Industrial Light and Magic

Industrial Light and Magic also known as ILM is one of the largest and most respected post-production visual effects companies in the entertainment industry. Controlled by Lucas Digital, ILM and Skywalker Sound are two of the largest entities in Lucas Entertainment. Created in 1975 by the four-time Academy Award nominated film director George Lucas also known as the creator of the Star Wars series, this company has produced some of most cutting edge computer generated visual effects for films and television. Located in the Letterman Digital Arts Center at the Presidio of San Francisco, this company has over 1400 employees and has produced special effects for over two hundred films. Of the 1400 skilled employees that work at ILM their jobs range from visual effects supervisors, technical director’s, art directors, producers, model makers, animators, matte painters to camera operators and stage technicians. Among these two hundred films ILM has received fourteen Academy Awards for its work on such films as Jurassic Park, E.T., Forrest Gump, Terminator 2, The Abyss and Cocoon.

Created in 1975 to produce visual effects for Star Wars, ILM has become one of the leading and most innovative visual effects companies in the world. Headed by George Lucas, one of the “American film industry’s most financially successful independent directors and producers,” (www.wikipedia.com) and Chrissie England, the current president of ILM, George and his assistant John Dykstra, creator of the Dykstraflex motion-controlled camera, providing a seven axes camera motion and responsible for many films groundbreaking effects, brought together “a small team of college students, artists and engineers who became the Special Visual Effects department.” (www.wikipedia.com) Members of the department included special effects artists Dennis Muren, who brought ILM’s models and miniatures to CGI and Phil Tippett the award winning Visual Effect Supervisor specializing in creature design and character animation. Dennis Muren is most known for his works on Terminator 2 and the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Muren helped push the pioneering of new technologies in special effects at ILM and helped the transition from models and miniatures to CGI. Phil Tippett the award winning visual effects supervisor and director helped lead ILM’s first animation department. Tippett used stop-motion filming to animate the imperial walkers and fierce alien Tauntaun in Star Wars: Episode V.







With the success of ILM over the last few years, Lucas has expanded his company to include divisions in other areas of media in the entertainment industry. George Lucas was able to take his Star Wars franchise into the gaming industry and in 1982 he founded LucasArts. In 1971, LucasFilm was created to focus primarily on television, and other Lucas endeavors such as “motion pictures, commercials, trailers, music videos and special venue projects.” (www.ilm.com) Even though ILM’s work is not as recognized for their commercial work as their films, the smaller commercial productions account for fifty percent of ILM’s income. ILM itself is comprised of numerous internal departments and divisions. ILM is mainly composed of CG groups and functions around the “pipeline of modelers, animators TD’s and R&D.” (www.ilmfan.com) They have an art department which operates like an independent division of the company that works along side with the model shop and Rebel Mac Unit, who then work with CG groups. The company is also supported by the public relations, business development and human resource departments.

When ILM first used special effects they operated with models and motion controlled cameras. In 1982 ILM had its first CG production on the Genesis series of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Over the years ILM has had great develop ments in software and “combinations of custom in-house technologi es and commercial products.” (www.python.org) Some of the programs ILM runs on to produce their ground breaking special effects, include Linux, Alias, Wavefront Maya, SOFTIMAGE, Compaq Tru64, IRIX, OS X and Solaris. In the 1980’s Adobe Photoshop was introduced to ILM by John Knoll an employee at ILM and Academy award winning motion picture visual effects specialist who helped create Photoshop with his brother Thomas, which ILM has used as an image processing program over the years. Soon after the release of 101 Dalmations ILM began running most of its programs from Python, which allow its employees to code and recode faster for the controlled production pipeline and is more efficient for customizi ng in-house software. With the use o f these programs ILM is responsible for some of the biggest accomplishm ents in computer-generated effects, which include the first computer-generated character in a film (Young Sherlock Holmes), the first 3-D character in 1980 for the Abyss, the first computer textured human skin in 1992 for the film Death Becomes Her and the first ever completely computer-generated character for the film Dragonheart released in 1996.

Industrial Light and Magic have c reated the foundation for special effects and has had an essential role in creating and defining the most groundbreaking developments with digital effects and CGI. ILM has continually pushed the boundary of special effects and has attributed effects to over two hundred films. Many of today’s most recent blockbusters have had huge special effects work attributed by ILM studios, including such films as Pirates of the Caribbean, which had the character Davy Jones completely created in CGI motion capture track suits (iMocap), Transformers, War of the Worlds, Harry Potter and many others.
Over the years ILM has played an integral role in the creation of numerous computer graphic studios across America. Pixar Studios was originally created by Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group in 1979 and has become o ne of the leadi ng CG animated movie companies. Ed Catmull a lead member of the original team was interested in CG animation and asked George Lucas if they could shift the company away from photorealistic FX and move towards animation. Ed Catmull was allowed to sell the company, which was then purchased by Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple computers). “The new company was named Pixar after the venerable image processing computer they developed at Lucasfilm.” (www.ilmfan.com) Part of the agreement was that ILM would have first access to any of the new programs and technology developed by Pixar. Another company with a strong relationship with ILM is the studio founded by the Academy Award winning director James Cameron and the former ILM president S tan Winston called Digital Do main. Their CGI ef fects have been featured in such films as Titanic, True Lies and Interview with a Vampire. ILM is also known for their participation with the SIGGRAPH group and has had a long tradition of attending their annual conferences.

Nicholas Escasany
Otis College of Art

Works Cited

“Industrial Light & Magic.” www.ilmfan.com
“Denise Muren.” www.wikipedia.com
“George Lucas.” www.wikipedia.com
“Industrial Light & Magic.” www.wikipedia.com
“John Dykstra.” www.wikipedia.com
“Lucasfilm.” www.wikpedia.com
“LucasArts.” www.wikipedia.com
”Phil Tippett.” www.wikipedia.com
Tyson, Jeff. “How Industrial Light & Magic Works.” www.entertainment.howstuffworks.com

“Industrail Light & Magic Runs on Python.” www.python.org