Throughout recent history, filmmakers have become obsessed with creating the impossible, using simple techniques to trick the eye, insert something into a scene, or even mask the transition between two different shots. One of the most incredible ways that filmmakers have been able to trick their audience into believing something is real is through a technique called matte painting.
Matte painting is a technique used to add in parts of an environment that weren’t originally in the shot. This technique was first used in the early 20th century, and was used to enhance the environment without actually touching anything in the landscape. Changing a landscape or building an entire set is very costly, but painting what you want is far quicker, cheaper, and easier.
Matte painting was originally done with glass screens in front of the camera, which would be covered with a tarp in the places that would be painted over. The paintings could also be directly applied to the glass, which would then match the lighting of the painting to the rest of the scene as well.
Matte painting requires a lot of skill in painting, as you not only have to create something new, but you also have to merge it with the real landscape as well. This can become complicated if there are many different parts that need painting in. For example, it could only be a tree in the far distance that needs painting in, or an entire roman city. This can be added in post-production instead, which means there’s less of a deadline for these matte paintings to be finished, although the amount of work that goes into these cannot be overlooked.
Matte painting is still used today, for VFX shots that don’t have any camera movement. Although these are mostly done digitally now, they’re still recognisable as the original matte painting technique.
There’s another technique of VFX that’s still used today. Because the main goal of VFX is to enhance what’s already there, and shoot everything that possibly can be without adding effects, prosthetic makeup and masks can also be used to create strange and unique characters and creatures. These can be in the forms of puppets, or can be animatronics or something worn by an actor.
These can be made from moulds to fit around an actor’s head, or as a silicon or fabric puppet. These can take time to make, depending on what they’re need for. For example, a full face of prosthetics that an actor can speak in are going to take longer to produce than say a furred glove to mimic an animal’s hand that could be peeking out of a sleeve.
A final technique used was stop-motion, which is a traditional form of animation that’s still used today. Although the most famous examples of it are movies such as ‘Coraline’ and ‘Kubo and The Two Stings’ by Laika Studios, stop-motion used to be used when a live-action scene could not be filmed. An example of this is the original ‘King Kong’ movie, in which a doll was stop-motion animated frame by frame to create the illusion of her being carried by a giant ape. For the scenes close-up of the woman, they used a large model of a hand and filmed her screaming and struggling in front of a green screen. These two shots were then integrated and cut together to create a more convincing film.
There are a few other tricks of note, such as splicing. A splicing machine was used to join to piece of film tape together. This was a quick way of joining two sequences together.
Filming and cameras have come a long way over time as well, which has effected how they can be manipulated and doctored. For example, some of the earliest filming cameras were operated with a lever, which had to be cranked constantly at an even pace. This is why some old, black and white footage can look clunky and uneven, since it had to rely on someone to turn it at an even pace. This in turn also effected what could be done with the footage, as there wasn't always sound, and producing film was a lot of work.
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