Vision & Craft Archives | Industrial Light & Magic

Industrial Light & Magic’s immersive entertainment team will be fully integrated with the rest of the company to inspire new innovations in cross-platform storytelling.

50 years since its founding, Industrial Light & Magic has never rested on its laurels. A hallmark of ILM’s endurance over half a century and counting has been its knack for adapting to change and embracing new creative opportunities. “ILM was created by George Lucas because there was no other way for him to realize his vision for Star Wars,” senior vice president and general manager Janet Lewin tells ILM.com. “From the beginning, our mission has been to make the impossible a reality.”

The ILM spirit that’s evolved over five decades and at studios in as many different countries is “motivated by the opportunity for reinvention, evolution, innovation, and resilience,” as Lewin puts it. ILM’s ability to “react and adapt to the changing dynamics” of an ever-changing industry has been key. Time and again, ILM has increasingly broadened its creative output. “We’re known for our work-for-hire visual effects in feature films,” says Lewin, “but we’ve also branched out into streaming series, feature animation, and of course, the incredible work that Vicki Dobbs Beck has championed with immersive storytelling.”

“ILM was created by George Lucas because there was no other way for him to realize his vision for Star Wars. From the beginning, our mission has been to make the impossible a reality.” -Janet Lewin, Senior Vice President & General Manager, ILM

As vice president of immersive content for ILM and Lucasfilm, Beck co-founded ILMxLAB (later ILM Immersive) some 10 years ago. What was initially a move to experiment with storytelling in the emerging fields of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality has since yielded broader implications for the way ILM will do business. “This opportunity allowed us to participate directly in the success of a project and drive these experiences from concept to launch, delivery, and support,” notes Beck.

Building on work first pioneered by Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group, the immersive team leveraged the highest quality visuals and sounds combined with meaningful interactive principles to create stories with groundbreaking potential. These have included productions like PGA Innovation Award winner Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series and Emmy-winning “What If…? – An Immersive Story,” as well as projects made with creative partners like Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award®-winning CARNE y ARENA.

“We see opportunities for social experiences that are associated with our stories,” explains Beck. “We started by inviting audiences to ‘Step Inside Our Stories’ in ways they’d thought were impossible. We’re now transitioning from storytelling to storyliving, which is a much bigger idea. You’re in a world and you’re making meaningful choices that drive the narrative forward. That’s the gateway to take advantage of new technologies that are coming on the scene.”

ILM is now “seizing the moment,” as Lewin puts it, to include all of ILM in this undertaking. “Immersive storytelling is becoming more and more relevant to our audiences and our partners. On the visual effects side, ILM has been involved in projects like ABBA Voyage – a first-of-its-kind – and the content we made for Sphere Las Vegas. We started to see that the projects coming out of our immersive line of business had a natural convergence of techniques, talent, and opportunity with those of our visual effects business.

“We’re now transitioning from storytelling to storyliving, which is a much bigger idea. You’re in a world and you’re making meaningful choices that drive the narrative forward. That’s the gateway to take advantage of new technologies that are coming on the scene.” -Vicki Dobbs Beck, Vice President, Immersive Content, ILM & Lucasfilm

“We can proactively leverage the strengths of our visual effects artists, pipeline, and storytelling passion with those of our immersive artists who are true experts in interactivity,” Lewin continues. “We see this ‘storyliving’ concept as the key growth opportunity. Not only do we want to market ourselves as one brand for audiences and clients, but we also want to empower our artists. This will allow for more cross-pollination of techniques, more opportunities for artists to move between types of projects, whether it’s an animated feature or our collaboration, “What If…? – An Immersive Story,” with Marvel Studios. If we can provide those opportunities, it allows us to keep attracting the very best talent in the industry.”

With every group now aligned under the ILM brand, the company will pursue an integrated portfolio that includes film, television, attractions, interactive products, and live events. For the immersive team, it’s a milestone following a decade of concerted effort, and for ILM as a whole, it’s the newest chapter in the company’s pioneering story. “We are poised for the next 50 years of ILM’s existence,” says Beck.

ILM’s position as a storied entity with a globe-spanning team of artists, designers, and engineers opens up limitless possibilities. “The world is our oyster,” as Lewin puts it. “This is a time for growth and expansion. I’m really excited about the ideas that we’re exploring. This is a moment when we can redefine who ILM is in the market, be more consumer-facing, and continue to be the industry leader. I also love the idea of having more efficiency and refining a better process. These moments allow us to examine the way we work and improve it. We can bring fresh, new ideas to the table.”

And as Beck describes, this is not only an opportunity to position ILM as the best creative partners and visual storytellers, but also as “aspirational leaders” who will inspire the next generation of storytellers. “This is a way for ILM to drive its destiny in a way that has not been possible in the past. To embrace cross-platform storytelling is what we are uniquely positioned to do. If we can take advantage of that capability and build ecosystems of experiences that cross different types of media, it gives us an incredible canvas to paint on.”

“This is a time for growth and expansion…. This is a moment when we can redefine who ILM is in the market, be more consumer-facing, and continue to be the industry leader.” -Janet Lewin, Senior Vice President & General Manager, ILM

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To discover more about ILM’s work in immersive storytelling, visit ILM.com/Immersive. And for all the latest news and stories from the company, visit the ILM.com Newsroom.

Visual effects supervisor Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser discusses the collaborative effort to make Alien fans scream once more.

By Dan Brooks

Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser remembers it well. It was summer 1979. He was 12 years old. Two years prior, Star Wars: A New Hope had been the talk of his school, but now a new sci-fi movie was garnering all the recess buzz. It was called Alien and he was dying to see it, though he was too young to buy a ticket and his parents refused to take him. As such, Sepulveda-Fauser did what any underage cinema-obsessed kid would: he snuck in to see it at Los Angeles’ vaunted Egyptian Theatre.

“I remember the impact that it had on me,” he tells ILM.com. “It was the first movie that I saw where I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s what a real alien movie is about.’”

Cut to 2024, and Sepulveda-Fauser is now a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, having led the company’s Sydney studio in work on Alien: Romulus. For him, Alien will always be about the feeling of Ridley Scott’s original film and, thankfully, Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez thought the same.

“When Fede described his idea of making it like the original, it was just one of those realizations where it’s like, man, I get to recreate that childhood moment, in a way,” Sepulveda-Fauser says. “The result was a 40-year full circle for me.”

Alien: Romulus arrived in theaters August 16 and quickly became a bona-fide box-office hit; as the movie continued its impressive run, Sepulveda-Fauser spoke with ILM.com about his approach to Romulus’ visual effects and the secrets behind some of its most memorable sequences.

Concept art by Amy Beth Christenson (Credit: ILM & 20th Century Studios)

Back to basics

The seventh film in the Alien series, Alien: Romulus takes place between the events of the original film and Aliens (1986), and follows a group of young Weyland-Yutani colony workers eager to abscond to a better life. At the heart of Alien: Romulus are Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her adopted brother, Andy (David Jonsson), who just happens to be a kind-hearted but damaged robot. A chance at escape leads the crew to an abandoned spacecraft, but instead of freedom they find unexpected terrors — including our old friend, the xenomorph.

Romulus leans into the series’ horror roots and, from the beginning, Álvarez and Sepulveda-Fauser were in alignment on how it all should look.

“From the get-go, from the day that I met him, one of the very first things that he said was, ‘I don’t want this thing to feel CG. I want this creature to feel real. If it doesn’t feel real, it’s not going to be scary.’ So the goal was to get as many practical elements in camera as we could. Everything else that we needed to build in computer graphics had to work around that, and integrate into photography seamlessly.” This would be a stark contrast to 2017’s Alien: Covenant, the last film in the series, which relied heavily on digital effects and creatures. For Romulus, Legacy Effects was on board to handle the practical elements, with ILM and Weta FX creating the visual effects for various sequences.

Director Fede Álvarez. Photo by Murray Close. (Credit: 20th Century Studios)

Under this ethos, the main challenge for Sepulveda-Fauser, as well as production visual effects supervisor Eric Barba, was matching ILM’s visual effects to Legacy’s practical work; if they were successful, audiences would not be able to tell where one stopped and the other started. This includes not just creatures, but sets and starships. Álvarez had the model shop create miniatures of the Corbelan ship, research center, and the EV, which Sepulveda-Fauser used to create digital replicas for the movie. “The tricky part was keeping the character of a practical model in the close-ups,” he notes.

First and foremost, however, was bringing the xenomorph back to life.

Bigger Chap

When it came to realizing the xenomorph, Alien: Romulus used just about every trick in the book. There was a man-in-a-suit version, a bunraku puppet, and an electronic build. Scenes requiring more fluid movement, however, meant ILM would have to work its magic.

“The Legacy puppets are beautiful up close. They hold up really well. But as soon as we have to incorporate specific body movements, we have to jump in with visual effects,” Sepulveda-Fauser says. “When the xenomorph is in motion, we can’t get a practical creature of that size to perform some of the movements required for an action sequence. In the elevator shaft sequence, for example, when he’s getting shot or when he catches Rain or he’s coming toward her, those scenes are a blend of our wide and medium close-ups with practical effects. We had to match the xenomorph model perfectly so we could have closeups cut between practical and CG.”

Still, Sepulveda-Fauser and his team took care not to overdo it, always looking at the original “Big Chap,” as the xenomorph was called during production of Alien, as a guide, as well as those in James Cameron’s Aliens for reference.

“Fede always said, ‘I want this alien to be creepy.’ He didn’t want over-exaggerated motion on the creature,” Sepulveda-Fauser explains. “His concern was that as soon as it moves too much or too fast, we take the audience out of the movie. We start feeling that CG on the screen. He wanted creepier movements. That’s why there’s the slow crawling on the walls. The slower movements make it feel creepier, strange. The creature is doing something impossible — it’s crawling on a wall — yet we had to make it feel possible, ominous, and weird.”

Ultimately, having Legacy’s new builds proved to be the best reference.

“I mean, seeing a practical creature on set is inspiring. You’re seeing it under real, live conditions and in real action,” he says. “You see it and think, ‘We know exactly what this xeno needs to look like,’ and we did. We replicated it as faithfully as we could to a real living creature.”

Facehugger stroll

One of the more tense sequences of Alien: Romulus finds Rain, Andy, and friends tip-toeing through a frigid corridor, hoping to avoid the attention of the craft’s resident Facehuggers. Throughout, the creepy crawlies move slowly, tapping their finger-like appendages, before finally becoming alert to their guests’ presence and launching a spine-tingling attack.

“That’s funny, because that sequence was shot in a couple of different spots,” Sepulveda-Fauser notes. “I shot a lot of that second unit, and that was in conjunction with some puppet work for the Facehuggers. There were Facehuggers that were set up in crates by the Weta puppeteers and the actors performed through the rest of the set imagining the CG huggers that we would fill in. When you look at that sequence, it’s a combination of, again, jumping from practicals to all CG. The Facehugger was another creature that we had to match absolutely perfectly.”

Animating the Facehuggers is one case where ILM broke a bit from the original films, feeling the creatures could use a bit more fluidity to satisfy Fede’s vision.

“In some cases when we saw that action of the Facehugger on set, it was obvious that it was a puppet. Although that was desirable in many cases, after a while the director realized this sequence was not going to be super exciting with things on wheels rolling along chasing these guys,” Sepulveda-Fauser says. “So we had to work out different Hugger run cycles for the chase. That took some time and experimentation, because it needed to both look like a mechanical thing, so it could pass as practical, and also it needed to follow this very specific action that the director wanted. We went through tons and tons of experimentation on how to make that work and, finally, we landed on something that Fede was really happy with, because they still look like they could be animatronic. We always kept it to some grounded reality.”

The x-ray

Featured prominently in the movie’s trailer is a particularly disturbing scene: the crew’s pilot, Navarro, uses an x-ray wand to scan her own chest, and finds something alive inside. It’s a clever spin on the series’ classic chestburster scenes of old and, to work, it had to look both believable and creepy.

“When the creature guys came on to do the chestburster, everybody was really excited because they were doing tests on the side and it was the first time we were seeing something so iconic to Alien in a scene,” recalls Sepulveda-Fauser. “It was a good feeling, ‘We’re going to do it like they did in the original.’ When Fede came up with the idea of the x-ray, it was even more exciting because we’ve never seen what this looks like from the inside. How exactly do we do that? So we digitally-built all of Navarro’s skeletal, muscular, circulatory structure, as well as organs. We researched the look of an x-ray, and we worked up the ideas in compositing, with animation to match the original puppet, broke some ribs, and popped it through. It was a quick moment but pretty neat.”

Considering its heavy use in promoting Alien: Romulus, I submit to Sepulveda-Fauser that this scene played a large role in getting fans new and old excited for the movie.

“It was a new take on the chestbuster and he made it terrifying in a different way,” Sepulveda-Fauser says. “I remember the original movie. You didn’t know what was going to happen, then all of a sudden, blam! This guy’s on the table and the alien pops out of his chest and everybody in the audience goes bonkers. You couldn’t do that again. If you recreate it, it’s not going to be as effective. So setting it up with Navarro, again feeling sick, you kind of know what’s going to happen, but you actually don’t know what’s going to happen. The reveal of the creature from the inside was a great idea. That was the scary moment. Understanding this thing is ready to pop out. We weren’t repeating the original, we’re scaring you in a slightly different way, and I thought that was really cool.”

Zero-G journey

In a movie filled with action set pieces, this might be the standout. Following a shootout with a xenomorph swarm, Rain must navigate from one end of a hall to another — all in zero gravity — while the creatures’ acid blood floats dangerously around her. Initially, however, it was meant to be a much smaller sequence.

“That was an interesting one because Fede had a really specific idea of what he wanted,” explains Sepulveda-Fauser. “In the beginning when we were first understanding the effect, it was a lot more subdued. It was going to be some alien blood in zero-g. But it’s a big action sequence and Rain’s had this big fight. There was a lot going on. The acid effect needed to have more character and quickly developed into, ‘No, the acid is an actor in this scene.’ This is a very, very scary moment. It’s got to be something else, it needs to be frightening, turbulent, it’s got to be an immediate danger that they can’t pass. And it needs to perform with intensity and visual impact.”

To achieve the intensity of the redesigned sequence, Sepulveda-Fauser’s Sydney team worked closely with ILM’s San Francisco studio.

“We worked hard with the team in San Francisco to put all this together,” he says. “There were a lot of requirements there. We were in zero-g, it needed to be terrifying, it needed to come toward our actors, to look impassable, but they still needed to be able to somehow make it through. We also needed a moving air current to affect the acid swirling in zero-g. So there was a lot of choreography needed. It took a lot of development and experimentation to get the recipe for realism so that it didn’t feel magical as in a Harry Potter movie. It was easy to go into a fantasy world really quick with this effect. We finally came to a setup that I believe was successful, so that it sold the idea that this was possible as kind of a funnel of real acid happening within the set.”

Signing off

Thanks to the success of Alien: Romulus, now the highest-grossing horror film of the year, the future seems bright for the xenomorph and our favorite space horror franchise. Though it’s gratifying for Sepulveda-Fauser, the reward is in the work on-screen.

“It makes me really proud to say that the Sydney team put this together,” Sepulveda-Fauser concludes. “I’m a little older now. I’ve been at ILM for 20 years and in the industry for 30-plus years. A lot of the people that I worked with are of course a bit younger and very, very excited about what we do. To see that new generation of talent embracing traditional methods of filmmaking and adding to it is inspiring. This was one of those shows where you’re looking back at film history, looking back at a historic movie, and having to produce something new that still touches back to that with fidelity. This team really put in a thousand percent to make that happen. We achieved something memorable, hopefully for the audiences but even more so for us as big fans. It was a difficult task and it was an easy thing to not get right. But the crew got it right. They worked so hard and put so much care and love into it, that it worked. I really am proud of this work. It’s likely one of the best projects that I’ve ever worked on.”

Concept art by Mathilde Marion (Credit: ILM & 20th Century Studios).

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Dan Brooks is a writer who loves movies, comics, video games, and sports. A member of the Lucasfilm Online team for over a decade, Dan served as senior editor of both StarWars.com and Lucasfilm.com, and is a co-author of DK Publishing’s Star Wars Encyclopedia. Follow him on Instagram at @therealdanbrooks and X at @dan_brooks.

Heads still roll 25 years later in the Tim Burton classic Sleepy Hollow (1999). Revisit all of the eerie magic behind Industrial Light & Magic’s work that brought Washington Irving’s folktale to life and reintroduced audiences to one of cinema’s greatest on-screen monsters, the headless horseman.

By Adam Berry

The headless horseman pursuing Ichabod Crane in the Western Woods. (Credit: Paramount)

On October 5th, 1949, the Walt Disney Studios released a feature film that reimagined two classic pieces of literature through the guise of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). While the first half retells the whimsical story of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), it is the second half that left a long-lasting impression on young audiences as they were introduced to American writer Washington Irving’s eerie folktale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820).

Released just in time for Halloween that year, this feature would go on to be recognized as one of Disney’s classics due to its memorable songs, beautiful animation, and the unforgettable visualization of Irving’s ghostly antagonist, the headless horseman. The unsettling imagery of a headless man riding horseback with a sword in one hand and a flaming jack-o’lantern in the other allowed the legend to evolve as film versions were passed down to new generations. 50 years later, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow would once again evolve on screen, and explore the story in new ways, re-introducing audiences to Irving’s horrific tale of the undead horseman.

To take this classic into a tangible world, a highly imaginative and visual mind was necessary to capture the fantastical elements of this story while rooting it in a sense of reality. Tim Burton, director of such films as Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990), was keen to step in as he was a fan of the Disney film. Burton told American Cinematographer, “I was really familiar with the original story because I’d seen the Disney cartoon…. I actually didn’t read the source novel until after I had read the script.” Burton’s own history with Disney, including attending the California Institute of the Arts on a Disney scholarship, and working at Walt Disney Studios as an animator on projects such as The Black Cauldron (1985), destined him to take on the challenge of creating a fresh retelling of Sleepy Hollow.

Concept art by Scott Leberecht depicts an eerie atmosphere shrouded in fog on the road to Sleepy Hollow. (Credit: Paramount & ILM)

Burton’s vision was to create a fantasy world that felt real in which the headless horseman could exist. The aesthetic needed to emulate, but not copy, the atmosphere of the classic Hammer Studios horror films such as Dracula (1931) or Frankenstein (1931) with their moody and gothic tones that left the audience in a state of unease. With that being said, Italian director Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) was the core inspiration for the film, giving Sleepy Hollow (1999) a classic movie feel while adding elements that were pictorial and synthetic.

To achieve his vision of what Sleepy Hollow needed to look like, Burton knew there had to be a balance between the use of traditional special effects and digital visual effects. “Digital technology is very interesting and certainly has its place in filmmaking, but when you’re watching a movie like Black Sunday you really feel as if you’re there,” said Burton. While he was resistant to using visual effects at first, he relied on the artists at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to help realize the full scope of his vision, particularly when it came to bringing the headless horseman into existence as a living, breathing creature.

ILM visual effects supervisor Jim Mitchell was tasked with solving how the horseman could exist in the film as a real man without having to rely on older methods. Tricks like having the coat propped up on the actor’s shoulders didn’t work as the proportions were wrong, eliminating the appearance that the horseman was indeed a man. Mitchell said, “Tim and I knew that something just wasn’t going to be right with that approach. We eventually decided that our Headless Horseman would be an actual person riding the horse and flailing his axe around, except that we’d just digitally erase his head.”

The most complex shots for ILM involved removing the horseman’s head. There were about 300 horseman shots altogether, with ILM creating 220 and London’s Computer Film Company contributing the rest. To convincingly convey that the horseman was real, the ILM team innovated a special blue hood for stunt actor Ray Park to wear during action sequences that the ILM artists could later isolate and erase from the shot. Blue was used as it is easily keyed from the plate so the effects team could restore the background in place of the head.

The headless horseman claims his next victim. (Credit: Paramount)

To fill the space where the actor’s head was taken out, a clean background plate of the sequence was shot, but the artists noticed that one element was still missing as the horseman has a large cape with a collar around his neck. “It was not only necessary to replace the background where his head would have been, but to also make a digital collar in the computer that was then matched to his movements,” shared computer graphics artist Sean Schur in Paramount Pictures’ Behind the Legend documentary. By using actors and replacing heads digitally, the horseman presents as a living and breathing creature.

Achieving this effect was particularly challenging during fight sequences with actors Johnny Depp and Casper Van Dien as their faces would be blocked out by the horseman actor’s blue hood. Once ILM erased the horseman’s head, they would also have to go back and eliminate the other actors’ heads as well. Mitchell shared, “I would have Johnny or Casper go through the same actions without the Horseman in there, and we’d just put their head into any frames where the horseman’s head was blocking theirs. It’s a tricky process, but it was actually pretty effective.”

Equally as challenging were the beheading scenes throughout the film. Creature effects artist Kevin Yagher created prosthetic heads of the actors for use in these pivotal moments while ILM was able to digitally recreate the scene using a series of three plates to blend together and form one cohesive shot. Using the scene in which the menacing Lady Van Tassel (Miranda Richardson) decapitates her bewitching sister as an example, Richardson would be filmed going through the motions of swinging her axe to dead air, then the prosthetic head flying off the body of her sister would be filmed separately, and finally the digital capture of that scene would be created. Once all three plates were finished, ILM would blend these together to make a seamless sequence for each beheading, making it feel all the more real for the audience. This was not an easy task for the artists as the film has ten decapitation sequences.

Concept art by Scott Leberecht shows ILM’s approach to depicting the headless horseman’s return to hell. (Credit: Paramount & ILM)

Burton wanted to convey suspense and a sense of impending doom throughout the film and tasked ILM with a series of subtle visual effects shots that added to the unsettling feeling when the horseman would appear. Most notable is the disturbing scene where the horseman pursues a family at their home. Killian (Steven Waddington) sits at his table with a crackling fire, which spontaneously erupts into larger flames seconds before the horseman crashes down the door. Sequence Supervisor Joel Aron shared, “I took the skull, which is the headless horseman’s skull, so I pulled up the eyebrows giving it this demonic look with a strong forehead, curling up the corners of the mouth and bringing the jaw around to continue to sculpt what would be the fire so that I knew when the fire would come off it would have an irregular shape.” It’s a blink-and-you-will-miss-it effect, but if you look closely you can see 13 demonic faces emerge within the flames in a quick flash which is meant to indicate that evil is present. It’s so subtle that it was intended for audiences to question whether they really saw the faces or not.

Natural elements were also added and utilized to punctuate the horseman’s presence. The subtle introduction of thick fog and flashes of lightning appear every time the horseman gallops toward his next victim in pure cinematic fashion. Sleepy Hollow was shot mostly on location in a small town called Marlow, just outside of London, which meant the environment presented Burton with an ideal setting for the gloomy atmosphere. These elements could be viewed by some as cheap tricks in a major film but the use of heavy smoke for fog makes the atmosphere more haunting and interesting. “In the Western Woods set and at some of the other locations, you can definitely see the smoke – it looks like the fog they used in the old Frankenstein and Mummy movies,” said director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki.

While using smoke allowed the filmmakers to get a consistent movie look, it presented challenges for the ILM team as once they were finished adding actors’ heads back into the shots they would also have to build back in the foggy backgrounds and natural elements in each scene. “The big problem for us was [that] every shot involving the horseman also had lightning and fog,” explained Jim Mitchell, “which was constantly moving and always changing, as opposed to trees and buildings, which are rigid. Whenever lightning hit the Horseman, we had to make sure that when we replaced his collar or any other parts of his suit that his head was blocking, we put the same lighting effect on it.”

To simplify this, Mitchell asked Burton and Lubezki to shoot the scenes as though the actors’ heads were already removed despite the level of complexity it would add for the ILM team to ensure the elements moved organically with the actors as they rushed through the fog, or horse hooves galloped through the settled leaves on the ground. “There are all kinds of things we’d prefer to stay away from when we’re doing this type of work, but if you lose those [atmospheric] touches, all of a sudden it’s not the same sort of visual, and it doesn’t have the same power,” concluded Mitchell.

The headless horseman emerges from the tree of the dead. (Credit: Paramount)

This is especially apparent during a highly intense scene mid-film when the protagonists discover the tree of the dead, which is the horseman’s resting place and gateway to hell. The combination of the natural elements like fog and tree leaves with digital effects cemented the believability of this scene as the horseman enters from the base of the tree in a bloody and terrifying fashion. There were multiple plates used to build this effect. Firstly, a blue screen plate of the horse and jumping rider was shot. Next, a background shot of the forest environment, with the tree of the dead and actors standing close to where the horse emerges. Finally, a shot of the fog and leaves being disturbed creates the effect of the horseman jumping out of the tree. ILM didn’t have a bluescreen shot of an actual horse, so they had to create one in the computer, as well as the headless horseman, which are both digital elements. Similarly to the decapitation sequences, artists layered all of these separate plates on top of each other to form the singular shot making a scene that might have been unrealistic feel very believable instead.

It has been 25 years since its initial theatrical release, and rewatching Sleepy Hollow you can witness firsthand how ILM’s work remains timeless and able to reach new generations. The eerie and suspenseful atmosphere that Sleepy Hollow pulls audiences in and stands as a formidable achievement of classic Hollywood filmmaking, adding another iconic cinematic monster with the headless horseman, who is equally as feared standing next to other horror icons such as the unnerving Count Dracula, and misunderstood Frankenstein monster. Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow lives on through the visionary work of artists from each generation. For Burton’s retelling, ILM wielded the eerie magic that gave life to the undying legend of the headless horseman.

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Adam Berry is the Studio Operations Manager for the ILM Vancouver studio. His passion for film led Adam to ILM in 2022, coming from an extensive career across different sectors of the hospitality industry including cruise ships, luxury hotels and resorts. If he’s not at the movies or traveling to new destinations, you can find Adam staying active and exploring Vancouver.

After 38 years, the veteran effects artist is retiring.

By Lucas O. Seastrom

First opening in 1987, the original Star Tours attraction at Disneyland included what was the most complex optical composite created at Industrial Light & Magic up to that time. A “view” out the window of a starspeeder was in fact a state-of-the-art flight simulator developed by Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) and Rediffusion Simulation with miniature effects by ILM. Among the thrilling encounters for passengers onboard was a harrowing trip through a cluster of icy comets which the crew dubbed “ice-teroids.”

Compositing in this photochemical era involved a piece of equipment known as an optical printer. With iterations dating back to the earliest days of cinema, optical printers combined separately-photographed elements by recapturing them – one frame and one layer at a time – onto a new roll of film negative. Optical printers and the artists who operated them created the final effect one viewed onscreen with everything carefully (and painstakingly) blended together. Going back to Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), ILM had developed the most sophisticated compositing techniques yet seen, allowing for even greater refinement and finesse.

The ice-teroid shot in Star Tours combined some 60 elements of individual sections of film. By comparison, the most complex shot of a space battle in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) just a few years earlier had little more than half the number. One of the two optical printer operators to work on the new shot for Star Tours was Jon Alexander, hired only that year in 1986.

“Don Clark and I worked on the shot together on the Anderson Optical Printer,” Alexander tells ILM.com, “and once you started, you couldn’t stop. Once you started a shot all the motors warmed up and they needed to stay on. If they were turned off you risked the machine cooling down and settling into a misalignment of the earlier passes. It took 24 hours to make all the elements so we split 12 hour shifts.

“The Anderson was an old-style optical printer,” Alexander continues, “where if you wanted to add any movement to the shot you had to crank little knobs by hand with an accuracy at best of a couple hundreds of an inch. Some years later ILM acquired the MC [motion-control] printer which was accurate to within a couple ten-thousandths of an inch, which is crazy. It’s like throwing a baseball from here in San Francisco and hitting the Empire State Building in New York.”

38 years later, Jon Alexander has now decided to retire, and ILM is celebrating his storied tenure with the company that stretches over dozens of films, series, attractions, and special venue projects – not to mention quite a lot of technological change.

Back in the late 1970s, Alexander had what he calls “a wandering college career” while studying at Ohio State University. With a background in both engineering and cinematography, he arrived in Southern California in 1980 to work at Calico Creations, an active commercial house. There, Alexander gained experience with motion-control camera systems, innovative tools that combined the latest computer technology with mechanical engineering. “This was before personal computers were readily available,” he notes. “We were doing programming with machine tools to create motion graphics for around 50 commercials a year. Everyone wanted something like 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968], the slit-scan style. It was a very manual process.”

These tools were used for everything from photographing miniatures to shooting hand-drawn cels on an animation stand. In conjunction with the team at Calico was Bill Tondreau, an accomplished engineer who designed his own motion-control systems, which Alexander learned to use.

“The system that ILM used on Star Wars was very analog,” Alexander explains. “You could speed up or slow down, but it was very hard to hit specific points. It was an art for those guys to get used to. They were flying in space so it didn’t have to be as precise. They got really good at it, but it wasn’t as adaptable as what Bill Tondreau later developed, which used stepper motors. ILM was switching over to this style, and my colleague Rob Burton at Calico was hired by ILM for Howard the Duck [1986], and they had so much work that they needed more operators. They had to be Tondreau-system operators, so they recommended me. They were looking for someone to do this specific thing, and hired me for three months. I have milked that for 38 years.”

Alexander works at an animation stand on one of his early ILM productions, *The Witches of Eastwick* (1987).

Initially, Alexander worked in the animation department, photographing cels with a down-shooting system. Among these projects was The Witches of Eastwick (1987), for which Alexander shot a tennis ball as a lone element for a scene involving a doubles match. This was required because, as Alexander recalls it, only the actress Cher knew how to play tennis, so the cast mimed the game without a ball.

“It was while working on this camera for Eastwick that I met Michael Jackson,” Alexander says. “I was working late and no one else was in the back of D Building [at ILM’s Kerner facility]. I was leaning over and adjusting the tennis ball when I got this feeling someone was right behind me. I turned my head and he was about three feet away with two of the biggest men – security guards – I’d ever seen. [Producer] Patty Blau popped around the guards and said, ‘Hi, this is Michael. He was wondering what you were doing.’ This was around the time ILM was finishing up [Disneyland attraction] Captain EO.”

Alexander’s technical experience once again necessitated a move, this time to the optical department, where a new optical printer was being refined. The aforementioned “MC,” or motion-control printer had been developed by Los Angeles-based Mechanical Concepts as a first of its kind device.

“It was a motion-control printer, but when it got here, it didn’t work,” Alexander explains. “Everything was project to project in those days, but optical was always going and it looked like they needed more folks. When I heard about this new printer, I went up to Kenneth Smith, who was running optical at the time, and explained that I could put a Tondreau system on it. I had done some optical work in L.A., so it wasn’t entirely foreign, but ILM was off the charts in terms of the people and equipment they had.”

Alexander collaborated with machinist Udo Pampel to reconfigure the MC printer to run on the system. The result was arguably ILM’s most sophisticated optical printer that allowed artists to create not only incredibly precise composites, but recreate shots entirely by adding movements or zooms. An early assignment for the Academy Award-winning Innerspace (1987) required Alexander to simulate the bouncing undulations of the camera “inside” the body of actor Martin Short.

“They were cutting back and forth between Martin Short running and this smooth motion-control inside the body, and [visual effects supervisor] Dennis [Muren] thought it looked weird,” Alexander says. “But at that point they couldn’t go back out on stage and reshoot everything. Dennis asked me if I could do something that had the same up and down motion of running. It was a tough thing to do on the stage, but it wasn’t particularly tough on the MC Printer because I could project onto the wall, track something specific like a button at the center of his chest, which then provided a curve like someone running along. So when I did the composite, it matched up. It was no problem to do that because of the way the printer was set up. I used to do a lot of that kind of match-moving stuff to project onto the wall and track something in a minute way. That’s entry-level now, but to do that in post at the time was almost impossible because there were so few motion-control printers around. We had one of the first.”

Alexander at work on the motion-control or “MC” optical printer.

As Alexander notes, for a handful of years, his position was among the most significant in ILM’s pipeline, considering that most everything had to be funneled through the MC printer. “Looking back at these things, it wasn’t a big deal to accomplish,” he admits. “It was just that people hadn’t done it before. Supervisors like Dennis or Ken Ralston could expand what they wanted to do creatively, and people like me were a great set of hands to help them.”

Change was in the air, however, and computer graphics (CG) effects were steadily on the rise. At a time when many traditional artists and technicians were making decisions about whether to embrace the change, Alexander lept in headfirst. “At that time, there were no BFA’s in computer graphics,” he explains. “You had to come out of an engineering school just to do anything. It fostered this new kind of collaboration. We on the film side knew what the final product had to look like and the programmers knew the math and physics to make it possible.”

Alexander remains very matter-of-fact about the transition. “CG helped eliminate the painful aspects of working on film. You’d work for hours on something, moving and adjusting things. It was so choreographed that you had to put the filters in the exact same order each time to get the same result. Then after you shot it, you’d go to the dark room, turn the lights out, unload the magazine and put the film in a can, and then you’d turn the lights on and realize you’d forgotten to close the can…and what you just shot was gone. In CG, if you make a mistake, you press ‘Undo.’”

Among Alexander’s first CG projects were Fire in the Sky (1993), The Flintstones (1994), and Forrest Gump (1994). A personal standout shot came in 1998’s Meet Joe Black when he had to help create the shocking death of actor Brad Pitt’s character, a young man who is hit by two cars while crossing a street. “They shot the different elements with bluescreen,” Alexander says. “The cars came in slow because it was too dangerous to go fast and I timed everything to match it all together. The director [Martin Brest] asked to make him flip in the air, which I then did.” A compositing supervisor at that stage, he enjoyed the opportunity to “test things and try out ideas,” from large elements to minuscule details.

Alexander at work on a digital composite for *Star Wars: The Phantom Menace* (1999).

