Matte Painting

Matte painting is one of the oldest techniques in the visual effects industry and one of the most widely applied techniques as well. The concept of matte painting is simple: “Use one or few paintings to replace a background.”

Matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming  Shooting location / Set

Depending on the skill levels of the artists and technicians, the effect is "seamless" and creates environments that would otherwise be impossible or expensive to a film. In the scenes the painting part is static and movements are integrated on it.

Although the concept is so simple, but the technique of matte painting is quite skillful and artistically demanding because the paintings used to replace background have to be realistic enough and support the film style so the audiences can think it’s a real background.

Traditionally, matte paintings were made by artists using paints or pastels on large sheets of glass for integrating with the live-action footage.[1] The first known matte painting shot was made in 1907 by Norman Dawn (ASC),

Throughout the 1990s, traditional matte paintings were still in use, but more often in conjunction with digital compositing.

In Die Hard 2 (1990) was the first film to use digitally composited live-action footage with a traditional glass matte painting that had been photographed and scanned into a computer. It was for the last scene, which took place on an airport runway