This blog is intended as a tribute to the ingenuity of the traditional matte painter where movie magic was created entirely by hand.

Some of the shots will amaze in their grandeur and epic quality while others will surprise in their 'invisibility' to even the sophisticated viewer.

I hope this collection will serve as an appreciation of the artform and both casual visitors and those with a specialist interest may benefit, enjoy and be amazed at skills largely unknown today.
Greetings fellow enthusiasts and fans of the wonderful world of traditional era matte painting and associated special effects trickery. It has indeed been a while (quite a while in fact) since I embarked on yet another one of these gargantuan 'tomes' celebrating traditional era movie magic, and of course acknowledging those often unknown practitioners and artisans that were responsible for such…
Hello there enthusiasts of old school matte painting and miniature motion picture wizardry. It's been a while since I posted one of these enormous retrospectives. When I finish one I usually say to myself that's 'quite enough', and I don't even want to contemplate attacking another one - at least for a while. After a month or two the ole' matte-shot mind starts to tick over and recall flicks or…
Greetings fellow matte painting and traditional special effects fans. I'm back with yet another mammoth blog post celebrating that wonderful movie magic that was created before the intrusion of the wretched 'computer', 'megabytes' and 'binary code(!)'. The days when true craftsmen (and crafts-women) and artistes conjured up endless cinematic wonders, more often than not with the most basic and…
It's been a while, and a few loyal and long time dedicated Matte Shot readers of foreign locales have been gently 'prompting' me to "pull finger", and get some damned mattes and models onto the cyber-waves. It's summer here, and household jobs, bits of carpentry and sundry unsavoury repairs - too numerous to mention - have held my attention of late, but they are pretty much done, so here we are.…
Greetings to all who are particularly partial to the long lost era of traditional, hand painted mattes and other ingenious motion picture 'tricks of the trade'. It is indeed that time again - perhaps a little overdue according to some of my faithful correspondents - for a veritable cavalcade of amazing (and in a few isolated instances, perhaps not so flash) special photographic and miniature trick…
Welcome fans and devotees of old school mattes, models and clever trick photography. It's time once again for another giant of a blog post, and I do emphasize, giant ! I never do these things by half-measures and always try to cover all possible bases when examining and illustrating these amazing hand rendered moments of movie magic. I have a vast collection of shots here, from a very broad cross…