How Star Wars fooled everyone with matte paintings
During the original trilogy there were really amazing and big sets, but they were only part of a painting. Yes a painting. These paintings are called matte painting and they were used as fake set to film huge world or places without having to actually build them. In the Original trilogy most of the sets were painting and these were a combination of Plexiglass and Oil Paint. But how did they work? The artist painted in the glass whatever was going to be still in the shot and not move, for example, some ships or soldiers in line, trees, background or even people. And the spots where there are going to be movement were leave unpainted. The director then used double, and triple exposure to blend both the painting and the live action film.
I came to research about this particular topic for my independent study week. I think I learned a lot of the process and understand better how double exposure works. Also making some critical thinking with what have we learn, I came with the question, "Is Matte Painting consider Trompe L'oeil?". With what we learn about Trompe L'oeil, this is considered an optical illusion and using matte paintings to create fake sets could be also consider an Optical Illusion so therefore, yes, we can consider Matte Painting a form of Trompe L'oeil.
