VFX Research - Matte Painting

In a previous post looking at the film 'Mary Poppins' I briefly spoke about a technique that I was to research a little more because it was highly popular at the height of it's creation, it opened a whole new world for film makes to work with. Here is Google's definition.

A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is nonexistent in real life or would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit

Below a shot from Pirates of the Caribbean, I had no idea that films this recent were still using matte paintings. It just goes to show how effective and inexpensive they still are today/

Back when they were first used sometimes it was a little obvious they, I think to us now, at the present time see it more obviously because we're use to a higher quality visual. Though back in the day I am quite confident people wouldn't have known the difference or even if they did would have enjoyed it just as much.

The point of the technique is that it's should be almost invisible to the viewer, they shouldn't notice it. An illusion of non-existent environment around our area of focus.

As far as history goes, the first ever matter painting was in 1907 by Noman Dawn. He was painting on glass for a movie called Mission of California, I can't imagine the excitement of them using the finished pieced and seeing the incredible effect back then. I'm sure it was no where near perfect but did a brilliant job. The technique is clearly used so much that the majority of the populous are oblivious to it, which is precisely what it's meant to do. Well known movies that heavily used this effect goes from as early as 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Mary Poppins', Star Wars IV and one probably the most used scenes for demonstration Raider's of the Lost Ark in 1981 the famous painting of the warehouse as pictured below.

As technology progressed of course, traditional matte painting is not as popular as it was; more commonly digital compositing is used but that's not to say some wise experts can't still use them to save money on their budget. With a bit of research I was able to learn the Die Hard 2 was one of the first merge matte painting and digital composting together, specifically the final scene on the runway of the airport. Unless you really need to save money, there are plenty of other options can give you much more flexibility in your film, 3d environments are pretty much the way to go in 2014. I would love to see a new film re-use the old glass matte painting effect though, even if it's just for one scene.

I am quite sure I won't need this technique for my video, again it would be something I would only experiment with. I remember seeing a video that I have forgot the name of, where instead of paying to fix up the whole house, they just used a matte painting to cover and make it look perfectly fine (Since half way through the film it goes through a renovation). Again my video is too simple to use one, there aren't enough elements and they just don't require a matte painting to represent anything.