Alexander’s last major shift came around 2008 when visual effects supervisor Bill George organized a unit to assist WDI with a reimagined Star Tours, ultimately opening in 2011 with 3D digital imagery. Eventually, Alexander stayed with George’s rides unit full-time, contributing to everything from Disney’s Soarin’ Over the World and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance to Universal’s Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon. In every case, he was able to work in a diverse array of image and presentation formats. More recently, Alexander has contributed to special venue projects for the Sphere in Las Vegas, including Dead & Co.’s Dead Forever concert series (2024) and Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth (2023).

“The Sphere is like being in a VR headset but massive,” Alexander says. “Something like 17,000 people can interact with the screen at one time. I was talking with Darren Aronofsky about how it opens up the possibilities about how to tell a story. You no longer set the direction for people to look. Something could be going on in one area, and then you put something up in another area. Maybe some people notice and others don’t. It’s a different way of thinking about it, like in a game, where you influence the way the story goes. To me, it’s really cool to move into this new space where you’re not limited by being in a movie theater where you can only look in a certain direction.”

As his ILM journey comes to a close, it’s poignant to consider that Star Tours in particular has formed bookends to the many productions Alexander has been involved with. In fact, he and Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald are the only two people to have worked on every iteration of Star Tours to date. Just recently, Alexander spent six months with WDI to help oversee the installations of the ride’s latest update in Disney Parks in California, Florida, and France. With characteristic humility, he’s keen to point out that he made a small mistake way back on that fabled ice-teroid shot in the original 1987 version. A matte for one of the dozens of ice-teroids was slightly misaligned, a detail too small for most viewers to even notice, but something that Alexander’s children would never fail to mention, much to his own amusement.

Alexander at work in 3D for an update to the Disney Parks attraction, *Star Tours*.

“I came into this with different expectations, like we all do,” Alexander reflects. “You think they’ll write a book about you one day. No one’s going to write a book about me. Then you think, maybe I’ll get a chapter in the book. But most of us just become footnotes. We’re part of a team. My dad and my uncles were all sergeants in the military. I got an appointment to the Air Force Academy. When I went there for induction a just-graduated 2nd Lieutenant was showing us around, and the Master Sergeant came by, an older guy with the stripes on his arm, and gave a crisp salute to this new 2nd Lieutenant as he walked by.

“The Lieutenant said, ‘There’s a lesson for you,’” Alexander continues. “‘This guy has to salute me because I’m his superior officer, but he’s a sergeant and he does everything. I can’t do anything that he does. He organizes all of the enlisted men to do what we need, so I have to listen to him and trust him to get it done.’ I kind of feel like I’m a Master Sergeant. I’m fortunate enough to have gotten to the point where I’m involved at this level, and I feel like there’s not a shot that I can’t fix. It’s not just me; it’s my position. That’s what a compositing supervisor is supposed to do. If there’s a shot with a problem, and you can’t go back and change anything, yes I can fix it for you. I find that particularly gratifying. I’ve stayed at this level in part because it’s about life-balance. If I were to go higher, I’d be away for four months at a time, and I didn’t want to do that to my family. I’ve got like five Oscars on the family side of stuff.

“George Lucas chose people really well, and those people chose their hires really well,” Alexander concludes. “George trusted people like Dennis Muren to get anything done for him, and Dennis trusted people like me to get him whatever he needed. George and Dennis and those types of people were magnanimous enough to let people like me in the room. Because of that, I’ve tried to share as much as I can when new folks come in so they feel like they’re part of it. To me that’s the most important thing, making people feel like they’re part of a team. The beauty of this place has been how collaborative it is.”

—

Lucas O. Seastrom is a writer and historian at Lucasfilm.

Exploring the technical innovations and behind-the-scenes stories that brought Slimer to life in Ghostbusters 2, reaching new heights in animatronics and practical effects at Industrial Light & Magic.

By Jamie Benning

The original Slimer head on display at Lucasfilm headquarters in San Francisco.

When Ghostbusters (1984) premiered, it became an instant classic. With a star-studded cast—Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson—alongside Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and Annie Potts, the film combined supernatural elements with groundbreaking visual effects and perfect comedic timing, captivating audiences worldwide. The film grossed $282 million in its initial theatrical run, cementing its place in film history.

Beyond the popular human cast, one standout element was the ghost originally named “Onionhead.” Special effects artist Steve Johnson, credited as the sculptor, likely drew inspiration for the name from its vegetable-like appearance. This gluttonous green ghost, classified as a Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor, made a brief but memorable appearance that delighted audiences. Designed to be grotesque and chaotic, Onionhead unexpectedly became a fan favorite. Bill Murray’s famous line, “He slimed me!” as Peter Venkman, became one of the most quoted phrases of 1984. Onionhead’s popularity only grew with The Real Ghostbusters (1986) animated series, where he was reimagined as a mischievous yet lovable, pet-like character.

In the eleventh episode of The Real Ghostbusters, titled “Citizen Ghost,” which first aired in November 1986, Onionhead finally got his new name. The episode’s flashback shows how the Ghostbusters became friends with the little green ghost, with Ray Stantz giving him the fitting nickname “Slimer.” The name endured, becoming a permanent fixture in all subsequent Ghostbusters projects.

Ghostbusters 2 (1989) sought to bring the evolved version of Slimer to the big screen, balancing the charm of the original character with the expectations of younger fans familiar with the cartoon. With the baton passed from Boss Film Studios to ILM for the sequel, visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren described the task ahead of them to Cinefex. “We had the opportunity to create a whole new array of ghostly images,” he explained, using all the tools at their disposal. An early idea of using a rod puppet was quickly dismissed, with Muren preferring to opt for a fresh take on the “man in a suit” approach.

With the technological advances made in the five years since the original film, the goal was not just to capture the original magic but to push the boundaries of animatronics, puppetry, and practical effects.

Slimer concept art for *Ghostbusters 2* by Henry Mayo. (Credit: Columbia/Sony & ILM)

Reimagining Slimer

For the sequel, Slimer needed to embody the more playful, cartoonish persona. “[Executive Producer] Michael [C. Gross] wanted elements from the cartoon version incorporated as well, and to this end he had Thom [Enriquiez] do the new series of drawings – which were fabulous,” creature and makeup designer Tim Lawrence explained to Cinefex.

Mark Siegel, a key contributor to Slimer’s original creation, was brought to ILM for Ghostbusters 2 to resculpt the character and adapt him for the film’s lighter tone. Siegel had been deeply involved in the creation of the original Onionhead ghost, sculpting his teeth, tongue, and inner mouth, as well as the complete replacement head for a second puppet with a wider, more frightened look to the mouth. He also puppeteered the tongue and eyebrows for the majority of the shots.

The sculpting process for the design maquette was a collaborative effort, with Siegel primarily handling Slimer’s body, head, and face while fellow crew member and performer Howie Weed focused on the arms and hands. For the full-sized puppet Siegel sculpted the head and the arms.

The character of Onionhead in Ghostbusters wasn’t just an arbitrary creation. His mannerisms and chaotic energy were directly inspired by the late John Belushi, specifically his portrayal of Bluto in Animal House (1978). This connection was not merely symbolic; it was a tangible part of his design and performance. Mark Siegel recalls how Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd made it clear to the team that Slimer was a representation of their close friend Belushi’s comedic spirit.

The team didn’t just envision this; they meticulously pored over Belushi’s scenes. “We studied frame by frame old VHS tapes of Belushi’s Animal House scenes, focusing on his expressions,” Siegel elaborates. This analysis allowed them to incorporate Belushi’s signature movements and broad, exaggerated physicality into Slimer’s performance for the first film. According to Siegel, it was Belushi’s expressive style that truly captured the blend of charm and grotesqueness that defined Slimer’s character.

“When I first started sculpting the new Slimer, I thought, ‘Well, that’s cute,'” Siegel admits. But the evolution of the character, from disgusting blob to family-friendly ghost, presented some challenges. “I felt we were losing some of the raw, chaotic energy that made Slimer memorable in the first film.”

The sculpting process was a collaborative effort, with Siegel primarily handling Slimer’s body, head and face while fellow crew member and performer Howie Weed focused on the arms and hands.

Scenes originally envisioned for Slimer in Ghostbusters 2 included him eating various types of food around the station house while Louis (Rick Moranis) tried in vain to catch him. Then later, when Louis straps on a backpack and tries to help the Ghostbusters, he finds Slimer driving a bus. Louis hitches a ride and the two eventually become friends. An early storyboard also shows Slimer flying around the Statue of Liberty for the final shot of the movie, mirroring the first film’s finale. But, as is often the case in artistic pursuits, things were adapted, changed, and even removed along the way, all for a multitude of reasons.

Technical Innovations: Pioneering Animatronics

One of the key advancements in Ghostbusters 2 was the shift from manual cable-controlled puppetry to the use of radio-controlled servos for Slimer’s facial expressions. Al Coulter, an ILM animatronics engineer, led the effort to remotely automate Slimer’s face, allowing for more nuanced performances. “Al wanted to mechanize Slimer’s expressions,” Siegel says. “The SNARK system (reported as both Serial Networked Actuator Relay Kit and Synthetic Neuro-Animation Repeating Kinetics module) allowed us to control multiple servos simultaneously, meaning that expressions could be achieved more easily, with fewer people.” This system was a technological leap forward, offering new possibilities for nuanced expressions, though it brought its own set of challenges.

One of the key motivations for this advancement was to streamline post-production, which had been a challenge in the original film. “In Ghostbusters, we had to deal with puppeteers in the frame, which meant removing them during post-production,” Siegel recalls. That was both time consuming and costly.

Coulter notes that while the servos were originally designed for consumer RC airplanes, significant customization was required to make them work for Slimer’s facial movements. “The joystick stuff from Hobby World caused a lot of problems when we went onstage, because there was so much interference from all the lights and the wires and the machinery…that we needed to be able to connect our character to something direct, hardwired. So we had this guy build control boards which we bundled together and plugged into a PC. And that PC would then have software on it, custom again, and it would record our performance.” It was a major advancement for the time, in a way following in the footsteps of the leaps ILM had made in motion-control in the mid 1970s for the spaceships in George Lucas’ Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).

Coulter reflects that working with the technology of the time, particularly the slow computing speeds, was a challenge in itself. “We were working with computers that ran at 24 MHz—slow by today’s standards, but cutting edge at the time.” Despite this, the SNARK system was a pioneering achievement in real-time, computer-controlled puppetry, allowing for repeatable and detailed performances. “The facial expression, eyebrows, eyes, I think we had a nose wiggle…being updated to radio control servos, that was a great idea,” Siegel adds.

Behind-the-scenes videos posted by William Forsche (another crew member) show the incredible range of facial contortions that could be achieved with the new Slimer, from sad to happy to curious in a matter of seconds. While motion-control’s precision was essential for the spaceships in Star Wars, it wasn’t yet clear how well the recording and playback of Slimer’s facial movements would work.

Ultimately the servos introduced their own set of challenges. While the system allowed for greater control, it limited some of the more exaggerated movements that defined the original Slimer. As Siegel explains, “In the first film, Slimer’s jaw was controlled manually, allowing for more exaggerated, chaotic movements. The sculpture was extremely soft and flexible. There was no structure in the lower jaw at all. Just a little metal rod in the lower lip and a puppeteer down below could pull it, just stretch that rubber way wide, twist it from side to side and get a whole variety of expressions, make him chew and stuff…. While the servos and pneumatics we used in Ghostbusters 2 gave us more precise control over the facial expressions, they also introduced limitations in terms of flexibility and range.”

The head wasn’t the only challenge. In trying to replicate the exaggerated, cartoon-like appearance and movements of Slimer’s body from the animated series, the crew encountered more hurdles.

Innovating Slimer’s Body Design

While the animatronics used for Slimer’s facial expressions were groundbreaking, if beginning to become troublesome, the team also had to experiment with new ways to animate Slimer’s body. Tim Lawrence proposed constructing the body out of spandex with bean-bag-like filling, aiming to give Slimer a more fluid, exaggerated range of motion similar to the stretch-and-squash effect seen in his cartoon form.

However, this idea quickly ran into practical issues, as Siegel explains. “It might have been a couple of days before we were shooting and Dennis Muren came in and looked at the whole puppet assembled, and he wisely said well that spandex is going to look entirely different on camera than that rubber head. For some reason that had never occurred to anyone before. So in a mad rush we took that spandex bean bag body into our spray ventilation booth, and I had to mix up big batches of foam latex and we actually spatulated it onto that entire body. And that’s really hard to do because the foam latex has a limited time before it sets. And then it had to be baked in an oven. So it was thrown together at short notice in less than one day. When the rubber was cured over the bean bag it made the body a lot less stretchy and flexible than Tim had intended it to be.” The problems were beginning to mount.

Robin Shelby tests the Slimer body costume. (Credit: Columbia/Sony & ILM)

Robin Shelby: The Heart Inside Slimer

While ILM envisioned the technological advancements to play a key role in bringing the reimagined Slimer to life in Ghostbusters 2, it was Robin Shelby (then Robin Navlyt), the performer inside the suit, who truly embodied the character’s spirit.

Previously known by ILM for her role as a troll in Ron Howard’s Willow (1988), she took over the role of Slimer for Ghostbusters 2 after the original actor, Bobby Porter, became unavailable. As Shelby recalls, “They had someone cast, then they wrote Slimer out of the script…and then they wrote him back in, but the original actor had taken on another project.” At just 20 years old, Shelby was tasked with bringing a new version of Slimer to life, despite the suit’s heavy and cumbersome design. But she was up for the challenge!

“I grew up doing musical theater, a lot of dance. So I was very aware of my body…and that helped a lot. I didn’t have any stunt experience at the time, but a lot of movement and dance experience,” remarks Shelby. Reflecting on her first impression of the suit, she adds, “They were still building it when I came in. It wasn’t all painted and set. They had to do a cast of my face and head so they could fit it to me. But when I first saw it with the motors, it was a little scary. The weight was extraordinary. But, the crew was amazing.”

With Shelby performing inside the suit and the expressions operated remotely, production became more efficient. By using a bluescreen and having Shelby wear a black leotard, ILM eliminated the need for puppeteer removal in post-production, just as originally planned.

Shelby and the team had about five to six weeks of rehearsal to help her adjust to the suit and coordinate with the puppeteers operating the animatronic features. The suit itself came in three interlocking segments: the main body, the gloves for the hands and arms, and the head. “I couldn’t see anything really. So what we would do is rehearse, they would shoot it, and then they would have me watch it. So I could see what it was all looking like. So, I knew in my head what we were all doing,” Shelby explains.

The physical demands of the suit were intense. Al Coulter praises her resilience, noting that the weight of the suit left marks on her nose: “As soon as you said action, she was right back there, just banging it out every time. Amazing!”

“The suit was probably over a third of my own body weight,” Shelby recalls. “I probably weighed like 95 pounds when we shot that, and it was probably 35 pounds. People ask, was it hot? It was hot, but probably the worst part of it was the weight.”

Michael C. Gross, the executive producer, visited the set to see how Shelby’s performance was going. “He said, ‘Don’t be the dancer that I know you are, just get in there and be gritty and be mean. Just go out and have fun.’ So I was just trying to rough it up a lot on the set, make it not so dainty or perfect or dance-like, just to try and make it work for the character. It was so much fun, and they really allowed me to play with it,” Shelby enthuses.

Still, even enthusiasm has its limits. “We’d worked for about an hour, and they’d say, okay, we’re gonna take a break. They’d take the head off. I wouldn’t get out of the costume, but they’d take the head off so I could have water, get some air, and sit down. There was a time that I pushed it because we were in the middle of the scene and I didn’t want to stop. They’re like, ‘Are you okay? You’re alright?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, let’s just keep shooting. We’re almost done.’ And then Tim is directing me, ‘Okay, Robin, we need you to turn around and go left. Robin? Robin!!’ And I wasn’t even answering. ‘Get her out,’ they shouted.

“You try to be the trooper…when you’re new and just want to please everybody. But lesson learned, yeah, absolutely,” Shelby admitted. “But I’d do it all again,” she adds.

Despite the technical challenges and physical demands, there were plenty of lighthearted moments on set as well.

Robin Shelby in costume on the bluescreen stage. (Credit: Columbia/Sony & ILM)

Bill Murray’s Antics

Bill Murray was known to be an unpredictable presence on set, providing some much-needed levity during the intense production process. One day, he arrived at the effects shop. “I didn’t realize how tall Bill Murray is (he’s 6’ 2”),” says Siegel. “And he was messing around with Robin, who’s tiny (4′ 11″), and he was picking her up like a child, and dancing around with her. He was hilarious.” For Shelby it was a surreal moment, “I was a big Saturday Night Live fan, I still am. And so he was one of my heroes at the time…so it was pretty amazing…. He asked if he could pick me up. And he picked me up over his head…. He was actually very sweet to me. You just never knew what he was going to do next.”

Effort vs. Outcome

With the crew rehearsals helping them find the limitations of the suit and the animatronic head, they began to hone the performance with some impressive results.

As Tim Lawrence told Cinefex, “Once we saw the subtlety of the expression that was possible, Slimer suddenly had an incredible life to him that I had never seen in such a character before. To see his face light up from very sad to very happy was a wonderful thing. The scene I was most happy with was one that they just threw at us. I wasn’t sure we could even do it because it was a 30-second shot without a cutaway. In it, Louis gets off the bus and heads off down the sidewalk. At this point, Slimer and he are on friendlier terms. Suddenly, Slimer enters frame, rushes intently up to Louis and pats him on the shoulder. From his motions, it is obvious he wants to go with Louis really badly, but Louis tells him he can’t and Slimer gets all sad. Then Louis tells him something that makes him happy, and Slimer gives Louis a big wet kiss with his tongue coming out and licking him. Then he does a spin and flies off. Well, we did that all in one cut and it looked wonderful. I had never seen a rubber character do what Slimer had done.”

“For that scene, they gave me a tape of it because it was shot in New York. And I had to listen to the dialogue so I could know the exact timing. I had probably listened to that hundreds of times just to get Rick Moranis’ dialogue and timing,” explains Shelby.

“Michael just flipped – he thought the performance was excellent. But at the same time, he told us that they might not be able to use the shot – and ultimately it did not make it into the film,” Lawrence had noted.

Despite completing all of the storyboarded shots, Slimer’s role in the final cut of the film was indeed scaled back considerably. Gross again explained in Cinefex: “Whenever he was in there, it seemed like he was really an intrusion. At first we thought the answer was to add more of him, so we had an ongoing confrontation between Louis and Slimer in which Louis was constantly trying to catch him. We thought it would be funny and at screenings we expected the audience to cheer and laugh when they saw him again. But nothing. No reaction. The audience was looking at it as a fresh movie. There were a lot of kids who loved to see him, so we knew we could not abandon him completely, but he never really worked with the audience the way we expected. Ultimately we decided less was better, and in the final film we limited him to two very quick shots.”

Siegel takes a philosophical approach, “From my own experience working in the business as long as I have, I just assume that some of the work’s gonna be cut…. His presence in the movie was questionable from the beginning. So again, I wasn’t surprised if some of his shots were removed.”

The disappointment is palpable for Shelby. “I think that’s probably the most bummed out I was…. Everybody just did such a great job on putting that all together.” But for the 20-year-old, little did she know that one day she’d get a call from Paul Feig to reprise the role in the 2016 reboot Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, this time providing the voice for “Lady Slimer.”

A Legacy of Experimentation

The experience of working on Ghostbusters 2, was always about the spirit of experimentation. Slimer’s evolution from the chaotic “ugly little spud” in the original Ghostbusters to a more cartoonish, mechanized character in Ghostbusters 2 stands as a testament to ILM’s relentless pursuit for innovation. Despite the technological limitations of the time, Slimer’s creation helped pave the way for future advancements in animatronics and practical effects. As Siegel concludes, “Every project has its challenges, but the lessons you learn set the stage for the next big breakthrough.”

While ILM pushed the envelope with cutting-edge animatronics, the process also highlighted the enduring importance of human performers. As Coulter reflects, “We overreached a bit. The software itself was very rudimentary. Everything was so experimental back then.” He highlighted that, despite the ability to program precise facial movements, human performers remained more adaptable and agile in responding to the creative needs of a scene. “At one point they brought the director and he looked at it and kind of went, ‘Could you make him incredulous at this one point?’ Er…. We don’t have an incredulous button here. It’s like turn the computer off, bring the puppeteers back in, and off we go again. A computer is not going to have any idea how to convey anger or emotion,” Coulter remarks, noting that even today, animators still rely heavily on human actors for motion capture, using them as the source for animation.

An Ongoing Partnership Between Practical and Digital

ILM’s current director of research and development Cary Phillips explains that physical puppets still hold a vital role in modern productions. “We often get called on to build digital models of physical puppets that perform on set, to execute performances that the physical models can’t. Grogu [from The Mandalorian] is a recent example. Physical models are an inspiration for the actors and everyone on set, as well as for animators who bring the digital version to life.”

He adds that some directors also prefer digital puppets that retain the movement style of their physical counterparts. “I think our human eyes are attuned to certain qualities of movement that we find appealing and comfortable because they suggest a physical medium at work. But that’s done by hand; there’s usually no automatic connection between the physical model and the digital.”

The challenge remains how to make a puppet, digital or physical, feel alive. “A frequent criticism of computer animation, sometimes legit and sometimes not, is that it can look too polished and smooth,” says Phillips, “lacking the spontaneity of a live performance, the unintentional quirks that make a character seem alive. Great animators can create this, but it’s hard. That’s one of the lasting appeals of motion capture, although it also introduces an entirely new set of technical challenges and limitations. Ideally, capture devices are simply an alternative to the keyboard and mouse as a way of describing movement, for use when appropriate.”

Phillips further reflects on the legacy of those who came before him and the evolving boundaries, or lack thereof, in modern visual effects. “Discovery is a vital part of the creative process. Something might feel like a mistake while it’s happening but turn out afterwards to have an appealing quality. The best tools let artists experiment quickly and work iteratively. One of the benefits of a computer graphics model is that it can do things that a physical model can’t, and we often get asked to make models and characters move in ways that violate the laws of physics. Leap tall buildings in a single bound. Cheat to get the action in the frame. So, there are no absolute boundaries—you can make it do anything. Even move in a way that would rip a real person apart. It’s an awesome power, but it takes real artistry to keep it looking plausible and appealing, even if it doesn’t look technically ‘real.’”

At Lucasfilm and ILM’s headquarters at the Presidio in San Francisco are halls lined with artifacts from the company’s rich history—matte paintings, spaceship models, and optical effects equipment. And around one corner, encased in acrylic, lies Slimer from Ghostbusters 2. His still vibrant green latex skin, now shrunken with age, reveals the servos and pneumatic cylinders beneath. It serves as a poignant reminder to all who pass by that character animation has deep roots in the physical world.

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Jamie Benning is a filmmaker, author, podcaster and life-long fan of sci-fi and fantasy movies. Visit Filmumentaries.com and listen to The Filmumentaries podcast for twice-monthly interviews with behind the scenes artists. Find Jamie on X @jamieswb and as @filmumentaries on Threads, Instagram and Facebook.

Take a closer look at how the ILM Vancouver team built a new world of stylized action for Japanese icon Ken Sato, also known as Ultraman, and how they pushed the visual envelope with a bold aesthetic as ILM steps back into animated features with Netflix’s Ultraman: Rising.

By Adam Berry

Netflix Ultraman: Rising marks the first fully animated feature production for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) since 2011’s Rango. The story chronicles the adventures of Ken Sato, and his superpowered alter ego known to the world as Ultraman. The film is a love letter to the 1966 Japanese superhero television show Ultraman, with the heart of the story exploring the importance of family in all of its forms as Sato takes on the responsibility of raising a baby kaiju named Emi.

A tender family moment shared between Emi, Mina and Ken Sato. — A tender family moment shared between Emi, Mina and Ken Sato (Credit: Netflix).

The monster-sized task of taking Japan’s beloved superhero, transforming the character to be fully animated and introducing him to a global audience was a dream come true for the film’s directors Shannon Tindle and John Aoshima, who had always been fans of the Japanese franchise.

With production on Ultraman: Rising beginning in the spring of 2021, the film required 1,578 visual effects shots and over 1,300 assets to be built. All 165,169 frames of the entire 108 minute feature were created by over 650 ILM artists across three of their global studios in London, Vancouver, and the former location in Singapore.

With London acting as the hub for the show, led by visual effects supervisor Hayden Jones, and Singapore providing support, it was actually ILM Vancouver that contributed the majority of work done on the film with over 300 artists assigned to the project. Every asset seen in the film, from the monstrous kaijus to Ultraman himself, with an additional 600-plus shots from the film’s total count were all built in Vancouver.

The Vancouver studio first opened its doors back in 2012 in the heart of Hollywood North’s historic neighborhood known as Gastown. ILM has led the visual effects industry in Vancouver over the past decade having worked on many large scale productions locally such as the epic Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023).

Leading the Vancouver team was associate visual effects supervisor, Tania Richard who tells ILM.com, “the work consisted of a global initiative to repurpose ILM visual effects toolsets into a robust feature animation pipeline that would provide flexibility and a stylistic consistency throughout the production. ILM Vancouver was responsible for building the character and environment assets on the show, working closely with the London and Singapore teams to refine and streamline elements that could be shared across multiple sites, along with producing a large scope of shot-work.”

Ultraman meets a baby kaijou that he comes to call Emi for the first time. — Ultraman meets a baby kaijou that he comes to call Emi for the first time (Credit: Netflix).

Having already worked closely with one of the film’s directors, Shannon Tindle on Netflix feature Lost Ollie (2022), the Vancouver team attributes the key to their success on Ultraman: Rising to their close collaboration with Netflix. This project provided them with the opportunity to build upon their relationship with Tindle, and to engage with him creatively. This close collaboration both inspired and empowered the team to share their ideas on a level that not all artists are given the chance to experience.

“The Ultraman clients were one of the best I’ve ever worked with,” shares final layout lead, Hayley Kim.“There were many opportunities to exchange creative ideas with the directors. The clients even visited the Vancouver studio in person to talk one-on-one with the artists.”

Directors Tindle and Aoshima came into the project with a clear vision, but entrusted ILM to bring fresh ideas and creative solutions that would enhance the work. “They valued the team’s input; empowered us with the belief that collective creativity would elevate the overall quality of the film. They achieved this without delaying decision making, or production time,” says CG supervisor Jeeyun Sung, who expressed her gratitude for having the directors readily available, which provided a valuable learning experience for the team and helped to speed up the production process.

The creative collaboration between both the Netflix and ILM teams inspired the use of new techniques that are not usually embraced in visual effects. With a hero this big, and a new global audience to be introduced to, the film needed a fresh new approach to the animation not yet seen in a feature film. Having other hit animated superhero feature films already on the audience’s radars, such as Sony’s Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018), meant finding a new look for Ultraman.

Ultimately, a painterly approach to shape the film’s aesthetic was decided upon, and as you can see when watching the film, every frame looks like it came straight off of a canvas. “Finding a painterly approach to our assets needed a certain amount of testing and collaboration between departments at the start of the project,” explains Tania Richard. “Implying detail and form when and where mattered; this meant leaning into more traditional artistic approaches and embracing individual instincts. Once a look was agreed upon, it was important to lock down methodology early enough to execute what was an ambitious schedule and volume of work.”

The Netflix art department team, led by art director Sunmin Inn and production designer Marcos Mateu-Mestre, brought their creative vision and thrilling concepts early on in the production process, generously offering the ILM team stylistic guidance as they developed the look and feel for the direction that the animation would ultimately go.

Sung shares, “The one thing that will always stick with me is a quote from the art director, Sunmin at Netflix, ‘just use illegal colors’. As production neared completion, those illegal colors were the norm and we could hardly believe all of our eyes had adjusted to the vision.” The beautiful color scripts and art direction allowed the team space to explore bold and vibrant color palettes to tell Ultraman’s story.

Mecha Gigantron, Emi, Ultradad and Ultraman form the ultimate team up to finish the fight with Dr. Onda. — Mecha Gigantron, Emi, Ultradad and Ultraman form the ultimate team up to finish the fight with Dr. Onda (Credit: Netflix).

With all 1,300-plus assets being built in Vancouver, one of the biggest challenges on the show was creating a robust animation pipeline that would maintain stylistic uniformity, be shared across multiple sites, have various artists working on shots simultaneously and have the work be executed with consistency. There needed to be enough flexibility for addressing creative notes and refinement. It needed to be built in so that the workflow remained efficient, with stylized techniques such as cross-hatching and linework being developed in toolsets to be shared with the London and Singapore sites.

“Embracing a more creative, painterly approach to building assets was key, such as understanding the balance between suggestive and refined detail, as well as developing stylistic tools that referenced the visual graphic language often seen in anime and manga,” details Richard.

Additional research and development time was required for each team across every part of the workflow; the team’s objective being to find the right balance between 2-dimensional (2D) graphic elements, such as outlines, texture details, cross hatching and the more realistic 3-dimensional (3D) rendering, a process with many possible directions.

“Once we achieved the imagery that became the look of our film, we adhered to the ground rules and shared the know-how between sites and sequence teams to avoid reinventing the wheel; revisiting the questions we had already answered,” says Sung.

Ultimately, a significant part of the ILM Vancouver team’s task was to explore the concepts that would define the film’s style, establish a look that would not only stand out among other animated features, while also being robust enough for the crew to carry through 1,600-plus shots. In the end, the challenge of building the beautiful world of Ultraman: Rising was worth the long days as every magnificent pixel of the film are generated assets created internally and exclusively by ILM.

The stylized animation needed to showcase every magnificent detail of the ultra-sized action sequences and spectacle that a hero like Ultraman brings to the big screen as he battles the larger than life kaijus through the streets of Tokyo. For the ILM Vancouver team, one of the highlights was working on the film’s opening sequences where Ultraman faces off against a kaiju called Neronga, which was ironically one of the last beats of the film to be executed.

“The dynamic battle sequences definitely stand out in my memory, particularly the fight scene between Ultraman and Neronga,” shares Kim, who was inspired to study classic Japanese monster films to pull ideas from scenes, like this one and Ultraman’s fight with Gigantron.

The battle with Neronga sequence, known internally as MUL (Meet Ultraman), consisted of nearly 60 action-packed shots with dynamic moving cameras, set against the colorful and complex streets of Akihabara, a bustling section of Tokyo adorned with vibrant lights, billboards, and crowds. All of these elements had to embrace a certain amount of interaction between our hero and his monstrous adversary, who are entangled in a clumsily destructive confrontation. Richard says, “It was important in the development of our environment assets for each neighborhood to reflect reality, from the elevation of buildings to details such as street signs and road markings, and our Akihabara set was no exception.”

Ultraman battles with Gigantron. — Ultraman battles with Gigantron (Credit: Netflix).

ILM Vanouver’s model supervisor, Mark Keetch, led the environment build, paying close attention to references provided by the Netflix Art Department, along with detailed research by the ILM team. The lighting and compositing teams, led by our CG supervisor Jeeyun Sung and comp supervisor Aaron Brown, also implemented various techniques developed throughout the production to create the exciting and highly stylized feast of imagery which were key components to the success of this sequence.

Sung shares, “The result exceeded our expectations. Every artist brought so much creativity to each of their shots, and by then we had built a Swiss army knife’s worth of knowledge of how to handle the style. Everyone was truly having fun! The energy was palpable, and I believe it contributed to creating stunning visuals!”

The action only grew larger and more epic from one battle sequence to the next; enhanced by the imaginative work and creative solutions that the ILM team worked tirelessly to innovate. Much like Ken Sato’s relationships with Emi and his father throughout, the Vancouver team were united in their efforts and passion to bring this epic story to audiences across the world, and truly capture the spirit of the character that directors Tindle and Aoshima care so deeply for. ILM’s team spirit can be felt with every frame as their own experience working on the film was just as meaningful.

“Working on the Ultraman team was filled with nothing but positive memories from start to finish,” shares Hayley Kim, who was given her first leadership opportunity at ILM on Ultraman: Rising.“It was incredibly fulfilling to see the final result at the screening, knowing that ILM was involved from beginning to end. I hope there will be more opportunities in the future to work on such creative projects.”

“Ultraman was a relatively rare feature animation project for ILM after a long time had passed since Rango,” explains Jeeyun Sung, who resides in New York, USA, but worked intimately with the ILM Vancouver team over the course of the project. This created an exciting energy for all crew members, from the bottom to the top. We faced new pipeline issues to solve, had new roles and language that needed reshaping. But the prospect of carving a new path for future animation projects at ILM kept us all abuzz. We felt incredibly happy and fortunate to have this opportunity.”

“Our Vancouver team was a delight to work with, and the collaboration between ILM globally was a unique experience,” concludes Tania Richard, who led the Vancouver team through a memorable creative journey which produced one of the most beautiful animated features to ever be seen on screen. “Everyone embraced the creative challenges on the show in a way that continually inspired the team to go above and beyond what was expected, and the resulting body of work is beautiful.”

There are over 7,500 kilometers between Ken Sato’s home in Tokyo and the team in Vancouver that built the vibrant new world seen in Ultraman: Rising. It took two years, and countless hours, but the final product is a breathtaking addition to the Ultraman franchise, and a bold new direction for ILM as they begin to expand their catalog of animated projects, including the recently released Transformers One (2024). Two worlds came together across great distances to bring this story to life by ILM’s passionate artists who knew the magic it would take to to effectively showcase the heart of Ultraman: Rising.

Ultraman punches his fist into the air. — (Credit: Netflix).

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Adam Berry is the Studio Operations Manager for the ILM Vancouver studio. His passion for film led Adam to ILM in 2022, coming from an extensive career across different sectors of the hospitality industry including cruise ships, luxury hotels and resorts. If he’s not at the movies or traveling to new destinations, you can find Adam staying active and exploring Vancouver.

ILM’s Sydney studio took on everything from digital creatures to CG environments for this adaptation of a beloved Disney Parks attraction.

