This week on 8111, Corey Rosen. Corey answers the question of “what would an 8111 theme song sound like”. Corey grew up in Rochester, NY. His dad is a children’s dentist and his mom is a teacher. He’s the middle child of three brothers. As a kid he went to sleep away camp in the Catskill mountains where they put on plays. Theatre became a permanent fixture in his life.

Corey gravitated towards filmmaking as a kid, remaking some of his favorite character driven films with friends from the neighborhood. He went on to study Radio, TV & Film at Northwestern University. Corey worked as a producer on a student comedy TV show called “Stinky’s Pub” and there he learned a number of skills. After his sophomore year he worked as an intern at Jim Henson studios and Comedy Central.

The following year Corey applied to the LucasArts internship program and was accepted, in part via a shared interest in golf by Lisa Vaughn. He interned in the scanning and optical department in the Summer of 1993. Corey was in a near fatal car accident on interstate 580 and kept working at ILM from his hospital bed. This led to a full time job that lasted for the next 12 years.

Corey and Scott Leberecht created their own short films at ILM including the Sprit of Spawn and the Sprit of Sleepy Hallow. These fun short films led to an opportunity to work as a writer developing original projects for Lucasfilm Animation. He then returned to doing cloth work as a TD and started to feel like it was time to move on.

Post ILM he has worked at The Orphanage, Image Movers Digital, and now at Tippett Studio writing theme park ride films. Corey recently wrote a book called, “Your Story Well Told” in connection with work he’s done on The Moth on NPR. It was great to reconnect with Corey and hear his story.

Corey Rosen in the orange shirt with the other creature TDs in the “House of Pain”.