Mattes and Matte Paintings

Matte Painting.

A matte painting is a painting of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create an illusion of a location painted on a background that is doesn't exist in real life or would either be too expensive or impossible to build or visit.

History of Matte Painting.

Around a hundred years ago film makers weren’t willing to spend millions of dollars to shoot in far away exotic locations. On top of that, it would be impossible to find an on scene location to shoot a movie like Star Wars. In 1905 a man named Norman Dawn developed a technique that joined together a Photograph and a Painting to enhance the location that is being shot by the camera. Norman Dawn took his photos and paintings and placed them on a large sheet of glass. Black tape was then placed over the parts of the camera where the painting would go. After the camera was positioned properly the live action scene would take place. What resulted was a union between a simple painting and actual live scenery.





An Example of Matte Painting

This clip shows them arriving towards the Emerald City. The reason why they have had to use matte painting is because there isn't an area is real life which resembles anything like this and green screens weren't as easy to use back then. This clip is very convincing because of the poor quality of the people stood and the fact it just doesn't look very realistic.