10 Awesome Innovations That Changed Cinema Forever

8. Matte Compositing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugMmyjCdpoQ We take green screen technology for granted these days; George Lucas, for instance, filmed large portions of his Star Wars prequel trilogy using coloured screens, inserting CGI backdrops behind the characters in post-production to help create these fantastical worlds more practically (even if the script evidently took a backseat). Back in cinema's earlier days, though, without the assistance of computers, things worked a little differently. The technique was originally developed in the 1940s, and required shooting an actor in front of a green screen, and then re-filmed with a special filter that removes all of the green from the frame. The two images are then fused together, an immensely time-consuming process that nevertheless garnered some pretty decent results considering the time period; check out the above clip from The Thief of Baghdad. Though the blue hue can be seen around the edge of the genie, it's not half bad, and a precursor to what we have today.