Below is the matte painting of an establishing shot describing Jerusalem in 1947 ( see pic A ). It was a very interesting process as director Ellie Chouraqui prefered to focus more on composition and "story telling " aspect than absolute historical accuracy . So I was totally free to create the whole foreground scene , using Cinema 4D for modeling ( see pic B ), texturing and lighting . The background was executed wtith a stitch of still frames from a panoramic shot of actual Jerusalem . I put all the elements together in photoshop , suppressed everything that looked too modern in my photographic sources and enhanced the photorealistic aspect of the CG with various textures . Artist Pierre Blain composited the matte painting with the plate and improved the " life " feeling with smokes and subtle warps in the leaves of the palm trees . I was proud that job became a double page in the fantastic book " Matte Painting 2 " by Ballistic Publishing .