How the matte portray went from paint to pixels


Once I have a look at films from the ’20s to the ’90s, I’m blown away by the worlds that filmmakers have been capable of create with their visuals. From Mary Poppins to Ben-Hur to Star Wars, they honestly made issues that individuals had by no means seen earlier than — all with little to no assist from computer systems.

How did they pull off such placing and novel visuals? Nicely, usually, it was simply with a paintbrush and a few glass.

With a method known as matte portray, expert artists would paint a scene and black out a portion of the body for live-action images. The actors could be filmed on footage that blacked out the painted backdrop, after which filmmakers would mix the 2 exposures to make one seamless scene.

This, in fact, all modified as soon as computer systems entered the trade. By the late Nineties, matte work have been virtually fully digital. Just some a long time later, now they’re virtually all made in 3D.

With the event of AI, a brand new evolution is perhaps on the horizon. Tune in to Vox’s newest to learn the way AI would possibly quickly change the matte portray trade — once more.

You could find this video and all of Vox’s movies on YouTube.

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