The Lone Ranger was one of the most challenging and satisfying projects I've ever worked on. The premise was simple - the climax of the movie features a high speed train chase through a densely wooden mountainous landscape. The only problem was there was no way to shoot it practically, so we had to figure out how to do it entirely digitally! Creating tree dense environments on this scale had never been done before at ILM so it was a daunting, yet exciting task!

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As the lead digital matte artist it was my job to do visual development of the environments. I first had to create trees that could be placed in a live action plate and blend in perfectly, no matter how close the camera got. I then had to devise an efficient way to have hundreds of trees in a given shot, for dozens of shots over the third act. 

 

Once  those challenges were met I worked on several sequences and one off hero environment shots employing our 3D tree set up, plus traditional digital matte painting techniques to create convincing landscapes that were entirely invisible as a visual effect.