"turning off" a matte

Is there an easy way to "turn off" a matte for part of a clip? I have something keyed out with a matte, and someone walks in front of it. I bladed that part out and deleted the matte from clip clip, but is there a better way so I don't have to either 1: cut up my clips, or 2: use keyframes and change the shape of an 8 pt. matte to accomodate the figure walking in front of it .

Okay- this is a bit hard to explain, as I don't think there is a name for these things. But you can change the in and out points of the filter separate from the clip.

Open your clip in the viewer, and go to the filters tab. Find the 8 pt Matte. In that row, there will be the filter's name (8 pt Matte), a blank box, then a red X and a checkmark menu in one box. To the right of that are where you can set the filter's in and outs. Simply put your mouse slightly outside of the black lines (it will be the same arrow as when you are trimming a clip on the timeline, not the slip arrow), click and drag to adjust.
Hope that helps.

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