blackthorngang

Hi Chris - what a pleasure to address one of the artists behind the films we all know so well. I spent a couple decades in the visual effects business myself, at Rhythm and Hues Studios, so I've seen the grisly side of production under crazy deadlines and high-pressure client relationships. One of the things we struggled with most was requests for changes once a shot was well into production. Just wondering if you could share some of the big-ticket curveballs you had to deal with back in the day? How often was a huge shot scrapped or rethought when it was close to done? Conversely, how about cases where a shot was supposed to be impossible but you pulled it off easily?

I figured you were probably working with some damn fine directors most of the time :)

Thanks for the reply - puts a big smile on my face.

Color management remains a difficult issue in film production pipelines, even in an all-digital world. Thinking back to film issues, the colors you paint on a matte painting can be affected by the chemistry of the negative stock being used to shoot the painting. I've seen some examples of paintings from Blade Runner, for instance, where the colors of the original painting are pretty garish - but when passed through the chemical/optical production pipeline, suddenly look fantastic.

That said, I'm sure each film had its own issues, and the techniques different companies used to get to final must have differed somewhat. I don't know a ton about the nitty gritty details of ILM's 1980's pipeline, but did you have to re-learn your own sense of color to compensate for changes that would emerge downstream from your painting?