and ceiling, which was a common requirement in matte work for decades.   *Courtesy Susan Day

Sultan and flying horse blue screen shot.  See below...

Before and after where once again Day has painted in the upper set, though not so you'd ever notice.


Hanging miniature Bagdad with horse added via travelling matte.  According to visual effects man Jim Danforth - whose favourite film, THIEF happens to be - there were around 55 blue backing TM shots made, which were used in some 99 cuts.



There has been some debate surrounding the TM shots.  Larry Butler took credit (and an Oscar for the work), though some articles and interviews report English vfx man Tom Howard as having carried the blue backing workload.  In an interview with author John Brosnan, Tom stated:  "I did a great deal of work on Thief of Bagdad.  I had a hundred travelling matte shots in that film, and I'm credited with, according to Kine Weekly, the trade magazine, as being the inventor of the TM process in colour."


We once again interupt our scheduled vfx coverage to be stunned by the smile of the THIEF Princess, leading lady June Duprez.


We resume our advertised vfx coverage with this rather clever, though unused Percy Day matte painted set extension, where none would be anticipated.   *Courtesy Susan Day.


Our divine and fetching Princess is abducted by the evil Jaffar.  Who knows what awaits her?


Meanwhile, little Sabu has his hands full when washedd up on a desert island and unleashing a genie.  Some nice optical transition work here.  According to Poppa Day's grand daughter, Susan, her father Tom - who was Poppa's matte camerman - played the little 'Sabu' figure in this sequence when they filmed it.

More examples of the 55 odd blue screen scenes.


The Genie, as played to the hilt by Rex Ingram, with a voice that sounded suspiciously like actor Clark Gable(!)   'Frankly Sabu, I don't give a damn' 

Not the best of prosthetic 'bald cap' appliances, which generally rarely ever passed a casual glance in many a film.  As an aside, the best and most convincing 'bald' appliance ever applied was by the great Dick Smith on Robert DeNiro for the mohawk in Scorcese's TAXI DRIVER.  Flawless, as one would expect from Mr Smith.... though I digress.


The Genie flies Sabu up to his mountain top temple.


Blue screen photography was by Wilkie Cooper, Stanley Sayer and Henry Imus.

The temple - a really nice shot.  I don't know whether it was a miniature or a painted matte?  It does have a 'painterly look' about it.

Interior a miniature with blue screened in people scuttling about.


Is this what they mean by a Tiny house?

Beautiful miniature set and stone idol.  The tiny Sabu is barely visible lower frame.


A tremendous model set.  Various tiny characters matted in scurrying around.

Part full sized set on the soundstage, augmented by matte painting.  *Courtesy Susan Day

Close up of the huge Vincent Korda designed set prior to matted add ons.

Test with Percy Day's artwork added to giant set.
Final as seen in the release prints with the red glowing all seeing eye.


Alternate view where Sabu inches his way around the idol in this masked take.

Unfinished test composite.

Before and after original 35mm nitrate frames with the original painting by Percy Day.   *Courtesy Susan Day




The final as seen in the BluRay editions.

Inside the idol's head before and after, though this shot never made the final cut.

I love the design of these massive spider web scenes.  I assume it to be a miniature (due to shallow depth of field focus) with Sabu doubled in.

Another terrific view in the spider's web.  Love that creative design.  Possibly matte painted, with Sabu, again, doubled in.

Sabu comes face to face with the biggest, bad-assed spider you ever saw.  The spider may have been constructed by Chris Mueller(?), though it was all shot by a separate unit by Edward Cohen.

The creature was a string marionette and looked better in rapid cuts than the longer ones.

Another unused matte shot from the spider sequence.


I've always liked this Day matte, even though it never made the final cut of THIEF OF BAGDAD.  *Courtesy Susan Day

A different, higher quality frame from the same deleted matte shot.   *Courtesy Harrison Ellenshaw

Now this is an interesting shot I barely noticed in past viewings.  Sabu stumbles across a sort of mirage in the desert, from which an entire Bedouin encampment slowly appears.  The background is kind of washed out with luminence fall-off around the edges as all Technicolor rear projection work tended to be around the time.  Presumably two paintings lap dissolved over each other?   I don't know whether the desert view was a Percy Day rendering perhaps or that of a studio scenic painter?

An ingenious use of matte work here.  The flying carpet and it's physical wire rig above the set needed to have Percy Day 'fix' the shot so as to conceal the wire rig.   *Courtesy Susan Day

The magic carpet starts it's journey... with no evidence of the mechanical rig above the set.

