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71-473: The robot is usually—and erroneously—referred to as "Maria", after the human original whom she impersonates. She was never named in the film, though in the novel her name is Futura. The opening credits refer to her as "the Robot". She has been given several names through the decades: Parody (the name Rotwang calls her in the novel), Ultima, Machina, Robotrix, False Maria, Robot Maria, Roboria and Hel. The intertitles of

142-421: A square TV screen. In letterboxing, the top of the image is slightly lower than usual, the bottom is higher, and the unused portion of the screen is covered by black bars. For video transfers, transferring a "soft matte" film to a home video format with the full frame exposed, thus removing the mattes at the top and bottom, is referred to as an "open matte transfer." In contrast, transferring a "hard matte" film to

213-484: A baggage car on a train 'set'. Around this time, another technique known as the glass shot was also being used. The glass shot was made by painting details on a piece of glass which was then combined with live action footage to create the appearance of elaborate sets. The first glass shots are credited to Edgar Rogers. The first major development of the matte shot was the early 1900s by Norman Dawn ASC . Dawn had seamlessly woven glass shots into many of his films: such as

284-440: A beam-splitter or per-pixel polarization filters.) The system simultaneously captures two frames that differ by about half the dynamic range at background pixels but are identical at foreground pixels. Using the differences between the backgrounds of the two images, McGuire et al. are able to extract a high-resolution foreground matte from the scene. This method still retains some of the shortcomings of compositing techniques - namely,

355-461: A full-color, foreground-only stream αF rgb with a pre-multiplied alpha ( alpha compositing ), a full-color background stream B rgb , and a single-channel stream of partial coverage of the pixels in the foreground stream. This ideal algorithm can take any arbitrary video as input, including video where the foreground and background are dynamic, there are multiple depths in the background, there exist overlaps between background and foreground share

426-404: A glass shot instead of a live action background. The resulting composite was of fairly high quality, since the matte line—the place of transition from the live action to the painted background—was much less jumpy. In addition, the new in-camera matte was much more cost-effective, as the glass didn't have to be ready the day the live action was shot. One downside to this method was that since the film

497-402: A home video format with the theatrical mattes intact is referred to as a "closed matte transfer." A "garbage matte" is often hand-drawn, sometimes quickly made, used to exclude parts of an image that another process, such as bluescreen , would not remove. The name stems from the fact that the matte removes " garbage " from the procedurally produced image. "Garbage" might include a rig holding

568-461: A recording—colloquially known as "bluescreen" or "greenscreen" after the most popular colors used—are probably the best-known and most widely used modern techniques for creating traveling mattes, although rotoscoping and multiple motion control passes have also been used in the past. Computer-generated imagery , either static or animated, is also often rendered with a transparent background and digitally overlaid on top of modern film recordings using

639-430: A relatively simple way of pulling a matte - the foreground from a greensceen scene could be imposed on an arbitrary background scene, for instance. Attempting to matte an image that doesn't use this technique is significantly more difficult. Several algorithms have been designed in an effort to address this challenge. Ideally, this matting algorithm would separate an input video stream I rgb into three output streams:

710-518: A second time; the background scenery has been added to the live action. The rotoscope was a device used to project film (namely live-action footage) onto a canvas to act as a reference for artists. Walt Disney used the technique extensively in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in order to make the human characters' motions more realistic. The film went significantly over budget due to the complexity of

781-434: A series of matte cutouts of the robot's silhouette and a number of circular neon lights. All effects were filmed directly into the camera rather than edited separately. As a result, the film had to be rewound and exposed many tens of times over to include the plates showing the heart and circulatory systems as well as cuts between the robot form and Maria showing her gradual transformation. For years, people have speculated how

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852-426: A single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (e.g. actors on a set) with a background image (e.g. a scenic vista or a starfield with planets). In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes . In film , the principle of a matte requires masking certain areas of

