Matte painting
Encyclopedia
Background
Traditionally, matte paintings were made by artists using paints or pastels on large sheets of glass for integrating with the live-action footage. The first known matte painting shot was made in 1907 by Norman DawnNorman Dawn
Norman O. Dawn was an early film director. He made several improvements on the matte shot to apply it to motion picture, and was the first director to use rear projection in cinema....
(ASC)
American Society of Cinematographers
The American Society of Cinematographers is an educational, cultural, and professional organization. It is not a labor union, and it is not a guild. Membership is by invitation and is extended only to directors of photography and special effects experts with distinguished credits in the film...
, who improvised the crumbling California Missions by painting them on glass for the movie Missions of California. Notable traditional matte-painting shots include Dorothy’s approach to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
, Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu in Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
, and the seemingly bottomless tractor-beam set of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
. The first Star Wars documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
ever made (The Making of Star Wars
The Making of Star Wars
The Making of Star Wars is a television special produced by 20th Century Fox, which aired on the ABC Television Network on September 16, 1977. It was written by Richard Schickel and directed and produced by Robert Guenette.-Synopsis:...
, directed by Robert Guenette in 1977 for television) mentioned the technique used for the tractor beam scene as being a glass painting.
By the mid-1980s, advancements in computer graphics programs allowed matte painters to work in the digital realm. The first digital matte shot was created by painter Chris Evans in 1985 for Young Sherlock Holmes
Young Sherlock Holmes
Young Sherlock Holmes is a 1985 mystery/adventure film directed by Barry Levinson, produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Chris Columbus, based on characters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...
for a scene featuring a computer-graphics (CG) animation of a knight leaping from a stained-glass window. Evans first painted the window in acrylics, then scanned the painting into LucasFilm’s Pixar system for further digital manipulation. The computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
(another first) blended perfectly with the digital matte, something a traditional matte painting could not have accomplished.
New technologies
Throughout the 1990s, traditional matte paintings were still in use, but more often in conjunction with digital compositing. Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) was the first film to use digitally composited live-action footage with a traditional glass matte painting that had been photographed and scanned into a computer. It was for the last scene, which took place on an airport runway. By the end of the decade, the time of hand-painted matte paintings was drawing to a close, although as late as 1997 some traditional paintings were still being made, notably Chris Evans’ painting of the Carpathia rescue ship in James Cameron’s TitanicTitanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
.
Paint has now been superseded by digital images created using photo references, 3-D models, and drawing tablets. Matte painters combine their digitally matte painted textures within computer-generated 3-D environments, allowing for 3-D camera movement. Lighting algorithms used to simulate lighting sources expanded in scope in 1995, when radiosity rendering was applied to film for the first time in Martin Scorsese’s Casino
Casino (film)
Casino is a 1995 crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese...
. Matte World Digital
Matte World Digital
Matte World Digital is a visual effects company based in Novato, California that specializes in realistic matte painting effects and digital environments for feature films, television, electronic games and IMAX large-format productions.-History:...
collaborated with LightScape to simulate the indirect bounce-light effect of millions of neon lights of the 70s-era Las Vegas strip. Speedier computer processing times continue to alter and expand matte painting technologies and techniques.
Significant matte painting shots
- The army barracks in All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
- Birds flying over Bodega Bay, looking down at the town below, in Alfred Hitchcock's The BirdsThe Birds (film)The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
(1963) - The view of Skull Island in King KongKing Kong (1933 film)King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
(1933) - Mary PoppinsMary PoppinsMary Poppins is a series of children's books written by P. L. Travers and originally illustrated by Mary Shepard. The books centre on a magical English nanny, Mary Poppins. She is blown by the East wind to Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, London and into the Banks' household to care for their...
gliding over London with her umbrella (1964) - The iconic image of the Statue of LibertyStatue of LibertyThe Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
at the end of Planet of the ApesPlanet of the Apes (1968 film)Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison...
(1968) - The city railway line in The StingThe StingThe Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936 that involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss . The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who previously directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Created by...
(1973) - Views of a destroyed Los Angeles in EarthquakeEarthquake (film)Earthquake is a 1974 American disaster film that achieved huge box-office success, continuing the disaster film genre of the 1970s where recognizable all-star casts attempt to survive life or death situations...
(1974) for which Albert WhitlockAlbert WhitlockAlbert J. Whitlock was a British-born motion picture matte artist best known for his work with Disney and Universal Studios.-Life and career:...
won an Academy Award - The Death Star's laser tunnel in Star WarsStar WarsStar Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
(1977) - The Starfleet headquarters in Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)
- The final scene of the secret government warehouse in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost ArkRaiders of the Lost ArkRaiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
(1981) - The Batty and Deckard chase scene in Blade RunnerBlade RunnerBlade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
(1982) - The view of the OCP tower in RoboCopRoboCopRoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop"...
(1987) and other scenes.
Important traditional matte painters and technicians
- Norman DawnNorman DawnNorman O. Dawn was an early film director. He made several improvements on the matte shot to apply it to motion picture, and was the first director to use rear projection in cinema....
- Linwood G. DunnLinwood G. DunnLinwood G. Dunn, A.S.C. was a pioneer of visual special effects in motion pictures and inventor of related technology...
- Harrison EllenshawHarrison EllenshawHarrison Ellenshaw is an American matte painter, following his British-born father Peter Ellenshaw. He started his career at Walt Disney Studios...
- Peter EllenshawPeter EllenshawWilliam "Peter" Ellenshaw was an Anglo-American matte designer and special effects creator who worked on many Disney features....
- Albert WhitlockAlbert WhitlockAlbert J. Whitlock was a British-born motion picture matte artist best known for his work with Disney and Universal Studios.-Life and career:...
- Matthew YuricichMatthew YuricichMatthew J. Yuricich is an American special effects artist.Before becoming a special effects artist, Yuricich received a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where he also played football and joined Phi Kappa Tau fraternity...
See also
- BipackBipackIn cinematography, bipacking, or a bipack, is the process of loading two reels of film into a camera, so that they both pass through the camera gate together...
- Chroma keyChroma keyChroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images together. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production...
- CompositingCompositingCompositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today,...
- Digital matte artistDigital Matte ArtistA Digital Matte Artist, or Digital Matte Painter , is today's modern form of a traditional Matte Painter in the Entertainment Industry...
- Optical printing
Books
- Mark Cotta Vaz; Craig Barron: The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting, Chronicle Books, 2002; ISBN 081184515X
- Peter EllenshawPeter EllenshawWilliam "Peter" Ellenshaw was an Anglo-American matte designer and special effects creator who worked on many Disney features....
; Ellenshaw Under Glass - Going to the Matte for Disney - Richard Rickitt: Special Effects: The History and Technique. Billboard Books; 2nd edition, 2007; ISBN 0823084086 (Chapter 5 covers the history and techniques of movie matte painting.)