Matted in top half of the tent.  Clever.

Back in the city... the carpet in full flight.  I think this was a physical wire-rigged gag for these views.  I wonder how hard it was to maintain balance for the actors?

Now, this sequence was really impressive.  The crowd gaze in awe as the carpet circles the minarets.  Now, what was really cool was the fact that the flying carpet casts a shadow on the building as it flies by.  Very neat indeed, and entirely practical.  The city of course was a foreground hanging miniature, and the carpet with occupants was an additional model, presumably 'flown' on wires to deliberately cast that shadow.  Really nice subtle touch and so convincing.


These shots were made in front of a blue screen and optically printed.

This page from Jim Danforth's indispensible memoir, Dinosaurs, Dragons & Drama, illustrates the general idea of the blue backing process.   *Courtesy of Jim Danforth

Probably Poppa Day's best shot in the film.  All of these Technicolor mattes were done as latent image shots - the standard technique employed by Day up until BLACK NARCISSUS around 1947 whereby the dupe process was the standard from that point on.  Day detailed some of the difficulties in shooting 3-Strip colour mattes on productions prior to switching to the duping method.  "One of the chief complications using latent was the 'build up' of the photographic latent image, resulting in a difference between the magenta, green and blue images after the first exposure, when the film was held before development.  When shooting the painting a different exposure was required for each of the 3-strip negatives, in order to obtain the same results as in the part already exposed.  As an example, in a scene in the film COLONEL BLIMP, a painting required to reproduce as 'grey' had to be made vivid green."

Rare before and after frames from Percy Day's original 35mm nitrate clips.   *Courtesy Susan Day

An excellent frame enlargement from the original 35mm print, which, as with most of the originals I have illustrated, look far better than the myriad video and tv incarnations, where colours are often skewed and hues 'all to buggery'.  I think there is still a place for the DEFINITIVE edition to be finally released.  Any takers out there?
The evil, and somewhat questionable Jaffar, played by the wonderful Conrad Veidt, figures it's time to, ahem,'cop a free feel'of our comely princess.  The forces of 'good' take exception to this, with little Sabu firing an arrow right between Jaffar's eyes!!!  An astonishingly graphic bit of 'Arabian Nights' violence which, when viewed, had me dumbfounded as to exactly how the physical effect was pulled off.  Hell, not even latter day ultra-violent movie classics like SOLDIER BLUE even managed to pull of a gag like this (we actually see the arrow strike and penetrate his forehead... no 'dummy' as the actor 'reacts'.  I know I've digressed again, but old school prosthetic and make up fx are a passion of mine.)
Sabu - our thief of the title - makes his way into the wild blue (screen) yonder, and goes on to appear in scores of other films, some most notable like BLACK NARCISSUS, until his untimely early death at just 39.   :(

THIEF OF BAGDAD was but one of 14 films nominated in the Best Special Effects category, 1940.  I've seen 12 of those pictures myself and could probably narrow the field down a bit, with excellent vfx shows like BOOM TOWN and REBECCA, though for me Fox's THE BLUE BIRD would be a very close candidate for winner, as the huge effects load in that film really was in a class of it's own, as detailed in a recent blog post, which may be read here.  I guess THIEF OF BAGDAD was worthy, though I'd like to have seen other technicians named along with Larry Butler, who actually took the award.

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THE THIEF OF BAGDAD: The original 1924 Douglas Fairbanks silent version


In my continuing efforts to leave 'no cinematic stone unturned', I've included the original 1924 version here as well.

Arguably the biggest star in Hollywood - the Tom Cruise of his day - Fairbanks was an international box office sensation and was instrumental in the creation of an independent film studio, United Artists, which he founded in partnership with Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford in the twenties.

The massive outdoor set mid construction for THIEF OF BAGDAD.

As extensive as the physical set was, other methods such as glass shots and hanging miniatures would still be needed to add to the grandeur.

One of several publicity pieces that appeared in print revealing the magic behind the film.

Production Designer was the legendary William Cameron Menzies, who, among other notable projects, would also be associate art director with Vincent Korda on the 1940 Technicolor version.

Special Photographic Effects man Phil Whitman (left) and associate art director Anton Grot (right).  Whitman was in charge of all of the glass shots and composite photography.  Ned Mann supervised the hanging miniatures, with assistance from a young Theodore Lydecker.

The picture was directed by one of the most versitile directors in the business, Raoul Walsh, who directed a number of my own favourite pictures such as WHITE HEAT, OBJECTIVE BURMA, THE BIG TRAIL, THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON and THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT - all 'tough' and unapologetic films for their day.  He was pretty much the Samuel Fuller of his day.

