Industrial Light & Magic

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas. It is a subsidiary of his film production company, Lucasfilm, and was created when Lucas began production of the film Star Wars.
ILM originated in Van Nuys, California, then later moved to a larger and more refined facility in San Rafael in 1978. Since 2005, it has been based at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco. Lynwen Brennan, who joined the company in 1999, currently serves as ILM's President and General Manager.
==History==
Lucas wanted his 1977 film Star Wars to include visual effects that had never been attempted in cinema before. After discovering that the in-house effects department at 20th Century Fox was no longer operational, Lucas approached Douglas Trumbull, famous for the effects on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although Trumbull was unable to join Lucas as he was already committed to working on Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he suggested his assistant John Dykstra to Lucas. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers who became the Special Visual Effects department on Star Wars. Alongside Dykstra, other leading members of the original ILM team were Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, Steve Gawley, Lorne Peterson, and Paul Huston.
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 and moved them to a new facility in San Rafael. 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 (2007-2018), the Men in Black series, Wild Wild West, most of the Mission: Impossible films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, *batteries not included, Van Helsing (in its first collaboration with Weta Digital on additional visual effects) The Abyss, Flubber, and also provided work for Avatar and quietly King Kong, alongside Weta Digital; as well as Spectre, becoming the first James Bond film to use visual effects and animation by Industrial Light & Magic marking their first involvement on James Bond's visual effects design alongside with No Time To Die.
In addition to their work for George Lucas, ILM has also collaborated with Steven Spielberg on most films that he directs, and for many that he produces as well. Dennis Muren has acted as Visual Effects Supervisor on many of these films.
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 archive footage - in films including Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Snow Falling on Cedars, Magnolia, and several Woody Allen films.
ILM began creating computer-generated imagery when they hired Edwin Catmull from NYIT in 1979. John Lasseter worked for ILM in the early 1980s as a computer animator. The computer graphics (CG) division, now known as Pixar, was sold to Steve Jobs and created the first CG animated feature film Toy Story.
In 2000, ILM created the OpenEXR format for High Dynamic Range Imaging.
ILM operated from an inconspicuous property in San Rafael, California until 2005. The company was known to locals as The Kerner Company. In 2005, when Lucas decided to move locations to The Presidio of San Francisco and focus on digital effects, a management-led team bought the five physical and practical effects divisions and formed a new company that included the George Lucas Theater, retained the "Kerner" name as Kerner Technologies, Inc. and provided physical effects for major motion pictures, often working with ILM, until its Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2011.
In 2005, ILM extended its operations to Lucasfilm Singapore, which also includes the Singapore arm of Lucasfilm Animation but it would due to be closed in Singapore in 2023. In 2011, it was announced the company was considering a project-based facility in Vancouver.
In 2006, ILM invented IMoCap (Image Based Motion Capture Technology).
ILM has received 16 Best Visual Effects Oscars and 40 additional nominations. It has also received 24 Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2012, Disney bought ILM's parent company, Lucasfilm, and acquired ILM in the process. Disney has stated that it would have immediate plans to change ILM's operations.
ILM is currently the largest visual effects vendor in the motion picture industry, with regards to workforce, with more than 500 artists. It has one of the largest render farms currently available with more than 7500 nodes.
==External links==
*Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) website
*Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) on Star Wars Wiki (Wookieepedia)
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Category:Lucasfilm
Category:Walt Disney Company subsidiaries
Category:Companies