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Mattes are used in photography and filmmaking to insert part of a foreground image onto a background image, which is often a matte painting, a background filmed by the second unit, or computer generated imagery. In modern use, the foreground element is often also computer generated. Lens and mounting of a large format camera Wikibooks has more about this subject: Photography Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. ...
Filmmaking is the process of making a film. ...
In film, the second unit is a separate team that shoots footage which is of lesser importance for the final motion picture, as opposed to the first unit, which shoots all scenes involving actors, or at least the stars of the film. ...
The seawater creature in The Abyss marked CGIs acceptance in the visual effects industry. ...
The original technique was to shoot an actor on a small set through a hole in a sheet of transparent glass or plastic plate bearing a painted background. The camera would be carefully positioned so that the background painted on the plate would appear to blend with the set as seen from the camera, giving the impression that the actor was in a large space without having to actually build that space. A similar effect, using models and a mirror, is called the Schüfftan process. In drama, the set (or setting) is the location of a storys action. ...
A camera is a device used to take pictures (usually photographs), either singly or in sequence, with or without sound recording, such as with video cameras. ...
The Schüfftan process, named after its inventor Eugen Schüfftan (1893–1977), is a movie special effect widely used in the first half of the 20th century. ...
A later development, called the travelling matte, allowed the shape and position of the matte to be altered from frame to frame, enabling greater freedom of composition and movement as the actors did not have to remain within a set portion of the image. If the matte were made exactly the same size and shape as the image of the actor, it was even possible to replace the entire background.
Bluescreen techniques, originally invented by Petro Vlahos as a film optical process, are commonly used to extract travelling mattes without using either rotoscoping or multiple motion control passes. Bluescreens are now commonly generated entirely digitally, as part of a digital compositing process. The bluescreen setup The final image Bluescreen is a term for the filmmaking technique of shooting foreground action against an evenly-lit monochomatic background for the purpose of removing the background from the scene and replacing it with a different image or scene. ...
Petro Vlahos, a Hollywood special effects pioneer who developed the color-difference blue screen process for the Motion Picture Research Council, founded Ultimatte Corporation, of Chatsworth, California, in 1976. ...
A rotoscope is a device that enables animators to trace live action movement, frame by frame, for use in animation. ...
Motion control is the automation field of controlling the position and/or velocity of actuators, usually electric motors. ...
Digital compositing is the process of assembling multiple images to make a final image, typically for print, motion pictures or screen display. ...
Mattes and Widescreen Filming
Another use of mattes in filmmaking is to create a widescreen effect. In this process, the top and bottom of a standard frame are matted out, or masked, with black bars, i.e. the film print has a thick frame line. Then the frame within the full frame is enlarged to fill a screen when projected in a theater. A 32inch CRT widescreen television A widescreen image is a film or television image with a wider aspect ratio than the standard Academy frame developed during the classical Hollywood cinema era. ...
Frame lines shown in red on a full-frame negative, and a 1:1,85 projection print, both on 35 mm film. ...
Thus, in "masked widescreen" an image with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is created by using a standard, 1.33:1 frame and matting out the top and bottom. If the image is matted during the filming process it is called a "hard matte." In contrast, if the full frame is filled during filming and the projectionist is relied upon to matte out the top and bottom in the theater, it is referred to as a "soft matte." The aspect ratio of a two-dimensional shape is the ratio of its longest dimension to its shortest dimension. ...
In video, a similar effect is often used to present widescreen films on a conventional, 1.33:1 television screen. In this case, the process is called letterboxing. Letterboxing is the practice of copying widescreen film to video formats while preserving the original aspect ratio. ...
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