Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) is a San Francisco-based visual effects studio founded by George Lucas in the 1970s. ILM has won 16 US Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and 20 Technical Academy Awards. ILM pioneered motion control cameras and computer-generated imagery (CGI) and created breakthroughs in photorealistic animal animation. ILM’s innovations have influenced modern cinema and led to the creation of Pixar and Weta Digital.
Industrial Light and Magic, more commonly known as ILM, is a motion picture visual effects studio based in San Francisco, California. Created by George Lucas in the 1970s, the company has a long history of innovation and success. Today the company is considered one of the best effects studios in the world and has won 16 US Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and another 20 Technical Academy Awards.
In the early 1970s, director George Lucas was thrilled to have his Star Wars film picked up for production by 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately, the production company had just shut down in-house effects production, leaving Lucas to look for another effects studio. Lucas contacted John Dykstra, who had assisted with the effects on 2001: A Space Odyssey. The effects Lucas wanted for Star Wars were completely unsuitable for traditional techniques, and Industrial Light and Magic was created to almost entirely rebuild the effects industry.
The first milestone that Industrial Light and Magic established was the use of a motion control camera. This innovative camera, named the Dysktraflex after John Dykstra, allowed for precise and repeatable camera movements around stationary patterns. On film, this gives the impression that the model, rather than the camera, is in motion. The Dykstraflex enabled the fantastic photography of starship and battles in Star Wars and would bring the studio its first Academy Award.
In 1979, ILM began pioneering work on computer-generated imagery (CGI) under the direction of computer genius Ed Catmull. CGI allows for the digital creation of characters, locations and effects entirely on computers, greatly reducing the actual shooting needs. Computer-generated imagery also allows for the creation of the physically impossible. In 1982, the first fully computer-generated sequence appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, created by ILM.
George Lucas has long collaborated with fellow director Stephen Spielberg, who started using ILM for his films. In 1993, the visual effects world was stunned by ILM’s CGI dinosaurs in Spielberg’s blockbuster Jurassic Park. Huge breakthroughs were made by ILM in this film, allowing for the creation of animals with photorealistic muscles, skin, expression and movement. This film gave Industrial Light and Magic its 13th Academy Award.
The knock-on effect of Industrial Light and Magic’s tremendous innovations created much of the technical world of modern cinema. In the early 1980s, Lucas chose to sell a section of the company that was primarily in computer rendering programs. Within a few years, a department member named John Lasseter would change the world of animation with the enormous success of Toy Story, the computer-generated feature film from Lasseter’s company, Pixar. Lucas also mentored Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings, on the future of Jackson’s acclaimed special effects studio, Weta Digital. With over thirty years of experience and dozens of awards to their name, Industrial Light and Magic seeks to continue the steady stream of innovation and invention that first made them the largest effects studio in the world.
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