By Lucas O. Seastrom

The Hatbox Ghost in Haunted Mansion. — The Hatbox Ghost, performed by Jared Leto. (Credit: Disney)

For nearly 40 years, Industrial Light & Magic has had a close relationship with Disney Parks. They have not only created visual effects for attractions themselves, from Captain EO and Star Tours in the 1980s to Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind in recent years, but have also worked on feature film adaptations of attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and Jungle Cruise (2021).

2023’s Haunted Mansion is another adaptation of a beloved attraction, which first premiered at Disneyland in 1969 and later at Walt Disney World in 1971. Director Justin Simien brought distinctly apt qualifications to the project, having worked as a Disneyland Resort cast member during his film school days at Chapman University. “Whenever I was in Disneyland, it was like being inside of a movie,” he tells ILM.com. “I would go on the rides over and over again, and I’d get chills in the same spots and catch my breath in the same places. I realized that this was cinema. It’s a theme park that’s physically happening around me, but the tools of the trade are the same.

“There’s production design, sound design, lighting, dialogue, character, and story,” Simien continues. “It sounds like something you’d say in a press interview, but it’s true – I remember going on The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean and thinking, ‘I need to figure out how to translate this to what I want to do as a filmmaker.’ Walt Disney and his artists brought us into these fantasy places. That’s the art. That’s the thing I needed to figure out. So for me, it all felt very complementary. Working at Disneyland was just another way of escaping into the movies.”

Simien’s approach to bringing Haunted Mansion to the screen was as complex as the vision of the attraction’s original creators. “I was really fascinated by the constant conversation that the Imagineers had about how scary it should be or how funny it should be,” Simien comments. “It was such an interesting way to make something unique. It’s not horror in the traditional sense. You’re not walking through a haunted house at Universal Horror Nights or something like that. But it’s not straightforward Disney either. It’s very subversive and there’s a lot of hidden, kind of dark stuff going on.”

Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota approaches the Mansion’s front door with a bluescreen extension behind her. (Credit: Justin Simien/Disney)

Simien and his team were able to visit the Disneyland Haunted Mansion in the off-hours, where current Imagineers helped them to understand its distinct narrative brilliance. “When you’ve made your way up through the Mansion, you’ve turned a corner, and you’re looking down into the dining room,” Simien explains. “All of the swirling dancing ghosts are there and ghost heads are coming out of the organ. It’s a culmination of all the different effects in the ride, the Pepper’s Ghost effect in particular. Even as an adult, when I know how it’s done, it takes my breath away. There are a couple of moments in the movie where we’re working from the same point of view. We pay homage. The ride has this build-up with specific timing and pacing.”

Simien took his cinematic leads from works in the 1980s and ‘90s, such as Ghostbusters (1984) and Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and the films of Tim Burton. He also went back to source material shared by the Disney Imagineers, including Robert Wise’s The Haunting from 1963. “There are so many parallels in the production design of that movie and the attraction,” he notes. “You see very subtle elements in our movie that are like that. There are slanted mirrors and shots where you look through a doorway and it’s a kind of off-angle. You get a claustrophobic ‘things are not right with the world’ feeling without really doing anything, just designing things a certain way.”

From a visual effects standpoint, Simien envisioned a mix of practical and digital techniques. “I wanted as many practical effects as I could get,” he says, “which I knew was always going to be a battle [laughs]. The movie is so fantastical. This wasn’t a typical horror movie where you hide the monster. It’s a Disney movie. There’s an expectation that you’ll get to see the ghosts. I wanted them to have a physicality, to be people in make-up and costumes moving on wires. We needed to ground the movie as much as possible in those things.”

ILM was one of multiple effects vendors on the project, and initially planned to contribute a modest sum of around 400 shots, overseen by Sydney-based visual effects supervisor Bill Georgiou and visual effects producer Arwen Munro. American-born, Georgiou spent nearly 15 years at Rhythm & Hues, climbing the ranks from rotoscope artist to compositing supervisor and sequence supervisor. He later worked as the onset visual effects supervisor on the DisneyXD program, Mighty Med, before joining ILM and moving to Australia in October 2021.

Coincidentally, Georgiou was an apt choice for Haunted Mansion, having known production visual effects supervisor Edwin Rivera for many years at Rhythm & Hues, not to mention Justin Simien himself. They had met through a mutual friend, editor Phillip Bartell, who cut Simien’s Dear White People (2014), as well as Haunted Mansion. “Edwin is very supportive and collaborative,” Georgiou tells ILM.com. “At the beginning, we were doing mostly set extensions, which is pretty straightforward. I think that he and Justin were impressed by the level of photorealism we were able to achieve, especially with the Mansion. Every shot of the Mansion has some CG, including the grounds around it. Another vendor, DNEG, was also doing some interior work, and we’d help create the views out the windows.”

A first-floor exterior of the Mansion was constructed onset. (Credit: Justin Simien/Disney)

A final frame shows the complete Mansion with ILM's extensions. — A first-floor exterior of the Mansion was constructed onset. (Credit: Justin Simien/Disney)

Initially, Georgiou’s Sydney team worked only with ILM’s former Singapore studio, which being closer in time zones, shared the same schedule. “ILM has the best of the best,” Georgiou says. “Everyone was an amazing collaborator and shared their opinions. It was very open.” Principal photography had taken place in Georgia back in the United States, where ILM’s Andrew Roberts acted as onset visual effects supervisor. Georgiou and Munro also made a visit to Los Angeles to meet directly with the client, something Georgiou describes as essential to their continued partnership as the workload grew unexpectedly.

Reshoots would require further effects work involving an elaborate scene at the movie’s climax, where Ben (LaKeith Stanfield) confronts the villainous Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto). “All of a sudden, we had more than twice as many shots as we started with,” Georgiou explains, “a CG human-like ghost character, and digi-doubles. It became an immense project, with over 1,000 shots. With a very short schedule, I think ILM knocked it out of the park. We had about 700 new shots, and Sydney became the hub for London, Vancouver, and San Francisco, as well as an additional vendor, Whiskytree. It became a global team. For my first real experience starting a project from the beginning at ILM, it was one of the best.

“When I first started on Stuart Little in 1998,” Georgiou continues, “one of the compositors who came in was R. Jay Williams, and he ended up being a senior compositor on Haunted Mansion [out of ILM San Francisco]. He had taught me so many things as a young roto artist, one of which was how to be nice to everybody. He always said hello and goodbye to everybody, one of the nicest, classiest people I’ve met in the industry, and I was able to finally tell him that on this project. It was so cool.”

During principal photography, a large portion of the Mansion was constructed as a physical set. “Mentally, psychologically, it was important to have a real mansion to shoot in,” Simien explains. “We could all get used to that physical space.” Other portions of the house incorporated bluescreen, including the sequence when Ben enters the ghost realm, a sort of alternate dimension within the Mansion where the hallways shift and rotate. This was amongst the work ILM received in the additional batch.

Actors Chase Dillon (left) and LaKeith Stanfield onset behind the first-floor exterior of the Mansion. (Credit: Justin Simien/Disney)

“It was quite interesting work,” Georgiou says. “Not only were we matching scans of the hallway reference that had been captured onset, but we were also matching the look to some of the previous work that DNEG had done. We then created animation for the rotations and how they would section off. The way they’d filmed onset with bluescreen was really well done, which made our work easier. The lighting was a challenge because there are candles and sconces on the wall, so you have these pools of light. The D.P. [Jeffrey Waldron] had very specific notes about how it should look. The chandeliers are swinging. Many puzzles to figure out, which is one of the best parts of visual effects. Overall, that sequence was one of the most successful, and it’s so cool that they used it in the poster.”

Of course, the appearance of 999 happy haunts would be the core element of Haunted Mansion’s visual effects. “Edwin Rivera used this term, ‘ectoplasmic effervescence’ for the ghosts, which has a Ghostbusters feel to it,” explains Georgiou. “It was fun to look through the history of cinema to find inspiration, but also figure out how we wanted to do things differently and create something that was fresh. Justin has such an incredible cinematic vocabulary. He’s looking at Kubrick and Hitchcock, and you can see that in how he’s framing shots. I felt like I was gaining plenty of knowledge.”

Another reference for Georgiou was Poltergeist (1982), one of ILM’s first client productions. “Poltergeist was very influential for me, especially when we were creating these skeletal ghosts that fly around. That was all connected to Poltergeist and the style they used for the ghost who comes right to camera. It feels really light-based but then there’s a skeleton face. Also, the way they use flares in Poltergeist was very influential for the last sequence of Haunted Mansion.”

A number of the prominently featured ghosts were performed by actors in costume and make-up. At times, ILM used digital doubles to replace them, each of which had to be modeled and textured. Others were entirely created with computer graphics, including the swarm of skeletal ghosts in the finale, which were original designs by the ILM Art Department. “The ghosts had a sort of x-ray feel to them,” says Georgiou. “It wasn’t a straightforward bone texture. We had to come up with how they glowed, both in day and night environments. They all had various types of clothing. Some had armor, or robes, or hoods. With all that comes a lot of creature work to get the costumes flowing properly. Then there are shots with hundreds and hundreds of them, as many as 600 or 700 at a time, which required crowd work. Our animation crew did hero shots, and they had the best time animating them. When they flank the Hatbox Ghost, they aren’t just standing there, but they’re chomping their teeth or doing little things with their hands. It’s subtle but it’s all there.”

A CG ghost moves through the Mansion’s library. (Credit: Disney)

The fan-favorite Hatbox Ghost is part of the lore of the Disney Parks attraction, and as the film’s chief villain, many different components went into his creation. “On the set, we had a great stuntperson named Colin Follenweider,” explains Simien. “We spent a lot of time discussing the physicality of the Hatbox Ghost, why he would walk a certain way. So he was in a suit on the set with a blue face. Then with Jared [Leto], we captured his voice. Then all of that goes into a blender at ILM where we have a team of animators fine-tuning every aspect of the performance. It’s a real amalgamation of a few different traditions.”

Georgiou explains that ILM’s fellow vendor, DNEG, had created the initial character model to produce an early batch of shots. “But it was never meant to be seen in bright lighting or anything like that,” he continues. “Every plate had the stunt actor. A human face with flesh and skin is very different from a more skeletal face. We had to figure out things like, how does the neck work? A skeletal neck wouldn’t fit around the wide neck of a human stunt performer. We were able to hide a lot of that behind the scarf he’s wearing. We had to figure out how the hat sat on his head. Onset, it was a little too low, but if it was too high, it looked more like a cowboy hat. There were a lot of challenges.

“Then there’s the clothing,” Georgiou continues. “In that final sequence, the earth is breaking apart, all of these ghosts are rising up. He has 999 ghosts, and he’s trying to get the last one so he can bring the ghost realm into the human realm. There’s a lot of shaking and wind. The stunt actor was on wires, and the clothing didn’t have much movement. In some shots, we kept the body and clothing and did a face and hat replacement. For around half of the shots we used a fully-CG Hatbox Ghost. The look development team worked very hard to match it to the actor onset. It’s pretty seamless.”

The Hatbox Ghost attempts to pull Ben into his ghostly realm. (Credit: Disney)

Georgiou explains how the character model was given new animation controls for his expanded performance. “We built that whole rig and made small controls for the wrinkles under the eyes, really small details in the face. It was really exciting. Our animation supervisor, Chris Marshall, helped us develop a lot of the facial performance for the Hatbox Ghost. I can’t wait to do another character like that.

“I kind of grew up doing shows like Garfield, Scooby-Doo, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Golden Compass where there are so many different types of visual effects,” Georgiou continues. “Haunted Mansion is very similar. We had ocean surfaces, a tsunami wave in an apartment along with its destruction, both interior and exterior. There were various effects elements, set extensions, digital doubles, crowd work, so many different kinds of shots. The Hatbox Ghost was a dream come true. Doing CG characters and placing them in live action was what I was raised on. It was a great opportunity to work on it. I’m so proud of our entire team. We have some incredible artists and I was the one who was lucky to be able to work with them.”

For Simien, the chance to tell a fantasy story laden with visual effects fulfilled his childhood dreams. “I grew up on effects-heavy films,” he says. “I’d lose myself in Star Wars, Star Trek, and X-Men. There wasn’t language for being a filmmaker when I was a kid. No one in my family talked about being a director. But what I would do is get home with the house to myself (I was a latch-key kid), put on a John Williams soundtrack, and pick up action figures and make them fight in these epic battles. I’d keep one eye closed to control the depth of field [laughs]!

“I didn’t know that I was directing,” Simien concludes. “I didn’t know that was a thing you could get paid for, but that’s what I did for fun. Having that big canvas is just part of my DNA. My first film was made for just over a million dollars, but it looks like it was made for more. To me, scale and cinematic spectacle is part of the fun of it. No matter what kind of story I’m telling, whether it’s something small and emotional or big and crazy like Haunted Mansion, I’m always going to push to see more in the world.”

The Hatbox Ghost takes his final plunge. (Credit: Disney)

Read about Skywalker Sound’s work on Haunted Mansion, including more from director Justin Simien.

Lucas O. Seastrom is a writer and historian at Lucasfilm.

Take a deep dive into the history and lore behind the starship designs created by ILM and introduced 40 years ago in The Search for Spock.

By Jay Stobie

Written and produced by Harve Bennett, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) afforded actor Leonard Nimoy his first opportunity to direct a Star Trek feature. With Ken Ralston as visual effects supervisor, the film also supplied Industrial Light & Magic with the chance to leave its own indelible legacy on the Star Trek franchise. ILM’s work on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) had included a collaboration with the Lucasfilm Computer Division which yielded the first all-CG sequence in a feature film, yet the company had an even greater impact on the film series’ third installment.

Among its many contributions to Star Trek III, ILM tackled the monumental task of designing and building five major starship and space station models that were introduced in the film. Though crafted specifically for this project, those steadfast exterior designs became staples in the Star Trek universe and appeared in prominent scenes across numerous films and television series. As we celebrate The Search for Spock’s 40th anniversary, let’s examine the long-lasting nature of ILM’s iconic creations and explore the circumstances in which they were employed in later Star Trek productions.

The Merchantman starship flies through space in Star Trek III. — The Merchantman in *Star Trek III: The Search for Spock*. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

The Merchantman: A Criminal Craft

A small, boxy vessel with a curved forward section lurked in deep space during the first act of Star Trek III, referred to as a merchantman by the film’s script. The ship carried a Klingon passenger (Cathie Shirriff) who had purchased intelligence related to the terraforming device known as Genesis. A much larger Klingon ship (more on that in a moment) lowered its cloaking device, becoming visible long enough to receive the data. Unfortunately, the Klingon operative had glanced at the information, prompting the vessel to swoop around and obliterate the merchantman with its weaponry.

From the earliest stages of pre-production on Star Trek III, the team at ILM — including Ralston, visual effects art directors Nilo Rodis and David Carson, supervising modelmaker Steve Gawley, and modelmaker Bill George — presented their creations to Nimoy and Bennett, who suggested alterations before final approval. Rodis and Carson generated concepts, while Gawley and George offered input and spearheaded model construction. The meticulous process was adaptable to each model’s role in the script, as the merchantman’s brief appearance meant it was fabricated in a relatively short amount of time. “The merchant ship was a design we threw together in a couple of weeks from a bunch of model parts,” visual effects cameraman Donald Dow told writer Brad Munson in Cinefex. “It was going to be blown up right at the very start, so there was no sense putting a lot of time into it.”

Camera operator Selwyn Eddy photographs the Merchantman miniature using ILM’s “Rama” motion-control camera. (Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

Yet, for a vessel not expected to see much screen time, the merchantman ultimately proved to be a testament to ILM’s dedication to quality, as the ship fulfilled its purpose in the film and went on to experience a revitalized livelihood in future productions. Boasting slight modifications in each instance, the merchantman reappeared as different vessels on six occasions. From a Sheliak transport carrying colonists in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s (1987) “The Ensigns of Command” to a Cardassian freighter targeted by saboteurs in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s (1993) “The Maquis, Part I,” the merchantman turned into a reliable resource for both series, as well as for Star Trek: Voyager (1995). In an intriguing twist, the merchantman — best known for being destroyed by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey in The Search for Spock — was even reconfigured to become a Klingon vessel in Deep Space Nine’s “Rules of Engagement.”

The Klingon Bird-of-Prey in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

The Klingon Bird-of-Prey: A Fearsome Fighter

An imposing warship with a head-like bridge section and angled wings, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey easily outmatched the merchantman. Commanded by a Klingon named Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), the Bird-of-Prey was armed with a cloaking device that concealed it from its enemy’s scanners. Kruge sought the power of the Genesis device, traveling to the Genesis Planet and making quick work of the U.S.S. Grissom. Despite its swift victories over lesser foes, the Bird-of-Prey soon found itself squared off against the legendary U.S.S. Enterprise. Of course, unbeknownst to Kruge, James T. Kirk’s famed vessel had been severely damaged in Star Trek II and only maintained a skeleton crew on its bridge.

Modelmaker Bill George at work on the Bird-of-Prey miniature. (Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

Perhaps the most distinctive starship ILM assembled for Star Trek III, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey model featured an intimidating green color scheme and motorized wings that could be raised above its primary hull. On top of bringing the vessel’s exterior to life, ILM pioneered the visual effect that permitted the Bird-of-Prey to decloak and become visible. “[Optical photography supervisor] Ken Smith came up with the optical effect,” Ralston shared with Nora Lee in American Cinematographer. “By using a ripple glass he threw the color sync off on each separation, so that everything is just a little out of whack. Then it all gets in sync and forms the ship.” The design impressed creatives to such a degree that, following the U.S.S. Enterprise’s destruction (yet another visual effect executed by ILM) in The Search for Spock, Kruge’s captured Bird-of-Prey — playfully renamed the H.M.S. Bounty by Kirk’s defiant crew — inherited the role of hero ship in the film’s Nimoy-directed sequel, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

Camera operator Selwyn Eddy shoots the Bird-of-Prey miniature while camera operator Ray Gilberti looks on. — Camera operator Selwyn Eddy (right) shoots the Bird-of-Prey miniature while camera operator Ray Gilberti (left) looks on. (Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

However, the Bird-of-Prey’s prolific career was only just beginning. The ship’s signature profile played key parts as other nefarious Klingon vessels across the next three Star Trek films — Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), and Star Trek Generations (1994) — and popped up in numerous The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager episodes. As with many starships that began as physical models, the Bird-of-Prey was ultimately supplemented with a CG build in the latter stages of Deep Space Nine’s seven-season run. The craft even ended up in animated configurations for Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020) and Star Trek: Prodigy (2021). Nevertheless, all the Bird-of-Prey models that followed were based on the look established by ILM’s initial build. Furthermore, the 22nd century iterations of the Bird-of-Prey and Klingon D5-class variants which debuted in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001), a prequel series set over 100 years before The Search for Spock, were tailored to reflect their lineage as in-universe predecessors to ILM’s original Bird-of-Prey from Star Trek III.

Earth Spacedock in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. — Earth Spacedock in *Star Trek III: The Search for Spock*. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Earth Spacedock: A Safe Haven in Space

As the U.S.S. Enterprise glided through the solar system on its way to a much-deserved respite from action, it was greeted by the sight of Earth Spacedock. With a mushroom-shaped upper section atop a stem extending downward, the gargantuan space station permitted entire starships to enter its massive superstructure and dock at a central core complete with repair facilities. Abuzz with ships and various shuttles, the lively starbase watched over Earth and kept the Federation’s fleet ready to serve missions of exploration and defense.

ILM’s Spacedock assignment necessitated three separate builds; namely the station’s illuminated exterior, its cavernous interior docking bay, and an interior view through the windows of a small, lounge-type set. Approximately five feet tall and three-and-a-half feet in diameter, the exterior model relied on a complex lighting system, which Ralston described in American Cinematographer. “[The Spacedock exterior] had lights inside after the door opens up and running lights that go inside. Sometimes it is hard to sync up all those functions with the motion control system. But I think it worked nicely.”

The issue of conveying the sheer size of a docking area able to house a multitude of starships received ILM’s innovative attention and expertise. “We found that the interior demanded some degree of atmospheric haze, even though there probably wouldn’t be any in outer space. It just needed help to look slightly degraded — not so crisp and clean,” visual effects cameraman Scott Farrar shared in Cinefex. “We ended up using blue gels on the lights and shooting in smoke for the basic fill look. Then, when we went to the light passes, we used a diffusion filter.”

ILM modelmakers work on the lighting components of the Earth Spacedock miniature. (Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

As timeless as Earth Spacedock’s inaugural performance turned out to be, the station’s unveiling soon led to its return to the big-screen. In addition to being featured in the three Star Trek films which followed immediately after The Search for Spock, Earth Spacedock appeared as several other Federation starbases — Starbase 74, Lya Station Alpha, Starbase 133, and Starbase 84 — in The Next Generation via the use of stock footage. A version of Earth Spacedock seemed to be in the midst of orbital construction in the Star Trek: Discovery (2017) episode “Will You Take My Hand?,” while the design was translated into animated form to represent Douglas Station in Lower Decks. According to in-universe lore, Earth Spacedock was retired from service and transported to Athan Prime, where it was last seen as the central hub of the Fleet Museum in Star Trek: Picard’s (2020) third season.

The U.S.S. Excelsior in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

U.S.S. Excelsior: The Transwarp Testbed

Dubbed “The Great Experiment,” the U.S.S. Excelsior acted as a testbed for an advanced faster-than-light propulsion system known as the transwarp drive. The Excelsior was spotted while berthed in Earth Spacedock, though the starship soon found itself attempting to engage its experimental engines as it pursued Admiral Kirk’s unauthorized departure aboard the Enterprise. Unfortunately for the Excelsior, Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) — the Enterprise’s chief engineer — had sabotaged the transwarp system, causing the vessel’s trial run to stall out in an abrupt and unflattering fashion.

As outlined in Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, early U.S.S. Excelsior concepts devised by Nilo Rodis and David Carson led to Bill George’s own distinctive study model and a 7 ½-foot studio model constructed with the oversight of Steve Gawley. Our first encounter with the starship coincided with the Enterprise’s arrival at Earth Spacedock, resulting in an arduous challenge for ILM — Excelsior needed to appear stationary within the confines of the station’s interior. “[The Excelsior] was shot separately from everything else. [Visual effects cameraman] Sel Eddy shot that stuff,” Ralston told American Cinematographer. “We had to match the moves so that it looked like it was locked right into the space dock. It was a pain. We had to cheat on some of the shots where there was so much trouble with the moves.” Their diligence paid off, as the majestic sequence endures as one of The Search for Spock’s most awe-inducing visuals.

The Excelsior returned in The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier, but it received its biggest chance to shine in The Undiscovered Country, which also featured visual effects by ILM. Now captained by Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), the U.S.S. Excelsior rescued the U.S.S. Enterprise-A during a crucial battle against a rogue Klingon Bird-of-Prey. The model was heavily modified for fresh cinematic escapades in Star Trek Generations, then bearing the legendary registry of the U.S.S. Enterprise-B. The Enterprise-B variant was also utilized as the U.S.S. Lakota, an upgraded Excelsior-class vessel, in Deep Space Nine’s “Paradise Lost.”

ILM’s Excelsior design prevailed via cameos in The Next Generation, as exterior shots of the vessel — now deployed to represent an entire line of Excelsior-class starships — debuted in the show’s first and second season premieres, “Encounter at Farpoint” and “The Child.” These views were subsequently reused as stock footage to depict various Excelsior-class ships in no less than ten additional episodes of the series. As with the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, ILM’s original Excelsior model served as the basis from which all future Excelsior-class physical and CGI builds stemmed. Deep Space Nine aficionados will point to the abundance of Excelsior-class vessels dispersed throughout Dominion War-era battles in “Sacrifice of Angels,” “Tears of the Prophets,” and the series’ finale, “What You Leave Behind,” as evidence that the starships were an integral part of Starfleet’s defense armada. In fact, at least three Excelsior-class vessels stayed in active service long enough to have been prepared to confront the vaunted Borg Collective in Voyager’s own season finale, “Endgame.”

The U.S.S. Grissom in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. — The *U.S.S. Grissom* in *Star Trek III: The Search for Spock*. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

U.S.S. Grissom: A Scientific Scout

On a research mission to study the Genesis Planet, the U.S.S. Grissom was classified as a relatively small science vessel. After detecting an anomalous lifeform on the planet’s surface and beaming down a landing party consisting of Lieutenant Saavik (Robin Curtis) and Doctor David Marcus (Merritt Butrick), the Grissom remained tragically unaware as Kruge’s Klingon Bird-of-Prey approached under cloak and jammed all outgoing transmissions. The Bird-of-Prey dropped its invisibility field and coalesced into view, pouncing on the Grissom and destroying the Starfleet ship with a single blast.

The Roddenberry Archive notes the U.S.S. Grissom was yet another Star Trek III design conceived of by Nilo Rodis and David Carson and built by Steve Gawley and Bill George. The Grissom stood as a departure from the traditional Starfleet aesthetic in which a ship’s primary saucer was affixed to its secondary hull by a neck-like connection. A gap separated the two elements on the Grissom, with the only structures linking them being thin pylons extending from the vessel’s warp nacelles. The ship’s tragic fate didn’t merely come down to creating the biggest explosion, as plot considerations factored into ILM’s take on the Grissom’s destruction. “I didn’t think we should do something flamboyant at that point,” Ralston pointed out in Cinefex. “If we played all our best cards at the start, we’d have nothing left to show when it came time to blow up the Enterprise.”

The Grissom’s grizzly demise did not spell the end for the distinctive vessel, as the model functioned as the template for what would become known as the Oberth-class starship line. The design reemerged as a different ship of the same class berthed within Earth Spacedock in Star Trek IV before earning a recurring spot as a variety of Oberth-class ships that encountered the U.S.S. Enterprise-D in seven episodes of The Next Generation. The design garnered a great deal of attention in “The Pegasus,” an episode in which it was presented as the U.S.S. Pegasus, a testbed for an illegal Federation cloaking device. One Oberth-class ship assisted in the rescue of the Enterprise-D’s surviving crew at Veridian III in Star Trek Generations, while others could be found in the background at the Battle of Wolf 359 in Deep Space Nine’s “Emissary” and the ILM-orchestrated Battle of Sector 001 in Star Trek: First Contact. Like Earth Spacedock and the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, the Oberth-class design found itself turned into animated form for Lower Decks, this time in the episode “First First Contact.”

Director Leonard Nimoy confers with visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston (and visual effects art director David Carson during a visit to ILM’s Kerner facility. — Director Leonard Nimoy (center) confers with visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston (left) and visual effects art director David Carson (right) during a visit to ILM’s Kerner facility. (Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)

The Search for Spock’s Legacy

Crafting memorable starships and space stations for any production is a tremendous responsibility, yet Industrial Light & Magic’s contributions to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock accomplished this lofty goal and so much more. Having not one, but five major designs go on to resurface in significant roles is an achievement beyond all expectations. A recent scene in Star Trek: Picard’s third season exemplified ILM’s incredible feat, as Kruge’s Klingon Bird-of-Prey and the U.S.S. Excelsior were both positioned around Earth Spacedock as part of the Fleet Museum’s honorary assemblage of classic starships. The everlasting nature of the designs speaks to the eternal appeal of ILM’s work. Whether the new studio models that ILM designed and built for Star Trek III were reused as they were originally constructed, recreated by other visual effects companies at a later date, or called upon by future artists to inspire their own takes on starships, the original models’ extensive influence on the Star Trek universe cannot be overstated.

Jay Stobie (he/him) is a writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to ILM.com, Skysound.com, Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Trek Explorer, Star Trek Magazine, and StarTrek.com. Jay loves sci-fi, fantasy, and film, and you can learn more about him by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

ILM’s Vancouver & London studios realized everything from ingenious facial replacements to a challenging plate composite for one cohesive action shot.

By Adam Berry

After the events of Marvel’s Hawkeye left Maya Lopez in an intense standoff with the powerful Kingpin, she finds herself now on the run from her criminal life, returning to her roots where she must confront her past and discover her true power; becoming the hero known as Echo (Alaqua Cox).

As with any Marvel production, big action set pieces and storytelling are promised elements that bring the massive scope of these heroes’ lives from page to screen. As Echo is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, with unique abilities not yet seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the action needed to deliver.

Industrial Light & Magic was called upon to create some of the biggest action sequences in the show, with work being shared between the London and Vancouver studios. All together, ILM contributed an amazing 467 shots, from start to finish, with a fast turnaround of only six months.

“ILM was awarded some really fun sequences to work on. From a thrilling train heist with a full CG environment, digidoubles and CG train; to a roller rink brawl requiring many face replacements and fight enhancements; a huge warehouse explosion and a photoreal CG woodpecker.”
–Steven Godfrey, Visual Effects Supervisor

Daredevil joins the fight in an epic faceoff against Maya during “The Oner”.

Echo is the first MCU project to be released under the TV-MA rating for mature audiences, so the visual effects team had a lot of freedom to play around with the blood and gore for the fight sequences. At the client’s request, the stylistic violence and gore from the John Wick films were used as a reference for the show.

One pivotal action sequence that ILM was tasked with creating, known as “The Oner,” was particularly complex for the team. The work on this sequence was to stitch together multiple plates and takes as the action progresses. The scene follows Maya as she makes her way along a series of hallways, fighting off a group of security guards; knocking them to the ground one by one, showcasing her martial arts capabilities. As the security guards lay unconscious, Maya is led into a larger room by a mysterious new adversary, resulting in the main fight. The action intensifies and reveals her new opponent as none other than the man without fear, another Marvel favorite, Daredevil (Charlie Cox). The two then face off in an epic duel that moves between a large open space and a tighter caged area full of weapons.

To make the scene as visceral as possible, there was a combination of making multiple plates blend seamlessly between takes. With multiple face replacement shots for the actors, blood spurts and destruction added to the environment, “The Oner” is among the most exciting sequences from the whole show.

It was challenging work for the team to get the plates to stitch together seamlessly; to hide transition points while ensuring that the action is still flowing throughout. By using a combination of wipes, warps, retimes and some manual tracking of multiple takes, ILM was able to stitch together all of these elements to form one cohesive shot.

Maya sends a deadly message to Kingpin’s army that ends with an explosive warehouse scene during Episode 2.

The biggest challenge for the team on this sequence, and others throughout the show, was face replacement work. The shots required would be fairly close to the camera and require a lot of facial performance during the intense fighting sequences. ILM became involved with the project after principal photography on Echo had wrapped, so there was limited data capture available to work with. Face replacements were especially needed for the fight sequences involving Alaqua Cox. As she is relatively new to the industry, there wasn’t a lot of data available to reference, or a Facial Action Coding System (FACS) session to capture her facial expressions, so only the footage taken during filming could be utilized.

In total, there were about 35 shots of face replacement work throughout the show. There were different approaches taken to emulate Cox’s likeness, such as trying a 2D replacement, building a 3D digidouble and using ILM’s FaceSwap.

There wasn’t enough coverage from takes to use a 2D replacement; not enough time to build a digidouble to the standard that the showrunners wanted, and not enough footage of Cox to use for an accurate Face Swap. With limited data, there was some experimentation required to figure out how to best achieve the most accurate facial performance possible.

This was vital because Cox is very expressive during the action sequences, so the facial expressions needed to have the same energy otherwise it might feel lifeless jumping between cuts.

The plan came down to using a 3D digidouble while training a Face Swap in the background, just in case it could provide anything of use. The Face Swap took three weeks to build, and was based on only 20 minutes of footage of Cox.

After some experimentation, the solution was for ILM to utilize a combination of Face Swap with a traditional digi-base setup to accurately replicate Cox’s likeness.

The results were great and provided a better likeness of the actress, adding a photographic level of realism that was difficult to achieve using only the digidouble.

“I feel like the work done here to overcome this challenge has strengthened, or expanded how we can implement something like this again.” – Tristan Myles, Visual Effects Supervisor

In Episode 3 Maya faces off against some of Kingpin’s assassins in a chaotic roller rink melee.

ILM’s contributions brought the explosive action sequences to life, while also making them feel grounded and realistic. The action continued onto a roller rink brawl, involving work to remove cables for stunt rigging, crash mattes and tricky crew removal from reflective surfaces, such as a giant disco ball; to an epic fight on a moving train, which needed extensive environment and animation work; then finally, a warehouse explosion calling for the team to replace the skyline, create explosions and augment explosion element plates.

The fight sequences and action only got bigger throughout the show, delivering some of the most thrilling sequences from any MCU project yet. The vision of bringing the pulse-pounding action of this iconic character to life was fully realized by the talented crew with artistry that only visual effects can create.

Maya sabotages a train car by planting a bomb during a heist that sends her flying to escape before it’s too late.

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The visual effects supervisor was practically a one-man operation as he joined director Gareth Edwards and crew in Thailand and the United Kingdom.

By Lucas O. Seastrom

Andrew Roberts captures an image at sunset on location of The Creator. — Roberts captures an HDRI at sunset while on location in Thailand.

Industrial Light & Magic visual effects supervisor Andrew Roberts was already a fan of writer/director Gareth Edwards when the opportunity to work on The Creator came knocking. In 2022, Roberts would join the crew on location in Thailand as ILM’s onset visual effects supervisor. Edwards had organized a streamlined team to work quickly and efficiently.

“Originally, Gareth explained that he was hoping for it to be a small team, maybe six vans driving around Thailand,” Roberts tells ILM.com. “His hope was that we’d see a location, jump out and film it. There might not be time to capture all of the typical reference material and photography that you normally would, but we’d get certain things before moving on to the next location. It was quite a guerrilla, lightweight, indie approach.”

Although The Creator did require more infrastructure than Edwards’ dream of a six-van guerrilla unit, the principle remained the same, and Roberts was the only visual effects representative onset. “There wasn’t the typical visual effects support where you have someone focusing on HDRIs, and a wrangler keeping track of the data, and a coordinator,” explains Roberts. “I would fulfill all of those responsibilities. For anything onset, I’d be there to advise and give recommendations to Gareth. But then at the same time, I was also trying to capture as much information as I could to provide a snapshot for the visual effects team. I recorded the lens, distance from the characters, lighting conditions and so forth.

