David Tanaka

David Tanaka grew up in the Bay Area. As a kid he was fascinated with a small hand cranked toy you could look into and watch Super 8mm film. He later took that toy apart and began making his own short films with friends. He wound up earning a degree in film from UC Berkeley. A visiting artist lecture with Ease Owyeung inspired David to begin looking for ways to get a job at ILM. After several tries he landed an internship at ILM working in the group that did amusement park rides (now defunct). He later moved over to the Art Department and eventually landed a full-time position as an assistant VFX Editor.

While at ILM David helped create a program that allowed employees to propose and make small independent projects. David went on to make a number of PSA for organizations like Swords to Plowshares. Others in the company made music videos, short films, spec commercials, and experimental art films. David worked at ILM for fifteen years.

His next job was working at Pixar for the next decade or so cutting trailers and marketing material for the company. David has continued to work as a freelance editor and creative for numerous clients. He also has been giving back through teaching and his work with the VES (Visual Effects Society).

David is an incredibly talented, kind, and thoughtful human. While he mentions others who helped him along the way, so many of the people I’ve talked to for this podcast mentioned David as having been critical to their successes. It was a pleasure to catch up with David and hear his inspiring story of creativity, tenacity, and generosity.

Paula Karsh

Paula Karsh grew up in Pittsburg and earned a Master's degree in Education. She later moved to California with her husband, who was enrolled at Stanford in their film program. She spent some time teaching and later found a job working at a film production company where Lucasfilm was one of her first clients. This later led to an opportunity to come to ILM and work on their Production Services team.

Paula worked as the Head of Production Services for 27 years. She has an amazing story and insight into the needs of a visual effects and film production company. When Dennis Muren calls you in the morning and wants a dead turkey vulture to study the way the wing moves for Dragonslayer, and he needs it by that afternoon, Paula is the one who can get you what you need. Her work, and the work of countless others behind the scenes helped make possible so many of the films you love. While she never won and Oscar, her and her team's work at ILM made it all possible with their critically important work.

Post ILM, Paula worked doing hospice care, and also as a volunteer firefighter. Paula is an amazing human being and it was amazing to catch up with her and hear her story.

Paula Karsh

Paula Karsh

Scott Squires

Scott Squires grew up in Indiana. As a kid he built his own microscope and was fascinated with bugs and ants. He worked for the local paper as a photographer in high school and was always interested in filmmaking. He travelled out to California shortly after high school and would up with a job opportunity working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he helped develop the “cloud tank”.

Scott worked at ILM for 20 years where he served as Visual Effects Supervisor and directed multiple commercials and ride films. Scott was also the ILM CTO during the transition to digital.

He has had 3 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nominations for Visual Effects - The Mask, Dragonheart, & The Phantom Menace. He also received an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scientific and Engineering Award for Pioneering Work in Film Input Scanning. 

For the last 4 years, he Co-Founded and was CTO as well as Creative Director at Pixvana, a company specializing in making cloud tools to create the highest quality 360-degree videos for interactive VR use. Scott directed several special VR projects including The Play for the Holodome at the Seattle MPOP.

He has co-founded and helped run 3 companies: a visual effects company (Dream Quest– later sold to Disney), a software company based on the Commotion roto and paint software Scott wrote in C++ (Puffin Designs – later sold to Avid), and a virtual reality company (Pixvana) with complete cloud processing and streaming.

Squires is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and is a Visual Effects Society Fellow. He is a Director of Photography in the International Cinematographers Guild. He was a co-editor and writer on the Visual Effects Handbook and holds 3 patents for special video processes.

Scott’s boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for creative problem solving has propelled him forward throughout his life and made him an industry pioneer of the highest order. His kind and quiet unflappable demeanor, his willingness to share, and his overall good nature make him unique among luminaries of visual effects. It was a real honor and pleasure to chat with Scott about his career, past, present, and future.

Barbara Townsend

Barbara Townsend was born in Florida, spent some time in Arizona, Texas, St. Louis, and lived her formative years in Memphis. As a young person in high school, she had her own radio show. She attended Arkansas State earning a BS degree in Radio/TV.

After school, Barbara moved back to St. Louis and worked at a local access station running cameras for college football, taping interviews with fans, and doing general production work. She continued a successful career in broadcasting working on the Today Show in NY, Saturday Night Live, and Meet the Press in Washington. She was fascinated by Chyron and took the training course in Long Island which opened doors throughout the industry. Her skillset and interests grew leading to opportunites doing broadcast graphics with Paintbox and Harry systems. At a career crossroads, Barbara approached her boss and asked to go out to Santa Barbara to train on Wavefront. It changed her trajectory for the next decade.

A connection with Henry LaBounta led to an interview with John Berton in the computer graphics division of ILM. Barbara was hired and worked at the company as a technical director for the next 11 years. Her credits include, Baby’s Day Out, Star Trek, The Mask, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Men in Black 2, Magnolia, Pearl Harbor, Hulk, and many others. 

She later spent a number of years working full-time as a mother. As her kids got a little older, she pursued a master’s degree in counseling and today works as a full-time therapist engaging with clients in her private practice. She is engaged in psychedelic assisted therapy and using her systems knowledge, education, and life experience to help people with severe depression. 

Barbara is an amazing person and it was truly great to catch up with her and hear about her incredible journey.  

Barbara at her desk at ILM - November 29, 1994 (you gotta love photos with dates on them)

Barbara at her desk at ILM - November 29, 1994 (you gotta love photos with dates on them)

Stu Maschwitz

Stu Maschwitz grew up in Minnesota. As a kid he loved movies. His dad was an entomologist and his mother was an artist working with textiles. He made short animated movies as a young kid and later shot numerous skateboarding videos with friends. He eventually made his way to CalArts and made every opportunity at the school count.

After graduation he landed a job at ILM where he’d work for the next 4 years. He was a founding member of the Rebel Mac group at the company and eventually left to branch out on his own. He co-founded and ran The Orphanage with former ILM colleagues Scott Stewart and Jonathan Rothbart for the next 10 years.

Stu has worked as a Visual Effects Supervisor, commercial and music video director, and software developer. Today he works with Red Giant Software developing tools for artists and creating his own projects. Most notably with his 2018 animated short film “Tank”.

Stu is a true raconteur in the world of filmmaking and visual effects. With his blog, Prolost, and his ongoing work with industry partners he shares his knowledge and skills with great generosity and humor. There’s no doubt he’d make a world class teacher. But in most every way, he already is. It was so fun to catch up with Stu and hear about his amazing journey.

Stu and Trish Shutz-Krause on the backlot at ILM as extras for Star Wars: The Special Edition.

Stu and Trish Shutz-Krause on the backlot at ILM as extras for Star Wars: The Special Edition.

John Goodson

John Goodson grew up in North Carolina, Alaska, and Northern California. His dad was a surgeon in the Air Force and John loved airplanes and science fiction. Space 1999, Star Trek, and later Star Wars captured his imagination as a young person and he began building models.

He earned a degree in Product Design from North Carolina State. He loved to draw hard surface models and objects and he's always made his own models and props. He got a 1966 Ford Mustang as his first car and it needed some body work. So he went to a bodyshop that was run by a patient of his dad's and learned how to work with all kinds of materials and developed a sense of precision in "making".

He and his pal Tony Hudson made their own Empire Strikes Back snowscape with working miniatures in a spare bedroom in his parents house. Some time later, Tony wound up working at ILM and he and John talked on the phone frequently while John was in Design School. He continued to build and develop his skillset making all kinds of models from the starship Enterprise to the EVA pod from 2001. He came out to stay with Tony for a few weeks in California and wound up with a full-time job in the ILM model shop where he worked for the next 31 years.

John's credits are beyond impressive and include; Back to the Future 2, Die Hard 2, Star Trek VI, The Rocketeer, Alive, Mission Impossible, Deep Impact, Mission to Mars, Planet of the Apes, Harry Potter, Terminator 3, Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, & 3, Rogue One, and The Mandalorian. Just to name a few...

John's enthusiasm, passion for making, and love of problem solving are inspiring. He shares some amazing stories of his experiences, the techniques developed, and solutions found to complex problems on numerous projects. It was an absolute blast talking to John and we could have easily gone on for another couple hours. May be this one will someday get a part 2...

Mark Moore

Mark Moore grew up in the Pacific Northwest. As a kid he loved art, movies, cars, and airplanes. He attended University of Washington as an undergrad where he studied industrial design. He moved to San Francisco after graduation to be closer to ILM and found work in the city building architectural models and toys.

A mutual colleague led to a friendship with John Bell, who was working as an art director at ILM, and they shared a laugh corresponding for a time via FAX machine. Mark soon landed a gig at ILM where he worked for the next 13 years as a storyboard/concept artist, visual effects art director -- and eventually in 1996 as the ILM Art Department Creative Director -- Mark has worked with many top Hollywood filmmakers including: John Carpenter, Nicholas Meyer, Frank Oz, Tim Burton, Stephen Sommers, Rob Cohen, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Ang Lee.

In 2002, Mark went freelance, moved to Texas, and has since worked on films with directors Robert Rodriguez, Mike Judge (on Idiocracy!), Jonathan Liebesman, Jon Favreau (on Ironman), and Jeff Nichols (on his incredible indie film Mud). In 2012, Mark began consulting with 900 lbs of Creative in Dallas on a variety of projects for feature films and interactive museum exhibits.

Mark is one of the funniest and most positive people I've ever worked with. His boundless energy and enthusiasm is infectious and he always makes me laugh. Thanks to Mark for an inspiring conversation. By the end of this interview you have to ask yourself one question, "are you pushin' it...or are you milking it?"

Ellen Poon

Ellen Poon grew up in Hong Kong in the 1960s. She was a middle child out of five and her mom loved going to the movies. From a very young age she was motivated to excel, and was always an independent thinker. A great teacher at university got her interested in graphics by challenging students to make images and patterns using Pascal. She realized that computer science was an area where she could be super creative. She went on to earn a PhD in computer science from the University of London.

Ellen is a founding member of MPC's Computer Graphics department. During her tenure at ILM, she was the first woman to be made Visual Effects Supervisor. Ellen has won two Hong Kong Film Awards for her work on Hero and Monster Hunt. Her film credits include: Jurassic Park, Disclosure, Star Wars: Episode 1, Jumanji, Frozen, and Raya and the Last Dragon.

Within minutes of meeting Ellen you know you are talking to one of the kindest, coolest, and smartest people you’ll ever meet. It was great to reconnect and hear her story.

Neil Lim Sang

Neil Lim Sang was born in Jamaica. His family emigrated to Canada when he was six. His dad was diagnosed with ALS and passed when Neil was only fifteen. He was partnered with a Big Brother who had a strong influence on his interest in making art. 

He attended art college and worked with all kinds of traditional media. After finishing there he continued on at Sheridan where he studied both computer graphics and animation. His first jobs were in New York City and Mexico City doing animated flying logos. 

He came to work in Berkeley in the early 1990's  at Rocket Science Games. He later landed a job at ILM in the commercials division where he forged his skills and what he calls his "vfx tourettes". Commercials ran at a breakneck speed and taught Neil how to do great work fast. After seven years Neil left to pursue other opportunities including Sony where he worked on Polar Express doing motion capture, and a tour in Australia on Happy Feet 2. 

Today he works as a senior artist on all kinds of projects. Neil's passion for music fuels his creative drive. He’s an incredible colleague and friend with a positive work ethic and an amazing story. It was so much fun to catch up with Neil and talk about his genuine zest for life.

Habib Zargarpour

Habib Zargarpour was born in Iran. He moved to Belgium at an early age (4th grade), moved to the south of France for high school, and Vancouver for university.

For a time Habib was interested in airplane design but later gravitated towards architecture. Attending Art Center to study industrial design he honed his skills and interests. One of those interests took the form of doing a 3D design for a lawnmower on the computer. His work in the digital space continued to grow. After school he worked for numerous clients doing designs for things like a camcorder for Panasonic.

Before graduating Habib landed a gig doing visual effects for “Adventures in a Dinosaur City”. He and a group of friends wound up doing three and a half minutes of CG effects for the project by developing their own tools. He later did work on the Roger Corman “Fantastic Four” creating the fire effects for Johnny Storm.

Some time later, an opportunity to work at ILM came up on “The Mask”. For the next ten years he worked at ILM developing key tools on additional films including; “Twister”, 2 “Star Trek” films, “Star Wars: Episode 1” (the pod race sequence), “The Perfect Storm”, & “Signs”. In 2003, he left to work at Electronic Arts for the next seven years doing realtime rendering for games. He spent some time at Microsoft working on the Xbox team where he began work on the Photon project doing development work for James Cameron and Joe Letteri. He later landed a gig developing realtime previs tools for “The Jungle Book” and “Ready Player One”.

He worked on “Blade Runner 2049” and “Greyhound” with Digital Monarch Media, which was later acquired by Unity. Today he’s working at Unity developing new techniques and realtime tools for virtual production and working on his own film “Squadron”.

