The Invisible Art : The Legends of Movie Matte Painting

At FXGuide we don’t normally do book reviews, but we have had the pleasure of reviewing arguably the best book on visual effects we’ve seen this year, The Invisible Art, The Legends of Movie Matte Painting. It is not over stating it to say this is the best book ever published on matte painting and a must have for anyone who works in compositing and digital matte painting today. Written by Mark Cotta Vaz, well known to the fx community as a senior contribut

Quite simply, this is a joy to read. Unlike many publications that speak down to an audience assumed to be unfamiliar with film and its terminology this book speaks with warmth and genuine admiration about a group of visual and special effects experts so often over looked. What makes this book different from any previous book is its shear depth of coverage.

This book covers not only the work but gives some genuine insights into the artists who performed these visual effects miracles. The book is full of remarkable stories from the painting of Xanadu in Citizen Kane to the first image John Knoll ever edited in the prototype of Photoshop, to the “Sting” like operation mounted by a brand new Matte World to win their first film contract.

One story that is particularly remarkable is Barron’s unique interview with the reclusive Lawrence Butler. Butler is famous for his ground breaking work in films such as the Thief of Bagdad. Another is an amazing story of how producer Alexander Korda found the special effects pioneer and genius Georges Melies in a french subway selling souvenirs. Melies who had fallen on hard times was brought to England by Korda. Butler was given the job of showing him around their UK facility. Butler recounts Melies explanation of how he accidentally discovered stop motion and thus effectively invented the precursor to modern day special effects.

Many believe that giant set replacement or complex visual effects began around the late 1970s, but Barron and Cotta Vaz offer amazing insights into what was achieved with films dating back to the start of cinema. During production of Star Wars Ep II, much was written about the use of virtual environments – with actors filmed in nothing but a doorway on a green screen stage. In The Invisible Art, the authors show exactly how this practice began using glass matte painting of the 1940s – with nothing more than a window frame for Claudine Colbert to lean out of, the rest of the house not built due to material storages in the second world war.

Not only does the book provide many ‘never before seen’ photographs and lavish glass plate reproductions it also includes a CD which allows the reader to see many of the key visual effects with quicktimes. Clips from films such as Citizen Kane, Empire Strikes Back and Dracula are all included on the CD. On the section for Titanic, for example, you can interactively wipe between principle photograph and the final completed shot.

The book covers a range of modern films; Casino, Xmen, Titanic, with much from ILM (Star Wars , Raiders of the Lost Ark) and the foreword is by George Lucas. The book is endorsed by Dennis Muren and Ray Harryhusen, among others.

This book benefits enormously from Barron’s personal contacts at ILM, Matte World Digital and elsewhere, and the encyclopedic nature of the work will make this the definitive book on the subject for years to come.

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