P1. Research and understanding mattes and matte painting

Matte Painting is where an artist paints a represented image of a location or set which then can be combined with real footage to create scenes which are impossible to create or cost to much to make.

The first noted matte painting was in 1907 and have been used in many famous films such as The Wizard Of Oz and Star Wars IV. The first digital matte painting was created in 1985 and used in the movie Young Sherlock Holmes. The matte paintings have been replaced by 3D models and CGI. The last matte painting was used in Titanic in 1997.

One of the most famous matte painting used in film would have to be from the movie Raiders Of The Lost Ark 1981. The matte painting was from the scene where we are have all this cargo and one guy pushing this one piece of cargo down the centre aisle. This was done by combining a matte painting with real live footage to create this effect that this one cargo was be pushed around many others, even though there was only one and the rest where paintings. To be honest when I watched this movie, I didn't even notice that it was a painting. So in my opinion this worked very well.