digital composition

In computing, computerized film editing. Some film special effects require shots to be cut together - composited. A sequence showing an actor hanging off the edge of a skyscraper, for example, may be put together out of footage of the actor in a safe location inserted into a shot looking down the side of the skyscraper, which may itself be a model. Traditional techniques for creating such a shot involved photographing the foreground shot with the background shot playing behind it, with an inevitable degradation of quality in the background material. In digital compositing, the same footage is digitized, and the work of merging the two sequences is done by manipulating computer files. The composite image is then transferred back onto film with no loss of quality.