“I spoke to [ILM chief creative officer] John Knoll before I went onset,” Roberts continues, “and he discussed his experiences on Rogue One [Edwards’ previous collaboration with ILM]. He said it would be lean, pretty indie-style, and you won’t get everything. So be prepared to accept that and trust that the team will be able to execute the shots and use whatever you can gather for them. That was reassuring, though obviously I agonized and wanted to get everything. But I had to let things go. My primary role was to be there for Gareth and make sure he had the support he needed.”

Admittedly, it was a lot to manage, but an assignment that kept Roberts constantly engaged with the director, cinematographers Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer, and other crew members from departments as varied as makeup and special effects. And his work continued with the end of each shooting day.

“Each night I’d transfer everything into a folder structure that listed the relevant information for each image,” Roberts says. “There were prop scans, weapons, environments, vehicles, locations, even just a plate behind an actor. It was all organized. So when I returned to L.A., I cleaned it up so that it could work inside ILM’s structure and enable people to easily find the information.” Using FilemakerPro for his information structure, Roberts had captured some six terabytes of reference single-handedly over the course of production, which wrapped around May of 2022.

Before starting on The Creator, Roberts had a long career in visual effects across film and television, including stints at Pixomondo, Scanline VFX, and Digital Dimension, among others. He joined ILM to work on Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) as part of the ILM StageCraft virtual production team. He’d also done onset work for projects like Babylon (2022), Haunted Mansion (2023) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). It was during his work on Mansion that he began preparation for The Creator. “Knowing that I was going to be the only visual effects person onset, observing the Haunted Mansion team was really helpful,” Roberts says. “They were very efficient. I watched them, asked questions and took lots of notes. They were doing a lot of shooting in low light, which I knew would also be the case for The Creator. I was able to learn which settings worked well, particularly when capturing HDRI’s.”

Andrew Roberts capturing location data along a river in Thailand. — Roberts captures data on location in Thailand.

Andrew Roberts on location in Thailand with actor Ken Watanabe. — Roberts captures data on location in Thailand.

As was the case with the ILM crew in general, one of Roberts’ earliest concerns was how to tackle the full-body replacement of live actors with artificially-intelligent robots. “Integrating photoreal robots seemed to be the biggest challenge,” he explains. “There were storyboards, but Gareth didn’t want anyone to get pigeon-holed in following them. They were aspirational, a general sketch. We’d ultimately find the shot on the day. Actors would be fulfilling the roles of these robots, and they needed to be removed from the footage, and replaced with digital robots. In environments where there is a lot of smoke, that can be really difficult. The convincing integration of the robots was something I was talking to [visual effects supervisor] Jay Cooper about a lot.”

Production designer (and former ILM concept artist) James Clyne worked with Edwards throughout production to revise the look and mechanics of both the full-body A.I. robots and simulants. The latter – A.I. beings who appear human, save for a bundle of gadgetry at the back of their heads – were another key challenge for ILM, in particular for Roberts onset. “We only had a sketch of what the mechanics in the simulants’ heads would eventually look like,” he notes. “It was also described in the script, how it would reflect the character’s emotions. How to track where that geometry sat and ensure it was convincingly integrated was another thing we spent time thinking about how to achieve.”

Edwards was unwilling to let his actors be covered in elaborate tracking markers, especially in the case of Madeleine Yuna Voyles, a child actor who plays the central character, Alphie. “The makeup department assisted me with the placement of just a handful of subtle tracking dots,” Roberts explains. “We thought about creating a template so that the marks would be in the same position for everyone. But because the actors were different sizes, it was more about just observing the individual and placing the dots where it worked best for them. That was a daily process whenever there was a simulant on the call sheet.”

Alphie the simulant child in The Creator, played by Madeleine Yuna Voyles. — A final frame of Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie.

Of less concern were a number of traditional, hard-surface sci-fi elements including tanks, aerial vehicles, and environments which the ILM team would incorporate into plates captured on location. “That’s ILM’s bread and butter,” as Roberts says. “Based on James Clyne’s designs, we’d end up with beautiful shots.” Among these was an elaborate sequence when a large American tank attacks a village along with a mix of supporting vehicles and soldiers, including automated bombs programmed to run into the enemy fray and detonate.

“The tank battle was a situation where I was able to assist,” Roberts points out. “We had storyboards that described eight to ten-feet tall bomb robots. There was a stuntman, and we found a pole that was about five feet tall. We strapped it to his upper body so it was sticking out above his head, making him closer to ten feet. Gareth could frame for the larger character. We also added some tracking marks to the stuntman’s limbs in case we needed to track his movement. We didn’t know if the robot would be running like a person or a dog. The animation team ended up developing a great run.”

Alphie attempts to stop a running a bomb robot in The Creator. — Alphie has an encounter with one of the running bomb robots.

Throughout principal photography, Roberts covered a lot of ground, often more than the main crew, which itself typically shot at more than one location per day. “During a given day we’d be at the farmhouse, and then at night we’d move to the location where the soldiers raid the A.I. base,” he explains. “There were occasions like that when Gareth would finish, the crew would start preparing a company move, and it was my opportunity to do a scan, take measurements, but then I’d hear on the radio that Gareth needed me. So we’d go and talk about the next setup and what was needed. But I still needed all those measurements! I would catch a ride back to the previous location to finish gathering as much as I could, then rush back to where Gareth was shooting. There were some moments when it was triage – what’s the one thing I can get that the artist will need the most?”

Among Roberts’ favorite locations was an abandoned industrial plant used as a facility that destroys A.I. robots. “It was really grungy, with rusty steps,” he recalls. “It had so much history to it. There were holes in the ceiling and lots of dust, so shafts of light would come through.” Another was a mining quarry used as ground zero, the location of a nuclear blast back on American soil. Roberts describes a “huge place where you’d drive this spiral road down into a quarry. Big gray walls, very stark, almost alien. There was a physical set of a few destroyed cars, which ILM then extended. The Thai crew mentioned a number of times that they’d never been there before. Gareth was the first person to shoot in a number of those locations.”

At times, “some last-minute things would come up, and you learned to pivot and adjust,” as Roberts says. “This included some of the driving scenes, like when Allison Janney [Colonel Howell] and Marc Menchaca [McBride] are in the police van and they overhear on the radio the suspects they’re pursuing have been seen. For those types of scenes, we shot on a soundstage and used a poor man’s process. We had a 4K projector, put some screens up, and Gareth selected some stock driving footage for the specific locations. Oren realized that the running time on the plate was only two minutes, but Gareth needed it to run for ten. So I took that material, loaded it into Adobe After Effects, and set it to loop, blend, and dissolve at the best points. I connected my laptop to the projector, they angled the screen to sit outside the van window, and special effects had a little hose where they sprayed rain on the windows which helped with refraction and really sold those driving shots.”

Roberts points out that “Gareth is very scrappy and that’s the ILM ethos as well. We go with the flow and are there as a creative partner, whether it’s high-concept, high-tech, or just using duct tape and bamboo sticks. Whatever the filmmaker needs, we’re there.”

Andrew Roberts deploys a drone on location for The Creator. — Roberts deploying a drone on location to capture plate elements.

Near the end of the main shoot, cast and crew assembled at Pinewood Studios in Roberts’ native United Kingdom where they primarily shot on the ILM StageCraft virtual production volume for scenes aboard the suborbital craft, NOMAD. “Having worked on Obi-Wan Kenobi, getting back on the StageCraft stage was very refreshing and familiar,” Roberts says. “The environments were created in Helios, our real-time rendering system. The team works on measurements of the physical set and then do the layout and tracking to extend from the physical into the digital.

“For me, it was interesting to be on the client side this time,” Roberts continues. “For Obi-Wan, I was on the stage team. We’d get in early before the director, cast and crew. They’d bring their material in and we’d accommodate, making adjustments based on what the D.P. and director needed. Then they shoot for the day and leave. On The Creator, I was on that crew coming in. It was interesting seeing things from that perspective and observing what ILM provided, not only in terms of the technical and creative wizardry of the Stagecraft volume, but also in their meticulous planning and careful communication, ensuring every department had what they needed.”

Before they had completed work in Thailand and moved to England, Roberts had an opportunity to direct second unit work on The Creator, which he describes as “a blessing” and “something I did not anticipate. We were in Northern Thailand, at the location where Joshua’s getaway car broke down at the crossroads. While Gareth was shooting conversations, there were these beautiful hills in the background. He came to me and explained that he needed background footage for the jetcopters when they’re flying, taking off, and landing, and could I take the drone team and shoot that material? It was wonderful to see some of that material make it into the film.”

Andrew Roberts captures location data inside a factory.

Andrew Roberts captures location data along a roadside.

After the main unit wrapped, Roberts collaborated with CG supervisor Adam Watkins in organizing all the reference information and preparing summary documents for the incoming visual effects crew. Before leaving the project, he even had the chance to contribute to a few early shots aboard the NOMAD, pulling on his skills developed in earlier roles as a generalist artist. “We had a version of that set created with Unreal Engine, which Gareth used to plan camera moves and framing,” Roberts notes. “I was able to import that real-time model into 3ds Max, and using gen tools I painted textures and got it into a good starting position. I didn’t finish any shots, but enjoyed working on a couple of those angles.”

Looking back on the experience, Roberts explains that it “really changed me in a number of ways. I was able to observe Gareth, who made the transition from visual effects artist to director, has maintained his love for sci-fi, and creates great works of art. It’s inspirational to get to know someone like that. He’s very down to earth and remains close to the art and craft of visual effects. The experience has improved my confidence in my own abilities. There were areas when I was stretched beyond what I had anticipated, more than anything I’d done before. In the past, I’d expected to have support from a couple of people, but seeing what I was able to do myself, and seeing what beautiful work ILM was able to achieve without the full compliment of resources, will stay with me.

“It’s not ideal, of course,” Roberts continues, “but it is possible to get shots done without all of the information, which is sort of the old school way. It recalibrates what is absolutely necessary for me. It’s also made me look at filmmaking slightly differently. Gareth often said that he didn’t want all of those instruments and accouterments to get in the way of the director and the actors. On other film sets, people might be watching from a video village, the signal goes down and they tell the director to stop. Gareth didn’t want any external factors to interfere with his process, so if the signal stopped, he kept shooting to maintain that pure moment with the actors. He often kept the video village out of sight so that he could rotate 360°. There were times when Oren, myself and a few crew members would be shuffling behind Gareth so he could perform a sweeping 180° camera move.

“It was really refreshing to see this approach,” Roberts concludes. “I’ve opened up my mind to what’s possible. Those ideas of being scrappy and not thinking there’s only one way to do things will keep informing me on future projects.”

Andrew Roberts captures location data on location for The Creator, including with actor Ken Watanabe. — Roberts capturing onset data while on location in Thailand, including with actor Ken Watanabe.

—

Lucas O. Seastrom is a writer and historian at Lucasfilm.

The filmmaker and Lucasfilm legend talks to ILM.com to reflect on what drew him to tell the story of the hit Disney+ series, “Light & Magic”.

Screenwriter and director Lawrence Kasdan.

How did you get involved with Light & Magic?
Several years ago my wife and I made a short documentary about a little diner that we used to eat at all the time that suddenly closed. In making that documentary with her, and cutting it with terrific people, it made me realize how much I liked the documentary format. I had never done that. We set out to meet some documentary people and I met Justin Wilkes at Imagine Entertainment. He asked me what I was interested in doing and I suggested a history of visual effects, because even though I had been around visual effects throughout my career, it occurred to me that I didn’t know much about them. The second thing that interested me were the people of Industrial Light & Magic that I had been working around for over forty years. So we both agreed that that would be a great story to tell: the history of visual effects, and the personal stories of these people. What drove these people, what was their life like, what made them want to stay at ILM as long as they did? Everyone loved the idea, so we went to work.

Lawrence Kasdan, center, on the set of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

What was your vision for the documentary?
From my very first film until today, I’ve always considered myself a humanist filmmaker. I’m interested in what happens between people, and why people make certain decisions in their lives. What chance is involved? What fate? What luck? So from the very beginning of this I was interested in learning what brought these people to this work. What were the relationships that they made when they arrived? Why did they continue to work there much longer than they expected, some for nearly half a century? What has all that meant to these amazing advancements in technology? It’s about people, and their gifts, and out of those gifts came technological advancements that boggle the mind.

Dennis Muren, left, and Phil Tippett, right, review images with Joe Johnston.

Why did you think this story should be told?
Because it’s great to see artists at work. The commitment of great craftsmen. I love to see people that have mastered a skill, and try to make it better, and don’t settle. I think it’s great to see expertise and this pure devotion to discipline, and that is always a good story to see. Dennis Muren, left, and Phil Tippett, right, review images with Joe Johnston.

John Dykstra and a fleet of miniature TIE, X-wing, and Y-wing starfighters.

How did you approach the research, and what resources did you use?
We had a fabulous team that Imagine Documentaries put together, some internal to the company, and some that were freelancers. They really knew their stuff, so it was a great luxury for me as a director. There were so many things that I wanted to ask during interviews, but the input from this incredible group of producers and writers and editors stimulated me all of the time to go in different directions during interviews.

ILM’s Paul Huston and Larry Tan on the set of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

For those that have yet to watch it, can you tell readers what the timeline of the series is?
Over the six hours we see the very birth of ILM, what happened as it came together during the production of Star Wars: A New Hope, and then off of the success of that film, how it was launched into a nearly fifty-year enterprise. We mainly follow it chronologically, but we do jump around a bit to serve the story. Part of the kick for me was that we had such a trove of archival footage, so these people might be talking about something from forty or fifty years ago, and we had stills from that moment in their career. It was incredible to be able to cut from one to the other across time, to hear them talking about a problem, and then see footage of them finding a solution. A huge part of ILM’s legacy is finding solutions to problems.

Peter Kuran, Rose Duignan, and George Lucas review effects shots for Star Wars: A New Hope.

How did you select the filmmakers that were featured in the documentary?
They are all giants, and they have all used ILM in the most expressive and innovative ways. They put pressure on themselves and then turned to ILM and said, “can you do this? Can you create something for me that I have never seen before?” ILM would always say yes. And sometimes it might be a struggle, and sometimes it might be a long process, and sometimes it might be an instantaneous solution where one of these genius people that work there would say, “I know what we could do”. These are major filmmakers that have contributed to the zeitgeist. Jim Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Bob Zemeckis, J.J. Abrams, and at the heart of it, of course, is George Lucas.

Lawrence Kasdan and J.J. Abrams on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

What was the most interesting thing you learned throughout the process of creating Light & Magic?
I think I learned what goes into creating something new, working with people you respect and depend on, and how this personal relationship then impacts the professional work. There is something beautiful about the generosity of the people that work at ILM, and through that generosity they are able to discover new frontiers and break new grounds that no one has ever been able to do.

All episodes of Light & Magic are streaming now on Disney+.

ILM | A legacy of innovative and iconic storytelling.

The Television Academy announced its winners for the 74th Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy® Awards over the weekend, celebrating today’s talent and their groundbreaking work. ILM’s creative teams were honored with an award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or a Movie for The Book of Boba Fett, alongside nominations for their work on The Witcher. This is third win for a Lucasfilm series in this category, a testament to the cutting edge work that ILM is known for.

Six-Part Docuseries Debuts Exclusively on Disney+ July 27

Disney+ released the trailer and key art for Lucasfilm and Imagine Documentaries’ “Light & Magic,” an immersive series that chronicles the untold history of world-renDisney+ released the trailer and key art for Lucasfilm and Imagine Documentaries’ “Light & Magic,” an immersive series that chronicles the untold history of world-renowned Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the special visual effects, animation and virtual production division of Lucasfilm.

Granted unparalleled access, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan takes viewers on an adventure behind the curtain of Industrial Light & Magic. Learn about the pioneers of modern filmmaking as we go on a journey to bring George Lucas’ vision to life. These filmmakers would then go on to inspire the entire industry of visual effects.

The series is directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and the executive producers are Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Justin Wilkes, Lawrence Kasdan, Kathleen Kennedy and Michelle Rejwan.

All six episodes of “Light & Magic” premiere on July 27, exclusively on Disney+.

Twitter: @DisneyPlus; @ILMVFX
Instagram: @DisneyPlus; @ILMVFX
Facebook: @DisneyPlus; @ILMVFX
TikTok: @DisneyPlus
Hashtag: #DisneyPlus

ABOUT DISNEY+

Disney+ is the dedicated streaming home for movies and shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic, along with The Simpsons and much more. In select international markets, it also includes the new general entertainment content brand, Star. The flagship direct-to-consumer streaming service from The Walt Disney Company, Disney+ is part of the Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution segment. The service offers commercial-free streaming alongside an ever-growing collection of exclusive originals, including feature-length films, documentaries, live-action and animated series, and short-form content. With unprecedented access to Disney’s long history of incredible film and television entertainment, Disney+ is also the exclusive streaming home for the newest releases from The Walt Disney Studios. Disney+ is available as a standalone streaming service or as part of The Disney Bundle that gives subscribers access to Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. For more, visit disneyplus.com, or find the Disney+ app on most mobile and connected TV devices.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Disney+ Media Relations
Shelby Cotten
Shelby.b.cotten@disney.com

Walt Disney Studios Global Publicity
Global Publicity (NY)
Derek Del Rossi
derek.del.rossi@disney.com

Lucasfilm Publicity
Ian Kintzle
ikintzle@ilm.com

Granted unparalleled access, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan takes viewers on an adventure behind the curtains of Industrial Light & Magic, the special visual effects, animation and virtual production division of Lucasfilm. Learn what inspired some of the most legendary filmmakers in Hollywood history, and follow their stories from their earliest personal films to bringing George Lucas’ vision to life. From Imagine Documentaries and Lucasfilm, and executive produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, the six-part documentary series premieres exclusively on Disney+ July 27.

Phil Tippett puts the finishing touches on the Rancor from Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.

On Friday, May 27, attendees of Star Wars Celebration will be among the first in the world to get a sneak peek at “Light & Magic” with an “illuminating” discussion panel featuring Lawrence Kasdan and Ron Howard, joined by VFX titans Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, Joe Johnston and Rose Duignan, and Lynwen Brennan, Lucasfilm executive vice president and general manager.

Join employees across Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm, ILMxLAB, and Skywalker Sound as they share stories on discovering their passions, beginning their careers, and the challenges and satisfactions of working in their current roles and departments. We hope their personal stories and recommendations inspire the next generation of young artists to break into and make their impact on the entertainment industry.

To learn more about Get in the Door, visit GetInTheDoorProject.com and watch the trailer below.

Gareth Edwards on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

Join Gareth Edwards and the Publicity Group at Industrial Light & Magic as we look back at his time directing Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Gareth discussed the cutting-edge virtual production used for the film, and the ways in which George Lucas inspired him as a filmmaker.

Tell me about the freedom you found in the virtual production-aspects of Rogue One?
John Knoll was very crucial for this, because he and the team at ILM devised a virtual environment where we could go in and look for shots. My entryway into filmmaking was through visual effects, so I understand it a bit, but a lot of VFX is kind of dark arts, which causes clients to come to visual effects companies and see VFX as magic, because no one understands what they do. The downside to that is that they can ask for things or approach scenarios in such a way that is really back-to-front, and doesn’t produce the best result. I find that storyboarding shots is really useful, but at a certain point it becomes somewhat limiting, because you’re having to invent every single detail about that shot. Whereis, in the real world, what you tend to do is you have a space, because it already exists. The light hits objects in this space a certain way, and going in, you knew you’d do a close up of someone’s face, but if you were to have them look down a little bit, and maybe move to the right, suddenly you have this beautiful composition that you wouldn’t have found with storyboarding. The trick with VFX is having that opportunity, and going, “this was the plan, but now that the ingredients are here in front of us, doing this would actually be better.” So figuring out a seamless way to do that without it being painful for the artists is important. There’s lots of ways to achieve that, but when you’re in space with spaceships, the only real way to do it—unless you’re doing what George did, which was taking footage of WWII aerial combat that would represent the final shot—is what John Knoll and Industrial Light & Magic were pushing for.

John Knoll and Alan Tudyk, in his mocap costume, on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

And what was John pushing for?
It was pre-viz animation of each section of the battle sequence. They then figured out a set up where they had an Apple iPad, with a game controller attached to it. When you moved the iPad, it could tell where it was in 3D space. They would then just loop these twenty or thirty-second chunks of animation, and I would get to hang out in these spots and just film it again and again, generating hours of footage. Then I’d go home on my MacBook and select my favorite takes, and then try to cut something together. It would be very jittery, and handheld, and not perfect. For each one we’d smooth it out by filming from another spaceship, and for another we’d keep some of that handheld-look. It felt like the process of getting those virtual shots was how we were getting the live action shots, which was, “light a space and find the shot,” versus, “tell us the shot, and we’ll invent all the pieces to create it.” It always feels more real with the first approach.

The Death Star’s Mk I Superlaser is set into place.

Like that shot of the Star Destroyer emerging from the shadow of the Death Star.
Exactly. That was a great example of John Knoll and ILM pushing for this new technology. If I remember correctly, we needed a shot of the Death Star for the trailer, but they needed it in only a few days. I remember that John got the iPad, and set up a model of the Death Star and some Star Destroyers. The important thing when devising a shot like that, is that the idea of scale is only relevant to something bigger in the shot. A typical thing you do in matte paintings, is when something needs to look really big, you paint a little human in there. It’s a trick that they used to great effect in The Empires Strikes Back. When you want something to feel big, you need to set something up to feel really big, and then show a new thing that’s even bigger than that. The idea was to have a ship that you know the scale of, like a TIE fighter, and then reveal the Star Destroyer, which feels huge, and then you reveal the Death Star which feels impossibly massive. I remember asking them, “can you do real-time shadows on this?” Once I learned that that was possible, it became so fun to reveal and conceal the ships in shadow, and find that moment where the dish slides into place. Within a few hours, we had the shots that went into the trailer, and that never would have been possible without the real-time technology that ILM was using.

An Imperial I-class Star Destroyer emerges from the shadow of the Death Star’s Mk I Superlaser.

Since Rogue One, you’ve gotten to visit ILM’s StageCraft volume in person. Having that experience, did it make you think about how you may have captured any shots differently?
I think that’s always true of technological advances in filmmaking, so yes. For sure. It feels like filmmaking in general is an archaic process. It’s over a century old, and in some ways, it hasn’t changed hardly at all – and yet this digital revolution, which is happening all around us, should drastically change the ways we make movies, but it’s been a slow process. There is so much we could do to utilize the technology we have to be more creative, and allow us to do things we couldn’t have done before. StageCraft though is a massive leap. It’s game-changing. It’s moving the industry forward.

ILM’s StageCraft in use on *The Mandalorian Season Two*.

What do you think will stay the same?
Storytelling, regardless of the medium. From the time of early humans, a million years ago until today, we have an innate need to sit around a campfire and listen to a story. Whether it’s a story about something interesting that happened that day, theorizing about why the world is the way it is. It’s absolutely hardwired into us. There’s this little glowing light. The need to paint a picture or sing a song about another person or another place. I don’t believe that that is going away anytime soon. We’ll always have an appetite for storytelling. Strangely, what I find funny is that a movie is around two hours long, and that’s about the length of time it takes for a campfire to burn out. It’s so embedded in us. That’s what cinema is, it’s us being able to dream out loud, or watch another person’s dream in real-time. I hope that stays with us. I hope in five-hundred years, people are still watching Star Wars.

The DS-1 Orbital Battle Station prepares to fire on Jedha City.

In getting into the making of film and working with Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic, were there ever moments where you needed to pinch yourself, because you were given the ability to create nearly anything you could dream up?
Funny enough, it almost felt like we had too much power, so we needed to be careful that we limit ourselves so it felt like the original trilogy. One of the early things that we did with John Knoll and ILM was the kitbashing, using the original models just like the original films. We went and bought some of the original model kits, lots of WWII, vintage-collector stuff. We started scanning those model parts in so that we could stick them onto the models we were building. What’s interesting is the subsurface scattering that goes on with those model pieces. It’s not like metal. So we were trying to recreate that model kit feeling on our ships. What’s funny though, when you get into that scenario, you realize that your memory is a little bit better than reality with some of the sets and props. The golden rule became, “let’s not do it how it was, let’s do it how we remember.” We wanted it to look and feel like how you “thought” those models looked. Also, going through the Lucasfilm Archives, the models are everywhere, and there were some designs in there that looked really cool. Those were good keys for us, because we were making something before A New Hope, but what did that mean, stylistically? Doug Chiang had a really hard task before all of us while doing Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. They took a real leap on that film from both a timeline and stylistic standpoint. It was much more Art Deco. The streamlined nature of the ships felt much more like The Rocketeer and Flash Gordon; those types of serials that inspired George Lucas to make Star Wars in the first place. And that makes sense because it takes place over 30 years before A New Hope. But for us, aesthetically, it was just before A New Hope, yet we still wanted it to feel distinct. What we did for inspiration, is we looked at the Ralph McQuarrie artwork, and the early models that had been made for A New Hope; things that had been either abandoned or improved. We sort of “reversed the car” back into that space, and where they went left, we went right. One example is that really slender, aspirational Stormtrooper that Ralph painted. He made that without a care in the world about how it would be actually realized by the costume department. We kept pointing at that, because traditionally when you put someone in armor, it can start to feel a bit bulky. We wanted something that looks like it could sprint and cause some serious damage. We tried to make armor that was slightly bendable, so it could sit just over top of the skin. We tried to cast towards that look of the troopers, someone tall and lanky. What that eventually became was the Death Trooper. That’s where the Death Troopers started. To answer your original question, we tried not to be kids in a candy store, we tried to temper that and work off the design language that existed. “With all of those limitations, what would they have done?”

The UT-60D U-wing, ‘LMTR-20’, heads for Eadu during Operation Fracture.

Did you and Greig Fraser try to match some of the old-school camera moves seen in the original trilogy?
We did. We tried to keep the vocabulary of any shots featuring Krennic and the Empire the same as those old school cinematographers. The way when someone walks by, how they would push in again to recompose based on the new position of the actors. All of these little things that would happen that were common in the late 1970s, things we don’t do so much now.

Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones) from a scene in the trailer for *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

This year being the 50th anniversary of Lucasfilm, I wanted to know what George Lucas means to you?
A lot of things come to mind. As crazy as it sounds, I think he’s underrated. I know that sounds crazy with all of his accolades. When I was a little kid, I didn’t ever really watch THX 1138 or American Graffiti. But as I got older, I would revisit those films constantly. THX is an incredible debut. It’s just an absolutely fantastic film, and one of the strongest films that came out of a first-time filmmaker in all of cinema. In terms of how bold and completely brand new it was. So many things made their way to Star Wars too. That fuzzy comms chatter. The clinical corridors. The look and feel. There was no Ralph McQuarrie, but it felt so much like George. He has such a great aesthetic and an amazing eye. It took a lot for him to make that film. Then he goes and makes the films that have inspired you, and me, and everyone like us. Even if that was all he ever did, it would have been enough. But then he goes and pushes harder, and pushes the digital technology further. Because of him, I was able to make my first film on a digital camera. I wouldn’t have been able to make my first film if it required film stock. I wouldn’t have been able to make my first film without George. Him pushing HD, and all the work he did with the technology used for the prequels, and the digital camera technology. I got into digital effects because of that, and I wouldn’t have been able to if it wasn’t for George building up everything at Industrial Light & Magic. He inspired me to want to become a filmmaker, and he gave me the tools to do it. At the end of that journey, I got to make a Star Wars film. He gave me Rogue One.

George Lucas on the set of *Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope* filming a scene aboard the ‘Tantive IV’.

Have you gotten to spend time with him?
A handful of times. This next story I say with the utmost love and admiration for the entirety of the Star Wars catalogue. But when I had my office at Pinewood, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to make this film. Everyone had The Empire Strikes Back, and A New Hope posters in their offices. To help elevate that, and to remind myself that this was Star Wars, and that I was making a Star Wars spinoff film, and I needed to have fun, I put up framed prints from The Holiday Special and Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. Those were the first spinoff films. [laughs]. Well, one day, George came to Pinewood, and he was sweet enough to come up to my office. I worked really hard to distract him while we spoke so he wouldn’t see the posters. I was really animated, and tried to lead him through the back. It was like a comedy skit as I tried to keep him away from the posters. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea about Rogue One. [laughs]. We got to hang out for a few hours that day, and I got to tour him around. I got to spend time with my hero. It was a surreal experience. He’s the Paul McCartney of film.

Gareth Edwards on location for *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*. Photo courtesy of Greig Fraser. All Rights Reserved.

And you got to spend time at Skywalker Ranch, yeah?
Yes. When I was there, the projectionist was so sweet. They said, “ when we would project the Star Wars reels, George would sit right there.” And they pointed over at a seat. “Would you like to sit there?” I got to sit there throughout the sound mix on Rogue One. It felt like I was sitting on the throne of the film world. The funny thing is, if you’re so intimidated by it, it can paralyze you. You have to let that fall away. But let me tell you, that was the best job in the world. That beautiful drive through the trees and hills on the way to Skywalker Ranch. Past Lake Ewok. It was so utopian. We were making a Star Wars movie. It was everything I’ve ever dreamed of. It’s surreal to think it even happened to begin with. You dream about this stuff as a kid, but it shouldn’t actually happen. What’s funny is, when it comes to Industrial Light & Magic, and Lucasfilm, and the team at Skywalker Sound, you see it in everyone that works there. We all have the same story. You and me, we grew up with the same story. The trinkets on your desk are the same ones I have at home. Those Ralph McQuarrie prints behind you. I feel like we all have a lot in common. I feel like if I was going to hang out with people outside of work, it would be with the people at ILM. Everyone is a mini-filmmaker, and even though we grew up in different places all around the world, if we went to the same school as kids, we’d be mates – and then suddenly all of these people wound up at Skywalker Ranch & Industrial Light & Magic. When Covid is through, I hope everyone can come together and see each other again.

I love that. Last question. John Knoll and Hal Hickel wanted me to ask you about Area 51?
[Laughs]. So I was in Las Vegas watching John Knoll, Hal Hickel, and Matthew Wood, from Skywalker Sound, during a panel at NAB for Star Wars. After it was through, I told them all, “we are only a few hours away from Area 51. We will never get this chance again.” [Laughs]. We drove several hours in the dead of night, through Rachel, Nevada, and walked right up to that fence where you couldn’t go any further. We went to Area 51. We stayed just long enough to scare ourselves, and then we got out of there.” [Laughs].

Greig Fraser on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*. All Rights Reserved.

The cinematographer for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and Matt Reeve’s The Batman, joins Industrial Light & Magic’s Publicity Group to discuss his work on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Greig shares how the early Kenner action figures inspired his love of Star Wars, and the influences he found in 1970s cinema, the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the film The French Connection.

What was your introduction to Star Wars?
If I think back about how I was first introduced to Star Wars, I think it had to be through the toys. I genuinely think it was the toys that got me going there. I was two years old when Star Wars came out, and five when The Empire Strikes Back premiered. You couldn’t really call me a “film fan” at that point, but the franchise definitely existed in my universe. I read some of the comics later on, but the thing I loved the most back then were the toys. A few years after, I think ‘82, Star Wars came to Betamax and VHS, and then the year after that, in 1983, I finally saw Return of the Jedi in theaters. It was mind-blowing, because the visual effects that ILM did for it were so revolutionary and groundbreaking. Then over the course of the next ten or fifteen years, I think I watched A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi literally hundreds of times.

A selection of *Star Wars* Kenner action figures available in the early 1980s.

How did the experience of watching the original trilogy influence your work on Rogue One?
The funny thing is, when it comes to Star Wars, there is a very particular visual language with the way the films are made. From the way they climb aboard the Millennium Falcon, to the wide shots of the Millennium Falcon going past the camera. There is a visual language that exists that, unless you’re studying it, you don’t really notice it. That occurred to me when we started Rogue One, when Gareth basically told me, “we’re not remaking Star Wars. We’ll make this movie the way we would want to make this movie.” But the thing is, what was great about that, is that we could channel Star Wars. Normally you try to hide your influences; you don’t wear them on your sleeve when you make a movie. You try to become a little more nuanced, a little more “clever” about sort of fooling people into what your influences are. “No, I didn’t actually watch Steven Spielberg films to make this ‘Spielbergian’ movie.” Those sorts of things. But what was great about Rogue One is that we were making a film that actually connected directly into Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, by design. So if we wanted to reference anything from Episode IV, Episode V, or Episode VI, we could. We were actively encouraging ourselves to do it. For me that was a huge revelation, because normally, on any other film, you wouldn’t do that. For example, when we went back and watched Obi-Wan’s sequences aboard the Death Star, we would study how Sir Alec Guinness would move throughout the corridors, and it was very influential in the way that we did some of our movement through the Imperial security complex on Scarif. We took for granted that it was such a big place, and that the Imperials would be minding their own business and doing their own thing, and that you could have these Rebel spies, and have them actively infiltrate this heavily-fortified complex.

Obi-Wan Kenobi uses a Jedi trick to distract a pair of TK Stormtroopers aboard the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station.

Was there a lot of conversations around trying to match the aesthetic of A New Hope?
There was. Growing up, you got used to watching Star Wars on Betamax and VHS, on a home television format. For research for this film, I was able to watch a 4K scan of one of the earlier films, and the conversation turned to, “is that our North Star? Do we make it look exactly like that? Do we shoot it on film, with those same lenses?” Sometimes your memory of something can be slightly different from reality, so what we did for Rogue One, is we tried to match it to the aesthetic of our “mind’s eye”, and what we remember from Star Wars growing up. For us, thinking about that look – it wasn’t super sharp, but it had depth and clarity. It was soft at times, but not defunct. That is why we chose the format that we did, the ARRI ALEXA 65, paired with these old lenses. For Gareth and I, it felt like it was showing us the film that we remembered as kids.

Director Krennic is confronted by Darth Vader at Fortress Vader on Mustafar.

