8111

This week on 8111, Euan Macdonald! Euan grew up near Edinburgh, Scotland the middle brother of three. His father was an architect and also loved cartooning. His mother taught yoga and wrangled the three boys. They had a ZX Spectrum computer in the house growing up and Euan played games and did some rudimentary programming. He worked to help his dad on projects mapping structured space and experimented with making videos from image sequences generated on the computer.

In school he was excited to pursue animation and computer graphics. After school Euan went to work in London at a company called Digital Pictures. He also got am opportunity to attend SIGGRAPH 1990 in Dallas as a student volunteer. He continued building his skills and his reel which landed him a full-time job at Industrial Light and Magic as a Technical Director.

At ILM Euan worked on numerous films including; In the Mouth of Madness, The Mask, Disclosure, The Lost World, Dragonheart, Episode 1, Harry Potter 3, and several others. Euan's skillset quickly landed him in the role of CG Supervisor. He had a fun experience on Dragonheart where he met fellow Scotsman, Sean Connery. When the film premiered in the UK Euan got to hang out with Connery and introduce his parents to the original 007. 

After more than a decade at ILM it was time for a change of pace and Euan headed to Vancouver to work at Electronic Arts. The transition to games was exciting and challenging. He continued to build new skills and expanding his roles with each move. Sometime later he returned to Marin to help set up the new studio at Image Movers Digital and worked for a time at The Orphanage. 

Today Euan works for himself on multiple exciting start ups. His ventures have included developing creative toys, mobile AR applications, games, VR, NFTs, and original content. Euan's drive, enthusiasm, and creativity have kept him always busy with new ideas, new projects, and new opportunities. It was so much fun chatting with Euan about this life and career. 

This week on 8111, Dan Goldman. Dan grew up in Colorado where his mom worked as a teacher and his dad, a physicist. He enjoyed drama as a young person and acted in plays in both jr. high and high school. When it came time to head off to college he chose Brown for a degree in Theatre. 

Fate intervened his freshman year when he was assigned an academic advisor who was a well known computer science professor from the School of Engineering. By the time his sophomore year rolled around, Dan had transferred to the computer science program at Stanford and decided to pursue drama on the side. 

In 1992, his sophomore year at Stanford, he landed an internship working in the Computer Graphics division at Industrial Light and Magic. That internship later turned into a full-time job where Dan worked for the next 12 years, eventually as a CG Supervisor. Dan’s credits include; Meteor Man, The Flintstones, Mission Impossible, Men in Black, The Phantom Menace, Galaxy Quest, & Attack of the Clones, among others. 

Dan then decided to return to grad school for his PhD in computer science and enrolled at University of Washington. He worked part-time at ILM while also working on his dissertation. When school ended he went to work at Adobe Research for the next decade where he helped develop numerous projects including what would become “content-aware fill” in Photoshop. 

Today Dan works at Google on the team developing the exciting Project Starline. It was a blast to reconnect with Dan and hear his story. Talking with Dan you can’t help but admire his boundless curiosity & enthusiasm for tackling complex problems. His drive and positive outlook are infectious. 

8111 is back from hiatus this week with Fon Davis! Fon was born in Vietnam. His dad was in the Air Force and in 1975 his family moved to California. As a kid he was always interested in working with his hands and making things. He loved science fiction films and making models.

One of his first jobs was at (Colossal) Pictures where he worked with Henry Selick. When Selick left to make Nightmare Before Christmas Fon joined the team at Skellington and stayed on through James and the Giant Peach. While working there he met several people from the ILM model shop including Steve Gawley. 

Shortly after Skellington he landed his dream job in the ILM model shop where he would work for the next decade. His credits include; Starship Troopers, Galaxy Quest, Pearl Harbor, Star Wars, Terminator, Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, Interstellar, and Guardians of the Galaxy (to name only a few).

Today Fon lives in Southern California and works with his team at Fonco Studios. It was a blast to chat with Fon and hear his story. He is, no doubt one of the nicest guys in the business. 

This week, just a brief announcement about going on hiatus. I'm undergoing treatment for leukemia and its taken me outta the normal daily world for a while. I plan to be back sometime in early Spring. I've got lots of great interviews lined up for the future. Thanks for all your support and please stay tuned. 

This week on 8111 David Dozoretz. David grew up in Arizona. He is the creator of ZAFARI, a children's animated TV show on NBCUniversal/Dreamworks TV and the first TV show rendered exclusively in Epic's Unreal game engine. 

An ILM and Lucasfilm alum, David also founded Persistence of Vision, a leading feature film pre-visualization company that produced work on films such as Star Wars, JJ Abrams' Star Trek and Mission: Impossible series, X-Men and more..

David and I were interns at ILM at the same time. His career has been nothing short of amazing and it was great fun to catch up with him. 

This week on 8111, Josh Pines!! Josh grew up in Long Island, NY. His father was a celestial mechanic (aerospace engineer) and his mother worked as a probability and statistics professor at Hofstra. He was the youngest of three with two older sisters. 

As a kid, he spent weekends going with his parents to Manhattan exploring the museums, attending operas, movies, and music venues. He played classical piano growing up and set his sites on a music degree at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. When that didn't work out, he wound up going to the Cooper Union where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. 

He played in several bands during college and really enjoyed electronic music. He connected the exploration of electronic music to other elements in engineering (sound waves, time varying signals going through circuits, Fourier analysis, signal processing, etc.) Everything he was interested in related to music suddenly seemed to have a direct connection to image making. After graduation he stuck around campus for a few years teaching film classes. 

Josh first began working in visual effects at MAGI in 1982 at the tail end of their work on "Tron" and went on to lead the computer graphics division at R/Greenberg Associates in NYC. Later he supervised film effects and film recording at Degraf/Wahrman in Los Angeles. 

