Catmull and others accepted Lucas' job offer, and a new computer division at ILM was created in 1979 with the hiring of Ed Catmull as the first NYIT employee who joined Lucasfilm. His search would lead him to NYIT, where he found Edwin Catmull and his colleagues. One of Lucas' employees was given the task to find the right people to hire. As a result, they started investing in Apple and SGI computers. Nevertheless, the test had showed him it was possible, and he decided he would create his own computer graphics department instead. He found it to be too expensive and returned to handmade models. He contacted Triple-I, known for their early computer effects in movies like Westworld (1973), Futureworld (1976), Tron (1982), and The Last Starfighter which ended up making a computer-generated test of five X-wing fighters flying in formation. Īfter the success of the first Star Wars movie, Lucas became interested in using computer graphics on the sequel. Apart from flashy special effects, the company also works on more subtle effects-such as widening streets, digitally adding more extras to a shot, and inserting the film's actors into preexisting footage-in films including Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Snow Falling on Cedars, Magnolia, and several films directed by Woody Allen. Dennis Muren has acted as Computer Animation Supervisor on many of these films. In addition to their work for George Lucas, ILM also collaborates with Steven Spielberg on many films that he directs and produces. the Extra-Terrestrial, Batteries Not Included, The Abyss, and Flubber, and also provided work for Avatar, alongside Weta Digital. From here on, the company expanded and has since gone on to produce special effects for nearly three hundred films, including the entire Star Wars saga, the Indiana Jones series, the Harry Potter series, the Jurassic Park series, the Back to the Future trilogy, many of the Star Trek films, Ghostbusters II, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the Terminator sequels, the Transformers films, the Men in Black series, the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, Wild Wild West, most of the Mission: Impossible films, E.T. In late 1978, when in pre-production for The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas reformed most of the team into Industrial Light & Magic in Marin County, California.
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Parking lot and building of the first company headquarters of ILM in Van Nuys, where the special effects of the first Star Wars movie were produced Alongside Dykstra, other leading members of the original ILM team were Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Robert Blalack, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, Steve Gawley, Lorne Peterson, and Paul Huston. After seeing the map for the location was zoned as light industrial, Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which became the Special Visual Effects department on Star Wars. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers, and set them up in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. Trumbull declined as he was already committed to working on Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but suggested his assistant John Dykstra to Lucas. After discovering that the in-house effects department at 20th Century Fox was no longer operational, Lucas approached Douglas Trumbull, best known for the effects on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Silent Running (1972). Lucas wanted his 1977 film Star Wars to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before.