Mitch Suskin

Mitchell "Mitch" Alan Suskin is an Emmy Award-winning visual effects (VFX) supervisor who worked on and , having left the franchise upon the conclusion of the latter series' third season. He shared four Emmy Award nominations for his work on Voyager, winning two of them. He also shared a nomination for his work on the Enterprise episode .
Prior to being hired on Voyager at Paramount Television in July 1996 near the end of that series' second season, Suskin had worked at VFX company Foundation Imaging, and it was Suskin who was instrumental in bringing his former employer to work on the VFX of that series, as he was the one who suggested the company to his superior Dan Curry, when the latter was looking to bring in another VFX company to work on the production. Replacing Michael Backauskas, who opted to leave the franchise, Suskin was paired up with firstly Arthur J. Codron and subsequently with Ron B. Moore to form one of the two alternating VFX teams for the remainder of Voyager. () The first episode he worked upon independently as supervisor with Codron was Voyagers third season episode . (Cinefantastique, Vol 29 #6/7, p. 103)
Suskin shortly returned to the Star Trek live-action franchise, when he joined the pre-production of in June 2016 as Visual Effects Supervisor, but left in February 2017 after nine months, before the new series premiered in September that year. His position was subsequently filled by former Star Trek colleague David Takemura and newcomer to the franchise, Ante Dekovic.
==Career outside Star Trek==
Before his time on Star Trek and holding a degree as Bachelor of Arts (BA), Fine Arts, Motion Picture & Television from the University of California, Los Angeles, Suskin started out his career in 1977 as an uncredited model maker for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and subsequently as such for Industrial Light & Magic's 1941 (1979). As VFX coordinator he continued to work for them on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (in which he had a cameo as medical assistant) and Poltergeist (both 1982), and as visual effects supervisor on (1985), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), and (1984). He was a concept artist for the creature effects of (1987).
Suskin was a VFX supervisor on J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5' at Foundation Imaging during its first two seasons (1994-1995), and subsequently a digital compositing artist at Flat Earth VFX for before joining the crew of Voyager. After Star Trek, he later became the visual effects supervisor for (co-created by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof) and the NBC series Surface. His work on the latter series garnered him an Emmy nomination, while his work on Lost earned him not only two Emmy nominations, one of which he won, but two Visual Effects Society Awards nominations as well, also winning one of them.
More recently, Suskin joined many former Star Trek VFX colleagues at Pixomondo Visual Effects (an international VFX house, founded in 2001) in 2010, continuing to work as a VFX supervisor on television productions such as, Hawaii Five-O (2011, co-produced by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman), BlackBoxTV and Hitting the Cycle (both 2012), as well as on the motion picture (2011, produced by J.J. Abrams). Suskin left Pixomondo in 2012 to continue his career as a free-lancer.
==Star Trek Emmy Awards==
Suskin received the following Emmy Award win and nominations in the category "Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series":
* Emmy Award nomination for the episode , shared with Eric Chauvin, Arthur J. Codron, Paul Hill, John Teska, Greg Rainoff, Koji Kuramura, and Adam Lebowitz
* Emmy Award win for , shared with Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz, Elizabeth Castro, Arthur J. Codron, Dan Curry, Don Greenberg, Paul Hill, Ronald B. Moore, Robert Bonchune, Greg Rainoff, and John Teska
* Emmy Award nomination for , shared with John Allardice, Eric Chauvin, Arthur J. Codron, Dan Curry, Don Greenberg, Sherry Hitch, Greg Rainoff, Robert Bonchune, John Teska, and Ron Thornton
* Emmy Award win for the episode , shared with Ronald B. Moore, Dan Curry, Arthur J. Codron, Steve Fong, Eric Chauvin, Rob Bonchune, John Teska, and Gregory Rainoff
* Emmy Award nomination for , shared with Arthur J. Codron, Pierre Drolet, Steve Fong, Koji Kuramura, Sean Scott, John Teska, Greg Rainoff, and Robert Bonchune
==Star Trek interview==
*"Computer Graphics", Anna L. Kaplan, Cinefantastique, Vol 29 #6/7, 1997, pp. 103-106
== External links ==
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es:Mitch Suskin
Category:Special and Visual effects staff
Category:Emmy Award winners
Category:Emmy Award nominees