BEHIND-THE-SCENES : [CARETAKER] MATTE PAINTINGS

The show's visual effects supervisors (Dan Curry, Ronald 'Ron' B. Moore and Bob Bailey, who oversee alternate episodes) look after Motion control photography done at Image G; they also supervise the creation of optical effects such as those done out-of-house by Amblin Imaging, Santa Monica. See also [Caretaker] Visual Effects. Matte photography forms one aspect of visual effects, because the use of matte paintings tends increasingly to involve the later placing of live action footage or small-scale CGI against the matte painting. Dan Curry creates many of the matte paintings, work which he also did for [TNG] thereby gaining valuable experience there too. Illusion Arts, in the San Fernando Valley, creates certain matte paintings. Dan Curry creates many of the matte paintings. He is as comfortable with a computer graphics program as with a brush. This page shows several [#1 and #2 Caretaker] matte paintings.

Below are scans of video prints showing Dan Curry's electronic sketches of possible matte painting elements for adding to the scene in which Chakotay, Neelix, Janeway, Paris and Tuvok beam to the Ocampa planet surface and shortly afterward encounter the Kazon-Ogla. Note the different possible backgrounds into which live footage of the Kazon-Ogla settlement and actors would be placed. Note also the differing positions of the Kazon spacecraft. A screenshot of the actual, finished shot is included for comparison. The far background is meant to depict the Ocampa civilisation, which has fallen into ruin ever since, over 500 Ocampa generations previously, the Caretaker housed the Ocampa in a subterranean city following 'the Warming'. For pictubehind-the-scenes res taken during location filming of the Kazon-Ogla scenes, see On Location With The Kazon.

Picture (1), 127Kb:

Picture (2), 121Kb:

Picture (3), 120Kb:

screenshot i.e. final finished shot:

Below are screenshots comprising the matte paintings drawn to portray parts of the Ocampa subterranean city. Moving people were inserted. The camera then panned across each matte painting, sometimes zooming in, so that the movement imparted the sense of being more 'alive' than a still shot. Note the tremendous detail in each painting. One feels that here is an immense, attractive and well-to-do city. Dan Curry, Syd Dutton and Rob Stromberg explain below how this was achieved.

Picture (A):

Picture (B):

Picture (C), same as (B) but further left:

Dan Curry: "Matte painting is the art of doing a two-dimensional painting and mixing it with live action, so that you have the illusion that people are some place they are not. It's used when it's either prohibitively expensive to go to a location or physically impossible to have that location. Sometimes matte paintings are the entire image. Sometimes they're mixed in with live actors who can be split in or shot again blue and green screen and put in front of it. Syd Dutton, who did a lot of our matte shots, is one of the greatest matte painters ever. Syd has worked in traditional media under the tutelage of Albert Whitlock, one of the all-time greats."

Syd Dutton: "Albert Whitlock worked on [TOS] and did some wonderful looking images. There was a continuity. Al worked on the original series [TOS], I worked on the second series [TNG]. Of course, that multiplied; recently we worked on the features. We started on [TNG] and it was something to do with an African planet where the people were dark-skinned and the buildings were reminiscent of African buildings. That was the first of many. We did the first locked off shots because that's what you did with a camera then, with matte painting. Then with computer motion control we were able to do moving shots on big paintings, and rear project into the painting to get live action. Then we started doing stuff in the computer. The paintings in the first episode of [Star Trek Voyager] were of an underground complex. It was designed by Rob Stromberg using script pages and research."

matte painting examples from [TOS], [TNG] and [DS9]:

matte painting examples from [Star Trek: The Motion Picture] and [Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country]:

Rob Stromberg: "From the script we generally get a little information and then we do about four or five quick sketches. The producer approves them or doesn't approve them. Then they pick elements they like in the shot. This now becomes the final shot, which is back here. This shot for [Star Trek Voyager] used a motion control camera - a computerised camera which allows us to create movement. It can create a realistic pan or a craning shot. It allows us to repeat that movement many times as we want. So we can add elements into the painting to make it more alive. For instance, water sparkles, waterfalls, birds - whatever we want to put into the shot to make it look real." left: a matte painting of the Ocampa underground city

below: adding elements into the matte painting: