1Since its inception by American Norman O. Dawn in 1907, matte painting has spread out in cinema, in all countries, in every genre and in every era. The technologies used to expand real sets through paintings have evolved, from a simple painted mirror inserted between the camera and the scenery, to the contemporary digital matte paintings consisting of millions of pixels. However, from 1907 to the present time, the same principle underlies these technologies: the creation of illusion. In any case, the spectator must perceive a huge city, gigantic castle, monumental church (fig. 1) or the ceiling of a ballroom (fig. 2). However, he/she must not see the painting. Like any special effect, the technique must be imperceptible in order to ensure the occurrence of the effect. Consequently, the matte painting experts resort to a certain number of tricks to erase the very idea of painting from the spectator’s mind. If it seems obvious to spectators that Blade Runner’s futuristic city (Ridley Scott, 1982) was not entirely built for the wide shots, they cannot realize, without additional information on the film, that the top of the monumental stairs in Nana (Jean Renoir, 1925, fig. 3) is a painting, just like Scarlett’s house in Gone with the wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).

6In order to achieve this “perfect” illusion, matte painters focus their work on the spectator’s perceptive limits. In this respect, they benefit from the limits of perception that are inherent to camerawork or are created through editing. Matte paintings are therefore precise compositions based on a thoroughly thought-out art of detail. Matte painters insert illusionistic—hence authenticating—details into specific parts of a shot, on which they draw the spectator’s attention, so as to prevent “disillusionistic” details from interfering with the creation of illusion. Directing the spectator’s look is therefore a prerequisite for this type of illusion, much in the same way as the diversion of the spectator’s attention is essential in the field of conjuring.

Directing the spectator’s look

7To direct the spectator’s look and draw it away from less polished parts of an image, matte painters take the capacities of human vision into account, just like any filmmaker. As explained by professional matte painter Harrison Ellenshaw, the human eye sees distant objects as blurry and cannot perceive every detail. The painter’s work consists in facilitating the eye’s work by providing it with an image that corresponds to what it would have seen on site, from the spot of the camera:

• 10  Richard Rickitt, Special effects, the history and technique, New York, Billboard Books, 2000, p. 1 (...)

Creating matte paintings is actually a case of painting something that mimics the way our eyes perceive a scene. If we look into the distance, we don’t actually see very much detail at all—a window on a far-off building looks just like a small grey smudge, a tree looks like a dull green blob, perhaps a bit of brown in it. What makes the distant objects look like windows or trees is the fact that our brains see them in context and tell us what they are—our brains fill in the fine details that our eyes don’t actually perceive.10

• 13  Christian Matras, « Une conception de l’image », Le Technicien du film, no. 212, February 1974, p. (...)

The camera lens has been compared to the human eye. This is basically wrong as the eye cannot perceive an image like a wide-angle shot, but proceeds to recreate it bit by bit. […] One must facilitate the eye’s work of exploration by showing it the essential parts of the image in the always limited and very short screening time. It is essential that the spectator can draw from the image everything that it contains within a few seconds. Understandably, some flourishes or peripheral details might be sacrificed. Moreover, they must not disturb—slow down and complicate. The goal to achieve is a kind of unity, of simplification through elements that are readily and precisely understood. Let us note that the theory of a painting’s strong points—whose laws are quoted in every treaty on picture composition—naturally results from this idea of the vision mechanism.13

Making painted leaves move (or creating the illusion that the leaves move): the illusionistic detail

13The task of the painter and director of photography will then consist in choosing the illusionistic—hence authenticating—details (the “right details”) such as moving leaves, drifting clouds, and in concealing the “fake” and “disillusionistic” details, inevitably present as the limited time of painting, along with its “fixed” object dimension, do not allow for an “identical” copy of a real space. As Richard Schickel explains in a New York Times article on the development of visual effects in the early 1980s:

• 19  Richard Schickel, “Far beyond reality,” New York Times, 18 May 1980, p. 56.

The point is to do such things as precisely balancing the light on real and trick elements in a composite, so as the viewers’ eyes do not look for fakery; to find some little piece of business that will so enchant them that they don’t want to look for imperfections. […] Not everyone will notice this work, any more than everyone will notice an actor’s subtle gesture in a shot. But we do sense the presence of this workmanship, and almost subliminally respond to it. And besides, as Dykstra says, detailing can “cover a whole passel of gross errors.” Whitlock claims you can probably ever get away violating a matte line if the movement in the shot is interesting enough—and directs your eye away from the trouble spot.19

16In the moving details of matte paintings, one can find every atmospheric effect—rain, wind, clouds, snow. Their triviality makes them absolutely imperceptible to the spectator. It is precisely this triviality that must be emphasized: the wind and rain are exposed “as if” the camera just happened to end up there. Besides, these elements require a massive amount of work, which seems disproportionate in view of the spectator’s inability to perceive them. At first, the spectator cannot imagine that a cloud or its motion may have been faked.

