We\'ve all seen behind-the-scenes footage, so it\'s no surprise any more
to find out that a great many breathtaking shots never actually existed
in reality. You know the kind of shot I mean; maybe a group of heroic
dwarves are walking along a precarious ledge, mere inches away from
falling to their certain doom into an impossibly dangerous chasm. Then
the VFX supervisor reveals how it was done, and it turns out that the
actors were on a soundstage, not even an inch off the ground, with
nothing but a styrofoam cavern wall behind them. The rest is, of course,
a matte painting.
The matte technique was pioneered a hundred years ago, taking advantage
of the fact that preventing light from hitting film would render dead
space on the film, into which any picture (such as a painting of a
fantastic set far too difficult to build) could be inserted in post
production. The concept is similar to using painter\'s tape when
renovating your apartment or house; you line the things you do *not*
want painted with *mask*ing tape, thereby leaving empty space that you
can later paint a different colour, or leave unpainted, or whatever you
please.
With camera tracking technology, mattes can get very complex, but for
this month\'s article, we will use a static plate to mask out a portion
of our motion picture out, and swap new footage into the empty space.
## Get Some Footage
For this example, you need a static shot; that is, motion picture in
which the camera itself does not move. That means your camera needs to
be on a tripod, with no pans or tilts or shakes from wind.
Import the footage into Kdenlive and drag it into your timeline.
## Create a Mask Layer
Since it\'s a static shot, place your playhead anywhere over the clip so
that you see a frame of it in your project monitor. Right-click on the
project monitor and choose **Extract Frame**.
Save the extracted frame to your hard drive in a location that makes
sense to you (preferably in your project directory, but you know your
own organisational scheme best).
We need to create a mask layer, with fully \"opaque\" represented by
white, and fully \"transparent\" represented by black. This is easiest
to do in GIMP, so open up the extracted frame in GIMP.
There are several different ways to achieve a mask, and how you manage
it will depend on the footage you\'re using and what you have in mind.
For this example, the mask is achieved by using the **Colours** \>
**Threshold** filter to reduce all hues to either black or white. This
creates a noticeable horizon line, and since I want to mask out the sky,
this is perfect for me.
Once the threshold filter has been applied, I use **Select** \> **By
Colour** to grab just the sky. Then **Select** \> **Invert** to select
everything *but* the sky.
Right-click on the layer in the **Layer Palette** and choose **Add Alpha
Channel** (if it\'s not available, then your layer already has an active
alpha channel). Then choose **Edit** \> **Clear** to erase everything
currently selected (replacing it with alpha).
It\'s not much to look at, but we\'ll use it to govern what we can and
cannot see through the project monitor in Kdenlive, so export the frame
as a PNG and import it into your Kdenlive project.
## Matte Painting
For this process, I use 3 video tracks. Add extra tracks as needed until
you have 5 in your Kdenlive project. To add video tracks, right-click on
any video track label on the left of the timeline and choose **Insert
Track**.
If we\'re going to mask something out, we need something to fill in the
gap we create. In this example, I\'m using footage of some horses on a
lonely Pennsylvanian farm, so I\'ll mask out the sky and put in a more
exciting time lapse sequence of clouds against a darker blue sky.
Whatever you choose to use, import your matte footage or painting into
Kdenlive and place it on the bottom video layer of your timeline (Video
3).
Just above your matte footage, place the mask layer that you just
created in GIMP.
Right click on the mask layer and choose **Add Transition** (recall that
Kdenlive uses \"transition\" for what you might think of as a
\"composite effect\" or \"composite mode\") \> **Cairo Affine Blend**.
Set the transition effect to composite with Video 3 (which should be the
default value).
The result should be immediate: the mask layer\'s white region is solid
and the alpha channel is transparent to reveal the video underneath.
Don\'t worry that this appears to be the exact opposite of the effect we
are looking for; we\'ll use another transition in a moment to reverse
the effect.
## Alpha XOR
To reverse the alpha channel effect and to introduce the plate, drag
your plate footage to the Video 1 track. Right-click on it and choose
**Add Transition** \> **alphaxor**. The XOR (\"exclusive or\") logic
function results in output if one condition or another is true, but no
output if both conditions are the same. In this filter\'s case, the
conditions are channel types; no output is produced if two opaque
regions or two alpha regions meet. Output is produced where alpha and
opaque combine.
The result is that opaque regions fail over to the lower video track,
and mixed regions fail over to the upper video track.
There are other composite methods to achieve the same effect, you just
have to think about how black or white values interact with different
composite modes. I chose this method because of the quick and direct
results, but some very nice effects can be achieved by using other
modes.
## Finishing Touches
The current composite is a little more saturated in the sky than on the
ground, so use **Add Effect** \> **Colour Correction** \> **Curves** to
balance Luma and colours as needed.
Granted, serious matte work in Kdenlive is not something you will do all
that often; Blender and Natron are better suited for extensive
compositing. Still, it\'s a useful trick to know for quick mattes, and
something you can use easily with a little practise.