923-537: A static female robotic figure. The Doctor Who audio story "Monsters in Metropolis" produced by Big Finish tells an alternative version of Metropolis' production, in which the Maschinenmensch is played by a damaged Cyberman , which eventually starts murdering film crew. Though some props and costumes from Metropolis did survive, the iconic Maschinenmensch apparently was destroyed during filming. Its actual fate

994-486: A technique similar to the bi-pack method to make the live action portion a matte itself, allowing them to move the actors around the background and scene—integrating them completely. The Thief of Bagdad (1940) represented a major leap forward for the traveling matte and the first major introduction of the bluescreen technique invented by Larry Butler when it won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects that year, though

1065-404: A test strip (with the blacked out areas in the shot) and projects a frame of the 'Matted' shot onto the easel mounted glass. This test footage clip is used as the reference to paint the background or scenery to be matted in on a new piece of glass. The live action part of the glass is painted black, more of the test footage is then exposed to adjust and confirm color matching and edge line up. Then

1136-490: Is a clear reference to the film and has a track titled "Metropolis." Original designs by Ralph McQuarrie for C-3PO in Star Wars were largely based on the Maschinenmensch, albeit in a male version. The design was later refined, but retains clear Art Deco influences. Japan's Ultraman design may have been influenced by this also. It featured in the video clip of Queen 's song " Radio Ga Ga ", in which Freddie Mercury 's face

1207-426: Is a difficult problem to solve. It has been under research since the 1950s, and yet its most popular use - filmmaking - resorts to the classic but constrained compositing method. Specifically, they use a kind of global color model. This technique is based on a global color assumption; for instance, that the entire background is green. (Incidentally, this is why weather forecasters sometimes appear to have invisible ties -

1278-482: Is an archetypal example of the Frankenstein creation . Artificial beings with a malevolent nature were popular at the time, as seen in films such as Der Golem or Marcel L'Herbier 's L'Inhumaine . In a formerly part of the film, Rotwang explicitly instructs the robot to pervert Fredersen's orders and help bring down his worst enemy, which helps explain her destructive behaviour. Different incomplete restorations of

1349-497: Is impossible. A third approach to digital matting is using three video streams with different focusing distances and depths of field. As with the previous method, all three image sensors share a common optical axis, though now the algorithm uses information about what part of the image is in focus in which video feed to generate its foreground matte. With this technique, both the foreground and background can have dynamic content, and there are no restrictions on what colors or complexity

1420-412: Is loaded and projected onto a piece of glass that has been painted first black, then white. The matte artist decides where the matte line will be and traces it on the glass, then paints in the background or scenery to be added. Once the painting is finished the matte artist scrapes away the paint on the live action portions of the glass. The original footage and a clean reel are loaded into the bi-pack with

1491-673: Is unknown. Replicas of the robot are found in many museums, notably in the Berlin Filmmuseum, The Cinématheque Francaise in Paris , and the Museum of the Moving Image in London . Oddly enough, almost all versions are silver rather than the original golden - bronze colour. Intertitle In films , an intertitle , also known as a title card , is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into

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1562-482: Is using a local color model. This model assumes the background to be a static, previously-known image, so in this case the background stream is given. A simple matte can be pulled by comparing the actual video stream with the known background stream. Lighting and camera angle requirements are very strict unlike in global color models, but there is no restriction for possible colors in the foreground stream. There also exist machine learning tools that can pull mattes with

1633-878: The demo scene were also adapted for the generation and recording of intertitles for home films. Among these were included the ColecoVision , the Magnavox Odyssey² (using programs such as the Type & Talk cartridge and the Voice module), the Bally Astrocade (using the built-in Scribbling program or the more advanced Creative Crayon cartridge), and the intertitle-specialized Famicom Titler . Matte (filmmaking) Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into

1704-416: The silent film era , intertitles were mostly called " subtitles ", but also "leaders", " captions ", "titles", and "headings", prior to being named intertitles, and often had Art Deco motifs. They were a mainstay of silent films once the films became of sufficient length and detail to necessitate dialogue or narration to make sense of the enacted or documented events. The British Film Catalogue credits

1775-444: The 17-year-old girl some discipline and mold her in his image, almost like the characters she played. The costume allowed little freedom of movement. To help Helm get up from the throne made of sheet metal, a wooden rig was constructed, so that a stage hand could give her a push. Behind the scenes stills show the rig and the hinged plate on the seat. The memorable transformation scene was another early miracle of special effects, using

1846-439: The 1898 film Our New General Servant by Robert W. Paul as the first British film to use intertitles. Film scholar Kamilla Elliott identifies another early use of intertitles in the 1901 British film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost . The first Academy Awards presentation in 1929 included an award for "Best Writing – Title Cards" that went to Joseph W. Farnham for the films Fair Co-Ed ; Laugh, Clown, Laugh ; and Telling

1917-475: The 2010 restoration of Metropolis quote Rotwang, the robot's creator, referring to his gynoid Maschinenmensch , literally translated as "Machine human". In the novel, the Maschinenmensch is destroyed. Though mention is made of Rotwang's former lover, Hel, they are never directly associated with each other. The film version is different due to limitations of the practical special effects available at

1988-656: The Night" makes frequent use of shots of the Maschinenmensch, particularly where Maria's body is transferred onto the robot and a replica can be seen in the dance rehearsal room of Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) in the film The Bodyguard (1992). In the BBC series Torchwood series 1 episode 4 ("Cyberwoman"), the CGI sequence of the Cyberwoman's resurrection is reminiscent of that of the Maschinenmensch, featuring similar glowing rings of light around

2059-464: The World . The award was never given again, as intertitles went out of common use due to the growing popularity of the " talkies ". In modern use, intertitles are used to supply an epigraph , such as a poem , or to distinguish various " acts " of a film or multimedia production by use as a title card. However, they are most commonly used as part of a historical drama's epilogue to explain what happened to

2130-453: The algorithm attempts to label the unknown region based on the user's input, and the user can iterate through multiple trimaps for better results. Knockout, a plug-in tool for Adobe Photoshop , is an implementation of this process. Another digital matting approach was proposed by McGuire et al. It makes use of two imaging sensors along the same optical axis, and uses data from both of them. (There are various ways to achieve this, such as using

2201-540: The animation. The technique had a few other uses, such as in 2001: A Space Odyssey where artists manually traced and painted alpha mattes for each frame. Rotoscoping was also used to achieve the fluid animations in Prince of Persia , which were impressive for the time. Unfortunately, the technique is very time-consuming, and trying to capture semi-transparency with the technique was difficult. A digital variant of rotoscoping exists today, with software helping users avoid some of

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2272-462: The armour, which she collected to buy chocolate in the canteen. The scene where Rotwang presents his creation to Fredersen took nine days to film in January 1926. Director Fritz Lang shot the scene so many times that an exhausted Helm asked him why she should play the role, when no one would possibly know she was inside the costume. Lang answered, "I'd know." Helm's son believes that Lang was trying to teach

2343-446: The assistance of a user. Often, these tools require iteration on the part of the user - an algorithm provides a result based on a training set, and the user adjusts the set until the algorithm provides the desired result. An example of this is using a manually-created coarse matte with a trimap segmentation, so called because it separates the image into three regions: known background, known foreground, and an unknown region. In this case,

2414-429: The background has. All of these approaches share one notable weakness: they cannot take arbitrary videos as inputs. In video, distinct from film, Chroma key requires the background of the original video to be a single color. The other two techniques require more information in the form of synchronized but slightly different videos. Another use of mattes in filmmaking is to create a widescreen effect. In this process,

2485-413: The background must be relatively neutral and uniform - but it introduces several benefits, such as precise sub-pixel results, better support for natural illumination, and allowing the foreground to be the color that a compositing technique would identify as part of the background matte. However, this means that intentionally masking something in the foreground by coating it in the same color as the background

2556-446: The background that are occluded by the foreground, and any sort of approximation will be limited. Additionally, the foreground and background of an image still have an effect on each other due to shadows being cast and light being reflected between them. When compositing an image or video from mattes of different origin, missing or extra shadows and other details of light can ruin the impact of the new image. The process of matting itself

