Matte Painting has been around since the mid 19th century well before movie cameras were a thing. The technique was used by photographers who were experimenting with double exposure. Matte Paints are mostly used as a background image whilst the actors would be in the foreground.
Thinking of a more traditional piece, matte paints are often a painted glass pane that is more likely to be done in production and used as an actual set piece combined with the actors.
A film in the past to use this technique would be Star Wars,
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This video explains how one of the scenes in Star Wars with Ewoks was painted, leaving black gaps where the live action would be place, and then had 78 photos taken of it so that the shot would be just over 3 seconds. Once they had the 78 images of the matte paint, they would add the live action in using a projector and combining the two together.
In digital Matte Paints, they would usually add in the matte later on in post production once everything is filmed. Often using programs like Adobe After Effects. You can still digitally paint onto the canvas using a graphic tablet and pen but it is also possible to use other stock images. A quicker, yet still effective, way of adding what is not actually there.
A more modern day film that uses digital Matte Painting is Harry Potter,
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This video is a useful for showing the VFX breakdown of how it is added on. Before and after.
This is one of the very first tutorials that I watched to gain an understanding of how some filmmakers will go about attempting to Matte Paint
This is how I plan to attempt to do this. By using stock images and manipulating them in creative ways to attempt to create the illusion of something, more, there.
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