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Colour Correction and Colour Theory: Towards believable matte painting

Researcher: Zaid Al Momani

There have been a number of important studies on believability and visual effects in recent years, and they look at the level of believability in relation to animation, CGI and the latest in 2.5D and 3D effects. However, what no research has attempted until now is a study on believability in matte painting.

This visual effect is one of the oldest and most frequently used techniques in post-production, and it would be extremely useful to study its methods to make suggestions for improving the believability of mattes.

By focusing on believability, production teams will look at their work from the point of view of the audience, and be able to produce more effective VFX. The theory of believability is the idea that a motion picture should be credible to an audience.

In today's film industry there are a huge amount of special photographic effects, and the power of effects artists has never been greater than in the modern computer age; their vision and potential has also never been so huge and indeed, may be called limitless.

In this research, Zaid attempts to clarify the role of colour correction and realistic sky replacement techniques, and question how a more believable image impacts an audience.