Today, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced their longlists for the 2025 EE Film Awards. 10 films will advance in the Special Visual Effect category. Members of the SVFX chapter vote to determine the longlist and the nominations. In the final round of voting, all film-voting members will vote for the overall winning film.
ILM contributed to 4 of the ten films that have advanced to the next round of voting including Alien:Romulus, Deadpool&Wolverine, GladiatorII, and Wicked.
The next round of voting, to determine the nominations, takes place between January 3rd and 10th. The final round of voting, to determine the winners takes place between January 22nd, and February 11th.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences yesterday announced shortlists in 10 categories for the 97th Academy Awards®: Visual Effects, Sound, Documentary Feature Film, Documentary Short Film, International Feature Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Animated Short Film, and Live Action Short Film.
Ten films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 97th Academy Awards. The Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist. All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view excerpts and interviews with the artists from each of the shortlisted films on Saturday, January 11, 2025. Branch members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.
ILM is thrilled to have contributed to five of the ten films named to the list including:
Nominations voting begins on Wednesday, January 8, 2025, and concludes on Sunday, January 12, 2025. Nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced on Friday, January 17, 2025.
The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and will be televised live on ABC, streamed live on Hulu and airs live in more than 200 territories worldwide.
After 25 years at ILM, Cooper has earned a reputation for seeking out the most efficient solutions to creative problems.
By Lucas O. Seastrom
Back in 2002, Industrial Light & Magic’s Jay Cooper was a compositing sequence supervisor on Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). For a time, director Peter Weir joined the ILM crew at their offices on Kerner Boulevard in San Rafael, California. “We had a shot when the mast of one of the ships falls over,” Cooper tells ILM.com. “There’s all this gunfire. It’s completely enshrouded in smoke. As I’m working on it, Weir comes to my desk and he says, ‘I want it to look like a beautiful nightmare.’ I was like, ‘Wow, that’s cool. Now what does that look like?’ [laughs]”
Over the past two decades, Cooper has moved into the visual effects supervisor role, working on projects as varied as Eternals (2021) and Babylon (2022). Most recently, he partnered with writer/director Gareth Edwards on The Creator (2023), a science-fiction tale with an unconventional visual effects methodology. As he and the ILM crew navigated the challenges of integrating effects into location photography with minimal reference data, Cooper managed to connect with Edwards in a way that reminded him of his experience with Peter Weir.
“Normally, as a visual effects supervisor, you’re being much more granular in your notes, lots of technical conversations,” Cooper says. “You don’t usually engage with artists in an emotional way. That’s what is really wonderful when you’re exposed to working with directors. That’s my favorite part of being a supervisor: you’re not always in the weeds talking about those details, you’re trying to engage with it at a story level. That’s the part that artists love. Gareth partnered with us in that way, and people got really excited about the project. Fun things happen when people get excited. They sneak in extra takes. They devote themselves in a huge way. We asked people to do really hard stuff without all of the support materials. If they know what we’re trying to achieve and we’re all pulling together, it can help make up for those shortcomings.”
At the beginning of the project, ILM’s chief creative officer Rob Bredow asked Cooper to meet with Edwards and producer Kiri Hart. “Gareth said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this movie and I hear you’re the guy who likes to cheat,’” Cooper says with a laugh. “He said that probably in the most affectionate way. I’m not really a devotee of any sort of process. I worship at the altar of whatever we can do as quickly and as simply as we can do it. As an artist, that was my forte. I did lighting and compositing, and I would try to navigate as many shortcuts as I could. I guess my reputation as a visual effects supervisor was that I’d work on shows with really small budgets and we’d try to wring out whatever production value we could. I think that’s why Rob put us together.”
Director Gareth Edwards operating the camera on location in Asia during production on The Creator.
