Before There Was Green Screen
People act as if it is something new and different when actors shoot scenes and 95% of the space on the screen is later filled in by CGI. This has actually been going on for decades with matte paintings on glass. Movie scenes were either filmed directly through the glass (there are some great examples in the linked article with Disney artists painting sailing ships on a bay for filming) or reshot later by projecting the original film and reshooting it with the matte art.
Here is a an example before and after the painted matt. Just like CGI, only CGI can add movement and dynamic elements
I had thought all this stuff was done in post production but apparently Disney at least shot a lot of scenes straight through a matte. I love this guy, sitting on the beach painting ships on glass so they would be sitting on the bay in the scene. You can almost imagine the actors tapping their feet waiting for him to be finished.
Much of the beauty of the original Star Wars movie was in its great matte paintings, not only of planets but of the large Death Star interior scenes.
Dan Wendlick:
"The Great Train Robbery", generally recognized as the first motion picture to show a complete narrative, used static matte techniques in 1903.
March 28, 2016, 9:54 am