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The ILM Vancouver artist details her globe-trotting career path from special make-up effects to art direction to effects supervision.

By Lucas O. Seastrom

For decades, a significant aspect of Industrial Light & Magic’s company culture has been defined by the atmosphere in dailies. These routine sessions where the effects team reviews work-in-progress and provides feedback are common across the industry, but ILM has always prided itself on its distinct style that encourages open and equal communication. Tania Richard had spent some 15 years working in visual effects before she joined ILM in 2018 as an art director at the Vancouver studio. And as she puts it, “ILM’s collaborative dynamic really shines in dailies.”

While working on Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), Richard was at first surprised when visual effects supervisor Grady Cofer would call on her in dailies, seemingly at random. “Grady wouldn’t hesitate to call my name out and ask me what I thought about something, even if it wasn’t something I was working directly on,” Richard explains. “He valued everyone’s opinion, and made you feel part of the overall process. Earlier in my career at other studios, dailies was pretty quiet and you didn’t speak up very often. Everyone has their own way of approaching things in dailies, but at ILM it’s always with the intent of creating a collaborative experience.”

As ILM has continued its global expansion – which now includes studios in Vancouver, London, Sydney, and Mumbai, in addition to its San Francisco headquarters – seasoned professionals from across the effects industry have joined the ranks. Each brings their unique experience working on diverse projects and often in many different types of roles. Richard is no different.

Growing up in Sarnia on the southern border of Ontario, Canada, Richard had what she describes as a creative upbringing. Both of her parents had their own artistic pursuits, and her mother in particular encouraged Richard and her brother (now a storyboard artist) to make careers out of their passions. Though she aspired to work in filmmaking from her time in high school, Richard chose to study traditional fine art while studying at McMaster University southwest of Toronto. “But I was lucky in that the university also had film theory courses,” she notes, “so I studied film theory as well as fine art.”

With this unusual blend of disciplines, Richard was able to both learn academic theories and create artworks that attempted to realize them in aesthetic form. She studied sculpture, drawing, print-making, art history, and painting, as well as film theory. Her fascination with the concept of film spectatorship inspired her to focus in painting. “There was a film theorist, Laura Mulvey, who talked a lot about the male gaze in spectatorship,” Richard explains. “I studied her a lot, as well as Cindy Sherman, who would often photograph herself in these film-looking environments and settings. I ended up doing something similar where I’d start by creating these film stills, photographing myself dressed up in various situations, and using that as reference for my paintings.”

To this day, Richard is fascinated by the intersections of artistic craft and theory, in particular the way that filmmakers code their works. “It can almost be a language, a communication between the filmmaker and the audience,” she says. “Somebody like [Andrei] Tarkovsky puts these little codes throughout his filmmaking, whether it’s sound like dripping water or a cuckoo, or a visual like apples. They were all meaningful to him on a personal level. You see and hear these codes throughout all of his films, and if you were familiar enough with them, it was almost as if he was talking to you in a way, on another level.”

At ILM, Richard has worked with director Shannon Tindle on both Lost Ollie (2022) and Ultraman: Rising (2024), and she describes the filmmaker along similar lines. “He’ll reference the same films in his creative process, like Kramer vs. Kramer [1979], for example. He loves that film, and I’m aware of that because I’ve worked with him long enough and had enough discussions with him to know that when I see something in the way a frame is composed or an animation performance in one of his films, I can understand where his influence is coming from. It’s special. It makes you feel like you’re connecting with the filmmaker on another level.”

As she finished her undergraduate studies, Richard jumped into work at Toronto-based FXSMITH, a special effects company founded by innovative makeup designer, Gordon Smith. Initially thinking she’d be working on a local television show, Richard soon discovered their team’s assignment was the feature film X-Men (2000). Initially, Smith had his new hire drawing concepts for characters requiring prosthetics, and as production commenced, Richard was part of the on-set team creating the extensive make-up for Rebecca Romijn as Mystique.

“It was a great experience and I had my foot in the door,” says Richard. “But this was back around 1999, and the transition from practical effects to computer effects was happening. For X-Men, we worked closely with the visual effects team on set because they had to pick up a lot of our work in post-production and refine it. In talking to some of the crew there, they encouraged me to move into visual effects.”

Concept art by Richard for Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) in *X-Men* (2000) from 20th Century Studios (Credit: Tania Richard).