Edwards’ vision and Cooper’s style were in tandem. In terms of workload, The Creator would be Cooper’s biggest project to date as a visual effects supervisor. “One of the best pieces of advice that [ILM executive creative director] John Knoll ever gave me,” Cooper notes, “was that you take big problems, break them into smaller problems, and smaller and smaller. So we created teams to hit different problems. We knew that we were going to be behind the 8-ball. We knew that Gareth had a smaller-than-desired budget, and he came to us wanting to partner in a different way.”
Edwards had been a visual effects artist himself before taking the director’s chair full-time. In his 2010 feature directorial debut, Monsters, he famously created many of the visual effects on his own. For Cooper, this practical experience helped define ILM’s approach to crafting visual effects with a “scrappy” sensibility. Shooting primarily on location in Thailand, Edwards focused on capturing his actors and the dramatic landscapes where they played out their scenes. Traditional effects tools like bluescreens and tracking markers would be almost completely avoided, and ILM would need to integrate their CG elements without the normal reference tools.
Looking into the ILM StageCraft volume during production on The Creator.
“Most of the time doing visual effects work, it’s very much a spreadsheet problem. You have seven robots at this amount of money, or fifteen environments at this scale at this amount of money. Even at the bidding stage for The Creator, we were instead asking what we could do for a certain amount of money. Just as a scrappy filmmaker, Gareth wanted to know what was possible in visual effects if we used different techniques and structured the show differently.
“If we take a whole sequence,” Cooper continues, “Gareth would explain how there’s only so much information you can take in during one shot, so let’s put everything together, bring it all up, and water the one element that’s dying. If you didn’t feel like there were enough robots here, how much do you need to add? Where’s your eye going to go? If a frame feels empty, what can we add? Is there a way to add something that avoids a roto-nightmare? Can we structure it so we don’t see the element in one shot but we do see it in the next two shots so that you sort of complete what the image is? Loosely, that’s how we went off and did the work.”
Much of that questioning and analysis was open to the larger visual effects crew. Initially, Edwards had planned to embed himself within ILM’s studio to personally oversee the work. Although pandemic concerns ultimately scratched that idea, he still welcomed artists from deeper in the ranks to present their work directly and share ideas.
Gareth Edwards discusses a scene with John David Washinton in the ILM StageCraft volume.
“It takes a rare person to be comfortable enough to share your feedback openly with artists on the production,” Cooper notes. “It’s really wonderful. You get a level of engagement that you may not always find. Sometimes working on blockbusters, you can feel like you’re just punching numbers. But if you expose the artists to the reasoning behind something, the filmmaking intent, you get a huge level of engagement.”
As visual effects supervisor for the entire production, Cooper was busy overseeing work not only at ILM’s studios in San Francisco, London, Sydney, and Vancouver but also the assortment of smaller vendor studios enlisted to assist on the project. The initial shot count estimate had more than doubled by the time Edwards shared his initial cut. As he points out, ILM contributed “about 95% of the asset work and the lion’s share of the shot work” with the support of the vendors.
“As a supervisor, I’m sort of tapping the boat,” Cooper says. “You can’t be in every single file to model the rivets. You can’t go into every composite to add the elements. You’re asking for degrees of one thing or another, and there are a lot of places where people are volunteering an idea. They’re doing it in a way that they understand what the stylistic or aesthetic goal is.”
Overall, Cooper’s experience on The Creator felt like a return to an earlier era in visual effects, one that speaks directly to ILM’s can-do spirit. “ILM tries to find projects that are outside of the comfort zone of what has happened previously. It must have been wonderful in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s when the question wasn’t ‘can you do this?’ It was, ‘is this even possible?’ Those times have ended in many different ways. You do it enough times, and there’s a cost structure around it. So it’s interesting to be on a project where you chuck a lot of that away and get back to the basest level. We have a pot of money and a director with some big ideas. That’s the launching point. It’s cool and exciting to be in that world again.”
Lucas O. Seastrom is a writer and historian at Lucasfilm.