I'm not sure whether this is a glass shot or a foreground hanging miniature?  Possibly the latter, as we see it several times with different 'time of day' lighting.

Same view, this one at night.  Characters act in the lower portion of the frame.

One of the large sets on the Fairbanks lot which has been extended even more through hanging miniatures by expert Ned Mann.  Mann was an extraordinary talent, and talent scout for that matter.  A number of later high profile trick shot exponents got their start through his training, such as Lawrence Butler, Cliff Richardson, Wally Veevers, Ross Jacklin, Eddie Cohen and others.

Miniature by Ned Mann.  Other films Mann supplied amazing trick shots for included the H.G Wells THINGS TO COME (1935); DELUGE (1933), and one very interesting and inventive show called THE BAT WHISPERS (1930), which had some eye-popping miniature set pieces in it.

Fairbanks on the prowl in what is either a foreground glass painted shot or a hanging miniature?

Enter the dragon.... Our athletic hero confronts a beast of volatile temperament.  According to a contemporary article, the effects team afixed fake horns to a crocodile and filmed it on a miniature set from a distance of some six feet.  Fairbanks was then photographed from around twenty feet away to diminish his scale.  The article states that"both were exposed on the same piece of film", though I would presume the Fairbanks footage to be shot against black and high contrast travelling mattes generated later to carefully time the action with the beast.

I'd suggest either the Dunning or the Frank Williams TM processes were utilised here.

I reckon that this sequence must have inspired Ray Harryhausen, as he did an almost exact duplicate of it in THE 3 WORLDS OF GULLIVER (1960), camera angles and all.


Now this sequence was quite beautiful.  The 'underwater' scene was done as an elaborate painted glass shot, supervised by Phil Whitman, and filmed 'dry'.  The apparently swaying kelp was moved with the aid of wires.

Another quite exquisite vfx sequence was the flying horse, upon which the Thief rides to the Citadel.  The Citadel was a miniature,  the horse and rider were filmed seperately against a black, velvet backing, while the clouds were painted on glass and moved slowly.

A beautifully designed and executed flight of fantasy.

Early travelling matte composite photography combining live action with glass painted clouds.

Miniature with foreground glass painted clouds.  Note the live action figures low in the frame.

The flying carpet takes to the skies...

Closer view of the magic carpet.  This shot was done in the studio (see below) against, what looks like, a painted scenic background.

A rare glimpse at the mechanical rig for the flying carpet.

Keeping one's balance must have been tricky.  Not at all one for heights myself.

Another wonderfully designed and photographed sequence with the flying horse.

Miniature setting with Fairbanks either 'added' in, or possibly filmed in situ akin to a Shufftan shot?
  The horse has been doubled in optically, and very smoothly too.
Do I smell a Steppenwolf song about to kick off.....
 

The show also features a couple of very nifty scenes involving what amounts to a sort of cloak of invisibility.  These shots were well done, involving double exposure dissolves, possibly made on the set, in camera.


A second 'invisibility' gag that worked a treat.  It was only with repeat rewinds that one can detect the very minor 'shift' among a couple of extras where it seems Douglas did his bit, everyone else 'froze in space' while he quickly exited the scene, and then the action carried on.  A nice lap dissolve 'takes him out' in the final scene.


The magic carpet stuns the locals.  Wire rigged from a huge construction crane with an 80 foot boom.  You still wouldn't get NZ Pete on the bloody thing!

Apparently, this not only impressed the film crew and cast, but blew the audiences away back in the day.  Done so well, with long, sweeping shots as the carpet glides and dives through Bagdad.

The wires are faintly visible here.

All miniature, including the carpet and riders.

Soundstage with wired rig and rolling painted backing.

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ATLANTIS-THE LOST CONTINENT:  Not at all among George Pal's better efforts.


This is one of those flicks we all loved as a kid, though looking at it in more recent times it's as hokey as they come.  The poster however was sensational - as most movie ad-art was in the sixties - and it was enough for me to buy a ticket.

Made in 1961, and packed to the brim with variable visual effects, though a great many of those were lifted shamelessly from other films, which was nothing new for George Pal.

