A shot-by-shot breakdown of A Trip to the Moon © Melies, 1902 (Behets, 2009)
Matte painting is an incredibly important concept in visual effects; throughout the twentieth century matte painting was considered the workhorse of visual effects. A big part of visual effects is combining traditional art into filmed sequences. There are many different artistic way in which film makers trick the viewer into believing the actor, for example, is on an alien planet, or being chased through a forest by zombie dogs. let's take a look at the evolution of this by considering the practice in industry. I have mentioned George Melies as being a true pioneer in VFX he extended his set in his 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon" by aligning a painted canvas in front of his camera but behind the actor, thus creating the effect of the actor being on the moon. This by definition is a matte painting, however the history books tell us that he didn't invent this art even though he used this practice in 1902 to present his film in this ingenious way. In today's terms we would call this practice "Rear Projection" matte'ing. Lets for a moment go back to the beginning of the 20th century to the photographer and filmmaker Norman Dawn, it is generally regarded (Fielding, 1980) that he first used a matte painting in his 1907 film "Missions of California” (Jeka, 2006) in which he used extensive "Glass Plate" mattes, (note that Melies used mattes five years before Dawn.) I donʼt want to argue the accuracy of history but simply to provide passage through this minefield of a subject. I have come to learn that historians frequently disagree when it comes to the history of cinema. Tim Dirks credits Melies as using matte paintings in A Trip to the Moon on his Filmsite website:
“It (A Trip to the Moon) contained 30 separate tableaus (scenes) with innovative, illusionary cinematic 'editing' techniques (trick photography with superimposed images, double-exposures, dissolves and stop-motion jump cuts), live-action, animation, the use of matte paintings..” (Dirks, 2009)
Fry and Furzon elaborate more on the technicalities of matte painting and Norman Dawnʼs techniques:
“Dawn combined his experience with the glass shot with the techniques of the matte shot. Up until this time, the matte shot was essentially a doubleexposure: a section of the camera's field would be blocked with a piece of
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