Matthew Yuricich was the Chief Matte Artist on Ghostbusters.
Career[]
Matthew Yuricich worked as a visual effects artist from 1950 to 1991. He worked on classic films such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Blade Runner," "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "Die Hard."
Ghostbusters[]
Notably, Matthew Yuricich rendered the expanded neighborhood around the Firehouse which included the Stay Puft Marshmallows billboard. [1] He also prepared matte paintings for 550 Central Park West. The initial concept of the pullback scene when the Ghostbusters walked through Dana Barrett's destroyed apartment called for the final image to be a fisheye lens view of New York. Richard Edlund took a still photo of the area of New York from a helicopter which was used for discussing the shot. Matthew Yuricich did a sketch of the fisheye perspective for the final composition. Ivan Reitman approved it but which Yuricich wasn't sold on it and soon everyone agreed on a less exaggerated perspective.[2] There was a disagreement about what side of the building Dana's apartment was on. Yuricich was already painting and had to switch the light and dark sides of the building.[3] Yuricich and other members of the Boss crew were photographed in the company parking lot at an angle corresponding to the perspective on a balcony on a building in the scene.[4] Yuricich and Neil Krepela had issues with matching the lighting on the Temple of Gozer set and the clouds shot in the cloud tank. He painted over much of the set to blend the elements together.[5]
References[]
- ↑ Shay, Don (November 1985). Making Ghostbusters, p. 142 annotation. New York Zoetrope, New York NY USA, ISBN 0918432685. Paragraph reads: "An expansive lower Manhattan street setting, rendered in matte painting form by Matthew Yuricich. When photographed, the firehall would be inserted into the undetailed center section as a live-action element. On a neighboring building is a billboard advertisement for Stay-Puft marshmallows."
- ↑ American Cinematographer June 1984 Line reads: "The script called for a long pull-back to the New York skyline after the explosion in Dana's apartment. A set was constructed for the apartment so that the actors could be photographed through the hole in the side of the building and then a matte painting was to be used to permit the pull-back. The initial concept called for the final image to be a fisheye lens view of New York. Edlund took a still photo of the area of New York from a helicopter which was used for discussing the shot and Yuricich did a sketch of the fisheye perspective for the final composition which Reitman approved, but which Yuricich himself was not sold on. He did another sketch in which he matched the perspective of the still photo and everyone agreed that the less exaggerated perspective was more appropriate."
- ↑ American Cinematographer June 1984 Line reads: "Unfortunately, there was some disagreement about which side of the building Dana's apartment was located on, which resulted in the problem with the direction of the light in the scene. Yuricich was initially told to match the direction of the light in the still photo and the set on which the live-action was staged was lit to match the direction of the light in the photo as well. Subsequently, it was concluded that the apartment had to be on the other side of the building with the result that the light needed to be coming from the opposite direction. Yuricich had begun work on the painting using the enlargement and now found himself having to reverse the direction of the light as he painted over the photo. What had been the dark side of a building now had to be the light side and vice versa. He also had to paint all the areas of the image that had originally been designed to be the exterior part of the set."
- ↑ American Cinematographer June 1984 Line reads: "In order to justify the lack of traffic on the streets in front of the building, Yuricich added police barricades, but he felt it was necessary to add some kind of movement in other areas of the frame. Several members of the crew including Yuricich himself were photographed in the parking lot at an angle corresponding to the perspective on a balcony on a building in the scene."
- ↑ American Cinematographer June 1984 Line reads: "Another way in which the pressures of the schedule plagued the matte department was that there was not time to tie down the color balance of some scenes before commitments had to be made either in lighting the set or in doing the paintings. Yuricich and Krepela had something of an uphill battle with the scene in which a vortex of boiling red and purple clouds is seen above the temple. There were problems matching the lighting on the set with the painting and the clouds shot in the cloud tank. Again Yuricich found himself painting over much of the set in order to blend the elements together."
Gallery[]
