The short answer is that I was engaged to paint a matte painting of a winter version of the location that had been selected to double for the Montana cattle ranch.
Here's the longer answer.
It was summer, and the production needed an FX shot to depict the change of seasons. The production wanted to be able to do a cross dissolve between the real summer vista and the winter version I would create.
The location was on a cattle ranch in the mountains above Taos, New Mexico, a wide valley flanked with fir covered slopes and Taos mountain in the distance. I sited the shot on a rise overlooking the valley that framed the slopes nicely with the mountain in the distance. A log cabin was under construction when I arrived.
To control exposure on the painting we built a hut made of 2X4s over which was stretched a skin of visquine to block out the sunlight. We would bring in two 10,000 watt lamps to provide lighting for the painting when we shot it. At one end we left an opening behind the glass on which I would create the matte painting that revealed the view. Opposite there was a flap which could be sealed. Otherwise, where were no other openings.
We erected a wooden easel to hold the glass at the correct distance from the lens, one that would allow me to carry focus from the glass to infinity at an F stop that would work for action, and I staked the tripod in the exact position where I'd sited the shot.
Painting a live on location glass shot is the oldest technique in matte painting, one that has largely gone out of use, and I was one of the very few people of my generation who could do it successfully.
Everything has go go right. Weather has to cooperate, I had to be exact in painting every detail of the landscape or things would appear to "jump around" during the cross dissolve.
Nothing went right.
A huge system of storms collided over northern New Mexico, rain, lightning, winds, fogs and mists, snow, the light changing every nanosecond. In addition, Simon Wincer fell in love with the lens I had chosen for the matte shot the shot without which I couldn't draw the line up on the glass. Production assistants would repeatedly show up in the middle of my work to demand that lens for a shot he was doing, or a thick fog would roll in, hiding the valley. I couldn't make any progress.
After a few days of this nonsense I informed the production company that I would not be able to do the shot under these conditions and regretfully that I would have to withdraw. That apparently got their attention and the lens stayed with me from then on.
I was days behind but determined to get the shot done despite hell and/or high water. I was working day and night to catch up, and one night, during a particularly violent wind storm, a blast of air came through the flap, picked me up off the ground and then slammed me face down into it. I could see my painting lights toppling toward the glass and managed to tackle it before there was a collision. In the darkness I could hear my equipment flying around,
Then it suddenly went still. The only sound was from the generator powering the painting lights. My face was wet and I thought that maybe I was bleeding, but when I tasted the wetness I realized that it was water.
I looked up at where the roof had been and could see stars. The roof had been completely blown off.
It was snowing though the top of what remained of the shelter.
My equipment was blown everywhere. Miraculously the painting was unscathed. I threw a plastic sheet over the glass to protect the painting, released the camera from the tripod, and hiked out of there back to the road, in total darkness.
9,000 foot altitude, carrying a motion picture camera thru Texas gumbo where you sank almost to your knees with every step, 3/4 of a mile to my car. I would have made a nice dinner for any of the predators in those woods. Sound like the glamour of Hollywood?
The next morning a crew rebuilt the hut and I went back to work.
The fates weren't done screwing with me.
The painting was completed, though final adjustments would be needed to adjust balances right before taking the shot, under the interior lighting. It had been painted to match the scheduled shot time of 5 PM.
The thing with a live on location glass shot is that it has be painted to a very specific lighting, color temperatures and contrasts change, and you have about plus or minus 20 minutes when the painting will match into the lighting of the time of day for which it has been painted. More than that and "things" shift.
I got back to the lodge where we were staying, saw my Production Designer, and told him we would be ready to go at 5 PM the following day as scheduled.
That's when he said, "Didn't anyone tell you?"
"Tell me what?" I replied with a sinking feeling.
"They rescheduled the shot", he said, looking very pissed that I had not been informed.
"Rescheduled it to when?" I blandly replied.
"8 AM, first shot of the day." he said.
"Which means that nothing I painted will work, the color temperatures will be different, the angle of light will be nearly the opposite of the time of day for which it was painted."
He was fit to be tied.
I said, "Look, get me the gas I need to keep the generator going and I'll go back out there and revise it. I know what 8 o'clock AM looks like in that valley, but I'll need the night to repaint it."
I went back out and set to work. I was given a sleeping bag to use for insulation if I started to get cold. Somewhere, in the dead of night, a gas station was broken into so that gas could be obtained that was carried out to my little hut. A note of apology was left along with a wad of cash.
I worked through the night. It was so cold that the vapor from my breath froze on the visquine surface over my head. The acrylic paint didn't dry quickly in the cold and damp, so I could work it like oil paint. Then I would lean in the 9 lights to dry it. The crew started to foll in at 5:30 and I was still repainting. At 7:30 the lights were set up in the tent while I was looking through the lens and going back and forth between the camera and the painting, to retouch values and adjust temperatures, I adjusted lighting and the whole dropped into place. I called action and we got the shot.
After that we took down the painting and got the shot of the "summer" version of the scene. I walked back to the Production Designer's car, opened the rear door, and passed out on the back seat. Someone kindly lifted my legs into the car and closed the door.
That's my contribution to Lonesome Dove.
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