2627-399: The cast, like pieces of a suit of armour. The resulting costume was then spray-painted with cellon varnish spray mixed with silvery bronze powder which gave it the convincing appearance of polished metal. The description in the original film script makes an analogy to an Egyptian statue. The 2010 restoration of Metropolis revealed a previously unseen scene where Rotwang confides his plans to

2698-420: The color of the tie is similar to that of the background, leading the algorithm to classify the tie as part of the background stream.) Any color in theory could be used, but the most common are green and blue. Luminance matting (also called black-screen matting) is another variation of the global color model. As opposed to color, it assumes that the background is darker than a user-defined value. Another approach

2769-556: The compositing technique known as chroma key - an electronic generalization of the bluescreen - is now possible even on home computers. The in-camera matte shot, also known as the Dawn Process is created by first mounting a piece of glass in front of the camera. Black paint is applied to the glass where the background will be replaced. The actors are then filmed with minimal sets. The director shoots several minutes of extra footage to be used as test strips. The matte painter then develops

2840-415: The critical parts of the matted live action scene (with the desired actions and actors in place) are threaded up for burning the painted elements into the black areas. The flat black paint put on the glass blocks light from the part of the film it covers, preventing double exposure over the latent live action scenes from occurring. To begin a bipack matte filming, the live action portion is shot. The film

2911-400: The crumbling California Missions in the movie Missions of California , and used the glass shot to revolutionize the in-camera matte. Now, instead of taking their live action footage to a real location, filmmakers would shoot the live action as before with the cut-out cards in place, then rewind the film and transfer it to a camera designed to minimize vibrations. Then the filmmakers would shoot

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2982-615: The depicted characters and events after the conclusion of the story proper. The development of the soundtrack slowly eliminated their utility as a narrative device (they were common for providing narration, but not dialogue, well into the 1930s), but they are occasionally still used as an artistic device. For instance, intertitles were used as a gimmick in Frasier . The BBC's drama Threads uses them to give location, date and information on distant events beyond Sheffield . Law & Order and its related spinoffs used them to give not only

3053-436: The development of a number of innovative approaches to the challenge. Frequently lacking access to high-quality film dubbing and splicing equipment, amateur film makers must plan ahead when making a film to allow space for filming an intertitle over the existing film. Intertitles may be printed neatly on a piece of paper, a card, or a piece of cardboard and filmed, or they may be formed from adhesive strips and affixed to glass. In

3124-428: The early 1980s, digital recording technology improved to the point where intertitles could be created in born-digital format and recorded directly onto the film. Several specialty accessories from this period such as Sony's HVT-2100 Titler and cameras such as Matsushita's Quasar VK-743 and Zenith VC-1800 could be used to generate intertitles for home movies. Early 1980s video game consoles and applications catering to

3195-444: The film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. However, many complex special-effects scenes have included dozens of discrete image elements, requiring very complex use of mattes and layering mattes on top of one another. For an example of a simple matte, the director may wish to depict a group of actors in front of a store, with a massive city and sky visible above the store's roof. There would be two images—the actors on

3266-481: The film made since the original offered different explanations of the robot's behavior. One, for example, says that Rotwang has in fact lost control of the robot and it is not under anyone's control. Others offer no explanation. The 2010 restoration, complete for all practical purposes, depicts Rotwang deliberately instructing the robot Maria, thus finally clarifying the gynoid Maria's motivation. The Maschinenmensch's appearance and concept has influenced many artists over

3337-451: The filming process it is called a hard matte due to its sharp edge. In contrast, if the full frame is filled during filming and the projectionist is relied upon to matte out the top and bottom in the theater, it is referred to as a soft matte , as the aperture plate is not on the focal plane and causes a soft edge. In video, a similar effect is often used to present widescreen films on a conventional, 1.33:1 television screen. In this case,

3408-400: The light circle animation was made. The magazine Science and Invention suggested at the time that fluorescent lights were used as a purely practical effect, moved up and down manually on invisible wires by stage hands. In later years Lang said in interviews that a brightly lit steel ball used as a pendulum was filmed or photographed with a long exposure time in front of a black screen and

