The Cathedral Trees of Endor: Michael Pangrazio's Towering Mattes

To create the ancient forests of Endor, Michael Pangrazio painted trees so massive they dwarfed the redwoods — matte paintings that turned Northern California into an alien world.

The forests of Endor were filmed among the redwoods of Northern California, but the trees on screen are even larger than reality — and that's thanks to Michael Pangrazio. His matte paintings for Return of the Jedi extended the already massive redwood canopy upward and outward, creating a forest that feels prehistoric, cathedral-like, and faintly sacred.

Pangrazio studied the work of 19th-century landscape painters, particularly the luminists — Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, and Thomas Moran. Their technique of using atmospheric perspective and carefully graduated light to suggest vastness became the foundation of his Endor work. 'I wanted the forest to feel like a place where you could get lost for a thousand years,' Pangrazio said. 'The Ewoks live there because nothing bigger comes looking.'

The technical challenge was matching paint to film. The live-action footage had specific lighting conditions — dappled sunlight filtering through real trees — and Pangrazio's painted extensions had to blend seamlessly. He developed a technique of painting on glass with multiple translucent layers, building up the impression of depth the way the forest itself layers canopy upon canopy.

His most complex piece was the wide shot of the Ewok village at dusk, where dozens of small fires twinkle among the trees. The fires were created by scratching small holes in the painted surface and back-lighting them with fiber optics — a physical special effect within a painting within a film. The result is one of the most atmospheric images in the original trilogy.

Pangrazio went on to paint mattes for Indiana Jones and other ILM productions, but he has always described the Endor work as his favorite: 'Those trees were my Sistine Chapel ceiling. Except horizontal, and full of Ewoks.'