Industrial Light and Magic’s Senior VP on How the VFX House is Changing the Filmmaking Game
variety.comJazz Tangcay Artisans EditorDisney+’s new six-part series “Light & Magic” takes audiences inside the magic and history of Industrial Light & Magic, starting with George Lucas’ vision for “Star Wars” and covering how their innovative StageCraft suite of virtual production changed the game in filmmaking.Speaking with Variety, Janet Lewin, Senior VP of Lucasfilm Visual Effects and General Manager of ILM, fondly recalls the first time she saw “Star Wars.” “I was 7 years old and was completely blown away.
I literally thought there were galaxies like that, far, far away,” she remembers.Years later, Lewin worked as visual effects producer on “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” and oversaw all aspects of the visual effects and animation business for Lucasfilm and ILM.
In documenting the rise of ILM, the series follows the pioneers and VFX trailblazers behind the magic such as Phil Tippett and Dennis Muren.Tippet is a legend of the VFX world.
His contributions over five decades include creating the Millennium Falcon’s holochess board, the AT-AT Walkers as seen in “The Empire Strikes Back” and the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.” Muren too, is a master of the craft, a seven-time Oscar winner who worked on the speeder bike shots in “The Return of the Jedi” and the mine car chase in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”Lewin says the series director Lawrence Kasdan (“The Empire Strikes Back”) shows how these geniuses made an impact on filmmaking. “It’s humbling to see that and to see their stories.”The artists and ILM’s history as the first major special effects house are the characters in this story.
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