David Dozoretz

This week on 8111 David Dozoretz. David grew up in Arizona. He is the creator of ZAFARI, a children's animated TV show on NBCUniversal/Dreamworks TV and the first TV show rendered exclusively in Epic's Unreal game engine.

An ILM and Lucasfilm alum, David also founded Persistence of Vision, a leading feature film pre-visualization company that produced work on films such as Star Wars, JJ Abrams' Star Trek and Mission: Impossible series, X-Men and many others.

David and I were interns at ILM at the same time. His career has been nothing short of amazing and it was great fun to catch up with him.

David on the right with TyRuben Ellingson in Japan on business circa 2010.

Josh Pines

This week on 8111, Josh Pines!! Josh grew up in Long Island, NY. His father was a celestial mechanic (aerospace engineer) and his mother worked as a probability and statistics professor at Hofstra. He was the youngest of three with two older sisters. 

As a kid, he spent weekends going with his parents to Manhattan exploring the museums, attending operas, movies, and music venues. He played classical piano growing up and set his sites on a music degree at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. When that didn't work out, he wound up going to the Cooper Union where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. 

He played in several bands during college and really enjoyed electronic music. He connected the exploration of electronic music to other elements in engineering (sound waves, time varying signals going through circuits, Fourier analysis, signal processing, etc.) Everything he was interested in related to music suddenly seemed to have a direct connection to image making. After graduation he stuck around campus for a few years teaching film classes. 

Josh first began working in visual effects at MAGI in 1982 at the tail end of their work on "Tron" and went on to lead the computer graphics division at R/Greenberg Associates in NYC. Later he supervised film effects and film recording at Degraf/Wahrman in Los Angeles. 

Josh was then hired by ILM where he supervised the film scanning/recording department for more than 10 years, and worked extensively with both traditional and digital cinema technologies. He has received a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and has credits on several feature films. Today he lives in the Bay Area and often commutes to LA for work. 

Josh is still looking for a clown based solution for several problems facing industry. There is no denying his brilliance, his wit, and great sense of humor. I'm forever a fan. It was a super fun chat catching up with Josh and hearing his story. 

Frank Gravatt

This week on 8111, Frank Gravatt!! Frank was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began sculpting clay models at a young age. Horror movies, both old and new, have always been a fascination of his and Frank started sculpting monsters, and working with makeup to create the faces he saw in the movies.

In his early career he began working at various retail chains until he landed a job in maintenance at Industrial Light & Magic. While working at ILM he brought his clay models in to the office for his coworkers to see, and soon landed a job making clay horses for Hallmark. From this point forward Frank went on the path to eventually be hired as a digital effects modeler and supervisor. His first movie was Casper (1995).

His first credited movie was Mars Attacks! as a digital modeler. Frank went on to create for movies such as Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, several Harry Potter films, Van Helsing, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and War of the Worlds.

He was nominated for a Visual Effects Society (VES) award in 2003 for "Best Character Animation in a Live Action Motion Picture" for his work in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). He was nominated again, and won, a VES award in 2012 for "Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture" for his work in Rango (2011). Frank was again nominated for "Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture" in 2014 for his work in Pacific Rim.

He has since worked on movies such as The Revenant, Captain America: Civil War, and Transformers: The Last Knight. Today, Frank continues to live in the Bay area with his five amazing kids and fiancée Trudie. It was a blast to reconnect with Frank and hear his incredible story.

Scott Ross

Scott Ross joins me this week to talk candidly about his time at ILM and Lucasfilm and his four decade career in entertainment and technology.

A native of New York City, Scott began his career in Media Studies at Hofstra University where he graduated with a BS in Communication Arts in 1974.

During the 70’s Ross toured with numerous bands such as the Miles Davis group and The Allman Brothers Band. In the 80’s Ross was General Manager of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic. In 1991 Ross was named VP of the LucasArts Entertainment Group, which was comprised of Skywalker Sound, LucasArts Commercial Productions, LucasArts Attractions, Editdroid/Soundroid and ILM. Most recently he was the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Digital Domain, Inc., one of the largest digital production studios in the motion picture and advertising industries. 

Scott is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (EMMYS).

Jeff Light

This week on 8111, Jeff Light! Jeff grew up in Lima, Ohio. His dad was an attorney and his mom kept Jeff and his three sisters mostly out of trouble. He loved theatre and movies as a kid and was inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey which he saw the Summer before Jr. High. He bought a Yashika LD6 Super 8 movie camera and began playing with filmmaking and visual effects. 

He was pre-med at University of Cincinnati for his first year but it just didn’t make his heart sing. He changed schools to Ohio State University where he earned his BFA and MA degrees in Photography & Cinema. He stuck around after his MA and taught animation to students. From there he worked at Cranston Surrey Productions doing motion graphics. Always curious and working to address needs on specific jobs, Jeff began learning programming and digital image processing. 

Lincoln Hu gave a presentation at SIGGRAPH and Jeff connected with him afterwards and was told to put his resume and materials together for an interview at ILM. He was first hired to work in the Scanning department on Terminator 2 in December of 1990. His background in film and programming were a perfect fit for the time when ILM was in transition from analog to digital. During his years at ILM Jeff taught Unix classes, composited on Hook and Death Becomes Her, technical direction on Jurassic Park, and was later tasked with helping develop and create the motion capture department. 

He went on to work at Dreamworks for a number of years and later served as the Chair of Visual Effects at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Today Jeff is back in California working on his own projects and keeping his finger on the pulse of the industry.

Jeff is a true renaissance man. His innate curiosity, love of cinema, problem solving skills, and overall enthusiasm make him a great teacher, and a fascinating interview. It was so fun to talk with Jeff about his life and creative passions. 

http://jefflightmedia.com/

Mike Bowles, Mike MacKenzie, Jeff Light, Lincoln Hu, Udo Pampel, and Josh Pines with the film scanner they built.

Jeff snatching another victory from the jaws of defeat at 12:08.

Jeff shares info about the motion capture process for “Cinema Secrets”.

Jeff shares info about the motion capture process for “Cinema Secrets”.