Robert Blalack Dies: Oscar-Winning ‘Star Wars’ Visual Effects Artist, ILM Co-Founder Was 73

deadline.com:

Robert Blalack, a towering figure in the world of visual effects, died on Wednesday. His wife Caroline Charron-Blalack confirmed the news to Deadline.

He was 73.Blalack said he specialized in “solving the Visual Effects requirements of ‘can’t be done’ Motion Picture productions.” He proved the truth of that statement on his second film project, a 1977 space opera by the name of Star Wars.At the age of 29, he designed and supervised the Star Wars VistaVision Composite Optical production pipeline, which allowed all the groundbreaking 365 VistaVision VFX shots in Star Wars.

Much of what he created for the film was built on a (relative) shoestring. With a VFX budget of just $1.6 million for the film, Blalack made use of obsolete VistaVision optical composite equipment from Hollywood’s Golden Years that could be had for a song.“My task was to scavenge the Hollywood junkyards for any VistaVision Composite Optical mechanics,” he wrote, “figure out how to upgrade those relics with custom state-of-the-art optics, design a photographic process to mass-produce the movie’s 365 VistaVision composites, and then train and supervise the Star Wars Composite Optical crew.”The result was what he called, “This Rube Goldberg assemblage of ancient composite printer hardware, state-of-the-art optics and the mass-production blue screen color-difference composite techniques were the backbone of the celluloid system…subsequently used on all ILM VistaVision VFX Composite Opticals.”Blalack was part of the team that founded Industrial Light and Magic, and again the effort was driven by necessity.George Lucas wanted cutting-edge effects for Star Wars but found that the studio, 20th Century Fox, effectively did not have a VFX department.