Did you find other advantages to shooting digital? Was there ever a conversation of shooting it on film?
There were a number of factors. The look we were trying to achieve was one factor, but the other thing that we had to balance towards was the fact that Gareth Edwards is a very hands-on filmmaker. He loves to operate the camera. Watch his film Monsters, which, coincidentally, was the whole reason I wanted to meet Gareth in the first place. When I was called up to do the interview for Rogue One—and of course, I was so excited for the opportunity—I thought, “even if I don’t get this job, I will get to meet the guy that made Monsters. I’ll get to shake his hand, and I’ll get to tell him about the mad respect I have for him and his film.” So when he explained to me that he wanted to make Rogue One with the same spirit that he used to make Monsters, I got really excited. That decision was also part of the reason we chose the ALEXA 65. It had all the film qualities of a much bigger camera, but it was in this bitesize package that you could throw around, and put in cockpits, without having to destroy too many things to get the shot you needed. It was a series of factors, but it all worked in our favor.

A shot from Gareth Edwards’ film, *MONSTERS*. Photo courtesy of Magnet.

Gareth has a unique style of shooting, where he’ll go from one take to the next without slating. How did your style integrate with that?
I found it very exciting. In some ways, even though Gareth was my director, he was also my camera operator. I loved helping him build a world where he could achieve anything that he wanted to achieve; be that handheld shots, or very specific tracking shots. That’s what I loved about Rogue One, and how Gareth wanted to make it. There were considerations, of course, but there were moments of freedom – both in freedom of movement, and freedom of camera. It kept everyone on their toes. He would pick up these small moments, maybe something an actor was doing, and he would get the camera in there and capture it.

Gareth Edwards shoots a scene of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

Greig, your photography has such a distinct style. What influences did you pull from in designing the palette of Rogue One?
I’m a big fan of world cinema, and I’m a big fan of ‘70s cinema. I love Andrei Tarkovsky. I think the way that he makes movies is so beautiful, and so strong. But I also love the way that Kathryn Bigelow shoots her films. I love The French Connection, and the way that it was shot. For Rogue One, we mined the depths of our interests, and the types of films that we loved to watch. Lawrence of Arabia was another influence. These massive, David Lean-style battles. These big frames, and tracking shots, and static shots. Then you combine that with modern-day filmmaking, which, if you look at the evolution of cameras, has changed drastically. Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, the cameras were much larger than they are today, and harder to move around. Therefore, films looked a certain way. When you get into the 1970s, when George Lucas was shooting Star Wars, there was not a lot of handheld in that film either. The cameras were not really malleable, and, stylistically, that wasn’t really what he was after anyway. What was good for us though is that we were able to combine our interests and influences. Gareth and I clearly love Star Wars, but that is not the only thing we’re influenced by. French cinema, documentaries, all of that played a part for us.

An image of Baz Malbus (Jiang Wen). Photo courtesy of Greig Fraser. All Rights Reserved.

Tell me about the early conversations around virtual production and LED walls on Rogue One, and how that got us to today with ILM’s StageCraft?
This is where having amazing partners, like Industrial Light & Magic and John Knoll, was very integral. What we were pitching was not a common thing. Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki had played around with something similar on the film Gravity, with putting actors in an LED box, but we were talking about putting people into ships and big environments. It all stemmed from a lighting problem, and the problem goes like this: “you’ve got somebody in an X-wing above a planet. We’ll use Earth as our stand-in for Scarif. You’ve got a sun source, you’ve got ambient light bounce from Earth, and then you have black space. When you’re in the atmosphere, you have all of this beautiful light coming from above, and below, and from your sun source. That type of scenario is really easy to light. But what happens when you’ve got no ambience above, some ambience below, and then a sun source? Now, imagine those lighting conditions, and pretend you’re in the cockpit of that X-wing, and you do a barrel roll. As you spin around, it’ll transition from light to shadow on your face and around the cockpit. To try and do that in a studio environment, with the lighting we have, is very difficult. You have to put diffusion on all sides to make it nice and soft, so when you sequence the lights over the top, you get the illusion of camera and lighting movement. But what happens when you push light through the diffusion? It bounces back from the other side. With that said, I needed a black side and a light side, but then, of course, that wouldn’t have worked for the barrel rolls, because the light would have needed to move. The one thing we had at the time that could account for all of this were LED screens. When the light turns off on an LED screen, it’s pitch black. It’s the perfect lighting tool for that type of thing. That then progressed into the next question, “if we’re going to use that tool, for that one instance, can it work for other scenarios? Like flying across Jedha, or soaring through the atmosphere of Scarif?” That’s where this tool, this LED volume, became immensely helpful. People like John Knoll, and the people at ILM, are extremely integral to getting the quality right for something like this. Good VFX can live or die by bad lighting. That’s why ILM’s StageCraft is such a powerful tool for DP’s. Because DP’s know, if you can get the lighting right, you’re halfway there to getting a good final image.

The partial hull of a T-65B X-wing starfighter used for shooting on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

That must have been exciting to figure out?
It was such a great project, because it really upheld the vision that George Lucas had for the future of filmmaking, the “stage of the future”. George theorized that, years down the road, there might come a time when a filmmaker could walk onto a stage, and they could project whatever they wanted up onto the walls, or that those walls could have color-changeable light. They wouldn’t have to light for it, they’d only need to flick a switch. That was the hopeful future that George was thinking about, and now, years later, ILM made that a reality with StageCraft. Filmmakers now have the ability to put any high fidelity, real-time image up on the LED volume. Rogue One was the proof-of-concept for lighting, and that evolved into what ILM, John Favreau, and the Lucasfilm team are doing on The Mandalorian, along with so many other exciting projects.

An early LED volume used on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

George referenced a lot of things for his aerial combat, including old WWII gun camera footage. How did you approach the ships flying in Rogue One?
While we were shooting, it became obvious where the camera could be, and where it couldn’t be. In Star Wars, there were never any mid-shots of people sitting in cockpits. You don’t have Han Solo in a mid-shot, shooting from outside of the cockpit. You never had a camera floating in space for a shot like that. The camera was always fixed inside the cockpit, or super-wide. There was no in-between. It would never go from a super-wide, into a mid-shot, into a closeup. The only example of that might be the final shot of the Millennium Falcon, just before Lando departs the Medical Frigate, at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. With that said though, we tried to maintain those parameters for Rogue One, and we didn’t want the audiences to have to think about it. I haven’t spoken to George Lucas about it personally, and maybe if he would have had infinite resources he might have shot it differently, but we wanted our film to match A New Hope, and we loved the look. It built our visual understanding of what a Star Wars film should be.

Jon Vander’s “Gold Squadron” forms up as they prepare for their assault on the Shield Gate during the Battle of Scarif.

There’s something intimate about it. When I think about old WWII air combat movies, they did the same thing.
Exactly. And they were forced to shoot like that. You either had a camera in the cockpit, or a camera on another plane. You couldn’t get a plane in close enough to get a reaction from a pilot, or you’d have planes crashing into each other. It was either super-wide, or close. It was purely pragmatic.

Red Twelve (Richard Glover) participates in the Battle of Scarif.

You did have a unique shot that was used a few times that I loved, and that was the one of the camera fixed on the X-wings and Y-wings, directly behind the astromech droid.
Gareth was clever, because even though we had these rules on how we would shoot the ships, we would work off moments from the earlier films to devise new things. There’s that shot of R2-D2 getting blown up in A New Hope by Vader in the Death Star’s meridian trench, and this was kind of an evolution of that shot, while still keeping one foot planted in that A New Hope aesthetic.

A T-65C-A2 X-wing starfighter drops out of lightspeed at the Battle of Scarif.

How did it feel with The Force Awakens shooting alongside your film, and to a degree, The Last Jedi too, when you were shooting pickups?
It was fun. We were all sharing buildings and in each other’s worlds. I’m such a big fan of Star Wars, and I could have walked on set and spoiled everything for myself, but I chose not to. I just wanted to enjoy them as a fan. I did have one thing spoiled for me… someone walked up and told me the scene regarding Han Solo, and my first reaction was, “how dare you do that to me! I wanted to see that in theaters!” [laughs]. We shared some crew from time to time, but we generally had blinders on for Rogue One. While they were making their films in the Skywalker Saga, decades in the future, we were leading right into A New Hope, so ours was almost the equivalent of a period film, in our language. I found that to be very exciting.

Greig Fraser on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

What’s your favorite shot, moment, or sequence in the film?
One of my favorites is that wide tracking shot of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) making her way through the Massassi outpost on Yavin 4 after she’s “rescued” from the Wobani Labor Camp. I also love the final sequence with Vader aboard the ‘Tantive IV’. When Gareth rang me to tell me we were going to do that, I was ecstatic. It’s such a wonderful sequence. We had the time to prepare it properly. We had the time to rehearse all the action, and to do the lighting tests. We also spent a lot of time figuring out how best to light Vader. As a kid in a grown man’s body, that blew me away. Vader, this dark “shape”, terrified us as kids. It was a dream come true to add to his iconography. I felt very honored and very blessed. Another moment I loved was seeing the full-sized X-wing props in person for the first time. I was transported back to being a kid again, playing with my toy X-wings, but then, of course, my filmmaker brain would kick on, and let me tell you, moving full-sized X-wings around on a set is pretty difficult [laughs].

Vader ignites his lightsaber in an attempt to capture the stolen plans to the Death Star aboard Admiral Raddus’ star cruiser.

I love the sequence you shot in Iceland of Orson Krennic and the Death Troopers making the long trek up to the Erso homestead from the shuttle. His cape flapping in the wind, it was incredible.
I love that shot too. An interesting thing about that sequence is how we found that location. In that part of Iceland, there’s all of this black sand, so they plant this weed to prevent it from blowing onto the roads and destroying the cars. It’s basically useless outside of keeping the sand from blowing about. We found that location on Google Earth while we were driving around, location scouting. I thought it looked so unusual and interesting. As soon as we dropped the moisture vaporators in, those weeds started looking like crops that the Erso’s were farming, and it instantly became Star Wars.

Director Krennic and his personal attachment of Death Troopers storm the Erso homestead on Lah’mu.

John Knoll in the cockpit of a crashed Partisan X-wing fighter on Jedha from *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

John Knoll, Executive Creative Director at ILM, and the Senior Visual Effects Supervisor on Rogue One: A Story Wars Story sits down with ILM.com to discuss the film’s five-year anniversary.

John, the whole idea of Rogue One started with you. How long back had you been thinking of this idea before it was greenlit?
I started thinking about this all the way back on Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. I was on set when we were shooting in Sydney, and I think we were waiting for some set-up to happen. I started chatting to Rick McCallum who was producing the film, and he mentioned that he and George Lucas were developing a Star Wars live-action TV series, and that they were working on scripts. I started thinking about all of the interesting tales you could tell in a show like that, and one of the first things that popped into my head was, “what about a Mission: Impossible-style operation to break into the most secure facility that the Galactic Empire had to steal the plans for the Death Star?” I started toying with that idea, along with a few others, and I approached Rick again to learn more about the time period they wanted to set the show in, and I realized that none of my ideas would apply to that period, so I shelved it.

John Knoll works on a miniature of Sheev Palpatine’s private viewing box in *Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith*.

When did it pick back up again?
Well, flash-forward to 2012 after Lucasfilm’s acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, where George selected Kathleen Kennedy to lead Lucasfilm, and our announcement of the continuation of the Skywalker Saga. What we also announced then that I was really intrigued by were the spinoff films. The first one we announced internally was Solo, and I got so excited about where these spinoff films could go, because the possibilities were endless. As a bit of a joke, I started pitching an updated version of my story that went, “picture a SEAL Team Six in the Star Wars universe, and they’re going on this desperate, high-stakes mission to break into the most secure facility in the Galactic Empire to steal the plans for the Death Star. What about that?” People would go “oh… actually, that sounds pretty cool…” [Laughs].

Early concept art from *Rogue One*: *A Star Wars Story*.

You can’t not love that pitch!
[Laughs] So I started having this conversation with a number of people, and every time I pitched it, I would start to add more detail, and it would get bigger and bigger. Kind of as a mental exercise, I asked myself, “well, if I were serious about this, who are the main characters? What are their arcs? What is the plot structure? How does this start, and how does this end?” I remember a specific moment where I was at this annual charity trivia game that we do, and I was on a team with a couple of friends, and we had about an hour over dinner while we were waiting for it to begin, and Kim Libreri said “tell me about this Star Wars story idea you have?” So I pitched him the half-hour version of it, with every detail, and at the end he goes, “you have got to go pitch this to Kathy.” At that point I realized I had to do this, because if I didn’t I would always wonder what could have been. So I called up Kathy and made an appointment, and I think it took maybe six weeks to find a time to meet with her and Kiri Hart from the Lucasfilm Story Group. I spent those six weeks writing up a really detailed treatment with all of the character descriptions. When the day came, I brought my treatment, sat down with Kathy and Kiri, and just dove into the pitch and the characters. They listened very politely to the whole thing, Kathy told me she was impressed with the story, and that was basically it. I didn’t hear anything for a few days, and at that point I was like, “well, I did it, at least now I don’t have to wonder.” A week later I got a call from Kiri, and she goes, “Kathy and I have been discussing your story a lot, and I think we want to proceed with this.” I was so elated, and one of the crazy things was that the first spinoff was supposed to be Solo, but Larry Kasdan got pulled into the development of The Force Awakens, and out of all of the spinoffs that they were tinkering with, Rogue One got slotted up to take its place in the queue. It was pretty surreal.

The first image released of the cast from *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

Tell us about the one-off cockpit shots in the film. I understand they were made from foam core, and then the CGI was built up around it?
That’s right. I got talking with our Director of Photography, Greig Fraser, and our Production Designer, Neil Lamont, about some of these one-off sets – like the cockpit for Leia’s CR90 Corvette, the ‘Tantive IV’, or the interior of Admiral Raddus’ MC75 Star Cruiser, ‘The Profundity’. We looked at the set budget that we had, and realized that it was tough to justify an extensive build like that for something that would only be on screen for a handful of shots. The cost of entry for a Star Wars movie is expensive, because you can’t shoot a single frame of film without having to build almost everything in front of the camera. With that said, we were under a lot of pressure to trim wherever we could, so those limited-use sets hit the chopping block pretty early on. When asked how we could save money, I suggested that we could likely do them as virtual sets, where we just build a fragment of it where the actors were going to be. Greig Fraser had the same concern I did though, and that was that these types of sets are really hard to light well; not to mention that standing bewildered on a blue screen makes it hard for both the actor and the Director of Photography. Grieg and I came to the conclusion that we could use foam core – just enough to provide something to light, and something for the actors to get their bearings against. We felt it was a good way to go. Greig could get what he needed out of it, I could get what I needed out of it, and the actors could get what they needed out of it. That’s essentially how we did a couple of those sets, but the Art Department could not just make it out of foam core [laughs]. I told them it could be the sloppiest, slapdash thing, but they went ahead and added these nicely beveled corners, and it was all beautifully painted with lots of detail.

The foam core set standing in as the cockpit onboard the ‘Tantive IV’ from *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

The final shot as seen just before the ‘Tantive IV’ jumps to hyperspace to escape Vader’s Star Destroyer, ‘Devastator’.

In conversations with Gareth Edwards early on, I heard that there were concerns that virtual sets might not look realistic enough. How did you convince him otherwise?
I did some fairly elaborate set recreations with some nicely rendered walkthroughs to build up Gareth’s confidence in the technology. Starting off, he wanted to build sets for everything, and that’s all fine on a production, until, of course, you can no longer afford to continue building them. I felt like we had reached a point where we had built a number of really good virtual sets for other projects, so we shouldn’t be so afraid of it. The topic of, “how do you light the actors?” became a talking point between Greig Fraiser and I. We both wondered what might prevent Gareth from embracing this, because he wouldn’t want an actor walking around on a blue stage – and I don’t want that either. So in the context of those conversations around lighting actors in virtual environments, that kind of led to what we did on the Blockade runner and Raddus’ ship. For some scenes that didn’t end up making their way into the film, I modeled the Death Star conference room, made famous in A New Hope, where Vader has his confrontation with Admiral Motti. The renders looked really good. I also modeled the corridor of the Blockade runner. Gareth felt strongly that we should do that one as a practical set, and I agreed, because it would be difficult to light the actors meaningfully because of all of the white balances. Resource-wise, the difference between building the foam core version of it, versus the practical set, was fairly insignificant, so it was hard to make the case that we should do it all virtually.

The foam core bridge of Admiral Raddus’ MC75 Star Cruiser, ’The Profundity’.

The final shot as seen during the Battle of Scarif.

Going back to the prequels, did you also build a physical set in the corridor shot of Bail Organa’s ship, the ‘Tantive III’, for Revenge of the Sith?
We did, yeah. The Blockade runner corridors are pretty limited spaces with a lot of repeating patterns, so that shot in Revenge of the Sith, for example, wasn’t a budget-buster. But for Rogue One, as soon as you turn the corner and go into the cockpit, you have elaborate instrument panels with screens, and levers, and complex seats, and all of those sorts of things: that’s an expensive set, so it’s more cost-effective to do it digitally.

John Knoll stands in the corridor of the ‘Tantive III’ while working on *Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith*.

Did you create any other test environments for Rogue One?
I did make one final one, and that was a Death Star Docking Bay. I was really happy with the way the virtual set turned out, and the dynamic walkthrough. We added comms chatter, the sound of mouse droids, a bunch of small details to make the walkthrough immersive. It was a lot of fun to create. If we were to shoot Rogue One today, this type of environment, given its immense scale, would be the perfect candidate for Industrial Light & Magic’s StageCraft platform.

A shot of ILM’s StageCraft platform today, in use on the set of *The Mandalorian* *Season Two*.

Speaking of StageCraft, what technologies were you and the team exploring on Rogue One that acted as a proving ground for what Industrial Light & Magic is doing today?
ILM’s LED volumes today certainly have their roots in what we were doing on Rogue One, and that actually came from a collaboration with Greig Fraser. About six months before principal photography, I had a really wonderful private session with him, where it was just him and I—no equipment or stages had been booked yet—and we sat down and I gave him my perspective on the top five obstacles that inevitably come up on tentpole movies.

Grieg Fraser on the set of *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*. All Rights Reserved.

I basically said, “sooner or later, someone in the production will want to shoot a daytime exterior scene on a soundstage. Here are the reasons why we need to push back on that.” I showed examples of it being done wrong, and examples of it being done right. I gave him a few other possible obstacles that we talked through, and one of those were scenes that take place in a moving vehicle. I knew that that was going to come up in Rogue One. Usually when we have a vehicle flying through a dynamic lighting environment, one of the commonly used gags is having grips put flags in front of the lights, which I find to be a little lackluster and unconvincing. It was at this point that Greig brought up, “well, what about using LED screens?” I actually had an experience with this a few years prior on Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, where we did our car driving scenes by using the background plates that we shot in Prague that would then be comped out of the windows. We put them on LED screens and had them playing, and that provided the lighting for the scene, and it looked really nice. There was lots of lighting complexity as the car drove by different environments; neon signs, for example. You would then see the light move across the actor’s faces.

The jump to hyperspace on the LED panels used on *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

At this point, Greig and I then conspired to scale this idea up and build a stage, which was a like a proto version of our current LED volumes, and what we now know as StageCraft. It had the big cylindrical screen, the ceiling piece, and some ring panels to help surround it. The only difference was that we were not driving with real-time content like we do on StageCraft. We did pre-recorded content that was animatic-level CG, but it was photographically accurate, and the ratios were correct. So anytime you were looking over someone’s shoulder, and you saw what was on the screen, we had to replace it in post – but what we got out of it was very nice lighting. A lot of things seem obvious in hindsight, but it wasn’t until I was standing on the stage, seeing the light bounce off the shiny helmets and the cockpits, that I realized how big of a deal this was.

An early look of what would eventually become Industrial Light & Magic’s StageCraft platform.

How did the actors react?
It was immensely popular with them. Instead of standing lost in a sea of blue, with someone saying “the bag guys are over there where that white ‘x’ is,” it was now all representative, so they could see it. It was really fun, it got them into character, and we got better results. And then that experience translated to Greig Fraser, when he was helping plan the first season of The Mandalorian with Jon Favreau and the Lucasfilm team, he was able to bring that entire experience over. “Let’s do this super LED volume. Let’s do what we did on Rogue One and then take it to the next level.”

The cylindrical screen used on *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

What was the genesis behind the Shield Gate situated above the Outer Rim planet of Scarif, and where did the idea come from to crash a pair of Star Destroyers into it?
The Shield Gate at the Imperial security complex changed a number of times. In my original treatment it was an Imperial drydock and refitting facility for Star Destroyers, and the Rebellion would have mounted an audacious assault on the facility meant to act as a distraction. As the story developed, Gareth really felt that we needed to have the Shield Gate to prevent the Alliance Fleet from assisting the Rebels that were planet-side. As the rewrites were coming together, and the edit was taking shape, editorial was really focusing on the live-action elements that they were balancing, while the space battle would be further refined in post. They had a lot of placeholders in the edit at this point, “the Rebels arrive, they can’t get through, the action escalates, they take out some Star Destroyers, and then they open a hole in the Shield Gate”. The clock was ticking, and time was running out, so they asked us to mock something up based on the broad beats, so I came up with the idea to have the Rebels call up one of the Hammerhead corvettes to push a pair of Star Destroyers into each other, disabling them, and destroying the Shield Gate in the process. I wanted it to be really unique, so I started looking at footage online of what happens when container ships wait too long to brake and hit the dock, causing millions of tons of mass to just start plowing and plowing. Or when ships scrape into each other; just this kinetic energy. So scaling that up to a ship that is supposed to be a mile long, we asked, “how would that work?” If they were to push into each other, and you start one going, just pouring a bunch of energy and mass into that momentum. I wanted it to be all about mechanical damage; not just fireballs. Our Animation Supervisor, Hal Hickel, and his team, took that and ran with it, and what resulted was something that was really visually spectacular.

A layout shot of the Imperial I-class Star Destroyers crashing into each other.

An animation shot as the team at ILM plans out the collision.

A progression shot as the sequence is further refined.

Is it true that the escape pods are visibly jettisoned during the shot of the Hammerhead corvette plummeting into the shield gate as it’s embedded in the Star Destroyer?
[Laughs] That is true. They survived! In my head canon, the crew survived. We put lifeboats on the Hammerhead in a pretty prominent way, and at one point we did have a shot of the escape pods jettisoning, but it became a bit distracting for what the point of the shot was. The idea is that they got out before it hit the Shield Gate.

The Sphyrna-class Hammerhead corvette, ‘Lightmaker’, under the command of Kado Oquoné, disables the ‘Persecutor’.

The Hammerhead corvette originated in Star Wars: Rebels, correct?
It did, yeah. In fact, at one point, I went and met with Pablo Hidalgo from Lucasfilm’s Story Group, and basically asked him what types of ships might make up the Rebel Fleet at this point in history, that way we could start building them. If you think about it, there would be a lot of ships that would comprise the fleet at this point that you wouldn’t have seen in The Empire Strikes Back, or Return of the Jedi, for obvious reasons. A lot of them didn’t make it out. Pablo suggested the Hammerhead corvette, and I thought it looked great.

A layout shot of the Sphyrna-class Hammerhead corvette in *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

You also brought Hera Syndulla’s ship, the ‘Ghost’, over from Star Wars Rebels. What was the process like to bring a ship from animation into live-action?
We got the geometry for both the Hammerhead corvette, and the ‘Ghost’ from the animation folks. Owing to the medium, they were built at a much simpler level of detail, with some aspects being a bit caricatured for the animation style. We slimmed the ‘Ghost’ down, and made “the movie” version of it, with a fairly extensive detail pass.

A render of Hera Syndulla’s modified VCX-100 light freighter, the ‘Ghost’.

A final image of the ‘Ghost’ parked in the upper left at the Massassi outpost on Yavin 4 in *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

Tell me about the kitbashing revival you did for this film?
We had a lot of model shop veterans at ILM. John Goodson and Paul Huston were really helpful. Basically, I pitched this idea of building a Star Wars parts library, where we could essentially scan all of these model parts into a digital collection. Then we started to ask, “well, what are the right pieces? What are the right kits to pull from to give us the best bang of our buck?” The next step was actually sourcing these model kits. We set aside a budget and just bought a bunch of them on eBay; a lot of old vintage stuff. The Big Bertha howitzer, the Flak Wagon artillery gun, and a bunch of others that were used on the original films. We then photographed all of the sprue trees, and John Goodson went through and circled all of the ones we needed. We then laser scanned them all, and a partner of ours, Virtuous, then built really nice, optimized versions of all those pieces. That then became the basis of our Star Wars kitbash library, which we have gone on to use throughout the rest of the Star Wars projects we’ve done. For The Last Jedi, Roger Guyett’s team expanded the library even further with more model kits scanned in.

Modelmakers at ILM’s original location in Van Nuys working on *Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope*.

Some of the vintage model kits acquired for *Rogue One: A Star Wars Story*.

Model sprue trees ready for scanning at ILM.

Scanned model pieces that make up ILM’s *Star Wars* kitbash library.

Tell me about how you captured the look of the original miniatures?
A lot of it had to do with kind of making the model pieces look wonky, if that makes sense. If you’re putting a bunch of greebles in a row, don’t make them all perfectly straight. Turn one two degrees, and give them all a bit of jitter. Maybe break some of the edges so they’re a bit crooked and less perfect. The tendency is to think that a mile-long ship should be precision-made, but if you look at a real aircraft carrier up close, the hull has a little wobble in it, because it’s hard to make big stuff like that super precise. You can see it in the miniatures at the Lucasfilm Archives too, lots of wobble, and things where the greebles are misaligned. If you don’t have that imperfection in there, your eye will see it.

An Imperial I-class Star Destroyer loiters over Jedha City, while Imperial forces strip the settlement of its Kyber crystals.

Were there conversations around trying to match the lighting of A New Hope on the miniatures?
Oh yeah. In fact, there was a philosophical discussion around to what degree we would match how the miniatures were lit. For the original trilogy, the miniatures were lit with stage instruments that were maybe twenty feet away, and that implies a certain spread angle on the light, and the size of the penumbra on the shadows. So the question was, “do we want to light these ships like there is a correctly scaled up 10K light that’s three miles away from them, preserving that original look, or do we want to light them from a sun that is one hundred million miles away, so the rays are more parallel?” Though it was tempting at times to go the other way, we ended up pushing more into the realism; same goes for the planets. We did very realistic renderings of the planets, which gave it the look and feel of the photography you might see aboard the International Space Station in orbit.

A GR-75 medium transport is obliterated while a Braha’tok-class gunship, two Y-wings, and an X-wing peel away.

Tell me about how you brought Red Leader (Garven Dreis), and Gold Leader (Jon “Dutch” Vander), from A New Hope, played by Drewe Henley and Angus MacInnes, respectively, back into the film?
If you think about it, we’ve brought back a number of characters, and we used every technique to do it. From A New Hope, Cornelius Evazan, Hurst Romodi, and Jan Dodonna were recast. Mon Mothma, from Return of the Jedi, was a recast (though Genevieve O’Reilly played Mon Mothma previously in a deleted scene from Revenge of the Sith). The creature shop brought Ponda Baba back from A New Hope. Anthony Daniels played C-3PO again. We brought R2-D2 back. Chopper was brought from animation into live-action. Jimmy Smits returned to play Bail Organa from the prequels, and James Earl Jones voiced Vader again. We of course had Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia which were full computer graphics. Incorporating the unused footage of Red Leader and Gold Leader though was that final technique. That was discussed very early on about how this film is going to meet right up with A New Hope. We thought about how a lot of these people in the Battle of Scarif would have participated in the Battle of Yavin too, so we should see some familiar faces. It was hard to avoid Red Leader and Gold Leader, so we decided to look through all of the dailies from A New Hope to see if we can find anything. It was super fun to do, but it was harder than it looks, because the lighting style was pretty different back then. The footage was really grainy and had faded, so trying to get a shot from forty years earlier and drop it into the film without it looking “off” was a challenge. We de-grained it, and did loads of rotomasks. The orange color of the flight suits had to be boosted.

Red Leader (Garven Dreis), played by Drewe Henley, leads Red Squadron during the Battle of Scarif.

Gold Leader (Jon “Dutch” Vander), played by Angus MacInnes, leads his squadron of BTL-A4 Y-wing assault starfighters.

[Laughs] One thing I discovered during this process, was that the digital X-wing cockpits we created were true and faithful to what the exterior looked like; I never noticed it before, but the cockpits that George had created had some huge cheats in their interior dimensions. The back window, for example, was made very tall so that George could get the shots looking over Luke at R2-D2. Ours didn’t match that at all, and it would have been jarring to jump between the digital cockpits and the archival cockpits. We had to rotoscope around Red Leader, and then insert him into the digital cockpit.

The digital T-65B X-wing cockpit from *Rogue One*.

Gareth Edwards sits atop the practical hull of a T-65B X-wing starfighter shooting interior cockpit shots.

We actually did it in reverse for Gold Nine, piloted by the character of Wona Goban, and played by Gabby Wong. She was shot in an X-wing, but we really wanted the Y-wings to be firing the ion torpedoes. Instead of creating a Y-wing cockpit from scratch, we simply rotoscoped her into the archival footage of the Y-wing cockpit that we had.

Gold Nine (Wona Goban), played by Gabby Wong, in an archival BTL-A4 Y-wing cockpit from *A New Hope*.

Red Five made an appearance too.
He did. There had to be a reason Luke was assigned Red Five in A New Hope [laughs].

Cadet Pedrin Gaul, played by David Forman, piloting his T-65B X-wing starfighter under the call sign Red Five.

Was there a discussion about including Wedge Antilles at the Battle of Scariff?
We discussed whether or not he should be in the battle, yes. But Wedge has that great line in A New Hope, “Look at the size of that thing!”, so it’s implied that he’s never seen the Death Star in person. We wanted to preserve that. Matthew Wood and Skywalker Sound actually brought in David Ankrum who overdubbed the voice of Wedge Antilles (played by both Denis Lawson and Collin Higgins in A New Hope) to voice Wedge again. If you listen to the comms chatter when the fleet is being scrambled, that’s Wedge telling the flight personnel to report and redirect to Scariff.

Wedge Antilles and “Fake Wedge” (Col Takbright in the canon universe), were both overdubbed by David Ankrum.

Tell me about Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia. Were they always intended to be a part of this specific story?
Tarkin was in my first treatment, and that conversation happened really early. I also really wanted to end the film with Leia. As the script was progressing, Kiri Hart told me that they wanted to prominently feature Tarkin, and asked how I felt about doing it. For Mon Mothma, the recast was perfect, because everyone remembers her lines from Return of the Jedi, but they don’t have a super clear picture of her in their head. They remember her robe, and the medallion she’s wearing, and her red hair, but if you recast and match those things, someone that looks a lot like her could fit into the role. Tarkin and Leia are so iconic, that you couldn’t do that with them. If they’re going to show up, you’d have to really match their likeness, and the only way to do that is with computer graphics.

John Knoll reviews dailies of the fearsome Wilhuff Tarkin in one of ILM’s View Stations.

Step inside the film — with Sprite, an Eternal, as your guide. Go on an epic Augmented Reality adventure through time and space to discover the truth about humanity. Enter the world, learn the backstory, and meet the characters, in Marvel Studios’ first Immersive Story Experience. This mini prequel lets you explore the story like never before and become a part of the action.

Marvel Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, and the Technology Innovation Group at Disney Studios Content have teamed up to bring the Eternals to your living room through an exciting augmented reality experience.

Industrial Light & Magic is thrilled to announce an exciting partnership with Disney’s Technology Innovation Group on Marvel Studios’ Eternals: AR Story Experience for the iPhone® and iPad®. In this augmented-reality app, the characters, world, and stories of the Eternals film have been brought to life like never before.

“I was so excited to get the call to come work on the Eternals: AR Story Experience,” said Danielle Legovich, Visual Effects Producer at ILM’s London studio. “What I found wonderful throughout the process was the incredible collaboration with the team at Disney, along with all of the content creators on the project. They were all such lovely people, and we were able to combine talent in such a profound way. With Disney coming from that background of games and apps, and ILM coming from the visual effects point of view—and having worked on a large portion of the Eternals film—it made for a really wonderful partnership. At ILM, we’re used to creating images that people view in a darkened cinema, so to be able to work on images that people would then bring into their home through AR was so much fun. The experience became so immersive for me personally during the creative process, that I would imagine this Deviant just exploding up from my kitchen floor. I really loved that.”

Film-quality VFX assets used in the app. Image courtesy of Disney Studios Content / Marvel Studios.

As you might expect, what makes this experience so incredibly unique is the augmented reality aspect. You’re able to literally step into that world and meet these characters without having to leave your home. That level of detail brought a host of exciting challenges. Edmund Kolloen, Computer Graphics Supervisor on the project, goes on to explain, “What was thrilling for me was trying to get the same quality that we would push out of a final render, and get that to look and act the same in a real-time application. The challenge, of course, was getting that data from our render package and pushing it to the pipeline at Disney. There was a lot of really great cross-collaboration on both sides, building it as we went along. The results were amazing. You can walk right up and have a look at these characters, because they’re the exact same digi-doubles from the film. We worked diligently to ensure that every facial expression and every emotion comes through.”

Recording actress Lia McHugh using over 100 cameras. Image courtesy of Disney Studios Content / Marvel Studios.

On the Disney front, the Technology Innovation Group developed a host of new cutting-edge tools and techniques during the iterative process of translating that data from ILM. Evan Goldberg, Manager, Technology Innovation Research at Disney Studios Content recounts, “We had a small but mighty team here at Disney to put this project together. Daniel Baker was the Producer, and was the beating heart and metronome of the project. I’ve been here at Disney for sixteen years, with a history of feature film production, animation, and VFX experience. My role on this project straddled the line between Tech Supervisor and VFX Supervisor. Both my team and Industrial Light & Magic really wanted to come from a place of authenticity for the experience, and to be as faithful as we could to the source material. When you see a still from the AR experience, it should feel like a still from the film, and we were able to do that by working directly with ILM. They were very open to adapting their pipeline to conform to what we needed on our end. That allowed us to collaborate more quickly, and make something that had a visual fidelity on par with the film, but rendered in a fraction of a second. It was so incredible to see new technologies born out of that process.”

Pre-visualization of in-app scene. Image courtesy of Disney Studios Content / Marvel Studios.

With all of the innovation, the teams still had a daunting undertaking. They had to create a cinema-quality AR experience, and one that would carry the Marvel Studios name on top of it. “We knew that we had to match the quality of what people see in the cinema,” explains Daniel Baker, Senior Producer and Manager, Technology Innovation at Disney Studios Content. “The iterative design process with ILM was so helpful, because it ensured that we were always working with the latest assets. The pre-visualization work, along with that review and iteration process, was really exciting. Since we were working from home, and across multiple time zones, we had to really make the most with the time we had. So to get everyone to go out into their backyard to play with the experience, and really give it that high level of scrutiny and pixel-by-pixel accuracy, was a lot of fun.”

Kolloen summarizes the overall Eternals: AR Story Experience perfectly, “one of the exciting things for me was to see the Deviants in that augmented reality environment. Nothing prepares you for the moment you walk outside with your iPad® and see this creature that’s the size of your house.”

In a new “Behind the Magic” video released on YouTube and Instagram, enjoy a glimpse behind the virtual production of NBC Sports’ Sunday Night Football show opening, featuring country music star Carrie Underwood.

“This was yet another successful demonstration of the end-to-end services available through ILM’s virtual production platform, ‘StageCraft™’,” says Chris Bannister, Executive Producer of Virtual Production at Industrial Light & Magic. “Partnering with the creative team from art concept all the way through principal photography, we were able to offer both the creative resources and real-world virtual production experience that maximized the scope and results for the project in a way that only ILM StageCraft can deliver.”

Shot on the StageCraft LED volume by Industrial Light & Magic.

The show opening is the key introduction each week to NBC’s flagship sports broadcast, and each year the creative team at NBC looks for innovative ways to top itself. 2021 was no exception, as they ideated ways to push the boundaries beyond the green screen and inject a new layer of authenticity and integration into the opener. That’s where ILM StageCraft came in.

“It was particularly important to Tripp Dixon and his creative team at NBC Sports to celebrate NFL fans coming back together,” notes Jonathan Howard, Associate Virtual Production Manager at ILM. “This unique opportunity allowed ILM to showcase both the agility, and production-hardened scalability of StageCraft 2.0, evident in the team’s ability to adapt the platform to the compressed schedule of a broadcast package.”

Across the entire production, ILM was able to find unique ways to match the energy and excitement that Sunday Night Football fans are used to, while also expanding upon it in distinct ways. “This was such a rare creative project for me, because I’m typically working with creatures, droids, and spaceships,” said Hal Hickel, Animation Supervisor at ILM. “It was fun in that way though, because it got me out of my wheelhouse, while also allowing me to craft some exciting elements in a grounded production.”

What makes StageCraft’s application for the Sunday Night Football show opening different from previous applications of the technology, is that this project is designed to look both indistinguishable from the real world, and also fantastical in its execution. Hayden Landis, Visual Effects Supervisor at ILM explains, “We had some incredible streaming elements like fireworks, along with dynamic moving components that we’ve never used before on the volume. Between the creative and technical wizardry that the StageCraft crew conjured up on the day, and the passionate support of the NBC Sports team, I think we really created something special.”

Even with all the magic happening on screen, it can be easy for viewers to miss StageCraft’s sleight of hand because it is so convincing. Hal Hickel elaborates, “To let them backstage in a creative way, we came up with the idea to have Carrie enter the studio in one take, walk up onto the set, and then have the entire StageCraft Volume power-up around her. That small addition really drove home the magic of StageCraft.”

Check out the “Behind the Magic” video below, and don’t miss the show opening this Sunday, October 17 at 5:20pm PST on NBC as the Seattle Seahawks face off against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Behind the Magic – Sunday Night Football

The Hollywood Professional Association announced the nominees for its annual HPA Awards for post-production, an honor that promotes outstanding creative artistry, and recognizes the achievement of talent, innovation, and engineering excellence. ILM is thrilled to have contributed to three shows nominated in the Outstanding Visual Effects category this year. Nominees include Richard Bluff, Hal Hickel, Jeff Capogreco, Abbigail Keller, and Joe Bauer for The Mandalorian – “Chapter 9: The Marshal”, David Seager, Alexandra Greene, George Kuruvilla, Dan Mayer, and Dan DeLeeuw for Loki – “Journey Into Mystery”, and Chad Wiebe for his work on Jungle Cruise.

“It is an absolute honour to have been nominated for our work,” said Alexandra Greene, Visual Effects Producer at ILM. “It’s hard to put into words the gratitude I have for all the ILM artists and production crews who poured their heart and souls into bringing the “Void” to life on Loki, along with all of the larger-than-life creatures that reside there. Every day I find myself amazed by both the innovation and creativity that comes from our teams here at ILM, including the work by our fellow ILM nominees for The Mandalorian, and Jungle Cruise. Congratulations are in order!”

Janet Lewin, ILM’s General Manager and Senior Vice President notes, “I could not be more proud of the nominees and their teams that worked on these incredible shows,” adding, “I’m continually in awe of our team’s technical ingenuity, imagination, and relentless spirit, and I’m so pleased to see their hard work recognized by the HPA.”

The annual HPA Awards are returning as an in-person event this year, presented at a live gala on Thursday, November 18th at the historic Hollywood Legion Theater. Tickets are on sale now.

In a new video released by ILM on our YouTube channel, join Visual Effects Supervisor, Richard Bluff, as he shares a peek behind the curtain of the effects of The Mandalorian: Season 2, winner of 7 Emmy® Awards including Special Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Cinematography, Prosthetic Makeup, Stunt Coordination, Stunt Performance, and Music Composition.

For its sophomore outing, Lucasfilm’s hit Disney+ series built upon the groundbreaking technical and artistic achievements accomplished during season one, combining traditional methodologies, with ever-advancing new technologies. The team also increased the physical size of the ILM StageCraft™ LED Volume which would again be used for over half of all scenes. This season also marked the debut of ILM’s state-of-the-art real-time cinema render engine called, Helios. The high-resolution, high-fidelity engine was used for all final pixel rendering displayed on the LED screens and offers unmatched performance for the types of complex scenes prevalent in today’s episodic and feature film production.

Practical creature effects have been a vital part of the aesthetic and charm of the Star Wars universe since 1977, and for season two, the effects team realized over 100 puppeteered creatures, droids, and animatronic masks, which included the beloved Tatooine Bantha, realized as a ten-foot-high puppeteered rideable creature.

Practical miniatures and motion control photography were used once again for scale model ships, as well as miniature set extensions built for use in ILM’s StageCraft LED volume. Stop-motion animation was also utilized for the Scrap Walker at the Karthon Chop Fields. The greater Krayt dragon on Tatooine was realized as a six-hundred-foot computer-generated creature that would swim shark-like through the sand environment by way of a liquefaction effect, wherein the sand would behave like water.

We would like to acknowledge the care and dedication that the team here at ILM put into the show, along with our partners at Legacy Effects, Hybride, Image Engine, Important Looking Pirates, Ghost VFX, Lola, Stereo D, Tippett Studios, Base FX, Raynault, Virtuous, and Yannix.

We hope you enjoy this look inside The Mandalorian: Season 2.

“I strive to make it easier to innovate — to create a supportive environment for groundbreaking creativity and excellence in production,” explains Janet Lewin, SVP and general manager of Industrial Light & Magic.

Formerly vice president of Visual Effects at Lucasfilm, Lewin has spent a combined 26-years at the two companies. She currently oversees the visual effects and StageCraft business at Lucasfilm as well as ILM’s five studios, focusing primarily on operations and production. Lewin is an experienced executive and producer with numerous credits to her name, most recently serving as a producer on both seasons of Lucasfilm’s ground-breaking hit series, The Mandalorian for Disney+.
A graduate of Boston University with a degree in PR and Mass Communications, Lewin explains, “I always knew I wanted to work in film and entertainment.” She recalls being mesmerized by the visual effects work she saw in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, “I remember watching it and I just couldn’t understand how T-1000 walked through the bars in the psychiatric hospital. I was so taken by what I had seen that I watched all the behind the scenes and that’s where I learned about ILM, Dennis Muren and what his team had created.”

In 1994, she was hired as a temporary assistant in ILM’s purchasing department. “The job consisted mostly of filing purchase orders,” she recalls. “But it was my first real exposure to filmmaking and visual effects at the same time. All the brilliant people and incredible projects at ILM hit the sweet spot for my interest in production, innovation, and the business of filmmaking.”

Lewin spent the next two decades of her career at ILM working her way up the ranks to ultimately become Global Head of Production in 2010. In 2013, she moved to Lucasfilm to oversee Visual Effects for the newly rebooted Production studio, at the same time serving as the overall visual effects producer on all of the new Star Wars films, collaborating with directors such as JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Gareth Edwards, and Ron Howard over the next seven years. “It was a fantastic opportunity for me to partner directly with filmmakers and gain studio-side knowledge and empathy for that side of the coin,” she mentions.

That experience, combined with her vast tenure at ILM, positioned her well to take on this new adventure as GM at ILM, partnering with ILM Chief Creative Officer, Rob Bredow, to run the global organization. “I’m mostly excited about the incredible talent we have at ILM, the innovative StageCraft technology, our entree into episodic work with our amazing television division, ILM TV, and the diverse content on the horizon – not only from Lucasfilm, but from all of our clients. We are in a unique position to push the boundaries of what’s possible in real-time visual effects, immersive entertainment, and animated features, while we continue to innovate and grow our capabilities with regard to our traditional effects work.”

On her collaboration with Bredow, Lewin says, “We work just like a visual effects producer and supervisor but on a much larger scale. I focus more on how to execute the business and shows successfully while Rob’s focus is more on innovation and technology. We have a similar aptitude for driving projects and passion for the business that overlap in both areas, so combined with our different experiences and styles, that makes for a great partnership.”

“So often ILM is on the bleeding edge in terms of developing technologies that go on to change how stories can be told — and never has that been more true than with StageCraft,” explains Lewin. Originally developed with inspiration from Jon Favreau for The Mandalorian, ILM StageCraft is a suite of virtual production tools that encompass all aspects of production from design, scouting, and previsualization in the virtual art department to principal photography on ILM’s StageCraft LED volumes. The system proved to be a gamechanger on season one of The Mandalorian and since have been used on feature films, music videos and commercials.

ILM isn’t resting on its laurels, the team took everything they learned on season one and combined that with 45-years of filmmaking and visual effects experience and reengineered StageCraft from the ground up for season two of the series. “We identified all of the shortcomings in the system and areas where we needed more flexibility and enhanced functionality, designing StageCraft 2.0 with filmmaking and production needs at its core.” notes Lewin.
Lewin credits many of her role models and mentors, including Lynwen Brennan, General Manager, Lucasfilm, for setting great examples. “I’ve kept an eagle eye on the way Lynwen leads, how inclusive she is and how unflappable. She is always approachable and makes people feel welcome… a real creative problem-solver and I admire that.”

With a Player-Coach leadership style, Lewin explains, “I like to be part of solving problems, being in the trenches and supporting my teams so they can do their best. I don’t communicate a broad vision and then expect everyone to just figure it out.” Lewin continues adding, “I’ve grown into someone who tries to be curious as a leader, really engage with stakeholders and I try to inspire the people who are going to be the ones to make the change.” She makes clear, “I do have a strong point of view but I want to also be open, and allow the best idea to get elevated.”

Lewin, who feels strongly about bringing on a diverse workforce and creating an inclusive environment, is also a part of Lucasfilm and ILM’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging team, helping executive initiatives both internally and externally. “The work we are doing through our employee resource groups is providing more connection points to different people within different communities. It really benefits the work we do – to have a welcoming and inclusive environment for diverse storytellers, production, creatives, and executives – it makes us bring our ‘A’ game because we all feel seen and recognized as individuals.” Lewin adds, “We care for each other and want to make sure everyone is thriving.”

One thing is clear, with Lewin and Bredow at the helm, we’re sure to see great things from the company for many years to come.

Industrial Light & Magic today announced the next phase of its global expansion plan for the company’s virtual production and StageCraft LED volume services. This expansion of services is tied to a proactive initiative for increasing diversity in the industry by combining ILM’s growth in this innovative methodology with a global trainee program geared for underrepresented VFX talent.

ILM’s existing StageCraft volume set at Manhattan Beach Studios (MBS) was used for the Emmy nominated series The Mandalorian and will soon be joined by a second permanent StageCraft volume set at the studio, servicing a variety of clients in the greater Los Angeles area. In addition, ILM is building a third permanent StageCraft volume at Pinewood Studios in London, and a fourth large-scale custom volume at Fox Studios Australia to be used for Marvel’s highly anticipated feature Thor: Love and Thunder directed by Taika Waititi. ILM will also continue to provide “pop up” custom volumes for clients as the company recently did for the Netflix production The Midnight Sky, directed by George Clooney.

An end-to-end virtual production solution, ILM StageCraft is a production-hardened technology that provides a continuous pipeline from initial exploration, scouting, and art direction, traditional and technical previsualization, lighting, and of course, real-time production filming itself, with the innovative StageCraft LED volumes. Lucasfilm’s hit Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, and a highly anticipated feature film took advantage of the full complement of ILM StageCraft virtual production services. Other projects such as Avengers: Endgame, Aquaman, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Battle at Big Rock, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Kong: Skull Island, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ready Player One, and Rango, have utilized aspects of the toolset as well.

By every measure, the new stages are vast improvements over the original ground-breaking LED volume developed for the first season of The Mandalorian in 2018. Physically, the new stages are larger, utilizing substantially more LED panels than ILM’s original stage and also offering both higher resolution and smooth wall to ceiling transitions – this directly results in better lighting on set as well as many more in-camera finals. ILM’s proprietary solutions for achieving groundbreaking fidelity on the LED walls at scale allows for higher color fidelity, higher scene complexity, and greater control and reliability.

“With StageCraft, we have built an end-to-end virtual production service for key creatives. Directors, Production Designers, Cinematographers, Producers, and Visual Effects Supervisors can creatively collaborate, each bringing their collective expertise to the virtual aspects of production just as they do with traditional production,” explained Janet Lewin, SVP, GM ILM. Rob Bredow, CCO, ILM added “Over the past 5 years, we have made substantial investments in both our rendering technology and our virtual production toolset. When combined with Industrial Light & Magic’s expert visual effects talent, motion capture experience, facial capture via Medusa, Anyma, and Flux, and the innovative production technology developed by ILM’s newly integrated Technoprops team, we believe we have a unique offering for the industry.”

Alongside the new stages, ILM is rolling out a global talent development initiative through the company’s long-standing Jedi Academy training program. The program, which is part of the company’s larger Global Diversity & Inclusion efforts, offers paid internships and apprenticeships on productions with seasoned ILM Supervisors and Producers who serve as mentors. The program is intended to fill roles across the virtual production and VFX pipeline with those from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds; ILM has posted expressions of interests for jobs across the spectrum, from virtual art department teams and production management to engineering and artist roles. The goal with this initiative is to attract diverse junior talent and create a pipeline for them to become future Visual Effects artists, technicians, and producers who will be “ILM trained” and uniquely qualified to work in this new, innovative way of filmmaking.

“There is a widespread lack of diversity in the industry, and we are excited to leverage our global expansion in this game-changing workflow to hire and train new talent, providing viable, exciting, and rewarding jobs across many of our locations,” noted ILM VP, Operations, Jessica Teach, who oversees the company’s Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. “We believe this program can have a multiplier effect, attracting even more diverse talent to the industry and creating a pipeline for visual effects careers. We know that bringing more diversity into the industry is a critical part of strengthening and expanding our storytelling potential.”
ILM expects to have the new stages up and running for production in London in February of 2021 and in Los Angeles in March, with a mix of projects from features to commercials in line to take advantage of them. The company is currently fielding inquiries for future bookings by studios and filmmakers. For more information or to express interest in the Jedi Academy program visit our careers site.

We are thrilled to report that Rob Bredow, Executive Creative Director & Head of Industrial Light & Magic, is among the six newly elected members to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ 2020-2021 Board of Governors. Additionally, Jessica Teach, San Francisco Executive in Charge, and 12 individuals from our artist and engineering ranks have been invited to join The Academy.

“I’m supportive of many of the positive changes that have been made within the Academy recently, and I want to focus on continuing this positive momentum,” said Bredow, adding, “I believe the VFX Branch will be stronger if we are more inclusive. A number of brilliant and accomplished visual effects experts are joining the Academy, including a few from ILM who I am excited to work alongside in this capacity. There is still much to be done. I’m excited to be joining the board of governors in this time of change.”

Bredow, who helped start the Academy Software Foundation and serves as chair, is also passionate about sharing “I think as leaders in our field, we have the honor and responsibility to share what we’ve learned for the next generation of filmmakers.”

The 2020 Academy Invitees from ILM:
MEMBERS-AT-LARGE
Jessica Teach

VISUAL EFFECTS BRANCH
Jon Alexander – Avengers: Age of Ultron, Noah
Tami Carter – Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Lucy
Karin Cooper – Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Kong: Skull Island
Ryan Church – Transformers: The Last Knight, Avengers: Age of Ultron
Leandro Estebecorena – The Irishman, Kong: Skull Island
Stephane Grabli – The Irishman, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Douglas Moore – 12 Strong, Ant-Man
Nick Rasmussen – Ready Player One, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
David Seager – Aladdin, Terminator: Dark Fate
Amy Shepard – Playing with Fire, Doctor Strange
James Tooley – Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Paige Warner – Terminator: Dark Fate, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

For a full list of the 2020 Academy Invitees, click here and for a full list of the current 2019-2020 Academy governors, click here.

What is your name, what do you do and how long have you been working at ILM Sydney?
My name is Rebecca Kuo, and I used to work in ILM Singapore as a Pipeline Technical Director for three years. I recently transferred to ILM’s Sydney studio.

What is your biggest passion outside of work?
I love traveling, exploring new things and enjoying good food. I always try to arrange at least two trips in a year just to see different parts of the world. I am also a theme-park person. I’ve been to Universal Studios Singapore 4-5 times in six months and hope that one day I can visit all Disneylands and Universal Studios around the world.

What kickstarted your career in VFX?
I used to play different kinds of games since I was a kid, from Gameboy, NES, to online games on Windows XP. Around high school time, I was attracted by the interior design, and I almost chose to study it as a professional. However, my father guided me into computer science as that was part of his daily life. Eventually, I graduated from a tech background, but deep in my mind still have the idea to do something related to art. So, I kept looking for what I wanted to focus on, then computer graphics made me very interested. After graduating from university, I worked in a mobile game studio as a programmer. During that time, I’ve watched many Marvel movies, I observed all the pretty and realistic images but I knew it’s fake, that made me want to switch from the game industry to visual effects. Because I wanted to find out how visual effects movies were made.

What do you love about working in the industry?
I really enjoy the production work from green screen plates to the final movie. Each project has different requirements, working in a position like Pipeline Technical Director, I have to understand each step in our workflow. When I’m watching movies together with friends or family, I can explain to them how something has been made. I think it is super cool.

If you could give one piece of advice to a young woman wanting to join or starting out in VFX, what would it be?
Everyone starts from something that you are not confident about, but never be afraid or doubt yourself without even giving a try.

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the visual effects division of Lucasfilm Ltd., announced today that the company would be expanding its global footprint to Australia. The studio is opening a new studio in Sydney to better serve its clients and complement its current operations in San Francisco, where the company is headquartered, Singapore, Vancouver, and London.

“Sydney is an ideal location for our fifth studio,” noted Rob Bredow, Executive Creative Director and Head of ILM, adding, “there is abundant artistic and technical talent in the region which are both keys to ILM’s culture of innovation. It’s particularly exciting that the first film our new studio will contribute to will be Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”

Gretchen Libby, ILM VP of Production said, “We are always looking for ways to enhance our offering to clients and the Australian Federal PDV Offset coupled with the new NSW PDV rebate is sure to attract significant interest from filmmakers around the world. Our studio in Sydney will allow us to offer that opportunity while providing the quality effects work that is synonymous with Industrial Light & Magic.”

“It’s an amazing opportunity for local Australian talent to join established ILM staff from around the globe and collaborate on high-end animation and visual effects,” noted Luke Hetherington who will expand his responsibilities to serve as the studio’s Executive in Charge. “At ILM they can do so while working on the kind of projects that inspired so many of us to start out in this industry, like Star Wars, Avengers, Jurassic Park, and many more.”

ILM’s Sydney studio joins the company’s global studios in offering award-winning visual effects and animation and the artistry and creative problem solving that the company has become known for. The studio will work on projects including feature films, television, immersive entertainment and themed attractions.

To apply for open roles at our Australia studio, click here.

Today, ILM Senior Compositor, Charmaine Chan explains her visual inspiration for the Kylo and Luke confrontation after the Battle of Crait in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

These days, majority of blockbuster films are shot in front of a giant green/blue screen. Taking an actor in front of a screen and grounding them into a scene to help promote their development and storyline is always a tough challenge. On Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I got tasked with such a scenario, specifically the scene where Kylo and Luke finally confront one another after the Battle of Crait. It’s a tense moment and I was assigned to handle the Kylo Ren shots under the direction of VFX Supervisor Eddie Pasquarello and my sequence lead Peter Demarest.
The scene we were set out to create was right after a giant battle has just occurred, the land was all torn up, ash and salt flying everywhere, and we needed to create a sense of intensity, passion, and rage from the duality built up between Kylo and Luke.

The first time I saw the plates they reminded me a lot of the sparring sequence from Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. It actually happens to be the 65th anniversary of Seven Samurai this year, so its only appropriate to give a nod to the film and cinematography that has influenced so many other films, including this one!

Toho Productions

The main thing I noticed within Seven Samurai is the simplicity and stillness of each shot and angle. Yet the way the subject is framed leaves us in anticipation of their next move. We wanted to do the same within our shots, where the backgrounds were not distracting us from focusing in on the two main actors.
We had the AT-M6’s in the back at a complete stand still waiting for orders, and a dramatic landscape that was subtlety changing as time passes by during their exchange. We represented this change via two major factors: the sun setting and the buildup of salt over the red kyber crystal floor.

When Kylo first approaches Luke, we set the backdrop very warm with saturated orange and reds and a strong contrast. We went through many iterations of both the sky color and FX animation of smoke/dust wisps over the floor. We then slowly transitioned the sky color to be less saturated, and used the animated smoke to create even more salt on the ground. By the time Kylo is ready to fight Luke, we’ve created a very different aesthetic that’s both cool toned and diffused.

What transpired next is probably one of my favorite saber duels, and being able to help set the mood right before that fight was a great refresher on visual storytelling.

OpenEXR, a widely-adopted HDR image file format, and OpenCue, a recently launched render manager, join the growing roster of Academy Software Foundation projects.
We’re thrilled to announce that the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), a neutral forum for open source software development in the motion picture and media industries, today announced that OpenEXR and OpenCue have been accepted by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) as Academy Software Foundation projects alongside OpenVDB and OpenColorIO.
Initially developed by ILM, OpenEXR is an Academy Scientific and Technical Award winning high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format for use in computer imaging applications. It is a widely-adopted standard in computer graphics for linear and interactive media.
OpenCue is a fully featured, open source render manager for media and entertainment that can be used to break down complex jobs into individual tasks. Developed in collaboration by Google Cloud and Sony Pictures Imageworks, OpenCue is an evolution of Sony’s internal queuing system, Cue 3.
“This announcement marks a new phase for the Academy Software Foundation. We’ve achieved our initial goal of accepting OpenVDB, OpenColorIO, and OpenEXR – projects which greatly influenced the Foundation’s formation – and we are now ready to support and drive collaboration around newer projects like OpenCue,” David Morin, Executive Director of Academy Software Foundation. “Studios and developers are finding value in having a neutral home for the open source projects that our industry relies on, and we look forward to growing our projects and continuing to find new ways to support to the broader open source community.”

OpenEXR and OpenCue join OpenVDB and OpenColorIO as projects in the incubation stage at the Academy Software Foundation. All newly accepted projects start in incubation while they work to meet the high standards of the Academy Software Foundation and later graduate to full adoption. This allows the Academy Software Foundation to consider and support projects at different levels of maturity and industry adoption, as long as they align with the Foundation’s mission to increase the quality and quantity of contributions to the content creation industry’s open source software base.
Cary Phillips, Lucasfilm Research & Development Supervisor and Academy Science and Technology Council member noted, “The Academy Software Foundation was created with OpenEXR in mind, recognizing that there’s a natural life cycle to software projects: original architects and developers move between companies, expertise spreads throughout the industry, and the entire VFX technology ecosystem rapidly evolves. The ASWF has brought together virtually every major company in the industry, and it provides a vital forum to discuss sensible, practical solutions that should ensure that OpenEXR continues to serve the industry as a stable and reliable standard.”
OpenEXR One of the foundational technologies in computer imaging, OpenEXR is a standard HDR image file format for high-quality image processing and storage. It features higher dynamic range and color precision than existing 8- and 10-bit image file formats, and the latest version of OpenEXR supports multiple image compression algorithms, stereoscopic workflows, multi-part files and deep data.
“For us, the single most important thing we create are the images that we put on screen, and we’ve all come to trust the OpenEXR format with our most precious data. ILM’s decision over 15 years ago to make EXR available as an open source project for the filmmaking community arguably set in motion an industry-wide trend that fostered collaboration and shared advancement, eventually culminating in the creation of the Academy Software Foundation. We’re proud to contribute OpenEXR to a new home to ensure it remains a robust and stable project for years to come,” said Francois Chardavoine, Head of Production Technology, Industrial Light & Magic.

OpenEXR was developed in 1999 by ILM in response to the demand for higher color fidelity in the visual effects industry. It was released to the public as an open source library in 2003, and it has since been widely-used and maintained through code contributions from companies including Weta Digital, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Pixar Animation Studios, Autodesk, and DreamWorks, among others. OpenEXR was honored with an Academy Scientific and Technical Award in 2007.
OpenEXR is ILM’s main image file format and has been used in all motion pictures that ILM contributes visual effects work to since 2000. The first movies to employ OpenEXR were Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs. Recent films include Solo: A Star Wars Story, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Developers interested in learning more or contributing to OpenEXR can visit the OpenEXR Github page.

Today our guest writer is Todd Vaziri, Lead Artist at ILM who chronicles how the Blockade Runner engine shot from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story went from idea to reality:

I was thrilled to get to work on this shot with my friend and frequent collaborator, ILM lighter Tom Martinek. (Leia’s Blockade Runner escapes, tying Rogue One directly to the start of Star Wars (1977)? Yes, please!) We loved bringing this moment to life. It was a thrill to be able to help create the updated look of a classic ship we haven’t seen on screen since 1977. Also, it’s fun to realize that pretty much no one agrees how to pronounce “Tantive IV.”

Our first task was to study those first fleeting glimpses of the Tantive IV from the original Star Wars. Replicating the engine look of the engines *precisely* from the first film would not work for our movie. This was a recurring theme for the design challenges we took on for Rogue One.

I created the Blockade Runner ‘engine look’ to appear the way you *think* you remember it from Star Wars, not the way it actually appeared — honoring the spirit of the original look and updating it to fit modern sensibilities and the stylistic signature of our new film.

First, I matched the hue of the engine glow from the original film. From there, I wanted to add an organic “jet engine” texture to the inside of each engine, so I rotoscoped and stabilized some footage from a Bell 209 helicopter engine, which had a lot of built-in dynamic energy.

I placed the texture inside the engine geometry of each of the eleven engines so we could get peeks at it when looking down the tunnel, and offset and rotated the helicopter engine footage for each engine (so each engine would have an unique energy signature).

Tom developed a flickery cucoloris effect to create the interactive light from the engine cast onto the inside of the chamber–I split that into 11 passes to animate them separately. Then I had to come up with a way for the engines to ignite as if from a cold start.

I knew we never saw a Blockade Runner power up in any of the movies, but I asked Pablo Hidalgo (Lucasfilm) and others to see if there was any precedent set in any of the animated series. Apparently, there was none! So, I thought it would look cool if the four corner engines fired up first for stability. Then the other seven engines followed up behind. I didn’t want the shot to become a big lens flare show, so I only had a few crisp flares peek through (taking my cues from the original trilogy X-wing engine flares).

This engine look became a quick-start setup for the other Blockade Runners you see in the film. Finally for this shot, I added a hopefully-subtle camera rumble as the engines ignited.

We had a lot of fun talking about the rotating dish atop the Tantive IV. Look carefully at it in the original Star Wars (1977)–in shot 1, it’s not visible. In shot 2, it’s rotating counter clockwise. In shot 3, it’s rotating clockwise! For Rogue One, we animated the dish counterclockwise.

Rogue One (2016), visual effects by Industrial Light & Magic. Visual effects Supervisor John Knoll. Full ILM credits.

ILM’s Chief Creative Officer, John Knoll was among those honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at this year’s Sci Tech Awards.
Watch David Oyelowo present Scientific and Engineering Awards to Thomas Knoll and John Knoll for the original architecture, design and development, and to Mark Hamburg for his continued development and engineering of Adobe Photoshop:

Congratulations to John, Thomas, Mark and all of those honored this year.

Early this morning the Academy announced the nominees for the 91st Oscars and we’re so excited that ILM artists worked on three of the five films in the Achievement in Visual Effects Category.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Dan DeLeeuw
Kelly Port
Russell Earl
Dan Sudick
READY PLAYER ONE
Warner Bros. Pictures
Roger Guyett
Grady Cofer
Matthew E. Butler
David Shirk
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
Rob Bredow
Patrick Tubach
Neal Scanlan
Dominic Tuohy
Other nominated films:
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN
Christopher Lawrence
Michael Eames
Theo Jones
Chris Corbould
FIRST MAN
Paul Lambert
Ian Hunter
Tristan Myles
J.D. Schwalm
And here are some early reactions from a few of our newly-minted nominees:
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Rob Bredow, Overall VFX Supervisor – “We pretty much freaked out! All of us were gathered around the TV. It was pretty exciting. It’s such a great list of nominees, so it was amazing to see us on the list.”
Patrick Tubach, VFX Supervisor – “I’m incredibly excited to be nominated for the VFX work on Solo. Like many, I’ve been waiting to hear this story ever since some hot shot pilot bragged about it over a table in a seedy backwater cantina, but there’s a extra special thrill in being one of the lucky group of artists who finally got to tell it. Seriously- never tell me those odds!”
Ready Player One
Roger Guyett, VFX Supervisor – “I’m really thrilled about the nomination – we worked so hard and had an incredible team working on the project. I’m sharing this with our huge crew who put so much love into this project. Its an honour and great recognition from our peers for the work we did on RPO.”
Grady Cofer, VFX Supervisor – “I’m delighted to hear that Ready Player One has been nominated for Best Visual Effects. It’s a testament to all the hard work that went into it. From day one this has been a dream project. Steven’s passion for the story, fueled by his endless creative energy, made it all possible. I am honored to join my fellow nominees and represent this film at the Oscars.”
Avengers: Infinity War
Russell Earl, VFX Supervisor – “I’m just really happy to be nominated and feel lucky to be able to represent the whole team that worked on the film. It’s been a really exciting morning.”
The Oscars are February 24th. Congratulations to all the nominees!

In today’s employee spotlight we’re highlighting Color & Imaging Scientist, Carol Payne from our San Francisco studio.
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The Visual Effects Society released the nominations for the 17th Annual VES Awards this morning, and we’re thrilled to have been nominated for seventeen awards for our work in 2018. We’d like to congratulate all the nominees and thank our teams for their hard work.

Our nominations include:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
Ready Player One
Roger Guyett
Jennifer Meislohn
David Shirk
Matthew Butler
Neil Corbould

Solo: A Star Wars Story
Rob Bredow
Erin Dusseault
Matt Shumway
Patrick Tubach
Dominic Tuohy

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
12 Strong
Roger Nall
Robert Weaver
Mike Meinardus

Bird Box
Marcus Taormina
David Robinson
Mark Bakowski
Sophie Dawes
Mike Meinardus

Outstanding Animated Character in a Photoreal Feature
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Indoraptor
Jance Rubinchik
Ted Lister
Yannick Gillain
Keith Ribbons

Ready Player One; Art3mis
David Shirk
Brian Cantwell
Jung-Seung Hong
Kim Ooi

Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature
Ant-Man and the Wasp; Journey to the Quantum Realm
Florian Witzel
Harsh Mistri
Yuri Serizawa
Can Yuksel

Aquaman; Atlantis
Quentin Marmier
Aaron Barr
Jeffrey De Guzman
Ziad Shureih

Ready Player One; The Shining, Overlook Hotel
Mert Yamak
Stanley Wong
Joana Garrido
Daniel Gagiu

Solo: A Star Wars Story; Vandor Planet
Julian Foddy
Christoph Ammann
Clement Gerard
Pontus Albrecht

Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project
Aquaman; Third Act Battle
Claus Pedersen
Mohammad Rastkar
Cedric Lo
Ryan McCoy

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Gyrosphere Escape
Pawl Fulker
Matt Perrin
Oscar Faura
David Vickery

Ready Player One; New York Race
Daniele Bigi
Edmund Kolloen
Mathieu Vig
Jean-Baptiste Noyau

Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project
Ready Player One; DeLorean DMC-12
Giuseppe Bufalo
Kim Lindqvist
Mauro Giacomazzo
William Gallyot

Solo: A Star Wars Story; Millennium Falcon
Masa Narita
Steve Walton
David Meny
James Clyne

Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature
Avengers: Infinity War; Wakanda
Florian Witzel
Adam Lee
Miguel Perez Senent
Francisco Rodriguez

Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Feature
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
John Galloway
Enrik Pavdeja
David Nolan
Juan Espigares Enriquez

Nominees in 24 categories were selected by VES members via events hosted by 11 of our Sections, including Australia, the Bay Area, Germany, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, New Zealand, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington. The VES Awards will be held on February 5th at the Beverly Hilton.

This morning BAFTA announced the nominees for their annual awards ceremony on February 10th and we’re thrilled that ILM worked on three of the five films that made the list!

Congratulations to our artists Russell Earl (VFX Supervisor, Avengers: Infinity War), Craig Hammack (VFX Supervisor, Black Panther), Roger Guyett (Visual Effects Supervisor, Ready Player One), Grady Cofer (VFX Supervisor, Ready Player One), and David Shirk (Animation Supervisor, Ready Player One).

Films ILM contributed to:

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Kelly Port, Dan Sudick

BLACK PANTHER
Geoffrey Baumann, Jesse James Chisholm, Craig Hammack, Dan Sudick

READY PLAYER ONE
Matthew E. Butler, Grady Cofer, Roger Guyett, David Shirk

Also nominated:

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD
Tim Burke, Andy Kind, Christian Manz, David Watkins

FIRST MAN
Ian Hunter, Paul Lambert, Tristan Myles, J.D. Schwalm

We’d like to congratulate all the nominees on this honor and thanks to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Gary Wu is a Creature Supervisor based out of ILM’s Vancouver studio. (more…)

Ten films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 91st Academy Awards, and we’re thrilled to have contributed to six of them.
All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the shortlisted films on Saturday, January 5, 2019. Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.
ILM contributed to:
Ant-Man and the Wasp – ILM VFX Supervisor, Russell Earl
Avengers: Infinity War – ILM VFX Supervisor, Russell Earl
Black Panther – ILM VFX Supervisor, Craig Hammack
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – Overall VFX Supervisor, David Vickery
Ready Player One – Overall VFX Supervisor, Roger Guyett
Solo: A Star Wars Story – Overall VFX Supervisor, Rob Bredow
Other Semi-finalists:
Christopher Robin
First Man”
Mary Poppins Returns
Welcome to Marwen
Congratulations to all the semi-finalists!

This article originally appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Nine technical achievements, represented by 27 individual award recipients including ILM’s John Knoll, will be honored at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation on Feb. 9 at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills.

Also during the evening, cinematographer Curtis Clark (The Draughtsman’s Contract), who chairs the American Society of Cinematographers’ Motion Imaging Technology Council, will receive the John A. Bonner Medal for service.

Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques) will be presented to David Simons, Daniel Wilk, James Acquavella, Michael Natkin and David Cotter for Adobe After Effects; Oscar-winning VFX supervisor John Knoll, Thomas Knoll and Mark Hamburg for Adobe Photoshop; and Pixar’s leader Ed Catmull, Tony DeRose and Jos Stam for their subdivision surfaces science.

The recipients of the Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates) are Eric Dachs, Erik Bielefeldt, Craig Wood and Paul McReynolds for the PIX System for distributing media; Per-Anders Edwards for the MoGraph toolset in motion graphics software Cinema 4D; and Paul Miller and Marco Paolini for their work on the Silhouette rotoscope and paint system.

Technical achievement awards also will be presented to Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins and Wan-Chun Ma for the Polarized Spherical Gradient Illumination facial appearance capture method; Xueming Yu for the related Light Stage X capture system; and Charles Loop for his subdivision surfaces research.

Thabo Beeler, Derek Bradley, Bernd Bickel and Markus Gross are also being honored for the conception, design and engineering of the Medusa Performance Capture System. Medusa captures exceptionally dense animated meshes without markers or makeup, pushing the boundaries of visual fidelity and productivity for character facial performances in motion pictures.

“Each year, the Academy forms a diverse committee made up of nearly 60 experts on the technology of filmmaking tasked with examining the tools that artists use to create films,” Doug Roble, chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, said Wednesday in a statement. “This year, the committee is recognizing nine technologies from around the world. These extraordinary contributions to the science of filmmaking have elevated our art form to incredible new heights.”

Industrial Light & Magic expanding its offering of best-in-class visual effects and animation services to include the streaming and episodic television market with a new division: ILM TV. The division will be based out of ILM’s new 47,000 square foot London studio and supported by the company’s global locations in San Francisco, Vancouver and Singapore.

The ILM TV team will be lead by Visual Effects Supervisors Hayden Jones and Jonathan Privett alongside Executive Producers, Louise Hussey and Stefan Drury. Previously, the team set up and oversaw DNEG’s television division; winning a BAFTA for Special, Visual and Graphic Effects for their work on BLACK MIRROR.

ILM TV’s first projects will be Lucasfilm’s eagerly anticipated live action series based in the Star Wars universe, THE MANDALORIAN, being developed by Jon Favreau and Superman prequel series KRYPTON, now in its second season, based on DC characters from Warner Horizon Scripted Television for SYFY.

“It’s not often you get to create a new division at Industrial Light & Magic”, explained Rob Bredow, Executive Creative Director and Head of ILM, “We are seeing a real convergence in our creative approach used on films and in our immersive entertainment division ILMxLAB, and now we’re proud to be able to offer these ILM innovations in a way that’s suitable for streaming and television work to creatives around the world.”

ILM’s legacy in television dates back to the studio’s revolutionary and Emmy award-winning work for THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES, which brought feature film quality effects to an episodic series for the first time.“We are extremely excited to be re-igniting ILM’s involvement in this market and to showcase the team’s expertise, unrivaled technology and production management globally.” adds VFX Supervisor Hayden Jones, “The television and streaming segments have grown exponentially in recent years and we are seeing substantial demand for high calibre visual effects that can be delivered on schedule and within budget, all of which lie at the core of our teams expertise and proven track record.”

ILM TV will offer producers and showrunners access to Industrial Light & Magic’s legendary VFX talent, infrastructure and technology combined with a fresh approach to visual effects, designed to suit the condensed production schedules and rapid turnaround times that episodic series and online streaming programs demand.

Senior Generalist, Jorik Dozy’s ILM credits include Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Recently, Jorik combined his love of the environment with his visual storytelling skills when he co-directed ‘Birthplace,’ Novo Amor’s impactful music video, which takes place on the ocean floor and highlights the tragic realities of plastic pollution. The video has been written and talked about by The Independent, Greenpeace, and Plastic Oceans and recently won VIDEO OF THE YEAR at the AIM Independent Music Awards. Jorik discusses his passion project:

HOW DID YOU BECOME ATTACHED TO THE PROJECT?
For almost two years now I have been directing and writing projects together with my friend Sil van der Woerd whom I know from my time at Gnomon school of Visual Effects in LA, when I was studying there. We aim to make films about stories that matter, especially when those in disadvantage can’t speak for themselves. The pollution of our oceans is one of the most important stories of our time and for a while we’ve been exploring ways to make a video that touches on this topic. When we heard Ali’s (Novo Amor) song, Birthplace, the specific idea for this video came to us almost in a flash. We have been collaborating with Ali for a while and we were fortunate enough to get the opportunity to create the video for the single.

HAD YOU DIRECTED MUSIC VIDEOS BEFORE?
I have been directing projects for little over four years now, starting with short films and later venturing into music videos.
Recently I have mainly been doing music videos, it is a great platform to experiment and guarantees an audience for your work. I have also been very lucky to collaborate with musicians that allow me full creative freedom which is incredible.

HOW WAS THE CONCEPT DEVISED?
The concept for Birthplace came from the essence of what we wanted to achieve; how do we raise awareness for such a depressing topic in a new way that would catch peoples’ attention. People are triggered in a different way when you tell a story or inspire them instead of showing them purely the horrific reality. We want the audience to fall in love with the beauty of the ocean and see that it is perfect, and then we want to break their hearts and hopefully inspire them to become active and fight for change.

WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES OF THIS PROJECT?
As a director the biggest challenge was communication. Filming underwater is very different from a normal film set where you can say to your actor or cinematographer, ‘look up’ or ‘go slower’. When you have four divers steering a 13 meter long plastic whale at 10m depth underwater, and an actor who is practically blind because he isn’t wearing a diving mask it can be hard to get everyone in the right place at the right moment. Luckily we had Nihal Friedel by our side. Nihal is a Lighting Supervisor here at ILM’s Singapore office and specializes in underwater cinematography in his free time, and is an absolute pro. His experience in diving and filming underwater was an essential piece in the puzzle to make this video happen. Controlling a 13m whale sculpture underwater was a huge challenge but we worked with an excellent diving team that practiced with it before the shoot, so they had an idea of how to move it around. Funny enough, the more challenging part of the shoot turned out to be the wildlife since you can’t control or plan that. Many times we were waiting for a manta ray to show up or for a school of fish to be in the right place at the right time, waiting for that one moment of luck where everything is just right and comes together to get the perfect shot.

The currents proved another challenge to the entire underwater team. In Komodo they would pick up rapidly and suddenly change direction. On some occasions we decided to just let the current take us and then have the boat collect us wherever we ended up.

HOW DID YOUR BACKGROUND AT ILM HELP YOU PROBLEM SOLVE OR INSPIRE ANY SOLUTIONS?
Of course, you are more comfortable on set knowing what you can and can’t fix or solve in post production. But besides that, understanding how to communicate, motivate, and work with different people is something that I am constantly trying to get better at. Working with different VFX Supervisors and Leads shows you different methods of leadership, which you can learn a lot from.

ARE ALL OF THE UNDERWATER SHOTS REAL OR ARE THERE ANY VFX SHOTS?
Everything is 100% shot in camera! We really tried to do it all for real and only use VFX to clean up some of the images or enhance it slightly. We used VFX to remove diver bubbles that showed up in the shots and also the ropes which were used to pull the whale forward.

WHERE WAS THIS VIDEO SHOT?
We filmed in two locations. The first was Amed, in Bali, which we chose because our production team found a group of bamboo builders able to build the whale, and Amed features relatively calm waters where we could film the whale in the ocean. The second location was Komodo, where we filmed all the wildlife. Komodo was relatively close and offers some of the best reefs in the world, thus providing the perfect setting for the pristine ocean we wanted to show in the opening of the video. It is also a site that has good chances of seeing turtles and manta rays.

HOW DID YOU BUILD THE PLASTIC WHALE?
We designed the whale in Maya after a real size humpback whale. We broke this model into eight segments so that we could make the whale move underwater, and take it apart, move it onto trucks, and assemble it in the ocean. Included in the design was a strong spine, that ran to the tip of the nose where we attached a steel cable. Two divers were pulling the cable with 2 underwater scooters. Inside the whale were 2 more divers who each controlled the flapping motion of one fin. We also equipped the design with two escape holes for the divers, and a mechanism to open the whale’s mouth.

We brought the design to Dalbo, an art director on Bali, who moved a small army in his village to build the whale (there are 25 villagers credited). The whale consisted of non-sinking materials; bamboo and plastic. The bamboo was freshly cut from the forest, and then split and modeled into many thin layers to form a strong structure. The bamboo segments were wrapped with sorted plastic, and covered with fishing nets to which we attached lots of plastic bags and waste which we sourced from the area.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MEMORY FROM WORKING ON THE VIDEO?
The entire thing was one big wild adventure! Encountering 4-meter manta rays and turtles was definitely a magical experience. Coming eye to eye with these phenomenal creatures that are so calm and gracious was truly humbling and unforgettable. However, what I always treasure most on such projects are the people you meet along the way and the friendships you build. After going through such an intense process together, solving problems, overcoming fears and uncertainties, and experiencing so much in such a short time, you truly come out the other end as a big group of friends with a unique shared experience. That is living!

HOW HAS IT FELT TO GET SUCH A POSITIVE RESPONSE TO THE PROJECT?
It’s great to see people really understand and grab hold of the message and underlying meaning of the video. In the end, we created this to raise awareness for a pressing issue that we all need to talk about much more often. If we don’t halt the manufacturing of plastic products, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. If you start to educate yourself about the numbers it becomes clear that this is a massive problem that we all need to be aware of. Hopefully, the positive response we have had on the video can help start the conversation for people who previously weren’t aware of it. The press and awards nominations also really help to get the message out there.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT ‘BIRTHPLACE’?
Making the video was like a deep meditation on the subject of plastic pollution, and we became much more aware of how waste and plastics are disposed of and how little we actually recycle. With this newly learned knowledge we now try to bring awareness to people around us and encourage them to become involved too, in solving this massive problem. We hope that people will educate themselves and learn how they can improve their day to day lives to make the situation better. We collected a lot of information for people to make this process easier. Read all about it here.

Join SVP, Executive Creative Director and Head of ILM, Rob Bredow for his keynote address from this year’s SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver. Bredow shares his unique understanding of how media and technological innovation can join forces to tell great stories and create groundbreaking experiences.

Watch:

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.
As CG Technology Supervisor of ILM, I work with the CG artist leads across our global studios, internal engineering groups, as well as with outside partners, to define and drive short and long-term technology strategy for ILM. I have 14 years of experience in the film industry as a vfx professional.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?
I majored in Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Brown University, then went on to be a senior management consultant at a business consulting firm for several years, before switching careers into the vfx field. My technical and CG skills are all mostly self-taught with some combination of “as-needed” courses taken at NYU and UC Berkeley, and of course “on the job” learning once I got my first job in vfx at Rhythm & Hues working as a character rigger.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?
I had always had a love of film and art and technology. An introductory 3D computer graphics class I took at NYU really made me realize how much I enjoyed CG work – both for the creative and technical aspects.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?
The biggest challenge for me was switching careers from business consulting to vfx. I had a liberal arts degree that had very little to do with computer science or computer graphics, and all of my professional experience to date had been in an unrelated field. I went about learning as much as I could as broadly as I could about the vfx field, and most importantly, I formulated my own “learning path;” I managed to cherry-pick a few classes that I felt would expedite my learning, and filled in the rest with just learning on my own time. There are so many publicly available resources for learning both programming as well as computer graphics that it is really possible to teach yourself and get from point A to B quickly without enrolling in a lengthy, costly program or having some official certificate.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?
My mentors on the artist and technical side have all been men, but they have all been exceptional in giving me advice, development opportunities and encouragement. My most powerful female role model is my mother, who had a very successful professional career as a designer and is the artist I most admire. Art is an essential part of her being and way of living, but she has also always pursued her passion with incomparable moral integrity. Just as valuable to me is the role my father played in my upbringing. He also worked as a designer, but was very involved as a parent. I have many fond memories of him being involved at my school and taking me to and from my Japanese Saturday school, and teaching me things and being creative together. I think for opportunities for women in society to really change, girls need to see strong, successful women thriving in their chosen professions, but they also need to see that if they choose to raise children with a partner, that partner can be supportive and complementary of their needs. I think that paradigm shift can be liberating for many men as well, whose societal roles and expectations may in some cases constrain them from having richer relationships with their children.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?
I do not have a particular mantra, but my children are all the reminder I need to give my best professionally and personally so that I can be the parent they deserve, and do my part to leave the world a better place for their generation.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?
It needs to start very early – my own children even at 3 or 4 years old have noticed and asked why certain professions or activities are “all boys” – whether it’s something they noticed in a book or observing the real world around them. Whether they ask about it explicitly or not, those models are being reinforced (and therefore more likely to be replicated) from a very early age. I think providing opportunities to girls in school with filmmaking projects, classes, camps etc. is essential to getting more girls interested in a field that otherwise appears very homogenous and prohibitive. And I think telling the positive stories of female filmmakers and other women in the industry is also critical, to show girls and young women that it is possible to succeed and enjoy a career in this field.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?
It is a continually evolving field so it is important to be flexible, curious, and enjoy being a constant learner. Follow and pursue the kind of work that you truly feel joy and excitement doing.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
Always listen inwardly to what it is you want to be doing and how you want to be growing and let that define what “the next level” is for your career at your own pace; what you want may not exist directly in that next box up on the org chart – it may be somewhere else. Or it may be something that is not a box at all, that you end up drawing up on your own! Career success would be being able to develop, hone and expand the ways in which you as an individual can uniquely create value, and feeling fulfilled in doing so. Don’t be afraid to find and even create the opportunities for yourself that meet those needs.

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a Lucasfilm Ltd. company, announced today respected industry veteran Rob Bredow has been appointed SVP, executive creative director & head of ILM. In addition, it was announced that Gretchen Libby, has been promoted to vice president, marketing & production. Bredow will be in charge of all of ILM’s 4 global studios and report to Lucasfilm General Manager Lynwen Brennan, and Libby will report to Bredow.

Bredow joined Industrial Light & Magic as a visual effects supervisor in 2014 and shortly thereafter was named vice president of new media and head of Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group. Bredow was instrumental in launching a new division, ILMxLAB, in 2015, combining the talents of Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound to develop, create, and release story-based immersive entertainment. In 2016, Bredow was promoted to CTO of Lucasfilm, overseeing technical operations and partnerships as well as the company’s technology roadmap. Currently, Bredow is serving as the visual effects supervisor and co-producer on Solo: A Star Wars Story directed by Ron Howard, which releases on May 25, 2018.

“I’ve been working very closely with Rob over the past two years on Solo,” says Kathleen Kennedy. “I have witnessed his leadership skills and creative abilities first-hand and I’ve been extremely impressed. Filmmaking is often about problem solving and Rob comes to every challenge with a strong creative point of view and the ability to find the best solution every time. This and his business acumen make him an ideal candidate to lead ILM, which has always stood at the crossroads of technology and artistry.”

“I am thrilled that Rob is going to be leading ILM into the future. He is the perfect fit for the role combining creativity, innovation and business savvy”, says Lynwen Brennan, Lucasfilm general manager. “He is also a wonderful leader who builds great, trusting relationships within the company and with the filmmakers and studios we work with.”

“I’m honored to take on this role for Industrial Light & Magic,” says Bredow. “From my involvement with the launch of ILMxLAB to supervising the visual effects team on the soon-to-release Solo: A Star Wars Story, I can honestly say the people at this company are some of the most passionate, creative, and dedicated people I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with. I’m thrilled to help guide ILM’s legacy of innovation and excellence on a global scale.”

Prior to joining ILM, Bredow was the CTO and visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks. He has worked on films such as Independence Day, Godzilla, Stuart Little, Castaway, Surf’s Up, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, and many others.

Bredow is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (Visual Effects Branch) and the AMPAS Scientific and Technical Council and, in 2010, was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award Outstanding Effects Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture.

Gretchen Libby started at ILM in 1997 as a production manager. A year later, she was promoted to associate visual effects producer for A Perfect Storm and then to visual effects producer on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones two years later. In her previous role, Libby had focused on the company’s global expansion, which included opening studios in Singapore, Vancouver and London, and was the key marketing point of contact for ILM’s clients. Libby’s focus will remain on client marketing, overseeing all global production and strategic relationships. Prior to ILM, Libby worked in visual effects film production at Pacific Data Images in Palo Alto, Calif. and in visual effects commercial production in New York.

“Gretchen is a key member of our executive team and has been instrumental in numerous strategic initiatives in recent years, from marketing the studio to our global expansion,” noted Brennan. “She brings depth of production understanding that is prized within the company and continues to be invaluable to our clients.”

“In my 21 years at the company I have seen firsthand the tremendous impact ILM has had, and continues to have, on the industry,” says Libby. “I’m excited to help ILM continue to evolve as we take on new challenges and provide new and exciting ways for storytellers to share their visions.”
Libby is a member of the Producers Guild of America and formerly served on the board of directors of the Visual Effects Society of which she remains a member. She is also a member of Women in Film and has served as a producer on 29 feature films, eight of which received Academy Award^® nominations for visual effects.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.
I have been in the industry for almost 10 years and my 7.5th year at ILM Singapore. I’m currently a production manager.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?
I majored in communications, media arts and production.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?
I have always loved Japanese Anime ever since I was a young girl I dreamed of being involved in the creation of it. Over the years, I (sadly) came to the realization that I lack the artistic skills to create these beautiful images. So, I decided that being in a production role is probably the best thing I can do to get close to my dream. I started in a feature animation studio in Hong Kong and moved into the visual effects world when I joined ILM. I’m so glad that it worked out :)

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?
It was quite stressful when I first moved into the managerial role – there were more decisions to be made, more responsibilities and more difficult conversations to handle. It took me a while to realize that it’s okay not to be perfect, as long as I can learn from my mistakes. And sometimes you just have to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and that’s what will make you grow.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?
Yes I did. My first production manager at ILM taught me a lot about VFX when I had no idea on what this industry is about. I was able to find my own management style based on everything I learned from her. I’m thankful to meet her at the early stage of my career (you know who you are :))

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?
“Do. Or do not. There is no try” – from our famous Yoda!

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?
Would love to see more female directors and producers to be part of the big budget productions.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?
Your passion for movies or visual effect shouldn’t be defined along the gender lines. If this is what you want to do in your life and it makes you happy, pursue it with all your heart and don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it. Go for your dreams!

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
There is no shortcut to success. Identify areas that can be improved on and give it 110%. Continue to deliver great work, be open to feedback and always willing to learn.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.
I am the HR Advisor in the London studio. I started as HR Coordinator back in May 2014 when there were only three of us in HR, Recruitment and Talent. This gave me the opportunity to help shape the structure of our department. Now along with knowing the systems and processes inside and out, I’m working on more defined HR projects. Although I’ve been working in creative industries for over a decade, ILM London is my first job in the film industry.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?
My journey into HR wasn’t exactly straightforward! When I first attended University in Canada, I enrolled in a general Bachelor of Arts programme, eventually switched to Jazz studies and then finally graduated with an Arts and Entertainment Management certificate. When I moved to London, I had been working in the music industry in Vancouver as Business Affairs Coordinator and was looking for a bigger industry pool to learn from. That’s when the wonderful world of VFX snapped me up and I haven’t looked back since! Since being at ILM, I’ve graduated with a Level 5 diploma in Human Resources Management through the CIPD.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?
One thing I knew from a very young age was that I love the creative industries and believe they have an important role in the world. Music and creative writing were always my strengths and so I followed those passions. One of the parts of my job whilst working at the record label in Vancouver was to obtain approval for our music to be featured in film and television. I was in contact with many studios, including Disney, and started to realise how many people it took to create the final film that we see in the theatres.

When I started at ILM London, that realisation became even more apparent! The work that our employees do is incredible, to say that the films would not be the same without them is an understatement. Being a part of the visual effects industry might not have been the driving force in my career like it has been for so many of our employees but I am inspired everyday by the amazingly talented people I get to work with. They inspire me to be the best I can be at my job, to ensure that they feel supported and have a positive experience working at ILM.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?
The biggest challenge I’ve had to face was finding the strength to give up an amazing job that I loved but had grown out of in order to push forward and progress my career. I knew that I needed to make a change but change is scary and difficult – and who wants to deal with that stress! After a trip to Europe, I realised that in order to take that next step I needed to leap so I applied for my work Visa, quit my job, packed up my life and moved from Canada to the UK. It is by far the best thing I’ve ever done. Not only have I successfully progressed in my career but I have also learned so much about myself as a person. As hard as it was, and as hard as it still can be, it was beyond worth it. Risks are worth it. No challenge is too difficult, there’s always a way to overcome.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?
I’ve always been surrounded by, or maybe surrounded myself with, strong female role models. My family not only taught me but showed me that women can do anything and be anything. The women in my family have worked and flourished in industries that have had the stigma of being predominantly male, namely the police and fire departments. I’ve watched my Mother work hard and navigate through the fire department from being a desk clerk at the fire hall to communications officer to Captain to training the new recruits at the academy.

That level of influence carried over into my career. My first job was working in a dog grooming shop owned and operated by a woman, my first office job was receptionat at an all-female law firm and now at ILM I’m surrounded by some of the strongest, smartest and most driven women I’ve ever encountered.

All of these women amaze me but they’re just people. The fact that they’re women is something I celebrate and recognise now but hopefully there will come a day where these types of achievements are looked at as just that, as achievements and not break-throughs.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?
‘Wake up. Kick Ass. Be Kind. Repeat.’

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?
The film industry is one that actually has the power and the presence to make an impact. If we show girls that there are female driven films (actor, director, producer, writer, artist, editor) then they will see the possibility. There’s a reason why everyone got the ‘Rachel’ haircut, enrollment in forensic science courses is through the roof and everyone wants to own a husky – they saw it on their screens. If we show girls that there are females in front of and behind the camera, behind the computers, on the boards and in the offices then they will see the possibility. Let’s go into schools and encourage girls to be interested in creative arts, technology, science and math. We’ve got the power to make this change.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?
Believe in your aspirations! Research schools, network and collaborate with like-minded individuals and look for work experience or internship opportunities. Most applicants for our work experience are females, our running team is 50/50 and we have females in each of our departments, a career in visual effects is well within reach.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
You have to want it, be confident in your desires and abilities and be prepared to work for it. Some people get places without putting much effort in but I’m of the belief that nothing is worth anything unless you had to work for it. Put the hours in, keep learning, ask for help, if you fail then find another way and follow your instinct. In a perfect world, I’d give the same advice to both genders!

We’ll get there.HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?
The same way that they can be allies to each other and we can be allies to each other. Every colleague, no matter their gender, race, religion, age or sexual orientation, deserves to be treated equally. I would expect all of my colleagues to respect and support each other, act collaboratively when the task calls for it, exercise compassion or patience if the moment asks for it, provide constructive feedback or show appreciation when required and accept each others differences and not let them get in the way of achieving magnificent work. In short, treat them exactly as you should anyone else!

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY
I have been in the film industry for 16 years. It is surprising how fast time goes when you are genuinely having a fun time. My role at ILM is a VFX Producer role. I oversee the schedule and budget for several projects by partnering with the VFX and CG Supervisors. I recently finished ‘Ready Player One’ and I am working on delivering ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story.

’WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?
I studied a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) at The University of Newcastle in Australia and I knew back then I wanted to be a Producer. I remember my Dad telling me a Science Degree would be a better option. It is funny how I have ended up in such a scientific part of film making in computer graphics.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?
My original dream was to Produce live action projects. I grew up in 80s and we would watch films like ‘The Goonies,’ ‘Neverending Stor’y and ‘The Labrynth’ over and over. I was obsessed. My first “real” role in the industry was as a Production Assistant working in Animation at DisneyToon Studios and I fell in love with the process. It was a natural progression to combine live action and my computer graphics animation experience and move into visual effects.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?
Every project has its own specific challenges and that is regardless of where you are in your career. It is what I love about the job – trying to understand all the different personalities and how to get a team to work together with the same creative vision. On a personal level, my husband is in the industry and we have moved countries twice and had two children while maintaining full time careers so that has been challenging for us both to juggle. I have had great support.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?
I have worked with some incredible women in all types of roles over the years. A lot of the times it is the people you work alongside who help you grow because you are working to help them also deliver their portion of the project. I would call out a few specific ladies who were my direct managers and who really helped me grow over the years: Danielle Legovich, Kara Piersimoni, Sandra Scott and Amber Naismith.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?
Just keep swimming.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?
The women I know all hold their own in their roles. They are amazing. We need to trust more women to take on active roles within the industry and keep allowing women in the industry to talk about their experiences and share their knowledge to inspire the next generation of filmmakers.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?
Do it. There is no limit to creativity. You will breathe the films you are working on for all hours of the day (and night), but it will be worth when you see it for the first time on the big screen. Every person on a project has a part to play. Remember you have a voice even when you think you don’t. Have fun.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
Work hard at the job and prove you are the best at your current level. You won’t get promoted before you can do your current role well. Try and focus on the people around you: listen to them, learn from them, watch them.

HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?
I have been lucky to work with some fantastic men in my career and foster great trust and partnerships. We could hire more women in visual effects – especially in creative and technical roles – and men have a role to play in that, the same as other women do.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

I’ve been with the company about one and a half years now. This past September I became a developer in ILM’s Research & Development group, my focus is mainly with the crowds department. My focus is more in helping the artists, leads and supervisors establishing new and/or expanding and upgrading existing workflows. Before that I was a pipeline developer supporting Ready Player One, but with almost a sole focus on the crowd department.

I started my career with a small company in Brussels working on an animation film (Walking the Dog) and I stayed with them for a bit more than a year and a half. After that, I moved to London and started with MPC where I worked with their techanim (characterFX) department for the next 3 years before joining ILM London. So about 6 years in the industry.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?

After high school I joined the army (I wasn’t made out for it, so I was there only very shortly), before going to university to study engineering. Engineering didn’t turn out to be a great fit either, but I found out that I absolutely loved programming and that I was pretty good at it. I switched tracks to study Informatics, finished my bachelor and started my Masters in Mathematical Informatics (it was the closest study they had related to artificial intelligence).

Just before my thesis year started I heard about a game development study at a sister university and I enrolled in both studies (my final year and the new one track). Three years later I graduated as a Bachelor in Multimedia and Communication Technology – Major Digital Arts and Entertainment – Minor Game Development (try saying that 5 times fast in a row), and went to work.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?

After graduation I took a month holiday before starting to look around for a job. At the end of my time off one of my friends contacted me and asked me if I wanted to help him out with a feature animation movie for about 3 months. I thought: it’s close enough to video games, and the experience would look good on my resume and I can look for a job in game development after that. One and a half years later I left the company to work in London for MPC.

It was never my intention to stay in visual effects this long, but I like it here. It’s challenging, demanding, but also fun and the people you get to work with are amazing.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?

There are different kinds of challenges, all having their unique issues and resolutions. I’ve had a few situations where if it didn’t work out it was probably game over or at the very least a major setback for my career, they just never felt that way when I was in the situation. It was something needed to be done and nobody was coming up with a feasible plan, so I did the best with what I knew and put it forward to my seniors to examine and discuss it. In general since starting in this industry I’ve been working on new parts of a pipeline or updating existing ones without much of a back up plan in some cases (sink or swim) and sticking my neck out and saying: I can do this, just give me the opportunity.

I worked with a CG supervisor that seemed to do the opposite of what common sense dictated and trying to shield the artists from the effects of that wasn’t easy. Communicating clearly with the production people involved and the supervisor’s superiors was what resolved the situation in the end (that and the artists were a bit more shielded from the supervisor).

I’ve stepped up to the CEO of the first company I worked and told him I was going to sit on the bench outside (in their back garden) reading my book because there weren’t enough licenses for something and he needed the artists to finish their work more than I needed to implement a new tool (trailer delivery). That if they needed me they could call me on my phone or yell out the windows. We got some extra licenses before the day was over.

Three times now I’ve been in a situation where I had to lead a team of more junior people through a new part of the pipeline (smallest team was 2 people, biggest was 6, going from a few weeks to months), while keep on developing that pipeline and supporting the existing tools in order to finish a show. That involved a balancing act of priorities (post it’s so far are by far the best scheduling tool that I worked with – at least for managing myself) and working some evenings and weekends.

Any of those situations could have backfired, but I would like to think that because of communicating clearly and knowing what my limits are, how to manage myself and who I could rely on if/when needed (if only to vent frustration), it worked out.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?

As a mentor and a role model that would be Ceylan Shevket, my former boss at MPC, without her I don’t think I would be where I’m at now. She saw something in me and gave me the opportunities to prove that I was capable of doing more. I’ve learned a lot from her and I still talk often with her.

In general I do find that I can learn or admire something in most of my colleagues (both female and male), you never know where that Eureka! moment can come from.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?

I’m more of a frustration venting kind of girl (not suitable for sensitive ears) rather than a motivational mantra one, I think the closest thing I have to something vaguely motivating is counting down the weeks till the end of the project or holidays (x more weeks till it’s over).

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?

I think it boils down to the same question as how to get more women in technical areas in general. As usual there isn’t a fixed answer, but rather a combination of things.

Almost all industries (if not all) already have women, some not much, but it does mean that it is possible. Have some of those speak at schools and show the students (can be high schools as junior years) that it can be done and preferably even that it’s normal to have a women in what would be considered a man’s job. As soon as you make a fuss about it that it’s a special person in a special role, people (and especially younger girls) will see it as something that is outside of the group or norm, and who at that age wants to be singled out? But also the opposite, have some men talk about their jobs that are viewed as more fit for a woman.

I heard that some of the studies started doing some summer courses for women only so they can get their technical skills/levels improved before starting the actual studies. That seems like a good thing also, although you would need to be careful as to not make them feel singled out. It could give them a confirmation or a little boost in self insurance to know that they are capable of doing this and if not that they can ask the teachers for help.

Even going younger, if you have to give a gift to a little girl you know, have you considered something more technical? Or was your first instinct to go for a cuddly toy or doll? She can love playing with dolls, but how do you know if she might not like to play with something more often chosen for boys (Lego, …). If you don’t know, there are some ‘girly’ variants on some of the boys’ toys, it might be worth giving that as a gift and show her a whole new world.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?

It’s the same advice I would give to men also: it’s hard work, if you are looking for a 9-5 job, you are not likely going to find it here. There will be moments where you will be asked to work late or weekends (you are not obliged to do so). The work will be frustrating at moments, you might work on something for days or weeks only to hear that it’s been canceled from the show, but it will also be rewarding: you get to see your work on the big screen and your family and friends will be able to watch it. The people you get to work with are in general amazing.

It’s not a conventional job and it’s a small world, people move around a lot and soon enough you know someone in the different companies and countries. I can’t say this enough: it’s a small world and people talk. I’ve been contacted already by companies that I’ve never heard of, but someone there worked with me before and they put my name forward.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

Speak up, be polite, friendly and respectful of course, but do speak up and be as direct as you can about it. Throwing subtle hints and hoping that the other party will pick up on it and give you the role rarely works in my experience. Speak up, say why you think you are fit for the role or why you would deserve this chance. Women tend to be more unsure about ourselves and in general hope that our superiors notice our worth and give us that role. But if you have never said that you are interested in growing further in the company, or even in what direction, how will your superior know? So speak up, you have a ‘no’, but you might get a ‘yes’, you will never know until you ask. What’s the worst that can happen? You might not get the job, but if that’s the case, ask for feedback, what areas you should work on, … At least at that point your boss will know that you want to grow and if he/she didn’t knew this before, you are still better off.

HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?

I think first women need to become better allies to themselves. There is a difference between men and women, and there probably will always be one, communication is one of the biggest. Men tend to be more direct, while women are in general more subtle in expressing themselves. We would need to communicate more directly instead of relying on hints and hoping that the other party will pick it up. With a more direct communication everybody involved know where they are at and the hints can’t be ignored or misinterpreted.

How men can be better allies to women, it’s difficult to say. So far on the work area itself I rarely had an issue with a guy just because I am a woman (so far in my career I had it once, and that guy has learned the hard way not to make that mistake again). The only moments where I did feel like me being female was part of the equation is when you talk with some of the higher ups (usually men) about a certain role and potentially getting that role. Somehow people always assume you want to get a baby (or multiple) as soon as possible and just after giving you that role and that always gives you a downside that for instance a male candidate won’t have.

I have to say though that of the places where I worked so far, that ILM has more women in leading roles.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

I am a production manager at ILM Vancouver, which means I’m responsible for the crewing and schedule of the show. I’ve been at ILM for 4 years. I coordinated on shows in some amazing legacy franchises like ‘Jurassic World’ and ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ before becoming a PM. My first show in my current role was ‘Transformers: The Last Knight.’

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?

I went to the University of Illinois and got a B.Sc. in Media Studies. While I was at University, I worked at the local PBS station, WILL-TV. That’s where I learned how rewarding it is to work on projects that reach a wide audience. After I graduated, I worked as a videographer/editor at Wolfram Research, the technical computing software firm that makes Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha. We made videos highlighting the developers the made and the scientists/engineers that used our software. I felt very privileged to have so much access to these amazing people- to ask questions, learn, and then share their stories. Being in production is very much the same in that I get to talk to everyone, make the connections and help the plan come together.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?

I was one of those Star Wars obsessed kids. And I knew from my time of at Wolfram that I loved working around extremely smart people using tech in innovative ways. When I heard ILM had opened a studio in Vancouver and was hiring, I was really excited about the possibility of working with the best in the biz.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?

The step up from production coordinator to production manager was a big one. I was used to being in the trenches- planning task by task and shot by shot with my artists. To suddenly zoom way out and take responsibility for the schedule and the crew and the budget gave me vertigo at first. But I asked a lot of questions, got a lot of answers and then tried to make the best choice for the show. It was a close collaboration between the awesome production teams in SF and Vancouver that made it all work.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?

I’m lucky to have a lot of strong female mentors in my orbit! First of all is my mother, Cindy Shepherd. She modeled strong and loving leadership my entire life. There’s also Jilyan Landon, who was the video producer I worked with at Wolfram Research. She taught me how to listen and ask questions to piece together the solution to a problem. She also showed me how rewarding work can be when you have a strong connection with your team of co-workers. Another important one is Emily Williams, who was the PM on the first show I ever worked and is now my direct manager. She’s always believed in me when I told her I was ready to take the next step and given me the opportunities to do so.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?

How do you eat a giant? One bite at a time.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?

Hire them. Fund them. Screen their films.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?

Be confident in who you are and what you bring to the table. Every team is much stronger with diverse perspectives and ideas.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

Make your contributions visible. I think there are a lot of extremely talented women doing excellent work who think that means their managers will automatically notice. Don’t expect or wait for them to. You’ve got to let them know what you are doing and how it helps the project.

HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?

Make opportunities for women to speak and actively listen. If you have hiring power, make a conscious effort to bring in more female candidates. And one smaller thing, let’s all cool it with comments like “You look stressed” or “You are looking under the weather”. Unless someone has personally told you that they aren’t feeling well, even these well-meaning comments can remind that their appearance is being scrutinized.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

I’m currently a Visual Effects Producer at ILM London. A Producer’s job is to ensure the project delivers on time and on budget – that’s the definition of the role, but there is so much more to it than that…

My daily routine consists of managing the Artists, Supervisor and Leads, and the rest of the Production Team, along side supporting the Visual Effects Supervisor, making sure he/she has everything they need to do their job. I spend a lot of time sitting in Dailies with the Supervisors, keeping an eye on the feedback and requests that come through from Artists and the various departments. Producing is thinking on your feet and knowing who you need to talk to to get the information you need, and ultimately constantly evolving to make sure all the plates keep spinning.

I have been in the film industry for only 7 years, just now coming into my 8th. I’m not going to shy away from the fact that I have progressed very quickly. I have just tried to be myself throughout and stick closely to my morals. I value hard work, honesty, trust and collaboration. These are the foundations of every project I manage.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?

I studied Illustration and Animation at Winchester School of Art. I have a very heavy artistic background, and all through school, college and university I had every intention of becoming an illustrator.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?

As time went on at University I realised my strengths were in organisation and people skills. My now Husband, graduated a year before me and was already working at a Visual Effects Studio in Soho. Although I knew what it was I had no idea what the day to day pipeline consisted of, all i knew was that the VFX artists put the cool giant robots or magic effects into the films. I was very naive. By the time of graduation I had decided I no longer wanted to focus on being an artist, and my husband actually suggested trying out production as a career, as a good fit for my obsession with organisation. A post for a Production Assistant role came up at the same company and I had previously undertaken some work experience at a Post-Production House and quite enjoyed it, so I applied. The interview went really well, I got the job and never looked back.

I accepted very early that it would be a constant learning curve, so I just got stuck in and absorbed the knowledge and advice coming from all around me, and just did the best I could. Before I knew it, 7 years later and I’m producing my own shows. I don’t feel anything has really changed, I still work the same way, except now I have some experience to back me up too.

Sometimes I look back and wonder ‘what if’ I did become an artist, I do miss it. Some people would argue that Production isn’t an artistic role, for the most part it’s not, but I have found that my creative background and intuition has helped me understand the intricate pipelines I have to manage, and also understand the creative demands the Artists and Supervisors are under. I can help steer the ship to ultimately delivering the clients vision and I do feel a swell of satisfaction when I see the beautiful images we create up on the big screen, knowing I helped make them.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?

The most challenging point of my career was when I had to step a out of the cocoon of safety of my superiors, and start to really think for myself. I suddenly realised as a Producer that a lot was riding on me to deliver the project, everyone was looking to me, and I had to deal with all kinds of problems that I had never faced before, or even imagined I would have to. I tried to deal with the problems head on and didn’t shy away from the challenge, be prepared to make mistakes (but obviously try not to). It sometimes took a lot out of me, energy and emotionally, but I always came out stronger on the other side and I have learned a great deal.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?

Yes I have had many, I have had the honour of working with some amazing women over the past 7 years, and before that at university, and in my life in general. It’s going to sound really cheesy but my main mentors and role models are in my family, both in my Grandmother and my Mum, they are both extremely hard workers and have achieved a phenomenal amount in their lives so far, with extremely successful careers. I think growing up around strong women has made me who I am today.

In a professional capacity, I have been fortunate enough to work with Ann Podlozny at 2 facilities. Very early on she took me under her wing. Ann is about as strong as you can get, and I still to this day seek out and value her opinions and guidance.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?

‘It will be worth it in the end, look at what you have achieved so far’.

‘it will be fine’

‘it’s nearly over’

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?

More exposure at a young age, I never knew the film industry was so big when I was at school. I wanted to be an artist but I didn’t think that could extend to working in movies. More school talks, and not just from Supervisors but from Producers, Production was never a job I thought existed and you never really knew about the hundreds of people that work on one Hollywood movie.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?

Work hard, it doesn’t matter if you are a male or female, if you are good at your job and show talent and ambition you will succeed. Try and forget about the division in gender, we are lucky enough to be in a world now where the division is reducing, use it to your advantage, women worked hard to get us to this place and we should continue to push for them.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

Your time will come, even if it feels unfair that others may be moving up around you, it’s always for a reason. Patience, consistency and reliability are extremely valuable assets for an employer, never forget about the role you are currently being paid to do. Continue to work hard, and show them why you should be considered for the next level.

HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?

I personally don’t think it comes down to men being allied with women, I think it’s about colleagues being allied with each other no matter what your gender. I feel it is becoming too easy to tie ourselves up in a ‘women v men’ attitude, and the sooner we just see each other as equals the better. If you enter a situation already acting as an equal, which works both ways, you are bypassing a divide which might not have even been there.

I am not ignorant to the fact that sexism still happens in areas of the industry, but bar some potential sub-conscious bias, I feel very comfortable working with the progressive men and women I currently work with at ILM. I have and still receive a lot of help and guidance from men and a women in positions of power, not because I am a girl, but because I am a colleague and I am good what I do.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

ILM was my first step into the film industry! I joined ILM as a production accountant in May 2015 working alongside the production and global finance teams to set and forecast the budgets for feature productions.

In late 2017, I transitioned into a financial analyst role where I work with department leaders providing financial support and analyses to local teams.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?

My main course of study in university was accounting. I obtained my Chartered Professional Accounting (CPA) Designation articling at the global accounting firm, PwC, specializing in audit and tax for a number of industries, including technology and mining.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?

I always found the world of visual effects extremely fascinating! The ability to transform imagination into realism portraying things that would only exist in one’s mind has always been something by which I was awestruck. When I saw the job posting for a position at ILM, I knew I could not pass this opportunity up. I am continuously amazed by the magic our artists create. Working alongside such great talent on the daily inspires me to do better and be better, and to constantly improve. The strides they take to achieve the impossible are inspirational and truly out of this world!

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?

When I left public practice accounting and started at ILM, it was a huge change. I was learning about an industry I didn’t previously know much about, using new tools, and working alongside people who had totally different career backgrounds than me. I was fortunate to have great support from both our local and global teams, so while it was challenging initially, I got comfortable pretty quickly!

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?

While I was articling at PwC, I worked with a team of amazing female leaders who encouraged me to seek opportunities that best suited my skill set, even if that meant taking on an uncomfortable role/project. They challenged me in new ways to further my development, including coaching younger staff, involving me in important meetings with clients and having me present issues to them, and hosting/teaching webinars to seasoned tax practitioners.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. – Gail Sheehy

Don’t estimate me. I know more than I say, think more than I speak, & notice more than you realize. – Unknown

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?

The industry needs to showcase and celebrate their female successes more prominently. The advertisement of equal opportunity in the industry alone is simply not sufficient. The industry could sponsor events that cater to a female demographic, put on courses/sessions for women, and produce featurettes on female-driven productions for circulation online, in print, or on cable. The industry needs to take action and make efforts to ensure that the policies in place to promote equal opportunity.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?

If you are an extremely creative and talented woman, the visual effects industry offers many amazing and exciting career opportunities allowing you to work alongside many other brilliant individuals in a technologically cutting-edge field. The industry is very inclusive and employs a broad range of people coming from various ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds. The industry is challenging and ever-evolving, as the technology and the roles within it are always changing. The opportunities in this industry are indefinite and only limited by one’s imagination and determination.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE HER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

I’d advise anyone that in order to take your career to the next level, you’ll need to work hard and be open to accepting new opportunities and challenges. Celebrate your major accomplishments and achievements with your team and management. Continually focus on ways to develop your skills, so that you’ll be in a better position to realize future challenges and opportunities that allow you to achieve your career goals sooner.

HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?

Men can be better allies to women in the workplace by celebrating their female colleagues’ successes and accomplishments in order to boost their confidence and encourage a more positive outlook in the workplace, and encouraging women to advance into greater roles.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ILM, AND HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY.

I am a Color & Imaging Scientist at ILM San Francisco. Our team works with every production and client to make sure image processing standards are of the highest quality throughout film production for all four of ILM’s global locations. This includes writing and maintaining the pipeline for colorspace transforms, camera profiling, image re-formatting and filtering, camera RAW processing and media encoding standards. I’ve been in the film industry for five years – four of which have been at ILM. I started as a Technical Assistant, and worked my way up through several roles to where I am now.

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN COURSE OF STUDY IN SCHOOL?

Most of my professional career has been at ILM. I studied Film & Digital Media, as well as Computer Science at the University of New Mexico. While in college, I interned at Sandia National Laboratories, where I did everything from software development for an AutoCAD-like proprietary software to full stack web development. After graduating, I worked for Pivot VFX, a boutique VFX company started in Albuquerque by several Sony Imageworks alums. It was a great introduction into the world of VFX – because it was a small company, I wore multiple hats: pipeline engineering, animation coordination, editing, compositing.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO VISUAL EFFECTS?

I was homeschooled through high school, and computers played a big part in my education from a young age. My dad taught me basic programming for arithmetic on MS-DOS. At the same time, my mom put me in ballet lessons when I was three, and dance became a huge passion for me all the way through college. I wanted to find a field where I could combine my love for both the arts and technology. At 16, I took my first computer animation class, and I never looked back.

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING POINT IN YOUR CAREER AND HOW DID YOU RISE ABOVE IT AND PERSEVERE?

Almost a year ago, my first mentor in the world of color science told me he was leaving ILM. I was (and still am) very new to the field, and it was hard to imagine a future without him as an anchor and teacher. I took it one day at a time, and relied on the amazing support structure of supervisors and friends who wanted to see me succeed. I still have so much to learn, but the opportunity to dive in headfirst to that challenge has made me so much stronger.

DID YOU HAVE SPECIFIC FEMALE MENTORS OR ROLE MODELS THAT HELPED PUSH YOU FORWARD?

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have several female mentors in my time at ILM. Maria Brill, Director of Studio Technology for ILM SF, has been a wonderful role model and support system throughout my time at ILM, but specifically in this last year in my new role – helping me make connections, get the technical mentorship I need, and giving me opportunities for exposure to our global locations, all of which have increased my development immeasurably. Melissa Abad has been my manager since I started at ILM and has always encouraged me in my big goals and worked on how to get there. I remember running ideas by her in my first years at ILM, and her responses were almost always “sure, that sounds great, let’s talk about how you’re going to do it.” There was never any doubt that I could. Cristin Pescosolido, now a VFX Supervisor at Lytro, is a consistent example for me of a woman making it work in this male-dominated industry – going from a compositor to a lead to a VFX supervisor in the short time I’ve known her, but still making time to teach, mentor, and motivate.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA?

“You can do anything if you put in the work.” I think it was my years as a dancer that first instilled this in me – like any sport or art, ‘talent’ only gets you so far – you have to put in the work. However, if you’re willing to put in the time and energy, I firmly believe you can achieve anything you set out to do.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE FILM INDUSTRY CAN BETTER ENCOURAGE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF ALL AGES TO GET INVOLVED IN FILMMAKING?

I think the industry as a whole needs to keep working to dispel the ‘boys club’ mentality. There’s a big problem still with the men at the top working with and promoting other men, because it’s what they’re used to. I think the big production companies can get involved and put a focus on equal gender representation for the people making their films. Once women and younger girls see other women in these roles, it will encourage them to know that they too can make it. The web series I am a part of, “Women in Visual Effects”, shares this goal – expose the talent and work of the amazing women in our industry. There’s a long way to go, but we’re already starting to see efforts and results to promote and empower women – we just have to keep the momentum going.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO WOMEN CONSIDERING FILM, AND SPECIFICALLY VISUAL EFFECTS, AS A CAREER CHOICE?

Speak up for yourself! There is nothing wrong or controversial about vocalising your goals, as well as being confident in your skills. Women tend to let their work speak for itself and count on that being enough – and in an ideal world, it is. However, as we work toward that ideal gender balanced workforce, I’ve realized that being clear about what I want in my career is key.

HOW CAN MEN BE BETTER ALLIES TO WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE?

The best male allies are the ones that acknowledge the bias and actively recognize and support the women around them – whether it be his peer, his boss, or his subordinate. It may seem obvious, but in my experience, it is not. One of the best examples I can think of is in the midst of all of the fallout over Harvey Weinstein and the many men that have come since as being perpetrators of sexual harassment in the workplace and film industry, one of the male supervisors made a point to stop by my desk and simply state that he had my back, that he respected me and that he couldn’t do the work he did without me. Those few sentences will stick with me forever.

Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored White and three colleagues with a Technical Achievement Award for his original design of ILM’s procedural rigging system, Block Party. He is also nominated for an Academy Award for Visual Effects for his contribution to Kong: Skull Island.

Jeff White joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2002 as a Creature Technical Director, working on a variety of films including the Academy Award-winning Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, as well as War of the Worlds and Star Wars: Episode III “Revenge of the Sith”.

In 2012, White served as the ILM Visual Effects Supervisor on Marvel’s The Avengers directed by Joss Whedon and earned both an Academy Award nomination and BAFTA nomination for his visual effects work. He also received the Hollywood Film Award for visual effects for the work. White also served as a Visual Effects Supervisor on Duncan Jones’ 2016 sci-fi epic, Warcraft, based on the well-known video game World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment.

“Jeff has truly done it all,” noted Randal Shore, Executive-in-Charge in Vancouver. “He is an extremely talented visual effects supervisor possessing both deep technical knowledge and a keen artistic eye, making him an ideal person to join our executive team and help lead our growing studio.”

Lynwen Brennan, GM of Lucasfilm, added, “I have worked with Jeff for many years now and have always been in awe of his combination of creative, technical and leadership skills. He exudes a confidence and grace under pressure that is quite unique and has made him one of most successful Visual Effects Supervisors. I am excited for Jeff to bring all those skills to our Vancouver studio and help lead it from strength to strength.”

“I’m thrilled to join ILM Vancouver and to work with Randal and the executive team as we continue to grow the studio and expand our client offerings,” explained White.

“Having worked with many of the artists here in Vancouver on a number of films including Kong: Skull Island, I know firsthand the amazing artistic and technical talent we have to offer and I couldn’t be more excited to share what I know and collaborate with them on all manner of projects.”

ILM Chief Creative Officer John Knoll took the stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference to share a cutting edge VR demonstration created by ILMxLAB and Epic Games utilizing Unreal Engine running on the newly-announced iMac computer. The demo showcased how realtime VR tools such as Unreal Engine running on powerful hardware are being used to enhance visual development in filmmaking.

Products such as the new iMac and iOS 11 will no doubt enable ILMxLAB to share incredible experiences with hundreds of millions of people around the world and that’s really exciting.

Cinefex Magazine issue 152 has made its debut and the latest and greatest incarnation of Kong graces the cover. The issue features the publication’s trademark in-depth coverage of 2 films for which ILM was the primary visual effects company Kong: Skull Island and The Great Wall.

Cinefex continues to be the periodical of record for the visual effects industry and remains an invaluable resource to filmmakers around the world. Kong: Skull Island was covered by Senior Staff Writer, Graham Edwards, while the feature story on The Great Wall was written by Editor in Chief, Jody Duncan.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WITH ILM AND WHAT IS YOUR ROLE?

I’ve been at ILM for a year and a half as a Media Systems Engineer and have supported movies from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What is a media systems engineer you ask? Good question; I’m still trying to figure that out! All kidding aside, we support everything from editorial to motion capture – building machines, creating global workflows and everything in between.

My role specifically is lead editorial engineer across the ILM and Lucasfilm family. I make technical recommendations and implementations for best editorial practices.

WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY?

I’ve literally had a video camera in my hands since the age of two. I love art in all its forms, so it only made sense to follow my passion into the entertainment industry. What really solidified my interest in entertainment was a live studio television class I took in college. Sitting in the director’s chair cutting a live show was exhilarating. I knew from that moment I would never give up on chasing my dreams. I joked with my parents that my name would be in the credits one day; ten years later it became a reality.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT YOUR JOB?

I think the thing I enjoy most about my job is being able to interface with so many different people and divisions within not only the Lucasfilm family, but the greater Disney family. My role has afforded me the opportunity to work on a multitude of projects within different divisions where I am able to meet some really amazing, smart and passionate people. I love learning about the different pieces of the entertainment industry puzzle and meeting the people that truly make the magic happen.

IF YOU COULD OFFER YOUR YOUNGER SELF ONE PIECE OF CAREER ADVICE, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I would tell my younger self that networking is extremely important and to get involved in film and television organizations as early as college. It would make choosing a career path and finding mentors so much easier. It would also provide a deeper understanding of the complexities of the entertainment industry.

WHAT KEEPS YOU INSPIRED?

Every Friday we have a program called “Friends & Family” when employees can invite guests for a tour of our facility as well as watch a demo reel of some of our more recent movies, which breaks apart the visual effects of a movie from green screen to final shot. I try to make it a point to watch the demo reel once a quarter and am always amazed. We sometimes lose sight of the big picture because we are so wrapped up in our day to day tasks, but watching this reel reminds me of how much work we put into making movies and how much talent there is at ILM. That reminder is what keeps me inspired and excited to work here.

ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Craig Hammack was honored at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards for Extraordinary Achievement in Film. The ceremony took place on November 6th, 2016 at Exchange LA.
Hammock was recognized for his contribution to the visual effects of Peter Berg’s ‘Deepwater Horizon’. Both Berg and lead actor Mark Wahlberg presented the award to Hammack. In Hammack’s acceptance speech he noted,

“You know, when you work on a project like this and you get to know some of the people who lived the tragedy it quickly turns from a job to an honor and a responsibility. Hopefully we did justice to this story and the individuals and families who were impacted by this catastrophe.

He continued, “effects of this nature just don’t work without great collaboration with all departments and a good crew. We had both and I’d like to thank them for all their help and patience during the difficult shoot.
I’d also like to thank the Hamilton Awards on behalf of the hundreds of artists back at ILM and around the world who worked with us and with whom I share this amazing honor.”

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WITH ILM AND WHAT IS YOUR ROLE AT THE COMPANY?

I’ve been at ILM for over 2 years. I am a Senior FX Technical Director, and have designed fx at ILM on “Warcraft: The Beginning”, “Ant-Man” and “Captain America: Civil War”.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT YOUR JOB AND/OR THE COMPANY?

My Job is really fun, FX is an extremely varied subject and every show/task is different, from creating magic portals leading to Azeroth in Warcraft, to producing infinitely detailed procedural fractal landscapes in the “Microverse” sequence in Ant-Man, each challenge is unique and rewarding. Industrial Light & Magic is an incredibly inspiring company, the caliber of artistic ability and experience is amazing and an incredible resource to drive my own work. It is a privilege to be working along side some of the individuals that are responsible for creating the effects that inspired me to learn to do visual effects in the first place.

WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE ON CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR?

On “Captain America: Civil War” I was an FX Lead. This entailed supervising 9 effects artists to complete over 200 challenging FX shots which included digital water, fire, magic FX, laser blasts, thrusters, rigid body simulations, you name it! A varied and broad scope of FX. In addition, I designed the look for Spider-Man’s webs, Hawkeye’s trick arrows, and Wanda’s jumping FX, as well as liaising with the other departments that we receive information and assets from, as well as those that we ultimately give assets and renders to.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOU FACED ON THE SHOW?

Spider-Man’s webs were very challenging, creatively and technically. This is the first time we’ve seen Spider-Man in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film and the direction from the client was to realize a very different look to that we had seen in the recent Spider-Man stand alone films. Our brief was much more inspired by artist Todd McFarlane’s style in the Spider-Man comics he had Illustrated, as well as real life reference of very complex spider webs. As a team we were very excited by the challenge, it was a fun conceptual and technical challenge, marrying these beautiful illustrations and real life references together and bringing them to life as working 3D models. Attempting to capture the complexity of McFarlane’s style and do these incredible images justice, whilst allowing the webs to move, flex and wrap around real objects, like Cap’s Shield for example, in a believable and realistic way.

WHAT KEEPS YOU INSPIRED?

The incredibly varied challenges at ILM keep me inspired. As a company, ILM prides itself on taking on unique and interesting projects, selecting work that will push the envelope for ourselves and the Visual Effects industry as a whole. Within this field, FX is a dynamically changing subject, always on the forefront of technology whilst requiring exciting high level creative decision making. It never feels like the same challenge twice though there’s definitely room to utilize and expand on the skills you’ve learned from previous challenges to find your next solution. Secondly, the prestigious history of ILM, the inspiring artwork contained in it’s halls and the incredibly high level of talent and support of the excellent artists working here, pushes each us to do our very best.

Launched by the Ile de France Commission, the Paris Images Digital Summit is devoted to digital creation in its multiple manifestations, the latest trends and innovations in digital visual effects, CGI, motion-capture, 3-D and disruptive technologies in cinema, television, advertising, video games and transmedia.
Muren is a visual effects specialist often celebrated for his contributions to some of the defining features of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas which reshaped Hollywood: the Star Wars saga, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Super 8.
He is an eight-time winner of the Oscar® for Best Visual Effects and has also been recognized with a Sci-Tech Academy Award for the development of ILM’s Go-Motion™ technology.

The issue covers three films that ILM contributed visual effects to: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Revenant and Spectre.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm Ltd. present the beginning of a new trilogy set in a distant galaxy, 30 years after the fall of the evil Emperor Palpatine, in which regional governors jockey for power, and survivors of the Rebel Alliance and the last order of Jedi Knights confront new Imperial threats. Director J.J. Abrams conjures exotic worlds and bizarre creatures, working with visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, special makeup effects supervisor Neal Scanlan and artists at Industrial Light & Magic, Base FX, Kelvin Optical, Blind Ltd., Propshop and Imaginarium Studios.
The Revenant
Leonardo DiCaprio stars in this 1820s drama about a frontiersman who, after being mauled by a bear, seeks revenge against those who left him for dead. Celebrated Birdman director Alejandro Iñárritu helmed the project, with visual effects by ILM, One of Us, Cinesite, MPC Montreal, Soho VFX, and Vitality Visual Effects, and creature effects supervised by Mark Rappaport
Spectre
Skyfall director Sam Mendes returns to helm the newest Bond feature, Spectre, which pits 007 (Daniel Craig) against a sinister organization out to bring down MI6. Chris Corbould orchestrated Bond-scale practical effects on stage and on location, while artists at ILM London delivered spectacular visual effects shots, under the supervision of visual effects supervisor Mark Curtis.

Amidst the glitz and glamour at last evening’s Hollywood Film Awards, Visual Effects Supervisor Tim Alexander was presented with the Hollywood Visual Effects Award for Jurassic World. Alexander accepted on behalf the film’s lead visual effects house, ILM, and of all of the visual effects artisans who worked on the film – Some 400+ artists, technicians, scientists and production team members.
The awards ceremony took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and Ridley Scott, Reese Witherspoon, Robert DeNiro, Laura Dern, Jake Gyllenhaal, Selena Gomez, Alicia Vikander, Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, David O. Russell, Tom Hooper and Will Smith were a few of the celebrities that graced the stage.
“It’s an true honor to represent the amazing visual effects team we had on Jurassic World,” noted Alexander. “Everyone involved with the show knew we had responsibility to create the most believable creatures we’d ever committed to film not only to our Director Colin Trevorrow, and Producers and Executive Producers Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Pat Crowley, Thomas Tull and Chris Raimo, but to the fans of the Jurassic films – And I can tell you that all of us on the effects crew are huge fans of the series. We strove to bring these amazing creatures to life in such a way that you, as an audience member, would never doubt for a minute whether or not they were real.”

The Hollywood Post Alliance® (HPA) announced the nominees for the 2015 HPA Awards and we are thrilled to report that three ILM projects are up for consideration. In the Visual Effects for Feature Film category, ILM’s work on Jurassic World and Tomorrowland have each received nominations as has the company’s work on Marvel’s Agent Carter in the Visual Effects for Television category.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the HPA Awards, which honor artistic excellence and creative achievements within the greater post production industry. The HPA Awards are considered the standard-bearer for excellence and innovation in the industry, which now embraces an expanding array of groundbreaking technologies, content management and media distribution.

The HPA Awards recognize outstanding achievement in Editing, Sound, Visual Effects and Color Grading for work in television, commercials, and feature films.

On September 23rd, Facebook announced that 360-degree video would be rolling out in user’s news feeds later that day. Disney and Lucasfilm debuted an exclusive ILMxLAB 360 experience from our upcoming movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, bringing fans inside the beloved Star Wars universe skimming over the surface of Jakku.
“There’s also a whole world of video creators and storytellers who are at the cutting edge of exploring this medium, and over the coming days they too will be able to upload their 360 videos to Facebook,” noted Maher Saba, Facebook Engineering Director, Video, adding, “we’re excited to see more innovative and compelling 360 videos being shared from these publishers.”
Ben Snow, ILMxLAB Visual Effects Supervisor on the project added, “I’m thrilled to have had a hand in bringing this Star Wars experience to Facebook and fans around the world. We used the same assets created for the film and tailored the experience to play up the strength of 360-degree video and its ability to immerse viewers in the world presented to them. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it come to immersive experiences and it’s encouraging that a platform with the vast user base that Facebook has is supporting 360-degree video natively in the News Feed.”

HOW LONG HAVE YOU WORKED FOR ILM?

19 years

WHERE DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL AND WHAT DID YOU STUDY?

Marquette University – I have a BA in Broadcasting and Electronic Communication with a minor in Criminology

WHEN WAS THE MOMENT YOU DECIDED TO BE IN FILM?

From the broad perspective, I knew as a seven-year-old after seeing Star Wars for the first time that I wanted to be involved in making movies. From the more narrow perspective of my current discipline, I was working at a television station as a graphic artist, and when I was asked to remove something from several images I literally said to myself, “I’d love to find a job where I could do this kind of paint all day.”

HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT ILM AND HOW DID YOU GET YOUR JOB?

I learned about ILM when I was a Star Wars-obsessed child. I arranged for an onsite informational interview with someone while attending Siggraph. I came to ILM, toured, and interviewed. They said they had technical positions available, but I was more suited for a creative position, and they would keep my resume on file. I was so sad not to have been offered a position, and was convinced I blew my one and only chance to work here. Then six months later, HR called me to interview for a position in the art department. I got the position and the rest is history.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ILM COMPANY EVENT?

Trivia Night! It’s a blast, and, it’s for a great cause.

WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE PROJECTS TO WORK ON SINCE YOU HAVE BEEN WITH THE COMPANY?

The Star Wars prequels, Magnolia, Mission: Impossible 3, Star Trek, Jurassic World

WHAT ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT PERSONALLY? WHAT DO YOU REALLY ENJOY? WHAT CAN’T YOU STOP TALKING ABOUT?

I love my dogs. I can’t stop talking about them or taking pictures of them. I also love traveling, reading, running, and collecting toys. (But not in that order.)WHAT FILMS INSPIRE YOUR WORK?

Star Wars, E.T., Alien, Kill Bill — it’s tough to narrow it down.

For 40 years, Industrial Light & Magic has set the standard for visual effects, creating some of the most memorable images in the history of modern cinema. From advances in the photo-chemical process, optical compositing, motion control, and models and miniatures, to the company’s pioneering efforts in computer graphics, digital compositing, film scanning and recording, morphing, digital environments, performance capture, character animation, and modern digital pipelines, ILM consistently breaks new ground in visual effects for film, television, themed attractions, and new forms of entertainment. The presenters discuss the company’s work from its earliest days and breakthroughs along the way.

While the film may have been 65 million years in the making, the visual effects crew would have substantially less time to create what would later be recognized as a seminal moment in the annals of cinema history. Jurassic Park represented a massive leap forward in the use of computers to create imagery for the screen. For the first time living, breathing creatures had successfully been created using the then nascent technology known as computer graphics.
Though commonplace today, the use of computer graphics (CG) in film was not at all common in the early 1990s. With Jurassic Park, director Steven Spielberg masterfully combined Stan Winston’s practical puppetry with ILM’s fully computer-generated dinosaurs. Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren gives much of the credit to CG Animator, Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams, and Co-Visual Effects Supervisor, Mark Dippe, for pushing the innovations that ultimately showcased what could be done in creating photo-real, CG dinosaurs. Although the original plan called for the dinosaurs to be animated using traditional stop-motion animation, once an initial test had been shown to the director it became clear that the plan would change, and with less than one year before the film’s eventual release date it was going to be a race to the finish.

Even though stop motion would no longer be used for the final-effects work, Phil Tippett and his team — led by Tom St. Amand and their years of animation experience — would prove invaluable to the endeavor. Working with ILM’s machine shop and R&D group, St. Amand came up with the idea to produce traditional stop-motion armature equipped with motion encoders that, when paired with ILM’s Tondreau Go-Motion™ system, would enable the translation of stop-motion moves into digital data that the ILM team could apply to the CG models in Softimage. The technology proved to be a unique bridge between analog artistry and the new digital frontier.
All told, the final cut of Jurassic Park contained just six minutes of CG dinosaurs (cutting seamlessly with nine minutes of the practical puppets), but the resulting spectacle is something that forever changed the visual effects business and by extension cinema itself. For filmmakers, a world of possibility was now open for to explore.

ILM and Science Channel joined together to celebrate ILM’s 40th Anniversary at Comic-Con International in San Diego this year. Industrial Light & Magic Visual Effects Supervisor, Jeff White, legendary ILM model maker, Lorne Peterson, and model maker and digital artist, John Goodson, spoke on a sold-out panel delving into the company’s 40-year history and how films the company has contributed to have inspired and been inspired by actual science. From astronauts to paleontologists, the Science Channel’s one-hour program covers a wide range of topics that include 3D laser scanning, artificial limbs, holograms, and of course, hoverboards.

Vision & Craft

50 Years | 500+ Film and TV credits | 135+ Awards

SINCE 1975

The Merchantman: A Criminal Craft

The Klingon Bird-of-Prey: A Fearsome Fighter

Earth Spacedock: A Safe Haven in Space

U.S.S. Excelsior: The Transwarp Testbed

U.S.S. Grissom: A Scientific Scout

The Search for Spock’s Legacy

The filmmaker and Lucasfilm legend talks to ILM.com to reflect on what drew him to tell the story of the hit Disney+ series, “Light & Magic”.

Marvel Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, and the Technology Innovation Group at Disney Studios Content have teamed up to bring the Eternals to your living room through an exciting augmented reality experience.

Let’s work together