Ben Snow Ben Snow is a visual effects specialist of Industrial Light & Magic ( ILM ) , who served as computer effects artist on . His very first project he worked on , after being hired by ILM , he was made responsible for rendering and lighting the by Stewart Lew and Scott Frankel built CGI version of the , featured in the scenes where it interacted with the Nexus . Career outside " Star Trek " . When Snow was a youth he read an article in an issue of " American Cinematographer " of renowned ILM staffer Dennis Muren of " Star Wars " fame , which made him decide to seek a career in the motion picture industry , though he knew he had a long road ahead of him , from a backwater Australian farm to ILM in San Francisco , USA . With the support of his parents , who suggested the move Snow majored in Computer Science and Film at the University of Canberra and set out , taking the trans - Mongolian railway from Hong Kong , for London , UK . He eventually found employment as a " runner " for several small companies , earning enough money to travel Europe for awhile , until finding a more substantial position at a small computer graphics house , Moving Picture Company , where he stayed until 1991 . With the experience gained there , he returned to Australia where he headed the computer animation department for the Sydney based company Conja , making commercials and station identification sequences for television , including the title sequence of the ABC program " Beyond 2000 " . " " Initially , I was the only guy in the department , so I was a jack of all trades . So , although I came in from programming , I did modeling , animation and lighting . We mostly worked on commercials and elaborate title sequences for " Beyond 2000 " , a science and technology show . It was a tremendous learning experience . " " , Snow recalled , discovering he did not wanted to do animation , but programming effects , " " I animated little soccer players using roto - animation . I did a terrible job . " " His employer sent him in 1993 to the computer graphics conference , SIGGRAPH , in Los Angeles , where he was invited by a friend , who just got hired by ILM , to attend a party thrown by ILM . Snow ' s friend suggested that he submit a demo reel to ILM , which eventually resulted in him being hired , with " Star Trek Generations " , his first assignment . After being hired by ILM in 1993 , Snow has never left the company , having moved over to the USA with his wife , and later became the CGI and visual effects supervisor on a number of films , including " Deep Impact " ( 1998 , with James Cromwell , Denise Crosby and Kurtwood Smith ) , " The Mummy " ( 1999 , with Erick Avari and music by Jerry Goldsmith ) , " Galaxy Quest " ( 1999 , with Matt Winston ) , " Star Wars : Episode II – Attack of the Clones " ( 2002 ) , " King Kong " ( 2005 ) , " Iron Man " ( 2008 , with Faran Tahir and Bill Smitrovich ) , its 2010 sequel , " Pirates of the Caribbean : On Stranger Tides " ( 2011 ) and " Noah " ( 2014 ) . By 2012 , his work on these productions had earned Snow no less than 22 award nominations ( four Academy Award s , two BAFTA Awards , five Saturn Award s , a Hollywood Film Festival Award , two Phoenix Film Critics Society Award s , two Satellite Award s , and six VES Award s ) , in the end only winning two of them , a 2003 Saturn Award for " Attack of the Clones " , and a 2008 Hollywood Film Festival Award for " Iron Man " .