Project 1 Research and understanding mattes and matte painting

A Matte Painting is a painted version of a landscape, set, or distant location that is used in film to create the illusion of an environment or background that wouldn't be able to do in real life or to expensive to create and film. Matte Paintings where originally done by artists using paints and pastels on a large sheet of glass which was then integrated into the footage. One of the first know matte paintings was done in 1907 by Norman Dawn for the film Missions of California.To the right is a traditional matte from The Wizard of Oz. Traditional matte paintings have been used in several blockbuster movies like Raiders of the lost ark and Star Wars. I was expecting that Star Wars would have used matte paintings for a lot of there death star and space scenes I would of thought sci fi and fantasy movies would be the type of films that use matte painting the most but traditional matte paintings have been used for iconic moments in films that i wouldn't of expected to have used matte paintings like Raiders of the Lost Ark is at the end of
the film where a guy is hiding the Ark of the Covenant in a ware house full of crates. (left) I've watched Indiana Jones several times and I would of never of guessed that it was a painting.
Around 1980 matte painters where starting to created matte paintings on the computer, the first ever one created in this format was in Young Sherlock Homes by Chris Evans in 1985, the matte was of a Knight jumping through a stained-glass window. Evans did this buy painting the window then scanning it into the computer to digitally manipulate it. Then around the 1990 matte paintings where getting merged with digital composting. Digital composing merges live action footage with a traditional matte that had been photographed then scanned. One of the first films to do this was Die Hard 2 the painted matte was of several airplanes on a airport runway in the snow. Around 1997 traditional matte paintings where not being used one of the last ones was by Chris Evans for Titanic the matte was of the Carpathia rescue ship. Matte painters now combine their digital mattes with painted textures within the computer generated 3D environments which allows the camera to do 3D movement.

Walking Dead Matte Painting
From the start of the video till 52 seconds is matte painting in the Walking Dead by Maxx Burman. In the first little clip Burman mattes loads of dead bodies on the road the characters are on and this is extremely convincing when I first watched this episode I thought they would of got actors to lie on the floor. In the next clip he makes a zombies face more gross and realistic, again this looks amazing and lifelike and again when watching the episode I thought it was done it make up. In the last clip Burman makes the character laying on the floor he look like hes just been eating alive adding exposed bone and blood on him and again makes it look so realistic and believable and again when watching the episode I thought it was done with make up. Burmans work is extraordinary and amazing and its unbelievable how realistic and real it looks it is defiantly a hundred percent convincing.