Richard’s brother was then studying classical animation at Toronto’s Sheridan College, a school that had graduated a number of artists later hired by ILM. “If the Sheridan opportunity hadn’t worked out, I might’ve gone for a PhD in film theory,” Richard notes. Joining the school’s postgraduate visual effects program, her main professor was Richard Cohen, recently returned from a stint at ILM as a CG artist on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Death Becomes Her (1992).

“There were about 12 of us in the class, and Richard [Cohen] felt that rather than having us all isolated and doing our own thing, we should make a short film together,” says Richard. “If I had not done that, I might’ve focused more on the animation side. But on the group project, we leaned into each other’s strengths, and because I had a painting background, it was clear that I was the concept artist, matte painter, and designer on the team. I did do some animation, but I learned that it wasn’t my strength.” She adds that although she intended to create traditional matte paintings for their film (ultimately titled The Artist of the Beautiful), Cohen urged her to learn Photoshop and embrace the emerging computer-based tools.

As she finished her studies at Sheridan, Richard had already begun professional work, initially as a concept designer for 2003’s Blizzard under production designer Tamara Deverell. She then became a digital matte painter at Toybox, a local effects house that was soon acquired by Technicolor. Eventually, a former colleague invited her to come to Sydney, Australia where Animal Logic was developing the animated feature Happy Feet (2006). “I was young and up for the big move, so I said yes,” Richard comments. “That was back when ‘2 ½ D’ projections were the thing, so I did a number of those mattes on that feature.”

During this period, Richard encountered a number of important mentors, among whom was the late visual effects producer Diana Giorgiutti, with whom Richard served as a concept artist on Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008). “We were on location in Darwin and Bowen for something like seven to nine weeks,” Richard explains. “Di had me working directly with [production designer] Catherine Martin. She had me sitting with editor Dody Dorn for a week. Dody had cut Memento [2000]. We were together early on when she had voice recordings of the actors reading the script and she wanted some images to cut in with them. I’d be mocking up frames for her and she explained to me the compositions they needed. She was really generous with her time.”

Soon, London-based Double Negative came calling, and Richard spent nearly a decade in the United Kingdom working on everything from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) to Interstellar (2014). As visual effects art director on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), she again found an important mentor in production designer Stuart Craig, who’d overseen the visual development of the entire Potter franchise. After creating elevation and sectional drawings for sets, Craig tasked Richard with building digital mock-ups, and together they’d determine the preferred camera angles for which Richard then created detailed concepts.

“Stuart had worked with set designer Stephanie McMillan for many years,” says Richard, “and they would often go onto set together and shoot the space in black and white. That helped them analyze the composition before they started adding color and texture, which only came after they were happy with the black and white composition. When I built my models, I rendered them in black and white as well, so I was approaching it instinctively in a similar way. Stuart loved it and helped me understand why it was a good approach. Rather than going full-tilt and adding lots of texture and detail right from the beginning, you start to learn that actually you might never see a particular area because of the way it’s being lit, or something like that. You learn to focus in an efficient way on where to add that structural detail, where to hit the image with color to have the most impact. It was a brilliant lesson from Stuart.”

Shooting reference photography for *Australia* at Kakadu National Park. (Credit: Zan Wimberley).

A return to Animal Logic for 2018’s Peter Rabbit was Richard’s ultimate springboard to ILM. With the opportunity to work closely with director Will Gluck, visual effects supervisor Will Reichelt, and associate visual effects supervisor Matt Middleton (the latter of whom are both with ILM now), she came to realize that effects supervision was her chosen path. “Will [Reichelt] had me run lighting dailies and look after the assets while he was busy on set,” Richard explains. “I was also really involved in the DI process and had a team of artists who I delegated a lot of design work to, so in many ways, it felt like a natural transition.”

In early 2018, the ILM Art Department’s creative director David Nakabayashi and senior producer Jennifer Coronado convinced Richard to make another move, this time back to her native Canada to work at ILM’s Vancouver studio. It was a significant decision, as Richard was then considering a move to New Zealand for a brief respite from active work. But the opportunity to join ILM was too important to pass up.

“ILM was the pinnacle,” Richard says frankly. “For anybody who is around my age and grew up with Star Wars, you see ILM as the height of where you want to be in the industry. But I wasn’t sure I had what it took to be a part of the company, so it was a surprise when they reached out. I barely took any time off between working on Peter Rabbit and coming to ILM.”

Initially working as an art director, Richard describes her first impressions of ILM as “overwhelming, exciting, and different.” After assisting Vancouver’s creative director Jeff White on some initial project bids, she was soon working on Disney’s Aladdin (2019). “The ILM Art Department is incredibly talented and is really the best of the best,” Richard notes. “There’s so much you can learn from them.” She continued as an art director on Space Jam: A New Legacy, for which ILM was responsible for integrating the classic Warner Brothers animated characters with live action footage.

“There was a lot of artwork created at the beginning of Space Jam,” Richard explains. “The spirit of it evolved quite a lot over the course of the show. I had a wonderful team, and I really loved working on Bugs Bunny! [laughs] Grady Cofer had me doing paint-overs on some of the characters, which I really enjoyed. The whole team was involved in refining the final looks of each character, including the textures crew, the groom artists, the modeling team, and the animators. I’m always blown away when I see animation come through.”

It was after Space Jam that Richard made the transition to associate visual effects supervisor on Lost Ollie. “I’m a bit like the righthand person or wingman for the visual effects supervisor,” she elaborates. “We work very closely with production and our department leads and supes to help establish looks, refine shots, and execute what needs to be done in post to maintain a certain level of quality and consistency. I had been slowly navigating into an effects supervisor-type role for a while, but I wasn’t sure if I had all the skillsets to be able to do it. I talked to Jenn and Nak about it, and they were very supportive and helped to guide me into this position along with Jeff White and [executive in charge] Spencer Kent.

“I think I just got really lucky,” Richard continues. “I believe that Jeff had Ultraman in mind for me, but it wasn’t quite ready yet. [Visual effects supervisor] Hayden [Jones] and [visual effects executive producer] Stefan [Drury] were working with Shannon Tindle on Lost Ollie, so I had a chance to establish a relationship with the same client. I think that’s why they thought it might be a good starting point for me. It was a smaller project, and I love the hybrid between live action and CG characters. It’s probably what I’m best at and what I love to do the most. I ended up diving in heavily on two episodes, and then I stayed in the background on the final two because that was when I started transitioning to Ultraman: Rising.”

The move into supervision has allowed Richard to focus more on refining her approach to communication and collaboration between the artists and the clients. “On Ultraman, Hayden was great at encouraging the team to ask questions and offer up suggestions with Shannon,” she notes. “What’s great about Shannon is that he creates an environment where it’s okay to suggest something that might not ultimately be the right idea, but it’s great to put it out there and see if it works. [ILM executive creative director] John Knoll is very similar. He embraces that exploration and isn’t afraid to try something.”

Richard emphasizes that “part of being a supervisor is having an ability to read the room and understand the personalities of the artists and how they like to communicate.” And as an artist herself, Richard brings her own unique blend of experiences. “I’ve been lucky to have had a toe in the practical side of things very early on. I’ve also worked with some really talented people who come from an earlier generation of filmmakers. I hope that some of that knowledge translates in my communication with the artists. Both Grady and Hayden like to do quick paint-overs on things in dailies, and that’s something I like to do as well. If words don’t quite explain something, sometimes a quick drawing or paint-over can act as a visual reference. Many supes like to do that.”

As so many have attested, it’s the people that have truly made the difference at ILM in its 50 years of storytelling. “Have curiosity about the people you’re working with,” Richard says, “and have empathy for them. Try to understand where your colleagues may be at a certain point in time. You can use that to develop relationships throughout your career, which is so important.”

—

Lucas O. Seastrom is the editor of ILM.com and a contributing writer & historian for Lucasfilm.

For Transformers one, the art department aimed to create shapes and silhouettes that appeared clean and simple from a distance, yet included intricate, purposeful details up-close, such as cut lines in the panels, smaller inset geometry, and layered panel work. Given that iconic Transformer designs often stem from their helmet shapes, the art department worked to seamlessly integrate faces into the helmets, enhancing their expressiveness while maintaining a mechanical, rigid aesthetic.

Check out the full design case study here: https://www.ilm.com/art-department/transformers-one-concept-art/

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.

–

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.

Make room for some stellar content and southern hospitality from Industrial Light & Magic in the heart of Texas at SXSW 2025! Find us on the schedule from March 7-15, where we are teaming up with the minds behind ABBA Voyage, alongside the Dead & Company and U2:UV’s Las Vegas Sphere experiences. We’ll explore how performing artists can leverage cinematic and filmed entertainment to drive forward the artform and meet evolving audience expectations. You’ll learn about the creative and practical challenges posed by different physical spaces as well as the crucial role of cross-functional team collaboration in crafting extraordinary communal experiences. It’s an opportunity for music fans to ask questions about the future of live entertainment.

Last evening the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the inaugural “Excellence in Production Technology” Emmy® Award to The Santa Clauses Season Two. The award was presented as part of the 75^th Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards at the Prince George Ballroom in New York, hosted by David Pogue, Emmy award-winning correspondent, CBS Sunday Morning.

Rachel Rose, ILM Research & Development Supervisor said, ”The team at Industrial Light & Magic are incredibly honored to be recognized by the Television Academy with an Emmy Award for our innovative StageCraft technology and the advancements made for ‘The Santa Clauses, Season Two.’ This recognition is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our exceptional team of technologists, artists, and production crew.”

Stephen Hill, Matthew Lausch, Industrial Light & Magic accepting the inaugural “Excellence in Production Technology” Emmy® Award. [Photo Credit: Joe Sinnott for NATAS]

Read the complete National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences press release here.

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.

The ILM veteran worked on projects like Jurassic Park and The Mask, and helped create a special Halloween poster that inspired the moniker for ILM’s new podcast.

By Lucas O. Seastrom

Listeners of the premiere episode of Lighter Darker: The ILM Podcast may be curious where the show found inspiration for its name.

27 years ago in 1997, Industrial Light & Magic was in the midst of the digital renaissance in visual effects, with projects as diverse as Men in Black, Contact, and Titanic being released that year, and others like Deep Impact (1998), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) readily underway. ILM’s then home at the Kerner facility in San Rafael, California was a bustling center of creativity across both digital and practical disciplines, and arguably the most exciting time of year came during Halloween season when hundreds of employees and their families gathered for an annual costume party.

Benton Jew had been with the ILM Art Department since 1988, working as a storyboard and conceptual artist on everything from Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) to the fabled television commercial where basketball star Charles Barkley plays one-on-one with Godzilla. Later, his responsibilities grew as he became a visual effects art director on projects like The Mask (1994). But there was always time for side projects in between work for clients, and in 1997, Jew was asked to illustrate that year’s invitation and poster for the fabled ILM Halloween Party.

The 1997 ILM Halloween Party poster, featuring artwork by concept artist Benton Jew. An artist is seen clutching his computer while horror characters tell him "lighter" and "darker." — The poster for the 1997 ILM Halloween Party, designed by Mark Malabuyo and illustrated by Benton Jew.

Designed by the late Mark Malabuyo, an in-house graphic designer at the time, the poster was envisioned in the style of the classic EC Comics of the mid-20th Century, known for their horror and science fiction stories. This “issue,” dated from October 1997, is entitled “Tales of Terror: Attack of the Nitpickers,” with the subtitle, “Producers! FX Supervisors! Art Directors! Nitpickers all!” Jew’s illustration below depicts a visual effects artist surrounded by figures caricatured in the horror style. He frightfully grasps his computer as the onlookers share their feedback about his work. “…Lighter…” one says, while someone else contrasts with “…Darker…” Yet another recommends, “…Split the difference…”

This tongue-in-cheek bit of satire about the collaborative process of visual effects would have inspired a chuckle from just about everyone at the company, and two of its word bubbles have now become the namesake of ILM’s new podcast. “I just wanted to capture that look of someone when a person comes by their workstation and points something out, or someone’s expression in dailies,” Benton Jew tells ILM.com. “It seemed like that kind of situation came up a lot in CG. Okay, no one can make a decision, let’s split the difference.

“Especially as an art director, I think I’d been seen as someone who would pick out little things,” Jew continues. “I’d be on The Mask or something, and would tell an artist, ‘Oh those icicles, they’re not quite right,’ or whatever it is. I’m sure that anybody who’s worked in CG can relate to that. People are always pointing and giving you backseat directions.”

Known within the department for his versatile and prolific output, Jew was also a lifelong comics fan, an attribute that earned him the Halloween Party assignment. “I was sort of the resident comic book geek,” he explains, “and obviously a Halloween piece would have an EC Comics theme to it. I tried to be in the spirit of artists like Jack Davis, Jack Kamen, and Graham Ingels. Mark Malabuyo was the graphic designer on it. He was a wonderful guy, so easy to work with. He was really jovial and friendly. We all miss him. He was set on making sure that the graphics had a fidelity to the old EC stuff. He made it as close as he could, with obviously some differences.”

Growing up, Jew had first aspired to be a comics artist. Then, as he puts it, “Star Wars happened.” The 1977 feature film launched the cinematic dreams of many younger viewers at the time, including Jew and his twin brother (who also became an illustrator). “We saw all the books on the making of Star Wars with Joe Johnston’s storyboards and Ralph McQuarrie’s drawings, and got hooked into amateur filmmaking. For people who grew up in that era when Star Wars came out, it really sparked a craze for people to want to be filmmakers.”

While studying at the Academy of Art in San Francisco with teachers like celebrated poster artist Drew Struzan, Jew was recruited into ILM’s ranks courtesy of storyboard artist Stan Fleming, who’d contributed to projects like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Jew loved cinema, but never lost his passion for comics and illustration. “When I started working there, most people were from the car design world,” he explains. “They weren’t necessarily drawing figurative work. They were doing architectural or vehicle-driven stuff. As things became more creature-based in visual effects, being a general illustrator worked well for me. I can’t draw a vehicle to save my life.”

From the beginning, Jew worked as a storyboard artist, directly applying his knowledge of comics to another mode of visual storytelling. Among others, he’d eventually board for director George Lucas on The Phantom Menace. “With George, all of us would sit and do thumbnails with him. But I’ve worked with plenty of directors like that where I’ll sit with them and draw lots of tiny thumbnails really quickly, and then I’ll go back and flesh those boards out later. With George, we met with him twice a week for quick little meetings. He’d basically tell us the story, and we’d all draw out different ideas and he’d make suggestions. Then we’d have this huge stack of thumbnails, and we’d get them in correct order, and someone like me or Ed Natividad or Iain McCaig would make finished drawings from those.”

Concept art of Milo the dog from The Mask, by Benton Jew. — An example of Jew’s concept art, a sketch of Milo the dog from 1994’s *The Mask*.

The digital renaissance led to a surge in projects requiring CG creature development, from early entries like The Abyss (1989) and Jurassic Park (1993), to even more ambitious projects like Dragonheart (1996) and The Mummy (1999). Jew had a front-row seat during this storied period that introduced new tools and tumultuous change. “My first real film was Ghostbusters 2,” he recalls, “and that was still done with foam and rubber and stuff like that. I got a pretty good idea of what that was like. I could see CG slowly coming into view. It was really a magical time and everything was changing by leaps and bounds.

“I would go down to ‘The Pit’ and watch Spaz [Steve Williams] creating those dinosaurs that he would later show to Spielberg and company,” Jew continues. “It was so weird when Jurassic Park was being made because you had to sit on this and not tell anybody, and you knew it was going to change the world. As the technology kept improving, it wasn’t replacing the artists and filmmakers; it was helping them. It’s about giving them the tools to make something that they couldn’t make with traditional means…. John [Knoll] would come by and ask us what we wanted to see in Photoshop. He meant for it to be a tool for us, not a replacement. Our pallet was growing larger.”

Departing ILM in 2001 after 13 years with the company, Jew headed for Los Angeles where he continues to work on feature films as a storyboard and concept artist. He’s also self-published comic books of his own, as well as contributed to comics for Marvel, among others. Jew still gets questions about the memorable “Tales of Terror” poster (and remains adamant that the terrified artist clutching his machine is not based on anyone in particular). Looking back on his ILM days, Jew values the artistic lessons granted him by the experience of working on so many different assignments.

“Just the idea of having to do a lot of stuff very quickly impacts how you draw,” he concludes. “You learn to do more shortcuts, what to leave in, what to take out, and things like that. Early on, I didn’t do a lot of paintings. Most of my stuff was black and white, but I learned to do more color stuff when they asked me to do it. The volume, speed, and needs always change, so you just stay flexible. As an artist or an art director, the most important thing is not your eyes or your hands, but your ears. To understand what the director or effects supervisor wants, you need to develop your ear more than anything. It’s learning what they want and how to do it correctly. It may not be your own taste, but you need to be able to talk to them and know where they’re trying to go with it.”

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

General

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

Let’s work together