8111
75 episodes - English - Latest episode: 29 days ago - ★★★★★ - 22 ratingsEighty-one eleven is hosted by visual effects artist and VCUarts Professor Matt Wallin, V.E.S. Each episode is a conversation with a guest who worked at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic during its 40+ year history. Guests discuss their journeys and career paths, and how working at ILM changed them.
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Episodes
Stephen Rosenbaum
March 20, 2024 13:00 - 2 hours - 92.8 MBOn the latest 8111 I catch up with Stephen Rosenbaum!!! Stephen grew up in Los Angeles and always loved building things. As the youngest of three he thought he'd likely follow in his father's footsteps and become a doctor. But in 1977 he saw Star Wars and the seed was planted. While attending Berkeley he enrolled in the College of Environmental Design and began working in the nascent field of computer graphics. Stephen decided to stay in Northern California after college and landed a dream...
Judith Weaver
August 27, 2023 21:00 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBOn the latest 8111 I catch up with Judith Weaver!!! Judith grew up as a self-described “Airforce brat” moving around with her parents from post to post. She spent several formative years in, Colorado, the Philippines, some time on the East coast, and settled for a time in Ohio. Judith was the oldest kid with two younger brothers. In middle school she discovered a love for drama and acting in the theatre. After high school Judith was determined to live in a bigger city and headed off to Ameri...
Don Bies
June 24, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBThis week on 8111, Don Bies! Don grew up in Chicago and discovered a love for movies at an early age when he first saw Frankenstein. He became fascinated with movie monsters, monster make up, special effects, and filmmaking. He loved pouring over the latest issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. After high school, Don considered college but eventually decided against it and worked in the local community theater doing set design, prop design, directing and even some acting. A family conne...
Alia Agha
April 25, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 54.2 MBThis week on 8111, Alia Agha!!! Alia was born in Damascus, Syria. Just before the age of 2, her family fled Syria and moved to Lebanon. After a time there, they boarded a ship and travelled to Brazil where they lived with Alia's mother's family. A few years later they emigrated to the United States and moved to Anaheim, California. Growing up Alia loved art and spent hours making models, drawing, sculpting, and watching movies. She attended an all girls school and continued making art an...
Michaela Calanchini
February 28, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 64.6 MBThis week on 8111, Michaela Calanchini Carter! Michaela was born in San Francisco and grew up in the Bay Area. She is the second youngest member of a huge family with seven brothers and sisters. Incredibly shy growing up, she found community playing soccer and a creative outlet in photography, which had been a hobby of her father’s. She attended UC Santa Cruz where she studied fine art photography. She took a semester leave, travelling with a friend to Africa. It was a journey that wound up...
Bruce Buckley
February 13, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 53.5 MBThis week on 8111, Bruce Buckley. Bruce grew up in Toronto. As a kid, he loved going to the drive-in movies with his family. Art was a clear area of interest in childhood as he enjoyed drawing and making things out of plasticine. Bruce attended Sheridan for college where he studied art fundamentals. His primary focus was photography, shooting both 35mm and 4x5. Commercial photography was exciting and he wound up doing lots of studio work and architectural photography. After earning his de...
Juan-Luis Sanchez
January 04, 2023 17:00 - 1 hour - 74.5 MBOn the latest episode of 8111, Juan Luis Sanchez!! Juan-Luis worked at Industrial Light & Magic from 2001 to 2006. Just a few of his film credits include: Wonder Park, Paddington, Gravity (VES Award for Outstanding FX and Simulation), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, How the Grinch Stole Chris...
Nelson Hall
November 06, 2022 23:00 - 1 hour - 78.4 MBThis week on 8111, Nelson Hall. Nelson is that rare breed…a Marin native. Oh, and his birthday is on Halloween! Growing up he loved watching old movies on TV. He was captivated by the films of Ray Harryhausen and the Wizard of Oz. He always liked drawing and making things including several Rube Goldberg contraptions in his family’s living room. He attended Sonoma State for a time and studied art. Still searching for a way to get into a creative job, he landed a job at the Printing Factory o...
Pat Sweeney
October 20, 2022 21:00 - 1 hour - 69.2 MBPat Sweeney, or is it Mike Sweeney? There's really no way to be sure. Pat grew up in Manhattan Beach, California. He is an identical twin. Pat went with his brothers and sisters to the local catholic school and loved watching old movies on tv growing up. He saw all the Harryhausen films, King Kong, and was a fan of the original Star Trek. For college Pat knew he wanted to study film. He enrolled with his brother Mike at Loyola Marymount University in their film and tv program. While in sch...
Maggie Oh
August 25, 2022 19:00 - 1 hour - 62.7 MBOn this episode of 8111, Maggie Oh. Maggie was an only child and grew up in Chicago. She was always interested in animation from an early age, thanks in part to Batman: The Animated Series. She attended MIT and studied computer science and electrical engineering as an undergrad. But she also took illustration, drawing and painting courses at MassArt. Maggie went to SIGGRAPH for the first time though a co-op project for the MIT Media Lab. After school she worked as an interactive programmer...
