How to create DIGITAL MATTE PAINTINGS in your films | Photoshop & After Effects tutorial

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This video has been updated and re-uploaded to show a much better process for the Photoshop section!

We've been having fun with 'matte painting' effects in the style of old Hollywood films. Here's my tutorial to get you started if you want to try them in your own films!

There's one particular visual effect that you've probably seen in hundreds of classic films, but it's so cleverly done that you probably never even realized it was there. They've created some of your favorite worlds and they're almost as old as cinema itself. Matte paintings were traditionally used by Hollywood to allow filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that could not be present at the filming location by expertly blending live action footage with still images, filmmakers became masters of creating worlds that would be impossible or just too expensive to film for real. Matte paintings have been used since the silent era (as seen in "Modern Times" with Charlie Chaplin). Traditionally, matte paintings were made by artists using paints or pastels on large sheets of glass for integrating with the live-action footage. In the scenes the painting part is static and movements are integrated on it. Some of the most famous and well-known matte paintings can be seen in the classic Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, created by Industrial Light & Magic.

Today we can recreate something in much less time and money using widely-available digital tools such as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. For a static shot, my method basically involves saving a freeze frame of your video and then opening this in Photoshop. Here you can add your extra elements from other images and stock photos, and then re-export as a PSD for PNG file to retain the transparent areas. Then you can open this with your edit program and drop it in over the top of your footage, masking out any further areas where you need to see movement behind.

For a moving shot such as a pan or a tilt, you can do a similar method but also analyse the clip in After Effects using the 3D camera tracker, and then creating a null object that sticks to the tracking markers. Then you can parent the PSD file to the null and tidy up the edges. See the finished effects from this tutorial here:

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Similar matte painting effects can be seen here: