Page 26 - Star Wars Insider (Special Edition 2020)

MATTE PAINTINGS
he Death Star’s
chasms. Bespin’s
T Cloud City.
The Ewoks’
village in the
trees of Endor.
The Gungans’ home beneath the
waters of Naboo. The starship
graveyard of Jakku. The rain-
soaked crags of Eadu. What could
unite such disparate vistas?
From the beginning of the
Star Wars saga through to its most
recent big-screen installments,
matte paintings have helped
realize far-flung settings that
dazzle the eyes and fuel the
imagination. By the time George
Lucas formed Industrial Light
& Magic (ILM) to create the
visual effects for the original Star
Wars, multiple variations of the
technique—which combines a
live-action element with painted
02
04
26 / STAR WARS INSIDER
scenery in order to create the
illusion of a larger setting—had
been developed and refined. The
processes by which visual effects
artists bring matte paintings to
cinematic life would continue
to be finessed over the course of
the original trilogy and beyond,
taking the paintings into the
digital realm.
New Hope, Old Process
Paul Huston has been behind
the scenes for every live-action
Star Wars movie, from the 1977
original to Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story. He joined ILM in 1975,
fresh out of architecture school at
the University of Colorado, where
he also studied media and art.
Based on his illustration
portfolio, he was hired as a visual-
effects storyboard artist at ILM.
Before long, he was also building
01 (Opening models and assisting with the
page) The
digital matte Dykstraflex camera that filmed
painting for those models on ILM’s stage.
Padmé’s
funeral in “The work would go through
the facility like a pig through a
Revenge of
the Sith. python,” Huston recalls. “It would
be crazy-busy in the model shop
02 Paul Huston
works on one until the models were finished
his models and could be photographed on
for The
the stage, and then the stage
Phantom
Menace. would be really busy. I followed
the pig just to keep working!”
03 Huston
On the original Star
photographs
the landscape Wars, “there wasn’t a matte
models for department per se,” Huston
The Phantom
Menace. explains. “[Concept artist] Ralph
McQuarrie did some paintings,
04 Huston at
Harrison Ellenshaw did some,
work on
the TIE and [visual effects art director] Joe
fighter Johnston did a couple. Because
models for
of my eclectic interests, I helped
the original
trilogy. photograph some of those.”
Harrison Ellenshaw was
the head of Disney’s matte
03
department when he received
special dispensation to work on
Star Wars’ matte paintings for two
months. By the time he joined
the production in early 1977,
McQuarrie had already been
working on matte paintings of the
film’s planets as seen from space.
The matte painters’ myriad
responsibilities included
matching the perspective of the
live-action element, mimicking
the characteristics of whatever
lens had been used for the live-
action plate, and compressing or
embellishing the sense of depth
as required. For instance, with
the high-angle view of the curved