Matt Wallin
July 26, 2022 23:00 - 1 hour - 73.4 MBThis week on 8111 the tables are turned and my hero/mentor Kim Bromley interviews me about my career and background. I grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs in the 70’s and 80’s skateboarding and going to the movies. In 1992 I earned my degree in Cinema from San Francisco State University. That same year, I began my career at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic where I worked for nearly a decade in the company’s computer graphics division. For over 25 years I have worked around the world ...
Amy Young
July 08, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 50.4 MBThis week on 8111, Amy Young!! Amy grew up in Manhattan where her dad was a stage manager on Broadway. She spent a lot of time behind the scenes watching her father work and when he was busy, she was able to go see plays and musicals for free. At sixteen her dad landed a job as the manager of the Curran theatre in San Francisco. Amy’s mom was an emergency room nurse. They moved out to Marin and Amy finished high school at Redwood High in Larkspur. After high school she enrolled at College ...
John Berton
June 06, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 66.4 MBThis week on 8111, John Berton!! John was born in the midwest. His dad was a mathematics professor and his mother was a musician. John loved movies as a kid and, through his dad, had early access to computers. He learned Fortran in high school and was fascinated by the logic of programming. John attended Denison University and studied communications and even had his own radio program. For grad school he attended Ohio State and studied computer graphics with American artist and computer art...
Scott Leberecht
May 30, 2022 04:00 - 2 hours - 87.3 MBThis week on 8111, Scott Leberecht! Scott grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio the middle of three bothers. His dad was an optician and his mom was an elementary school teacher. Drawing was always something that he was interested in, and good at. He studied industrial design at University of Cincinnati with a goal of may be making toys for Kenner where he'd worked part-time as part of a co-op program. In school he met fellow ILM alum George Hull. And he discovered that ILM model maker Charlie Baile...
Dawn Martin Mirkin
May 09, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 48 MBThis week on 8111, the "not shy" Dawn Martin Mirkin! Dawn grew up in Florida and left for California the second she could after high school. In San Francisco she quickly found a place to live and started working as a hostess at Perry's restaurant on Union Street. She quickly became invaluable instinctively sorting through complicated scenarios with well known guests. A TV production class at the College of Marin connected all the dots and Dawn knew she wanted to work in the field. She got ...
Ellen Pasternack
April 04, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 49.3 MBThis week on 8111, Ellen Pasternack! Ellen grew up in Long Island. As a kid she was an avid reader. She was the youngest person in her town to get a library card. As a young adult she earned a degree in anthropology from SUNY Buffalo in three years time and thought seriously about going to law school. But in 1975, a good friend was traveling to California and Ellen decided join the adventure. In sunny Los Angeles, Ellen quickly landed a job working as a temp secretary at Burbank Studios (now...
Euan Macdonald
March 28, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBThis 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 excite...
Dan Goldman
March 21, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBThis 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 ...
Fon Davis
March 14, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 50.2 MB8111 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 Pea...
8112
December 23, 2021 13:00 - 47 seconds - 616 KBThis 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.
David Dozoretz
December 14, 2021 22:00 - 1 hour - 51.6 MBThis 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 t...
Josh Pines
December 06, 2021 05:00 - 2 hours - 90 MBThis 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 ...
Frank Gravatt
November 29, 2021 14:00 - 55 minutes - 38.3 MBFrank 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...
Scott Ross
November 22, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 67.6 MBScott 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 R...
Jeff Light
November 15, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 79.4 MBThis 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 O...
Leah Anton
November 08, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 62.7 MBThis 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 explor...
Endla Burrows
November 01, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 71.8 MBThis week on 8111, Endla Burrows. Endla (whose first name is Estonian) was born and grew up in the Bronx. Her mother worked as a nurse and her dad worked in multiple jobs in the city including working as an elevator operator in a high rise. Endla loved watching tv as a kid and would often sit with an encyclopedia by her side so she could look up anything that she saw or heard and didn’t understand. Endla’s boundless curiosity and thirst for knowledge served her well in school. She was ofte...
Daniel Jeannette
October 25, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 51.5 MBThis week on 8111, Daniel Jeannette. Daniel grew up near Normandy. His parents both worked for the Dutch company Philips, where Daniel worked during the Summer to save money to buy a Super 8 camera. As a kid he was always interested in drawing, in part from his love of comics. While at the same time, he had a natural mechanical inclination born from his interest in motorcycles that he would both ride as well maintain. He attended the Gobelins school and studied animation. During his French...
Corey Rosen
October 18, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 49 MBThis week on 8111, Corey Rosen. Corey answers the question of “what would an 8111 theme song sound like”. Corey grew up in Rochester, NY. His dad is a children’s dentist and his mom is a teacher. He’s the middle child of three brothers. As a kid he went to sleep away camp in the Catskill mountains where they put on plays. Theatre became a permanent fixture in his life. Corey gravitated towards filmmaking as a kid, remaking some of his favorite character driven films with friends from the ...
