Industrial Light & Magic

### **Headquarters**

1110 Gorgas Ave. Letterman Digital Arts Center, Presidio of San Francisco, California, 94219 United States

### **Key people**

Rob Bredow (Head of ILM)
John Knoll (CCO)
Dennis Muren

### **Parent**

Lucasfilm Ltd.
(The Walt Disney Studios)

### **Divisions**

ILMxLab
ILM TV

### **Subsidiaries**

ILM London
ILM Singapore
ILM Vancouver
ILM San Francisco
ILM Sydney

### **Website**

ilm.com

**Industrial Light & Magic** (**ILM**) is an American motion picture visual effects company founded in May 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded and created when Lucas began producing the film *Star Wars*.

ILM originated in Van Nuys, California, then later moved to San Rafael in 1978, and since 2005 it has been based at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco. In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired ILM as part of its purchase of Lucasfilm.

## History

Lucas wanted his 1977 film *Star Wars* to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. 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). 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. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers and set them up in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which 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. 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* movies, *E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial*, *Batteries Not Included*, *The Abyss*, and *Flubber*, and also provided work for *Avatar*, alongside Weta Digital.

In addition to George Lucas's work, ILM also collaborates with Steven Spielberg on many films that he directs and produces. Dennis Muren has acted as Computer Animation 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 preexisting footage—in films including *Schindler's List*, *Forrest Gump*, *Snow Falling on Cedars*, *Magnolia*, and several movies directed by Woody Allen.

After the first *Star Wars* movie's success, Lucas became interested in using computer graphics on the sequel. 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. Lucas found it to be too expensive and returned to handmade models. But the trial had shown him it was possible, and he decided he would create his computer graphics department instead. As a result, they started investing in Apple and SGI computers. Lucas tasked one of his employees to find the right people to hire. His search would lead him to NYIT, where he found Edwin Catmull and his colleagues. Catmull and others accepted Lucas' job offer, and he created a new computer division at ILM in 1979 with Ed Catmull's hiring as the first NYIT employee who joined Lucasfilm. John Lasseter, who Lucas hired a few years later, worked on computer animation as part of ILM's contribution to *Young Sherlock Holmes*. The Graphics Group was subsequently sold to Steve Jobs, named Pixar Animation Studios, and created the first CG-animated feature, *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, a name that did not draw any attention, allowing the company to operate in secret, thus preventing the compromise of sensitive information on its productions to the media or fans. In 2005, when Lucas moved to the Presidio of San Francisco and focused 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. In 2011, Lucasfilm announced that they're considering a project-based facility in Vancouver. Vancouver's first location opened in 2013, and ILM opened a second location in Vancouver in 2017.

In 2006, ILM invented IMoCap (Image-Based Motion Capture Technology).

In 2012, Disney bought ILM's parent company, Lucasfilm, and acquired ILM in the process. Disney stated that it had no immediate plans to change ILM's operations but began to lay off employees by April of the next year. Following the restructuring of LucasArts in April 2013, ILM became overstaffed, and Disney reduced the faculty to serve only ILM's visual effects department. ILM opened a London studio headquartered in the city's Soho district on October 15, 2014.

As of 2016, 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.

On November 7, 2018, ILM opened a new division targeted at television series called *ILM TV*. It's in ILM's new 47,000-square-foot London studio with support from its locations in San Francisco, Vancouver and Singapore. In July 2019, ILM announced the opening of a new facility in Sydney, Australia.

ILM is one of the largest visual effects vendors in the motion picture industry and has one of the largest render farms (named Death Star) currently available with more than 7500 nodes.

## Milestones

* 1975: Resurrected the use of VistaVision; first use of a motion control camera (*Star Wars*)
* 1980: First use of Go motion to animate the Tauntaun creatures of *The Empire Strikes Back*
* 1982: First in-house completely computer-generated sequence — the "Genesis sequence" in *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*. (Previous computer graphics in *Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope* were done outside of ILM.)
* 1985: First completely computer-generated character, the "stained glass man" in *Young Sherlock Holmes*
* 1988: First morphing sequence, in *Willow*
* 1989: First Digital compositing of a full-screen live action image during the final sequence in *Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade*
* 1989: First computer-generated 3-D character to show emotion, the pseudopod creature in *The Abyss*
* 1991: First dimensional matte painting — where a traditional matte painting was mapped onto 3D geometry, allowing for camera parallax, in *Hook*.
* 1991: First partially computer-generated main character, the T-1000 in *Terminator 2: Judgment Day*
* 1992: First time the texture of human skin was computer generated, in *Death Becomes Her*
* 1993: First time digital technology used to create a complete and detailed living creature, the dinosaurs in *Jurassic Park*, which earned ILM its thirteenth Oscar
* 1994: First extensive use of digital manipulation of historical and stock footage to integrate characters in *Forrest Gump*.
* 1995: First fully synthetic speaking computer-generated character, with a distinct personality and emotion, to take a leading role in *Casper*
* 1995: First computer-generated photo-realistic hair and fur (used for the digital lion and monkeys) in *Jumanji*
* 1996: First completely computer-generated main character, Draco in *Dragonheart*
* 1999: First computer generated character to have a full human anatomy, Imhotep in *The Mummy*
* 2000: Creates OpenEXR imaging format.
* 2006: Develops iMocap system, which uses computer vision techniques to track live-action performers on set. Used in the creation of Davy Jones and ship's crew in the film *Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest*
* 2011: First animated feature produced by ILM, *Rango*
* 2019: First use of real time rendering (with Unreal Game Engine) and digital LED displays as a virtual set *(Known as "**StageCraft"** or **"The Volume"**)*, *The Mandalorian*

## Notable employees and clients

ILM used Photoshop as an image-processing program. ILM Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll and his brother Thomas created Photoshop as a summer project. ILM used it on *The Abyss*. The Knoll brothers sold the program to Adobe shortly before the film's release. Thomas Knoll continues to work on Photoshop at Adobe, and they featured it in the billing on the Photoshop splash screen. John Knoll continues to be ILM's top visual effects supervisor.

Adam Savage, Grant Imahara, and Tory Belleci of *MythBusters* fame have all worked at Industrial Light & Magic.

Industrial Light & Magic is also famous for its commercial work. Their clients include Energizer, Benson & Hedges, Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser, McDonald's, Nickelodeon and other companies.

Actor Masi Oka worked on several major ILM productions as a programmer, including *Revenge of the Sith*, before joining the NBC show *Heroes* as Hiro Nakamura.

American film director David Fincher worked at ILM for four years in the early 1980s.

Film director Joe Johnston was a Visual effects artist and an Art Director.

Film Director Mark A.Z. Dippé was a Visual Effects animator who directed *Spawn*, which New Line Cinema released in 1997.

## Commercials

* Canada Dry, "Domino" (1996)
* Honey Comb, "Crazy Craving" (2000-3)
* Gatorade, "Raptor" (2000)
* Alcatel, "MLK" (2001)
* Reese's Pieces, "E.T." (2002)

## See also

* Moving Picture Company (MPC)
* Digital Domain
* DNEG
* Framestore
* Sony Pictures Imageworks
* Rhythm & Hues Studios
* Weta Digital
* Image Engine
* Pixar Animation Studios
* Tippett Studio
* CSRG, UC Berkeley