• 22  Syd Mead about Blade Runner, L’Écran fantastique, no. 26, September 1982, p. 43.

When you look at a matte painting and notice flashing lights, a car flying by or a piece of paper flying about over the pavement, there is a chance that this slight movement cost millions of dollars, but thanks to this artifice, everything becomes much more believable. The accessory movements and details add to the realism, which is exactly the intended purpose.22

17Nondescript at first sight, these elements have a primary purpose, which consists in erasing the technical dimension and its specificities (fixity, particular texture, lack of relief, smallness). Just like water or smoke, clouds introduce a scale. Each element, known to the spectator, provides the image with a size reference, as well as relief, depth and motion.

18On the contrary, the absence of these “details” would be noticeable. This idea was already raised in 1931 by Don Jahraus, in relation to miniatures and the need for these to integrate accurate details:

• 23  Don Jahraus, “Making miniatures,” American Cinematographer, November 1931, p. 10.

Although the minute detail is rarely so apparent in the completed shot as to be consciously noticeable to the audience, it is none the less important, for if it is missing the audience speedily becomes conscious of it, and resentful of the fact that it is looking at a miniature.23

19Apart from the moving atmospheric effects, the use of luminous events as hooks is frequent, like the blinking neon lights in Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1940, fig. 4) or the continuous light of the castle in the introduction to the same movie.

20Besides diverting and drawing the spectator’s attention, this kind of elements can facilitate the understanding of the shot. In this way, in Forbidden Planet (Fred McWilcox, 1956, fig. 5), Matthew Yuricich encountered a problem in a shot. At first, the audience could not see the characters, since the actors were lost in the middle of a gigantic and complex space:

• 24  Interview with Peter Cook, available on his blog: [online] http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.fr [ac (...)

So I designed, into the doorway that they came through, a light above them. It was concentric circles, instead of just a beam, which were pulsating on and off as they walked through the door. Now when you first saw the image on the screen your eye would be attracted to this motion. You followed these people because you now knew they were there... otherwise you might never have noticed them unless you hang a sign which says “look, here come some people.”24

21This light signal has a dual effect. It draws attention on the characters and allows to see them moving forward. It also helps to understand the development of the story. Therefore, the issue pertains to narration. But at the same time, this attraction helps draw the spectator’s attention away from the generator and its cartoonish aspect, despite the huge place it occupies on the right side of the image. In this case, the issue pertains to aesthetics. It is quite difficult to find the balance between “perceiving” a place, not seeing it (the painting), or perceiving (an authenticating detail) without seeing (an illusionistic detail). The key points that help draw the spectator’s attention are more closely related to the illusionistic diversion of attention than the theory of strong points in painting. In fact, contrary to painting, the matte painting shot includes movements, if only for the movements of the actors integrated into the painting (who, of course, partake in this work). These movements constantly shift the “strong points” of the painting, here formed by the authenticating details.

An example of detail: the birds, or the ripple effect of the commonplace

23This is the case for the painting of the wide-angle shot in Earthquake (Mark Robson, 1974, fig. 6), which is systematically used as an illustration in the various articles dedicated to Whitlock’s work. In this painting, we can see a ruined city, where several fires are raging, judging from the visible flames and smoke. Some parts of the image are very detailed, while others are imprecise, blurred—or to quote the painter’s assertions found in numerous interviews, they fall within the impressionist style. Placed on either side of the image (thus confirming Evans’s notion of the pyramid of vision), the two tallest buildings hold our attention. In the background, the landscape is completely swamped with paint. Just to the right of the central building, the edifices are fuzzy, although they are close to our focus point.

24When we compare this painting with the screened result, it is easier to understand the importance of “gags” for Whitlock. The fires create a visual process for the spectator to follow, which goes from one smoke trail to another, considering that motion incites the spectator to browse from left to right—which he/she naturally does already—, therefore going from the most detailed part to the most blurred.

25These fires establish an immediately visible scale for the spectator, while providing the image with depth, as the nearby fires are bigger than the distant ones, the latter coinciding with elements of the painting. In this sense, these elements convey an impression of relief that offsets the “flat” aspect of the painting. Apart from bringing a touch of color that enhances the other orange fires (to the left, upper middle and right), the fire in the foreground affects the spectator’s vision through its proximity and threatening aspect.

26As the spectator’s mind cannot imagine a fire coming out of a painting, the illusion here allows the fixity of the painting to go unnoticed, just like the absence of characters in this shot—no one is gesticulating at the windows of the main building, no one is moving in the streets, no panic reaction, as opposed to the other shots of the film that constantly show the spectator the panicking crowds in the streets.  

