Take Harryhausen skeletons for example. They film the actors and the skeletons, but how did they put them onto one bit of film? Surely someone didn’t have to cut out a skeleton from each frame and stick them on?
Likewise, how did they add matt paintings to the film?
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There were a lot of cool optical effects that could be done in a black room. One of the things they do is to copy the content of one film onto another by shining a light through the old film onto the new film. So you can copy the film of the actors. However instead of copying the film with the skeletons to a new film you can just reuse the same film that now have the exposure of the actors. The result is a film with both the actors and the skeletons. This is called double exposure.
You can also load both films on top of each other into the same operation. When you shine a light through them both then they would act as a filter. You could also add various other items in the light path to block part of the image or change it in some way. If you have used a film editing tool then you might recognize most of these techniques and the way you stack layers on top of each other. Modern software is essentially simulating working with old optical films.
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