Celebrated maker of many memorable fantasy films (this one arguably less so), George Pal, shown here shaking hands with MGM's very own in house wizard of countless productions, A.Arnold Gillespie.  *Courtesy Mr Gillespie's grandson, Robert Welch


Veteran MGM director of special effects, A.Arnold Gillespie - known to all and sundry as Buddy - is pictured here with visual effects cinematographer Clarence Slifer in what I suspect was Buddy's favourite haunt... the MGM tank on the backlot.  So much of Gillespie's remarkable career revolved around miniature ships (and aircraft) in this very tank.  Some of my all time 100% fx favourites were created by Buddy right here:  30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO;  GREEN DOLPHIN STREET;  MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and on and on....  *Courtesy Robert Welch

An evocative lobby card that completely sold the flick to kids like moi.  I think I saw it on a double bill at the dire Astor theatre, here in Auckland on Dominion road (for any potential Kiwi readers out there, if in fact any exist??) - an absolute 'fleapit', famous for the chocolate ice cream stain on the right side of the screen.  Infamous also for the image gradually fading darker, and darker, and darker.... which, as it turned out from a recent conversation with a projectionist was due to that shady outfit using old 'carbon stubs'in the 35mm projectors, which would only last a while till they burnt out, and 'newer' carbon stubs (not a full carbon rod... they cost money!) would be inserted, and the image on the screen would magically become 'bright' again... at least till that fucken stub was reduced to ash!   Ah.... the bad old days!.... long before Xenon's, though, I digress, again.

As mentioned, many of the vfx shots in ATLANTIS were stolen from other films.  This severely cropped shot was originally a splendid CinemaScope matte shot from a fifties MGM epic with Lana Turner, THE PRODIGAL, as we can see above. 

I reckon this too was lifted from another show, as no setting really resembles this in ATLANTIS.

Buddy Gillespie model shot.

A revealing look at the substantial outdoor tank set.  Note the 'wingless' airplanes mounted at the side to provide serious wind and storm effects for countless movies filmed here, such as BEN HUR, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, THE PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE and many more.  *Courtesy Robert Welch


I'm pretty sure this is a matte painted shot, as opposed to a tank with miniature & cyclorama backing.  Lee LeBlanc was in charge of the mattes.  Lee had a long career in the industry, starting off in the art department at Disney and then getting a job at 20th Century Fox in 1941.  Initially involved with miniatures he soon made his way into Fred Sersen's highly regarded matte department where he would stay for a number of years painting alongside artists such as Ray Kellogg, Emil Kosa, Jim Fetherolf and Matthew Yuricich until a prime opportunity arose over at MGM when Warren Newcombe retired in the late fifties.  LeBlanc, Yuricich and fx cameraman Clarence Slifer all went over to Metro, with Lee assuming head of that department. Lee would head that department until the early 1960's, from whence he retired to concentrate of wildlife artwork.  Many of LeBlanc's MGM mattes still survive with his family.

Under Lee, Matt Yuricich executed some of the mattes on ATLANTIS.

Oddly drawn out perspective here in this edge of your seat view down a canyon.

As I said, many mattes in ATLANTIS were pinched from other, often far more reputable productions, and this is another such example...

...and here's the original, glorious matte as painted in England by the legendary Peter Ellenshaw for the wonderful epic QUO VADIS (1951).  Note, the upper recycled shot has been slightly modified with a triangular pool thing matted into the foreground.
Before and after taken in Rome in 1950 for Mervyn LeRoy's QUO VADIS.  Don't believe any lying bastard who tries to sell you on the prospect that LeRoy stole the shot (and many others) from Pal.  As the 'comb-over orange man' says "That's fake news!"   ;)

An actual ATLANTIS matte shot, by all accounts.

Another shot shamelessly ripped off by Pal, and again, with a fresh slice of live action matted into the middle area on the steps...
A rare before and after from Ellenshaw's showreels, reveal the real deal...


....and again, we have the true provenance of the shot, another Peter Ellenshaw masterpiece from QUO VADIS - a film that not only never gave Peter his 'promised' screen credit (bastards!), but should have been an Oscar contender for the outstanding visual effects.  Some of Ellenshaw's best ever work.  Seriously!

Oh, and they just keep on coming, don't they.  Yet another pilfered matte!

Another rarely seen before and after that mysteriously appeared in ATLANTIS, horribly cropped and duped, but we all know different, don't we?

Yes folks, you guessed right... QUO VADIS from 1951, which was made in the UK and had Peter Ellenshaw rendering incredibly good matte paintings.  They should have given Peter a full screen credit on ATLANTIS, for Christs sake!

Large miniature on the MGM backlot, with what looks like painted cut-out city in the foreground.
The set up in the MGM tank, with the top of the huge painted cyclorama visible here.  *Courtesy Robert Welch


Huge landslide in ATLANTIS was another shot definitely borrowed from elsewhere....

...and here is the original miniature sequence as it was seen in the Stewart Granger adventure GREEN FIRE (1954).  In it's favour, Buddy Gillespie made this effects shot in the first place.

The volcanic eruption, with all of these cuts taken straight from George Pal's previous film, the wonderful THE TIME MACHINE (1960), which itself had shots in it from even earlier flicks!

Definitely taken from an older movie, though I can't place the title.

The mythical city of Atlantis is about to come crashing down in flames.  An admittedly well executed and shot sequence of events with much destruction and mayhem, all supervised by Buddy Gillespie and his very able team.

Dare I say it?  While these shots and most of the 'action' was shot for ATLANTIS, the many miniature structures were in fact old models that the great Donald Jahraus built for, yes, you guessed it, QUO VADIS.  They have evidentally been kept in safe storage for a decade and found a new use.

I well remember being utterly enthralled with this extended climatic sequence as a kid.


You just knew it was too good to be true.... more action and visual effects stolen (at gunpoint I ponder?) from QUO VADIS.  A remarkably well done flaming set piece, involving Donald Jahraus' miniature destruction and excellent optical compositing by Tom Howard.

More QV action that, as I mentioned, should have worked in favour of a Best Special Effects nomination, or even an outright win, for QUO VADIS.


Sick of hearing about QUO VADIS yet?   Well, this flaming vista of Rome going up in smoke was still another sequence from that famous epic.  Buddy Gillespie and Donald Jahraus supervised.  **Note:  The extended family of Mr Jahraus have been in contact with me and I'm dying to hear back from them, as Don was an absolute legend in the model business, and Gillespie regarded him as invaluable to the MGM fx operation.

The large MGM tank set prepped for destruction for ATLANTIS-THE LOST CONTINENT.

Mayhem in times of olde.


I found all of this very inspiring as a kid interested in 'trick shots'.


Everything was carefully pre-rigged with hidden spring activated cables and release devices timed to topple the pre-scored buildings on cue.


One of Gillespie's effects riggers in the ATLANTIS tank.  Joe Regan was what Gillespie termed a 'wave specialist', as many of Buddy's assistants had highly specific skills in certain areas such as: miniature trees-vegetation; scale pyrotechnics; model plane wire work; miniature process projection and so forth.  *Courtesy of Robert Welch. 

All hell breaks loose in the luxury getaway resort that was Atlantis.

This all looked sensational on the big theatre screen, even though that happened to be the ice-cream stained, dingy screen at the Astor theatre here in Auckland!  Those were the days!  Young folk today have no idea how we enjoyed double, triple or quadruple bills back in the day. 


I had an absolute fetish(!) for fx scenes with collapsing miniatures back in the day.  So many such scenes and flicks stay with me to this very day.

It worked so well shot in sunlight juxtaposed against the dark hued backing, which just added to the forboding sense of doom.

...and wouldn't you credit it.... the god-damned insurance policy expired just last week!  

Just when the Atlantians figure things couldn't possibly get any worse, the whole damned thing explodes like the fucken' Death Star.  

Splendid ad campaign, as was the norm in the day, and unsurprisingly promised somewhat more than it delivered.


***This vast and utterly exhaustive post, and all 186 previous blog posts known as 'Matte Shot', were originally created by Peter Cook for nzpetesmatteshot, with all content, layout and text originally published at http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/ 

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FINAL WORD FOR 2024:

The world's outrage and anger just grows and grows, with the generously financed and militarily enabled genocide enthusiastically perpetrated by Israel upon the Palestinian and Lebanese populations.  TheState of Palestine alone has suffered more than 46'000 brutal and deliberate deaths at the hands and jackboots of the Zionist ultra-extremist regime, and their powerful foreign benefactor, and that count doesn't include the many, many thousands of Palestinian people (small children routinely included) targeted, assassinated, arrested and tortured on a regular basis for the past 80 years.

The malignant tumour that is Benjamin Netanyahu, is widely acknowledged by the United Nations and most world leaders -  with the courage to speak up - as a war criminal, as are his key partners in crime among his fascist government.  The deliberate and targeted ethnic cleansing by way of the planned maiming and destruction of women, children, medics, religious,  journalists, humanitarian workers, the sick, the infirmed and innocent civillians of The State of Palestine as well as Lebanon.  
Netanyahu, an 'off the leash'Zionist swine and his smirking 'holier-than-thou'bastard regime must be stopped.

STOP  SUPPLYING  ARMS  TO  ISRAEL  NOW!


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