Movie Magic: The art of matte painting

If a movie matte painter has done their job well, you shouldn't even notice their work.

That’s probably the reason why legendary matte painters like Peter Ellenshaw, Albert Whitlock, Syd Dutton, and Robert Stromberg aren’t exactly household names – despite the special effects artists playing integral roles in some of the most famous movies of all time.

What is matte painting, you ask? Well, before the advent of computer-created visual effects, filmmakers often employed a combination of complex in-camera trickery and paintings -- yes, paintings -- to extend sets, create impossible to shoot angles, or realize fantastical landscapes that wouldn't otherwise be possible on a budget. A movie scene would be shot with area of the film left unexposed, and later a matte artist would literally paint in the rest of the shot by hand. This seamless special effects technique has been in use since pretty much the dawn of cinema, and can be spotted in thousands of films made before the mid-1990s -- if you know what to look for.

For example, take the scene below from “The Empire Strikes Back.” Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are locked in a climactic lightsaber battle on Cloud City, but there’s much more to the shot than meets the eye. While it probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that the duel was shot on a sound stage, it might shock you to discover that about 80 per cent of the scene is actually a painting.

Using multiple exposures, live-action and still image are aligned to create the illusion of a near-bottomless pit below Luke and Vader. It's not so different from modern visual effects techniques, except the for the fact that there were no green screens back then. Rather than filling out the background with computer-generated imagery, the background had to be painstakingly painted by hand with a brush and made to look like existing, already shot elements. A master matte painter could find a balance between realism and impressionism so that their work would remain undetected by moviegoers. The fact that they were rarely recognized for their hard work makes these painters the unsung heroes of film.

Below are a few more examples of famous movie scenes that were completed using matte paintings.

(Via Reddit)

Matte painting as a technique lives on today -- albeit in a digital form -- with many former physical matte painters making the difficult transition to computer visual effects over the past two decades. They became the pioneers of the so called "digital backlot," where CG imagery is used in much the same way that matte paintings once were: to create and extend movie sets, backgrounds, and establishing shots.

Occasionally, physical matte paintings will still be used by filmmakers, as they can sometimes be a cheaper alternative to the increasingly expensive computer VFX, but the painters -- like many other purveyors of the physical special effects that once dominated Hollywood -- are a dying breed.