Preamble

Filmmaking is all about telling stories, and stories take place in locations. But what if the story is set in a location that is inaccessible or indeed doesn’t even exist? After all, our inability to send a film production to Mars, didn’t prevent us from depicting its environment in Total Recall (1990 and 2012) or The Martian (2015). Since the emergence of film as fledgeling technology in 1894 by French inventors the Lumière brothers, artists have been creating, extending, or enhancing environments using Matte Paintings. As a child of the 1970’s my interest was evoked by the amazing work on the epic disaster movies of that era such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974), The Hindenburg (1975) and fantasy/sci-fi movies such as Star Was IV (1977), Superman (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Blade Runner (1982). My interest has since expanded into other areas of visual effects where I was able to apply this commercially as a VFX artist and compositor and to share my knowledge of the subject through my role as a University Lecturer. However matte painted environments have always been a particular area of interest and passion.

Whilst it is helpful, and even necessary, is to understand how the tools and techniques for creating matte paintings have evolved, this study focusses on a very specific aspect of the art form which is how digital technologies can be used to make a flat two-dimensional matte painted environment appear three-dimensional when seen through the prism of a moving camera. Matte painters have always set out to create the illusion that the environment being depicted is 3-dimensional using established depth cues and have ultimately succeeded or failed entirely on the quality of the application within the painting. But with the introduction of camera movement, additional factors come to bear on the scene such as how different areas within the painting parallax and/or overlap other areas, or how parts of the image change perspective based on the position or angle of the camera over the course of its motion path.