3479-490: The live action section. The film would be rewound, and the filmmakers would film their new background. This technique was known as the in-camera matte and was considered more a novelty than a serious special effect during the late 1880s. A good early American example is seen in The Great Train Robbery (1903) where it is used to place a train outside a window in a ticket office, and later a moving background outside

3550-466: The location, but also the date of the upcoming scene. Guy Maddin is a modern filmmaker known for recreating the style of older films, and uses intertitles appropriately. Some locally produced shows, such as quiz bowl game shows , use animated variations of intertitles to introduce the next round. Intertitles have also had a long history in the area of amateur film . The efforts of home movie aficionados to intertitle their works post-production led to

3621-417: The mask does not change from frame to frame. Other shots may require mattes that change, to mask the shapes of moving objects, such as human beings or spaceships. These are known as traveling mattes . Traveling mattes enable greater freedom of composition and movement, but they are also more difficult to accomplish. Compositing techniques known as chroma keying that remove all areas of a certain color from

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3692-408: The matte's silhouette. By covering the glass plate with grease and filming the moving lights through it the illusion of a light circle moving up and down was created. When playing human Maria's evil twin — the gynoid in human form — Brigitte Helm wore heavy makeup and her expressions, gestures, and poses were exaggerated and jerky compared to Maria's composed and demure demeanor. The Maschinenmensch

3763-413: The midst of (hence, inter- ) the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialogue intertitles", and those used to provide related descriptive/narrative material are referred to as "expository intertitles". In modern usage, the terms refer to similar text and logo material inserted at or near the start or end of films and television shows. In

3834-443: The original threaded so it passes the shutter in front of the clean film. The glass is lit from behind, so that when the reels are both run, only the live action is transferred to the clean film. The reel of original footage is then removed and a piece of black cloth is placed behind the glass. The glass is lit from the front and the new reel is rewound and run again. The black cloth prevents the already exposed footage from being exposed

3905-419: The process is called letterboxing . However, in letterboxing, the top and bottom of the actual image are not matted out. The picture is "pushed" farther back on screen and thus made "smaller", so to speak, so that, in a widescreen film, the viewer can see, on the left and right of the picture, what would normally be omitted if the film were shown fullscreen on television, achieving a sort of "widescreen" effect on

3976-540: The process was still very time-intensive, and each frame had to be hand-processed. Computers began to aid the process late in the 20th century. In the 1960s, Petro Vlahos refined the use of motion control cameras in bluescreen and received an Academy Award for the process. The 1980s saw the invention of the first digital mattes and bluescreening processes, as well as the invention of the first computerized non-linear editing systems for video. Alpha compositing , in which digital images could be made partially transparent in

4047-418: The robot costume, described how it was made. He had considered making the robot from beaten copper, but it would be too heavy to wear and difficult to achieve. He then discovered a sample of " plastic wood ", a new material which was easy to sculpt into the required shape. Using a plaster body cast of actress Brigitte Helm , Mittendorff cut large chunks of plastic wood, rolled flat with a pin and draped them over

4118-471: The robot. The shot is unusual because it reveals part of the back of the robot, namely the back of her head and shoulders. The cast was made while Helm was standing up, making movements such as sitting down difficult and uncomfortable. According to actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge , it was tight and confining, pinching and scratching the actress despite many attempts by the stage hands to file away all sharp edges. People took pity on Helm and slipped coins into slots in

4189-436: The same color and no texture, and other various features that such algorithms traditionally have some difficulty in dealing with. Unfortunately, achieving this algorithm is impossible due to the loss of information that occurs when translating a real-world scene into a two-dimensional video. Smith and Blinn formally proved this in 1996. Matting also has some other fundamental limitations. The process cannot reconstruct parts of

4260-457: The same principle as a matte—a digital image mask . Mattes are a very old technique, going back to the Lumière brothers . Originally, the matte shot was created by filmmakers obscuring the background section on the film with cut-out cards. When the live action (foreground) portion of a scene was filmed, the background section of the film wasn't exposed. Then a different cut-out would be placed over

