Industrial Light & Magic
Industrial Light & Magic is a movie special effects studio founded by Star Wars writer/director George Lucas in May of 1975, and is currently owned by Lucas's main motion picture studio, Lucasfilm. The company is known for its outstanding work in many motion pictures, including the first computer-generated imagery animation in a feature length film, the first movie shot entirely on digital cameras, and for the development of the Pixar computer system (before they separated and were eventually bought out). The San Francisco-based company has participated in the production of over 200 movies in the past 32 years.
ILM is responsible for the majority of the CGI in the first live-action Transformers movie, and served in the same capacity for the sequels, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, as well as Transformers: The Ride.
Despite winning several awards from the Visual Effects Society for Transformers and seemingly being a shoe-in for the 2008 Oscar for "Best Visual Effects", ILM actually lost, to the shock of the visual effects industry and the assembled movie makers, to a goddamn polar bear, no less. Revenge of the Fallen wasn't even nominated for the 2010 Oscars for "Best Visual Effects". Dark of the Moon managed to get a "Best Visual Effects" nomination in 2011, but lost to Hugo. Another project ILM happened to work on.
ILM staff on Transformers included:
- Charles Alleneck - Animator
- Scott Benza - Animation supervisor
- Russell Earl - Associate Visual Effects Supervisor
- Scott Farrar - Visual effects supervisor
- Alex Jaeger - Art director
- Jeff Mann - Production designer
- Keiji Yamaguchi - Technical animator
- Greg Killmaster - Creature technical director
- Laura Killmaster - Creature technical director