Earlier today BAFTA announced the nominations for the 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards, celebrating the very best in film over the past year. ILM contributed to four of the five films recognized with a nomination in the Special Visual Effects category.
Jay Cooper, Charmaine Chan, Ian Comley, and Jonathan Bullock were each nominated for Gareth Edward’s sci-fi thriller TheCreatorwhile Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland, and Neil Corbould received nominations for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. ILM also contributed effects work to Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon and James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Anna Higgs, Chair of BAFTA Film Committee said, “It has been an outstanding year for filmmaking as represented by the 38 films nominated today. They showcase ambitious, creative, and hugely impressive voices from independent British debuts to global blockbusters. From complex moral issues through to joyful journeys of self-discovery, they all ultimately explore human connection. Which is why we go to the cinema: to be transported into new worlds, to laugh, cry, to be entertained and to be challenged. The films nominated today deliver all that and more – we hope people up and down the country, and around the world, are inspired to watch them. Congratulations to all the nominees.”
The winners will be announced on 18 February from the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London, as part of an unmissable celebration of film hosted by David Tennant.
The EE BAFTA Film Awards will be broadcast on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK, on BritBox International in the USA, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and South Africa, as well as BBC Australia in Australia and New Zealand, NOVA Bulgaria, NOVA Greece, Turner Spain, and Canal Plus. With more territories to be confirmed.
The EE BAFTA Film Awards voting takes place over three rounds: Longlisting, Nominations, and Winners, by BAFTA’s global voting membership, comprising over 7,800 creatives and film industry practitioners
The nominations for the 2023 Emmy Awards have been revealed, and three ILM projects were recognized with nominations. Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian, Andor, and Amazon Studios’ The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power were each nominated in the Special Visual Effects category. This marks the third time that The Mandalorian has been nominated in the category having won the award each of its first two seasons.
The Mandalorian visual effects supervisor Grady Cofer shared, “It is such an honor to be recognized. The nomination is a testament to Jon Favreau’s commitment to excellence, and to the passion and dedication of the entire VFX team. Thanks to all the Television Academy members who have supported The Mandalorian through the years.” Nominated alongside Cofer were visual effects producer Abbigail Keller; animation supervisor Paul Kavanagh; Assoc. Visual Effects Supervisor, Cameron Neilson, special effects supervisor, Scott Fisher; Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel; Legacy Effects Supervisor, J. Alan Scott; ILM visual effects supervisor Victor Schutz IV; and ILP visual effects supervisor, Bobo Skipper
Andor visual effects producer TJ Falls said, “I’m very excited that Andor was recognized with a nomination for Outstanding Special Visual Effects. It’s a testament to the collaboration of the team and the incredibly remarkable talents of each of our nominated members, as well as those around the world who contributed to the project.” Falls was joined by fellow nominees visual effects supervisor, Mohen Leo; ILM visual effects supervisor, Scott Pritchard; Richard Van Den Bergh, special effects supervisor; Neal Scanlan, creature effects & Droid supervisor; Liana Mansor, lead visual effects editor; Joseph Kasparian, Hybride visual effects supervisor; Jelmer Boskma, Scanline visual effects supervisor; and Colorist, Jean-Clément Soret.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power nominees include Ron Ames, visual effects producer; Jason Smith, visual effects supervisor; Nigel Sumner, ILM visual effects supervisor; Ara Khanikian, Rodeo FX visual effects supervisor; Dean Clarke, SFX supervisor; Ken McGaugh, Weta FX visual effects supervisor; Tom Proctor, DNEG visual effects supervisor; Greg Butler, Method Studios visual effects supervisor, Joe Henderson, visualization creative supervisor, The Third Floor, Inc.
The 75th Emmy Awards is currently scheduled to broadcast live on FOX on Monday, September 18, (8:00-11:00 PM EDT/5:00-8:00 PM PDT) from the Peacock Theater at L.A. LIVE.
