Matte Painting (Video)

We've always had the idea of doing a Fantasy film. Up until now, we didn't have the knowledge on exactly how to do that. This video shows a simple track matte, which is simply motion tracking the whole scene and keying in objects that don't belong. This is the basis of films that don't have the ability of shooting on location. I mean, where else are you going to find a firey mountain side with an exploding volcano for the land of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings? Or showing people walking through an old 1800's town that doesn't have city skyscrapers or cars running in the background?

That's the magic of matte painting, and is extremely common in many movies. Sometimes they may just be replacing a small object in the scene, like a window ad in a store, or grafiti on a brick wall. Other times its more advanced like removing roads from a scene so that it looks more isolated, or adding thousands of warriors fighting on a battlefield when you only have a dozen or so actual actors.