Mo Husseini

Mo Husseini was born in Egypt, grew up in Jordan, attended boarding school in the UK, and moved to the San Francisco bay area in the late 1980’s. He attended classes at UC Berkeley, apprenticed with various filmmakers and artists, and eventually landed a job at ILM in the commercial editorial group. Mo shares his stories of luck, the generosity of others, the Dunning–Kruger effect (uh-oh), and his amazing post-ILM career. Plus, he’s a super smart and kind human. Was great to catch up with him for the show.

Mo with Commercials Producer Paul Hill on Mo’s last day at ILM.

Laurel Woods

Laurel Woods worked at ILM and Lucasfilm for 7 years in the 90’s. She is one of my dearest friends. Her story is incredible and includes; a dad who owned strip clubs in LA, Star Wars, UCSB, working as an office assistant at Playboy, ILM computer graphics, Lucasfilm, a murder for hire, visiting prison on holidays, MTV, stalking Carrie Fisher, SCUBA diving, Tunisia, writing a memoir, and working for CORE in LA doing COVID-19 testing.

Laurel’s journey takes her across the US and around the globe. She’s easily one of the most incredible people I know. 

Laurel Woods and George Lucas at the Lucasfilm holiday party circa 1995.

Terrence Masson

Terrence Masson has had an incredible career. He's worked on 20+ feature films as well as many “special venue" interactive, broadcast commercials and video game projects. Some highlights include three Star Wars movies, getting SouthPark started and the world's largest interactive digital Etch-A-Sketch. Terrence is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Visual Effects Society and has been active in SIGGRAPH since 1988, including as the 2006 Computer Animation Festival Chair, the 2010 Conference Chair, and Outstanding Service Awards Chair.

Terrence's enthusiasm for the craft is infectious. Today he works as Chair of the MFA program in Computer Arts at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York.

C-3P0, Terrence Masson, & R2-D2

Old ILM electronic slate from a shot Terrence worked on from “Hook”.

TMAN (Terrence’s old ILM email handle) appearing on ABC.

A classic early image of an ILM computer graphics division desk/office set up. Oh the glamour.

VFX Show 252: Tenet

Mike Seymour, Jason Diamond, and Matt Wallin live in a twilight world and there are no friends at dusk. We pass through a lazy-Susan/turnstile and use entropy to talk backwards catching IMAX frames on our Apple Watches as we talk about Christopher Nolan’s TENET.

Elle Chan

This week I talk to Elle Chan. Elle worked in the commercials division at ILM for five years in the early 1990's. She talks about growing up in Rochester, NY, how she came to ILM, and the amazing success she's created since leaving and starting her own company, Trademark Event Productions, Inc. 

Elle Chan and Clint Goldman in the ILM Commercials production office in the old D building at Kerner.

“This was pretty much every day summed up in a single frame.” - Elle Chan