Matte Painting & Environments

Here is how this works in practice. Matte painting and environment work for productions filming in Ireland extends the photographic plates captured at the country's most distinctive locations into the full cinematic worlds the script demands. Game of Thrones (eight seasons in Northern Ireland. Extending Castle Ward as Winterfell, the Mourne Mountains as the lands beyond the Wall, Ballintoy Harbour as the Iron Islands. The Dark Hedges as the Kingsroad.

Here is the short of it. Murlough Bay and Larrybane Quarry as Westeros wilderness) drew on wide Framestore Dublin and Yellowmoon Belfast matte-painting work to expand the practical The North geography into the full continental scope of the show. Star Wars Force Awakens and Last Jedi extended Skellig Michael into Ahch-To and the wider Star Wars galaxy. Vikings (six seasons in County Wicklow and County Dublin) drew on wide matte work to extend Ireland's coastal and forest geography into Scandinavia. The British Isles of the 9th-11th centuries.

Here is the breakdown. Banshees of Inisherin, Belfast (Branagh 2021), The Wonder, Foundation Apple TV+, and Cartoon Saloon's hand-drawn cinema palette have all leveraged matte and environment work at the Dublin and Belfast bench.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. Matte painting and environment pipelines run Adobe Photoshop (the industry-standard 2D matte tool), Foundry Mari for 3D-projection-painted textures. Autodesk Maya and SideFX Houdini for the 3D-geometry side of 2.5D parallax setups. Maxon Cinema 4D for broadcast and commercial environment work. Blender for indie and commercial pipelines, and Foundry Nuke for the final composite integration into the live-action plate. Source plate-photography for matte extensions runs ARRIRAW, RED R3D, Sony Venice X-OCN, and Blackmagic RAW originals at 4K, 6K, and 8K resolution with multi-pass LIDAR scanning (Faro Focus.

Here is how the picture comes together. Leica BLK360) for set-extension geometry capture and gigapixel still photography for high-resolution background plates. ACES-linear color pipeline preserves dynamic range and color fidelity through to final composite, with Dolby Vision and HDR10 HDR mastering for the streaming-sites deliverables. Matte work integrates into the wider Framestore Dublin, Egg Post Dublin VFX. Mac Guff. The Mill Dublin, and Yellowmoon Belfast composite pipelines for delivery to Cineworld Ireland theatrical DCP. Coimisiún na Meán + RTÉ + BBC NI broadcast, and Netflix Ireland + HBO Max + Disney+ + Apple TV+ + Amazon Prime + Sky Ireland streaming sites.