MD6001 Week 22 - Matte Painting with Tim Holleyman

Left to right: Tim Holleyman and Mark Collington

On Monday 9th March 2015, Tim Holleyman visited my university to give us a session on matte painting, which is a form of image manipulation. Here is what I learnt in the session using paraphrased notes from my notetaker Zoe Bryant:

The earliest form of matte painting involved artists painting on glass but nowadays this method is no longer used.

Matte painters nowadays must have a sound understanding of colour and lighting, photography, compositing.

A matte painter will receive a still photographic image, known as a base plate, from the client, and instructions for what is required.

Pre-production allows a lot more freedom than post-production. There are a lot more restrictions in post-production - matte painters have to work with the lighting etc that already exists.

Examples of matte painting Tim showed were featured in the Robin Hood television series, Rise of an Empire, Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise and The Chronicles of Narnia film franchise. For Robin Hood, matte painting had to be used to remove a Land Rover from the scene to make it more appropriate for the programme's historical setting.

Matte painters must have a technical understanding of light and colour.

Directors prefer to have work done in 3D. This makes things easier if they change their mind about lighting, camera angle etc.

Photoshop is the main software used.

The plate is what is shot on set. Matte painters should respect it and use it as a marker in their work. They cannot add new lighting, for example. They have to go by what is in the plate.

Sometimes a director will shoot in conditions that are different from what they want the end result to be. E.g. Shooting on a sunny day, but wanting it to look overcast in the film. This makes things more complicated for a matte painter.

Resolutions are important to understand. Some films are shot at 5K resolution nowadays. Resolutions are becoming increasingly higher.

16:9 is a normal aspect ratio. In the recent version of Wuthering Heights, the aspect ratio changes during the film.

8 bit and 16 bit images - 8 bit is less flexible. When matte painters are working on a plate for film, it has to be 16 bit, as it has much more information stored in it.

Highlights on people or buildings indicate the direction the light is coming from.

The 'eyedropper' tool is used to pick up existing colours from the image. Matte painters can paint with colours that are already in the image, and extend mountains etc.

Mtte painters need to have an eye for detail. The director/supervisor will be scrutinising every inch of the image to see if it all looks right.

It is essential that Photoshop layers are labelled properly as well as being well-organised. In the professional world, everything needs to in order, in case a worker becomes ill and someone needs to take over working on their file.

Adjustment layers are used to ensure painters can undo any changes they make, in case theirr supervisor or the director is dissatisfied with the changes they have made. Painters must use non-destructive ways of working, i.e. they should never destroy any sections of an image, in case they get rid of a particular part the director liked.

Painters must take care if they are using images found on the internet since firstly they are usually low quality, and secondly they belong to other people. Often, a location team will go and take high quality images of a location for a matte painter to work with.

Tonal values - blacks and whites. Things that are further away are lighter and more blue (which is connected to the way light travels). Painters should ensure their levels match and make sense in terms of where they are in the image - how far away or close they are. They can copy and paste a section from one area of thei image, and contrast it with another area, to see if their levels are adequate.

Painters should match the resolution to the resolution of the plate.

Painters cannot change the lighting. It would be a complicated job to change the lighting in an image.

Instructions for image manipulation

L = shortcut for lasso tool. Use shift to add, and alt to take away from the selection.

You can drag a layer down to the icon next to the bin, and duplicate it.

Magic Wand tool - select, and then add to selection using shift.

Right click on layer (where layers at shown on right of screen) > duplicate layer

Shift and scale at same time to keep a selection in proportion.

Here is a simple method for colour adjustments, which I used to adjust the mountains in my image below:

1. Use the lasso tool to cut them out of the photo.

2. Copy and paste them into the main image

3. Erase the bottom of the mountains to make them look rugged and blend in the background.

4. Go to Image > Adjustments > colour balance to adjust the levels of red, green and blue.

I used the same method to adjust the colours of the lake and the houses in the background. originally made my lake blue but Tim advised me it looked over-saturated so I changed it to grey to make it blend in with the background more.

Tim advised me and the rest of the class to find the people who inspire us by watching films and animations for example.

Tim's inspirations include John Singer Sargent and Goya.

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