Darin Hilton Art and Design

INDIANA JONES 4

Matte paintings and environments

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Shot from the film of the Akator temple set extension.

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Akator temple set extension sourced from onset imagery and photo reference.

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Final film frame, the set finished a little above the heads of the warriors at the top of the first flight of stairs.

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Cliff edge matte painting. it was difficult melding the weird cleared dirt of the set footage with a believable cliff edge. The water was lifted from footage shot at Iguazu.

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Matte painting of the river valley for some of the ant and fight sequence.

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Matte painted elements of trees, even shadows on the ground were massaged into this footage, shot on a backlot in Los Angeles.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

When I was offered the opportunity to join ILM and work on the latest chapter of the Indiana Jones saga, I jumped at the chance. Working at ILM had been a dream of mine since seeing Star Wars as a child and Raiders of the lost Ark still is one of my favorite films. I had a blast working on the project and was given a variety of shots to complete, from the temple sequence at Akator to a cliff environment for a fight sequence.

I even comped two simple shots on of the temple and another of a sunrise. There was no complex roto or color correction needed and they were finalled in their first review, I really loved the all hands on deck style at ILM.

Learning the proprietary ILM matte tools in Zeno was a revelation (Interactive projections in real time back then was almost unheard of) and working with some of the best artists and matte painters in the world was a truly amazing experience.