4331-481: The same way an animation cel is in its natural state, had been invented in the late 1970s and was integrated with the bluescreen process in the 1980s. Digital planning began for The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, for which Richard Edlund received the Academy Award for his work to create an aerial-image optical printer for combining mattes, though this process was still analog. The first fully digital matte shot

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4402-400: The set, and the image of the city—to combine onto a third. This would require two masks/mattes. One would mask everything above the store's roof, and the other would mask everything below it. By using these masks/mattes when copying these images onto the third, the images can be combined without creating ghostly double-exposures. In film, this is an example of a static matte, where the shape of

4473-463: The tedium; for instance, interpolating mattes between a few frames. Often, it is desirable to extract two or more mattes from a single image. This process, dubbed "matting" or "pulling a matte," is most commonly used to separate the foreground and background elements of an image, and these images are often individual frames of a video file. In case of video, matting methods can use temporal relations as additional information. Compositing techniques are

4544-413: The time. The Maschinenmensch is a metallic automaton shaped like a woman. In the film version Rotwang proudly proclaims that Hel, his former lover, is not dead but alive in the form of the automaton. Hel had chosen Fredersen over Rotwang, who never forgave his rival. The Maschinenmensch is ultimately destroyed when the city's rioting workers burn it at the stake. Walter Schulze-Mittendorff, who designed

4615-410: The top and bottom of a standard frame are matted out, or masked, with black bars, i.e. the film print has a thick frame line . Then the frame within the full frame is enlarged to fill a screen when projected in a theater. Thus, in "masked widescreen" an image with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is created by using a standard, 1.37:1 frame and matting out the top and bottom. If the image is matted during

4686-545: The years. It was depicted on the 1977 album Live! In The Air Age by Be-Bop Deluxe . The still displayed on the album is of the climactic scene, in which the appearance of Maria is being installed onto the robot and rings of light are circling around the robot's body. Heavy metal band Y&T 's 1985 album Down for the Count cover art shows the robot being held by Count Dracula as he prepares to sink his fangs into her neck. German band Kraftwerk 's 1978 album Die Mensch-Maschine

4757-532: Was created by painter Chris Evans in 1985 for Young Sherlock Holmes for a scene featuring a computer-graphics (CG) animation of a knight leaping from a stained-glass window. Evans first painted the window in acrylics, then scanned the painting into LucasFilm's Pixar system for further digital manipulation. The computer animation blended perfectly with the digital matte, something a traditional matte painting could not have accomplished. As of 2020 , nearly all modern mattes are now done via digital video editing, and

4828-426: Was exposed twice, there was always the risk of accidentally overexposing the film and ruining the footage filmed earlier. The in-camera matte shot remained in use until the film stock began to go up in quality in the 1920s. During this time a new technique known as the bi-pack camera method was developed. This was similar to the in-camera matte shot, but relied on one master positive as a backup. This way if anything

4899-428: Was lost, the master would still be intact. Around 1925 another method of making a matte was developed. One of the drawbacks of the old mattes was that the matte line was stationary. There could be no direct contact between the live action and the matte background. The traveling matte changed that. The traveling matte was like an in-camera or bi-pack matte, except that the matte line changed every frame. Filmmakers could use

4970-471: Was superimposed on the robot's face. Fashion designer Thierry Mugler created several outfits in silver metal and transparent plastic for one of his collections in the 1990s. Pop singers Beyoncé , Madonna , Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga have used outfits inspired by the Maschinenmensch and Janelle Monáe was directly influenced by the concept of the Maschinenmensch in the creation of her Metropolis suite album. Whitney Houston 's music video for "Queen of

5041-418: Was then composited onto the image, though this is not consistent with the multiple exposure method used. According to the film's set designer, Erich Kettelhut , a glass plate was positioned halfway between the robot and the camera. The silhouette of the robot and throne were carefully drawn onto a piece of plywood to be used as a matte , and using a pair of circular neon lights of a diameter corresponding with

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