Josh was then hired by ILM where he supervised the film scanning/recording department for more than 10 years, and worked extensively with both traditional and digital cinema technologies. He has received a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and has credits on several feature films. Today he lives in the Bay Area and often commutes to LA for work. 

Josh is still looking for a clown based solution for several problems facing industry. There is no denying his brilliance, his wit, and great sense of humor. I'm forever a fan. It was a super fun chat catching up with Josh and hearing his story. 

Frank Gravatt was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began sculpting clay models at a young age and excelled in his craft. Horror movies, both old and new, have always been a fascination of his and Frank started sculpting monsters, and working with makeup to create the faces he saw in the movies. 

In his early career he began working at various retail chains until he landed a job in maintenance at Industrial Light & Magic. While working at ILM he brought his clay models in to the office for his coworkers to see, and soon landed a job making clay horses for Hallmark. From this point forward Frank went on the path to eventually be hired as a digital effects modeler and supervisor. His first movie was Casper (1995), although uncredited, he used his eye for detail and creativity from sculpting and began learning the trade of digital effects modeling. 

His first credited movie was Mars Attacks! as a digital modeler. Frank went on to create for movies such as Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, several Harry Potter films, Van Helsing, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and War of the Worlds. 

He was nominated for a Visual Effects Society (VES) award in 2003 for "Best Character Animation in a Live Action Motion Picture" for his work in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). He was nominated again, and won, a VES award in 2012 for "Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture" for his work in Rango (2011). Frank was again nominated for "Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture" in 2014 for his work in Pacific Rim. 

He has since worked on movies such as The Revenant, Captain America: Civil War, and Transformers: The Last Knight. Today, Frank continues to live in the Bay area with his five amazing kids and fiancée Trudie. It was a blast to reconnect with Frank and hear his incredible story. 

Scott Ross joins me this week to talk candidly about his time at ILM and Lucasfilm and his four decade career in entertainment and technology.
 
 A native of New York City, Scott began his career in Media Studies at Hofstra University where he graduated with a BS in Communication Arts in 1974.
 
 During the 70’s Ross toured with numerous bands such as the Miles Davis group and The Allman Brothers Band. In the 80’s Ross was General Manager of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic. In 1991 Ross was named VP of the LucasArts Entertainment Group, which was comprised of Skywalker Sound, LucasArts Commercial Productions, LucasArts Attractions, Editdroid/Soundroid and ILM. Most recently he was the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Digital Domain, Inc., one of the largest digital production studios in the motion picture and advertising industries. 
 
Scott is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (EMMYS).

This week on 8111, Jeff Light! Jeff grew up in Lima, Ohio. His dad was an attorney and his mom kept Jeff and his three sisters mostly out of trouble. He loved theatre and movies as a kid and was inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey which he saw the Summer before Jr. High. He bought a Yashika LD6 Super 8 movie camera and began playing with filmmaking and visual effects. 

He was pre-med at University of Cincinnati for his first year but it just didn’t make his heart sing. He changed schools to Ohio State University where he earned his BFA and MA degrees in Photography & Cinema. He stuck around after his MA and taught animation to students. From there he worked at Cranston Surrey Productions doing motion graphics. Always curious and working to address needs on specific jobs, Jeff began learning programming and digital image processing. 

Lincoln Hu gave a presentation at SIGGRAPH and Jeff connected with him afterwards and was told to put his resume and materials together for an interview at ILM. He was first hired to work in the Scanning department on Terminator 2 in December of 1990. His background in film and programming were a perfect fit for the time when ILM was in transition from analog to digital. During his years at ILM Jeff taught Unix classes, composited on Hook and Death Becomes Her, technical direction on Jurassic Park, and was later tasked with helping develop and create the motion capture department. 

 He went on to work at Dreamworks for a number of years and later served as the Chair of Visual Effects at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Today Jeff is back in California working on his own projects and keeping his finger on the pulse of the industry.

Jeff is a true renaissance man. His innate curiosity, love of cinema, problem solving skills, and overall enthusiasm make him a great teacher, and a fascinating interview. It was so fun to talk with Jeff about his life and creative passions. 

http://jefflightmedia.com/

This week on 8111, Leah Anton. Leah was born on a dairy farm in Northern Minnesota and moved to the Twin Cities shortly thereafter where she grew up. Her mother worked as a nurse and also took art classes. At the age of five Leah’s mom took her to a life drawing class and it sparked a lifelong love for art and drawing. Throughout middle school and high school Leah was a self described “art kid”.  She experimented with painting on a large scale, doing murals, working with airbrush, and exploring photography. 

Leah attended Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) as an undergrad and continued honing her skills. While continuing to paint she began to spend more time doing photography. After college Leah moved to New York City, working at Grey Advertising and freelancing at a design studio doing photo assistant work connected to architecture. 

After a few years in New York, Leah moved back to Minnesota and landed a job working at WCCO on the PaintBox. Her ability to draw was the hook that landed her the gig and she quickly learned the technical parts of the system. From there she started freelancing in post-production houses around the country doing ad work and sports graphics. 

After a freelance stint in Portland, Leah was on her way to Baja for holiday and stopped to visit friends in San Francisco. She wound up landing an entry level job at ILM doing wire removal on Hook. After about six weeks, the job ended and Leah got a call from a friend at CBS to come work the Olympics in France. When she came back to California she worked for the start-up company 3DO and was later hired back doing painting and composting at ILM where she worked for the next 18 years. 

Today Leah lives in the Bay Area, continues to write, and working doing photography. It was so much fun talking with Leah and hearing her story.