BIO

As a child, I loved the magic of movies and animation. This passion along with my interest in stories, model railroading, and insects led me into a career in visual effects and directing. On my first movie, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, I developed the cloud effect and helped film the mothership. I have worked on many films, tv shows, commercials, and specialty films. Projects ranged from very large films where I visual effects supervised hundreds of people around the world to executing smaller projects myself. My work experience includes co-founded my own visual effects company, Dream Quest, and also working at ILM for 20 years. I’ve been nominated for 3 Academy Awards (THE MASK, DRAGONHEART, and STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE). I have received a BAFTA and many other awards

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As a director, I have done nation commercials for HP, Intel, and others. I have also directed specialty ride films, VR films, music videos, and shorts. One of my commercials was selected by SHOOT Magazine as Best Work You May Never See. I am always thinking of the story and how to make the most of visuals and humor.

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My need to create great visual images has required me to develop new tools and techniques as needed to achieve the desired results. Part of my time at ILM was as CTO overseeing the transition to digital production. I won an Academy Technical Award for my work on creating one of the first film scanners to enable digital effects to be incorporated with film elements and DI colorwork. Other examples: Designing the electronics and software for a motion control system, developing an app to interface to a digital surveyors tool, creating a bluescreen motion capture system. Commotion was a visual effects paint and roto Mac application I wrote for the second company I co-founded, Puffin Designs. In addition, I have created iOS apps and plugins for After Effects and Nuke.

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I am always interested in pushing creative and technical boundaries. For the last 4 years, I’ve been immersed in Virtual Reality at another company I co-founded, Pixvana. We built a cloud system with a web front end to process 8-12k videos to produce the highest quality 360 videos in VR headsets. As Creative Director I shot and Directed a number 360 and 180 videos for clients, including interactive videos. As CTO I prototyped most of our processes and tools, including using Unity and Unreal to explore VR interactions. I am listed on the 3 patents for video developments done there.

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VES Fellow.
Co-edited and wrote for the VES Handbook.
Member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences
I am classified as a Director of Photography in the International Cinematographers Guild.