About the Author

Mark Cotta Vaz recently completed his 19th book, a biography of Merian C. Cooper, creator of King Kong which is scheduled to be published by Random House in 2005. Vaz's books on movie history include Industrial Light + Magic: Into the Digital Realm, which
Craig Barron has been an innovator in the cinematic technique of matte painting for the last two decades, playing a key role in the effects for films from The Empire Strikes Back to The Last Samurai. A veteran of George Lucas's effects company, Industrial Light + Magic, Barron now heads Matte World Digital. He is currently creating the visual effects for an Imax film on the Universe for professor Stephen Hawking. Barron lives in Marin County, California.

Reviews

Some of the most memorable settings in Hollywood film - Tara, Oz, Xanadu - were the sleight-of-had creation of matte painters, who laid down a scene with oil paints on a sheet of glass, leaving an area black (the matte) where the live action was slotted in. Pioneers of the genre like the aptly named Norman Dawn were unimpressed by such three-dimensional concoctions as D.W. Griffith's mammoth Babylon for "Intolerance." "No matter how big you make your sets," Dawn boasted, "I can make them 10 times bigger." For a hundred years, the magicians of matte worried that revealing their secrets would ruin the pleasurable illusions of filmgoers. Nnow that digital technology has made matte painting obsolete, this eye-opening book (with CD-ROM included), by a film historian and a matte-painting alumnus of George Lucas's studio, has the opposite effect; it increases our wonder at this heretofore "invisible art." The Wizard of Oz may be exposed, but his Emerald City - along with other shimmering images on glass from the silent era to the star wars series - retains its magic. - New York Times