Habib is absolutely brilliant and one of the nicest people in the business. With every project he’s worked on he’s made an indelible imprint on the industry with boundless enthusiasm and excitement for the medium.

John Schlag

John Schlag grew up in Baltimore and became the church organ player from the ages of 13 to 17. Everyone thought he'd grow up to become a music major but instead he studied electrical engineering at University of Delaware and later attended Carnegie Melon for his Master's degree. He spent a few years at NYIT and then drove across the country on his motorcycle. He later landed at MacroMind (later to become Macromedia) where he worked with Alex Seiden developing a 3D program that never launched in time. He then landed a job in 1990 at ILM in the computer graphics division on Terminator 2 followed up by Death Becomes Her. John helped develop Viewpaint for Jurassic Park. He helped supervise and set up tools for the crowd scenes in Forrest Gump and the pingpong scenes with the digital pingpong ball.

After four years at ILM John left to work as a freelance consultant and to spend more time being a dad. John moved to Germany for a few years working as a VFX supervisor on numerous projects and later landed at ESC Entertainment to work on the Matrix sequels. Since then he’s has worked with Nvidia, Sony Imageworks, Digital Domain, Adobe Research, and Google.

John is a great storyteller and shares his knowledge and perspective on the evolution of digital tools and the immeasurable value of experience.

John Schlag, Doug Smythe, Dennis Turner, Rita Zimmerman, & Grant McGlashan play ping-pong on one of the ILM stages at the Kerner facility between takes while serving as extras on one of the Star Trek Next Generation movies.

John Schlag, Doug Smythe, Dennis Turner, Rita Zimmerman, & Grant McGlashan play ping-pong on one of the ILM stages at the Kerner facility between takes while serving as extras on one of the Star Trek Next Generation movies.

Robert Bruce

Robert Bruce, "brucer" was his ILM email nickname, grew up in California. He attended a number of schools and flirted briefly with the idea of becoming a classical guitarist. He eventually landed in Sonoma where he earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Rob later came to work at ILM, but wound up leaving after an unexpected health issue forced him to change gears. He returned to school earning a master's degree in Library Science and began his own career in academia.

Rob is amazing and we talk about the old days, old friends, and the pros and cons of a life in academia.

Brucer’s old ILM “showme” photo.

Brucer’s old ILM “showme” photo.

Paul Hill

Paul Hill grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He is the youngest of three children and attended catholic school in his youth. He earned a degree in english from the University of Virginia with an emphasis in creative writing. After college he went to work for the US government helping coordinate resettlement of Vietnamese refugees from South Vietnam to the United States. Paul moved to San Francisco and got a job working for Dolby Laboratories as their Creative Director. From there he did a stint at Skywalker Sound and eventually landed at ILM where he would work for the next 16 years. Since ILM, he’s worked on multiple projects including several feature films, commercials, Audi’s website portal, and numerous other projects.

Paul’s documentary film “Alaska Far Away”, and the new documentary on PepsiMan are available online. Paul Hill is a wonderful human being. Its 100% true that he is the kind of person you always dream of working with. His work ethic, kindness, empathy, and good humor are unparalleled in the business. It was a great pleasure to reconnect with Paul and hear his story. He won 25K once on Jeopardy!

Rod Bogart

Rod Bogart, aka RGB, (the best initials in the biz) grew up in Colorado. His dad worked at IBM and occasionally brought computers home. Computer Science was a natural pursuit and Rod went on to earn his BS and MS degrees. After graduating he spent some time running a visualization lab on the University of Michigan campus. He later worked at PDI in Hollywood where he helped develop procedurally based image processing tools to automate wire removal and the removal of most anything from any shot. He joined the ILM R&D group in 1995 and helped develop the Open EXR standard with Florian Kainz, Drew Hess, and Piotr Stanczyk which went on to win a Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Award. Years later at Pixar he developed their color science pipeline. Rod then moved to NYC where he worked for HBO on their HDR tools and workflows. Today he is the senior software engineer on the virtual production team at Epic. He’s been at ground zero of virtually every major development in the business for the last 30 years.

Rod is one of the most kind and intelligent people I've ever worked with. He would make an excellent teacher as he has an uncanny ability to take highly complex technical concepts and explain them in terms anyone can follow and understand. It was great fun to reconnect with him and hear his story. 

