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.

Terry in NZ at the Weta lobby with the security guard.

Terry and the animation/roto group at ILM.

Imagemovers Digital

That small group in the C-Theatre at the old Kerner ILM. Indira Guerrieri, Paul Debevec, and Terry.

Kim Thompson Steel

Kim Thompson Steel grew up in the suburbs of Toronto. As a kid she loved drawing and Saturday morning cartoons. She studied traditional hand drawn animation at Sheridan College. A fortuetous studio visit from Steve "Spaz" Williams led to a Summer internship at ILM in 1992 just as Jurassic Park was gearing up. She later returned to ILM as an employee in the commercials division. She also worked on numerous feature films including; Men in Black, Flubber, a couple of the Star Wars prequels, AI, Galaxy Quest, and some of the Harry Potter films. Today she lives in Marin with her family and runs her own business. https://kimthompsonsteel.com

Guy Hudson, Kim Thompson Steel, and Sandra Scott in ILM Commercials back in the mid 90’s.

Ridley Scott: A Retrospective

Ridley Scott has long been one of my all time favorite filmmakers. While he certainly has laid a few eggs along the way, his films are the ones that I return to more often than any others. Ian Nathan wrote this coffee table style book that is really a broad survey of all of Scott’s work to date. It goes deep in a few key sections and glosses over some lesser received projects. I highly recommend the book to any big fans of his work. Its a must have for the home library.

Indira Guerrieri

Indira Guerrieri (named after Indira Ghandi) was born in Rome. Her parents were both deeply involved in the arts. Her father even worked on the script for the classic Italian Neo-Realist film "Bicycle Thieves". She attended university in the US, eventually earning an undergraduate degree in Art History. She returned to Europe and worked for a time on a PaintBox system at a local company. When an opportunity to sign up for the Erasmus Programme in the EU came up she signed on and learned a host of computer graphics skills. She worked for a time with SoftImage doing demos and training and eventually landed a job at ILM on Casper as a Technical Director. Her career has taken her all over the world on all kinds of commercial, film, and special venue projects. Today she lives in California and works remotely with a team in New Zealand. It was so much fun catching up with Indira and hearing about her amazing journey.

Indira suited up to serve as a background extra for a shot in the Mummy.

Ed Kramer, Indira, Vince Tascano, and Eric Krumrey all ready for some Mummy extra action at ILM.

Indira’s old student ID card.

Amelia Chenoweth

Amelia Chenoweth grew up in the East Bay. After high school she attended Brown, graduated from RISD, and had a very brief stint in grad school at Art Center. She began her career at Chaos in San Francisco where she was hired to work as a technical director. She was later hired to work on Casper at ILM. She's also worked for Weta Digital in New Zealand, Sony Imageworks, and Pixar. Amelia shares her story of working in the industry from a young age. Her many credits include; Casper, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Contact, Deep Impact, The Mummy, The Frightners (at Weta Digital), Men in Black 2, the Pixar short Lifted, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Super 8, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Black Panther. 

She's been a great friend for 25 years and it was a blast catching up with her. 

Wes Takahashi, Lisa Todd (on the RZ350), Amelia Chenoweth, and Mark Chu leaving Skywalker Ranch after lunch and headed back to ILM on Kerner.

Amelia, Christophe Hery, and colleagues in the courtyard at Kerner.

Amelia