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 today announced the recipients of the 74th Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy® Awards honoring an individual, company, or organization for developments in broadcast technology. Industrial Light & Magic is proud to be the recipient of an Emmy Award for its StageCraft™ virtual production tool suite. StageCraft has been used on such series as The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, How I met your Father, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Old Man.
“Innovation is a vital part of television production; and the talented engineers, scientists and technologists we have recognized are essential to the growth of our industry,” said Frank Scherma, chairman and CEO of the Television Academy. “These pioneering companies and visionaries have leveraged the power of technology to elevate television and storytelling in fundamental ways.”
ILM StageCraft is an end-to-end virtual production tool suite that bridges the gap between practical physical production methodologies and traditional digital post-production visual effects by providing the ability to design, scout and light environments in advance of the shoot and then capture that vision in camera during principal photography. StageCraft brings together a real-time engine, a real-time renderer, high-quality color management, physical camera equipment, LED displays, motion-capture technologies, synchronization methodologies and tailored on-set user interfaces to digitally create the illusion of 3D backgrounds for live-action sets.
“Earlier this year the Academy formed the Science & Technology Peer Group representing members who are involved in the strategy and development of technologies that enable or advance the storytelling process for the television industry,” said Committee Chair John Leverence. “Under the leadership of the new peer group’s governors and co-chairs Wendy Aylsworth and Barry Zegel, this year’s newly constituted Engineering Emmy Awards Committee honors a wide range of innovative solutions to once seemingly intractable technical problems.”
The Television Academy announced its winners for the 73rd Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy® Awards over the weekend, celebrating a diverse group of talent from across television. ILM’s creative teams were honored with an award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or a Movie for The Mandalorian, alongside nominations for their contributions on The Boys, WandaVision, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. This is the second year in a row that the hit Lucasfilm series has received the Emmy Award for Special Visual Effects, a testament to the groundbreaking work that the show is known for.
Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel, VFX Producer Abbigail Keller, VFX Supervisor Joseph Kasparian (Hybride), and Environments Supervisor Enrico Damm in attendance at the 73rd Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy® Awards.
The visual effects team representing this win, included: Joe Bauer, Richard Bluff, Abbigail Keller, Hal Hickel, Roy K. Cancino, John Knoll, Enrico Damm, John Rosengrant, and Joseph Kasparian. Special recognition is also in order for ILM Producer Stacy Bissell, ILM Animation Supervisor Paul Kavanagh, and the entire StageCraft team for their incredible contributions.
Richard Bluff, Visual Effects Supervisor on The Mandalorian, added, “I want to take this opportunity on behalf of the visual effects team to congratulate all the artists, production, and the technical support staff who contributed to the Visual and Special Effects on season two of The Mandalorian. We continue to be in awe of the spectacular work and the effortless partnerships we enjoy with all of our vendor partners. The time and effort invested in the visuals by ILM, Hybride, Image Engine, Important Looking Pirates, Ghost VFX, Lola, Stereo D, Tippett Studios, Base FX, Raynault, Virtuous, and Yannix has been exceptional and this recognition is fully deserved. Everyone associated with the show couldn’t be happier or more grateful for what we all achieved together.”
In addition, The Mandalorian was also recognized with Emmys in the following categories: Sound Mixing, Cinematography, Prosthetic Makeup, Stunt Coordination, Stunt Performance, and Music Composition.
The 73rd Emmy Awards will be hosted by Cedric the Entertainer at L.A. Live in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Executive Producers Reginald Hudlin and Ian Stewart and Director Hamish Hamilton have been selected to helm the show for production companies Done+Dusted and Hudlin Entertainment. Highlights from the 73rd Annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be broadcast on Saturday, Sept. 18 (8:00 PM ET/PT) on FXX. The 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live on Sunday, Sept. 19 (5:00-8:00 PM, PST) on the CBS Television Network, and as well as streaming live and on-demand on Paramount+.
