Matte World

Matte World was a matte painting company, based in Novato, Marin County, California, that was contracted to create matte effects for  and. The matte elements they provided for The Undiscovered Country, were the Klingon court room and the Camp Khitomer backdrop. For First Contact, they provided the forest backdrop where the  (the CGI model of which was composited into it) landed. 

The company was founded in 1988 by former ILM member Craig Barron, former ILM matte painter Michael Pangrazio, and effects producer Krys Demkowicz. Matte World later adopted digital processes and became known as Matte World Digital in 1997 (after their work on First Contact). The first film which Matte World worked on was Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in 1989. The company has since worked on such films as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Batman Returns, Casino, Independence Day, The Truman Show, Con Air, Armageddon, X-Men, The Ring, and The Last Samurai. The first film the company worked on under the name Matte World Digital was Paramount Pictures' Academy Award-winning Titanic.

Upon completion of their work on Hugo (2011), it was decided to close down the company on 8 August 2012, with founder Barron citing "rising costs of technology and R&D, studio cost-saving measures and competition from an increasingly global effects industry (...) making it difficult for a small company to survive", as reasons to do so. The last argument in particular reflected, as of 2012, the crisis that the United States based visual effects industry was in at the time.

Employees

 * Craig Barron - Founder
 * Harold Weed - Model Maker
 * Paul Anthony Rivera - Digital Compositing Supervisor