27This painting by Whitlock was used again in a TV film called Mission Galactica: the Cyclon Attack, directed by Vince Edwards and Christian I. Nyby II (1979, fig. 7). From a diegetic perspective, the damages are caused by aliens this time, not by a natural disaster. Nevertheless, the interest of this shot lies in the fact that it adds a moving element: the flying saucers. These flying saucers present a variation on a classic theme of matte painting, i.e. the recurrent presence of birds flying away, which will be taken over in many films, from King Kong to Star Wars.

28Birds are permanent residents of matte paintings. They have managed to migrate and reproduce through their transition to the digital format. Birds are included in The Mummy’s first shot (Stephen Sommers, 1999), which opens on a zoom-out starting at the top of a pyramid under construction and ending on a wide-angle shot of the construction site. As he arrives in Rome, the Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000) is accompanied by small birds. In the same way, we can find small birds in the shot of Alexandria in Alain Chabat’s Astérix et Obélix mission Cléopâtre (2001) or in the spaces of Naboo in George Lucas’s Star Wars 1 (1999). They are already present in King Kong, The Son of Kong (Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933), Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (Carol Reed, 1965), Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946). Although it is quite easy to place digital birds in a digital painting, all of the aforementioned birds were either animated shot by shot (King Kong), or separately shot and optically integrated into the shot (for instance in Mary Poppins).

30Standing out against these clouds, birds greatly contribute to the concealment of technique. First of all, they provide the spectators with a scale reference, considering that the latter have all seen birds in “real life,” even if they have never seen these specific birds (the birds on planet Naboo, for example). Consequently, they draw on their personal experience and knowledge of birds to determine the size of the ones they are shown. In so doing, the small size of the painting is obliterated by the bird’s presence.

31Secondly, the living bird breathes life into the painting through a ripple effect: since a bird is flying over, in and out of these spaces, then there must be some depth to these spaces, which means that they are able to contain living entities. Subsequently, these spaces are “realistic,” if not real. This point makes up for the painting’s inherent lack of depth, thus further contributing to break the causal link between the “painting” and this effect in the spectator’s mind.

34As early as 1933, in King Kong (fig. 8), birds appear numerous times: as the crew arrives on the island, then as the crew encounters a dinosaur for the first time, a triceratops about to charge. Right before the dinosaur appears, the crew discovers the dinosaur’s track, which is a classic metonymy that draws on the spectators’ general experience: indeed, they have already seen animal tracks (in the mud or snow). Quite simply, this universal experience is here put into perspective by the impressive size of the track—no spectator has ever seen such a huge track. In the same way, once the crew has seen the track, Denham mentions the presence of birds in his dialogue line. The background noise (peeps) suddenly becomes audible, even though it has been there since the beginning of the sequence, albeit completely unnoticed in the background noise. As we move on to the next shot, the same birds fly away in the background, unsurprisingly from left to right, shifting our focus. The point of this maneuver is to have spectators authenticate the dinosaur, through the same principle as the one used during the arrival on the island, using birds as guides.

35Once again, these birds go completely unnoticed by the spectator. Although the latter have followed the birds with their eyes, their brain has “corrected” this perception by classifying it as “commonplace” and therefore secondary. It is indeed common to see a flock of birds flying over a place, all the more so that experience demonstrates, just like in King Kong, that man’s presence (or the dinosaur’s) disturbs the bird that flees whenever it hears a loud noise.

Conclusion: the ripple effect of illusion, from matte painting to cinema

• 31  Interview with Craig Barron, in Richard Rickitt, Special effects, the history and technique, New Y (...)

Many shots tend to be held on screen for longer than the average special effects shot. Matte shots are normally used for establishing shots that are quite contemplative—they tell a story or establish a scene and people look at these images for a relatively long time. That means that the quality has to be there, otherwise people will notice that something is wrong. The whole idea of an establishing shot is that it confirms the location or period of a scene in the mind of the audience. If the first image is not convincing, the realism of the whole scene will be destroyed, no matter how good the others elements.31

37Here, Craig Barron raises the issue of the ripple effect of illusion. When the shot containing a matte painting is accepted by the spectator, then the whole space-time of the film is made credible. The wide-angle shot in Nana is only used twice throughout the film. The rest of the time, the shots are close to one another, revealing only a tiny part of the scenery. However, through these shots, spectators get to know what is virtually out of the camera frame and goes together with the limited space that they are shown. The matte painting shot must be sufficiently striking to partake in the imaginary construction of space-time in the rest of the story.

38At its level, the wide-angle shot containing a matte painting constitutes an illusionistic shot, which contributes to the creation of the global illusion in the movie. In this sense, it works like an illusionistic detail that provides the rest of the film—in other words, a combination of illusionistic details of various natures—with credibility. In this respect, working on matte painting allows for the mise en abyme and clear presentation of the various illusion processes. Isn’t the perfect illusion that matte painting tries to achieve—especially through the imperceptible effects of which spectators are the unaware victims—something else than what cinema globally aims to attain?