Among the thousands of exquisite matte shots produced under the watchful eye of the eccentric ‘genius’ Warren Newcombe at Metro Goldwyn Mayer I’ve selected, almost randomly, a number of wonderful mattes from some classics and some not so well known MGM pictures, mostly from the 1940’s which for my money was THE heyday of the artform. The sheer audacity and boldness of the matte supervisors of the forties and the glorious results up on screen I find tremendously exciting, and nothing thrills this writer more than to watch a hitherto unknown old DVD title and find such gems combining camera ingenuity with hands on draughtsmanship skills. The craft is seen at it’s best advantage in many of these frames. Some of today’s frames are also old school optical composites, the likes of which are now resigned to history.
Most of today’s matte images I’ve included are from the Newcombe era, with a few other examples post Newcombe, from Lee LeBlanc’s management of the matte department. This is a kind of lucky dip on my part, as I have more or less ‘shuffled the deck’ and come up with these terrific shots which I hope devotees will enjoy as much as I do…
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A Tribute to Golden Era Special FX
Please Note: Now, I am going further back into the archives of Matte Shot – A Tribute to Golden Era Special FX to feature even more articles from this great site.
This blog is intended primarily as a tribute to the inventiveness and ingenuity of the craft of the matte painter during Hollywoods’ Golden Era. 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.