Published at: Nov. 18, 2002, 7:05 a.m. CST by staff
Hey folks, Harry here... Over at HollywoodReporter.Com they have a little blurb story by Sheigh Crabtree that grabbed my attention, if only because of how blase the piece was.
You see, the above headline isn't some dreaded news about a remake we would all go ginsu blades of death angry about, no it is something to be elated about. Not long ago I was hearing faint death knell rumors about SONY PICTURES IMAGEWORKS. The rumor had it, they were going the way of the dodo. Well, today they added 3 absolute geniuses to the line-up. Right now, without a doubt, they have the best group of Visual Effect Supervisors working in one place since the heyday of ILM around the time of T2 and JURASSIC PARK, or even before that.
The Two Anchors of this Seven - They're the figures of effects legends. First we have Ken Ralston, whose work is burned into our corneas for all time with Star Wars, Dragonslayer, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Rocketeer, Forrest Gump, The Mask, Contact and the hopefully the upcoming Zemeckis film THE POLAR EXPRESS will be an addition to that impressive list.
The second anchor is John Dykstra, who brought to life Huey, Dewey and Louie in SILENT RUNNING, then went on to Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Lifeforce, the Schumacher Batmans and Raimi's Spider-Man. Next he'll be taking on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which he's already been spotted supervising in Chicago!
Those two already had two other fantastic folks working with them at ImageWorks with Rob Legato and Jerome Chen. Legato supervised the work in Interview with the Vampire, Apollo 13, Titanic, Armageddon and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Not too shabby. Jerome Chen's work in both of the Stuart Little films has been quite impressive, as was the supervising work he oversaw with Godzilla, Contact and James and the Giant Peach.
So those are the 4 they had. Who just came aboard? Let me introduce them one by one by one.
First we have Mark Stetson, who served as the Visual Effects Consultant throughout the entire main shoot of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. He worked on Supernova, The Fifth Element, The Shadow, Matinee, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, Die Hard, 2010, Masters of the Universe, Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Ghost Busters, The Right Stuff, Blade Runner and Star Trek: The Motion Picture!!! He's currently working on Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle - which means he oversaw the scanning of Cameron Diaz... WOW!
Next is Kevin 'super-genius' Mack! He dubiously got his start on Airplane 2: The Sequel. Then he painted models on King Kong Lives, The Abyss, Flight of the Intruder and Freejack. He was a scenic artist on ARMY OF DARKNESS! Ok, so what makes him so magnificent? It's where he went next... True Lies, Interview with the Vampire, Apollo 13, Fifth Element, What Dreams May Come (where he grew a tree digitally), Fight Club (where he grew a human brain digitally), How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Vanilla Sky and A Beautiful Mind. Now he's teamed up at Imageworks to handle working with Tim Burton on BIG FISH. What happens when super-geniuses collide? We'll See!
Lastly... We have Richard Hoover. He's that DreamQuest / The Secret Lab - SuperGenius behind Armageddon, Unbreakable and Reign of Fire. He's been working on DARKNESS FALLS which we recently had that amazing pair of reviews from a test screening last Friday, which apparently scared the shit out of folks. The work that Hoover does is beautifully lit and composed. Very nice. In fact at Sitges this year, I made sure that Reign of Fire picked up the best Special Effects award because... his dragons just kicked fucking ass!
This group of Supervisors have 17 nominations and 11 wins for Best Visual Effects at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. On top of that, they just frankly kick all sorts of ass. Putting them together, in a building, in the same universe and having them get the type of projects they need to evolve and push the medium... where they can shoot the shit and problem solve... Well, it could mean fan-fucking-tastic things for us Effects Junkies. Oh man, this is sweet news to me!
