History of Composite Components

Composite Components Company was founded by Jonathan and Kay Erland in 1995 soon after the demise of Apogee Productions with which Jonathan had been associated for the previous fifteen years.

Much of Erland’s time as Director of Research and Development at Apogee was devoted to traveling matte technology, (as chromakey was then referred to in the motion picture field), and the transition from photochemical to digital compositing was demanding a review of how such footage should be achieved.

The result was the conception of the Digital Series™ of traveling matte backings and the creation of Digital Green®, Digital Blue™, Digital Video Blue™ and Digital Red™ backings. A fundamental tenet of the new development was that the various types of materials, paints, lights, fabric screens etc., should match each other as closely as possible and further that they facilitate the matte extraction algorithms found in such products as Ultimatte® and Primatte®. Thus painted floors, hanging screens and costumes would perform equally well.