The Notorious RGB

The Notorious RGB

Gonzalo Escudero

Gonzalo Escudero grew up in Madrid. He went to school for architecture and later landed a job doing motion graphics at a small local firm. He attended SIGGRAPH and wound up with a job offer to come work at ILM. After working as a Technical Director on a number of high profile projects Gonzalo left ILM to pursue a career as an actor in New York City. Gonzalo shares his story about taking risks, following your dreams, and giving yourself space to grow as a person. You might even say, “Change in plans…”

Natasha Devaud

Natasha Devaud was born and raised in Switzerland. As a little girl she learned how to knit before she knew how to write her own name. She earned a degree in Education and moved to Palo Alto in the US to work as a nanny and learn english. She returned to Switzerland to enroll in an accelerated program in fashion design. An intriguing and fateful visit to a lab at ECAL in Lausanne led to a Master's Degree in computer graphics. Natasha travelled to SIGGRAPH in Chicago to serve as a volunteer and went the following year to Anaheim where she was hired by Rhythm & Hues. She was later hired by ILM where she worked for the next 22 years. Her credits include several Star Wars, Transformers, Harry Potter and Marvel movies. Natasha was my office mate for several years at ILM in the 1990's. She's always been a great friend and her story of happy accidents, passion, drive, and luck is amazing.

Natasha_Devaud.3.jpg

Chris White

R. Christopher White grew up in Dale City, Virginia and always had an interest in computers. After seeing some rigid body dynamics during a Summer program at George Washington University he was hooked. Chris earned his BFA in Computer Arts at Syracuse University. He went on to graduate school at University of Illinois’ Electronic Visualization Lab in Chicago and applied for the ILM internship for the fourth time and got in developing tools for Twister. He would up working at ILM for the next seven years. He later left, finished his graduate degree and soon headed for New Zealand where he’s been ever since.

Today, Chris is a Visual Effects Supervisor with over 25 years of industry experience. From feature films and streaming media to special venue projects, he has a passion for making engaging environments, creatures, and effects. His work has been recognized with multiple awards from the Visual Effects Society, along with Academy Award, BAFTA, and Emmy nominations.

Some of his more notable work includes Twister, Star Wars Episode I, Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, King Kong, Avatar, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, and The Umbrella Academy. He is currently working on the Avatar sequels at Weta Digital in New Zealand.

Enthusiastic about giving back to the next generation of artists, he enjoys guest lecturing at universities and conferences. As an active member of InclusionFX, Chris offers young people from traditionally underrepresented groups mentoring and career guidance in visual effects.

Mark Siegel

Mark Siegel grew up in Minneapolis loving science fiction and monster movies. He was an avid reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and the articles sparked his imagination. He earned a degree in Theatre from the University of Minnesota and attended the Ringing Bros. Clown College. His stage and circus experience taught him skills for working with prosthetics and make up. He landed a job at Universal Studios as part of a Verne Langdon monster makeup show for tourists. This eventually led to work as a sculptor and fx artist working on multiple films including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Dune, Ghostbusters, and many others. He was later hired by ILM where he worked for decades on numerous projects in both traditional and digital formats. Today he is retired and living in the Bay Area. Mark is a great storyteller. He’s had an amazing career spanning many disciplines that all inform his work in fascinating and unexpected ways.

Scott Grenier

Scott Grenier grew up in Southern California. After high school and community college he got a job working at a computer repair shop. That job opened doors to other opportunities working in IT. With the help of a great mentor, Scott eventually found his way to ILM in the mid 1990's. Scott shares his awesome story of skill building on the job. From the soft skills of helping co-workers with tech issues, to enterprise system architecture, to sales, he's added new skills with each career move. It was a blast catching up with Scott and hearing about his journey.

Terry Molatore

Terry Molatore grew up in Los Angeles, the youngest of six children. In the 1970's she attended UC Santa Cruz and later worked at the Nuart movie theater on Santa Monica Blvd. She landed a job doing traditional rotoscoping on The Empire Strikes Back for an LA company called VCE which eventually led to a gig at ILM that wound up lasting 22 years. Terry left ILM to work at Imagemovers and later travelled to New Zealand to work at Weta Digital. Just before the pandemic, she retired from visual effects and is now developing stories connected to her family experience and background. Terry is one of my all time favorite ILMrs and we have a great conversation about her background, old friends, growing up an LA kid, and the state of the world.

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