Marty Brenneis
October 11, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBThis week on 8111, the Droid himself, Marty Brenneis! Marty’s nickname, “Droid” comes from the following axiom; An engineer builds one and then you get a droid to build 99 more. Marty grew up in Berkeley attending Berkeley High School. He was part of the student stage crew helping put on full blown productions. He basically grew up in the business with his mom working doing hair and makeup, and his dad working as a still photographer. Marty saw Star Wars at the Coronet theater in 1977 an...
Jeff Mann
October 04, 2021 04:00 - 2 hours - 87.9 MBJeff was born in Southern California. As a kid he took apart the family lawn mower to build himself a go-kart. He loved the hotrod culture and grew up in a very “American Graffiti” way. He always liked drawing and started surfing around age fifteen. After high school he worked for about 18 months at Lockheed Aircraft working on C5A Delta planes. In 1968 Jeff packed all his belongings into his VW bus and shipped it all to Hawaii where he spent the next year until he ran out of money. He then ...
Julija McDowell
September 27, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 46.3 MBJulija grew up in Canada. As the oldest sister she often helped take care of her siblings. Her mother, who worked as a travel agent, instilled a deep sense of creativity and “making”. As a family they wouldn’t buy Christmas presents for one another but would make presents. She attended a preforming arts high school where people were literally dancing in the halls. Julija was more interested in the visual arts and after high school followed in her aunt’s footsteps pursuing a degree in graphic...
John Stillman
September 20, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 50 MBJohn Stillman is a Bay Area native. As a kid, he played baseball, soccer, and football. He earned a bachelor's degree at UCLA in Design. Shortly after graduation John travelled around Europe landing a job in Prague where he worked as a Production Manager and Associate Art Director for Prognosis, an English language newspaper. After a year or so abroad John came back to California and applied for a job at Industrial Light & Magic working as a production assistant. He wound up working there ...
Kim Smith
September 13, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 74.8 MBKim Smith is an artist in the truest sense of the word. She was born in NYC and grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her father was a very successful illustrator. At an early age, Kim was very interested in archeology. She combined her interest in science with a natural affinity for art and creativity. She attended Syracuse University and studied art. Her initial interest was working as a studio artist. Kim was also interested in cartography and the way in which maps developed so different...
Trish Krause
September 06, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 48.1 MBTrish grew up in Montreal, Quebec. Many ILMrs may remember her as Trish Schutz. She grew up the youngest in her family with two older sisters. Her mother was a creative influence with painting, drawing, and sewing throughout Trish’s childhood. Her dad was a dentist. Trish attended Catholic school and after high school she took her first animation and art classes. She later graduated from Sheridan College in Ontario for computer animation. In 1986 Trish went to SIGGRAPH in Boston at the rec...
Chris Townsend
August 30, 2021 04:00 - 2 hours - 90.1 MBChris grew up in the UK. As a young man he travelled to China and worked numerous odd jobs while exploring. His background in graphic design helped him land opportunities to work in creative ways doing motion graphics for television news. His boundless curiosity and wanderlust took him all over China, Singapore, Thailand, and even Australia. With passion, enthusiasm and dedication he eventually landed a job at Industrial Light & Magic where he worked for more than a decade as an artist and...
Eric Brevig
August 23, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 63.8 MBThis week on 8111, Eric Brevig. Eric grew up as an only child in West Los Angeles. He loved going to the movies growing up and he made his own short films with kids from the neighborhood. His mom worked at a bank near 20th Century Fox and one of her clients got Eric a set visit to The Towering Inferno on the day they blew up the building. It was an eye opening experience. He went on to attend UCLA for film school and earned a Master’s degree where he made a complicated short film involving s...
Alex Laurant
August 16, 2021 04:00 - 2 hours - 84.4 MBAlex was raised by his mom in San Francisco. She was a fine art painter and art has always been a part of his family. So he’s always drawn since his was a little kid. He watched late night monster movies and scoured the local news stand for every magazine on movies he could find. In school he and a friend made stop motion animated films of their own inspired by Ray Harryhausen. He saw a presentation by Linwood Dunn at the SFMOMA and it set his trajectory for the future. Alex attended CCAC ...
David Tanaka
August 09, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 73.1 MBDavid Tanaka grew up in the Bay Area. As a kid he was fascinated with a small hand cranked toy you could look into and watch Super 8mm film. He later took that toy apart and began making his own short films with friends. He wound up earning a degree in film from UC Berkeley. A visiting artist lecture with Ease Owyeung inspired David to begin looking for ways to get a job at ILM. After several tries he landed an internship at ILM working in the group that did amusement park rides (now defunct...
Paula Karsh
August 02, 2021 04:00 - 58 minutes - 40 MBPaula Karsh grew up in Pittsburg and earned a Master's degree in Education. She later moved to California with her husband, who was enrolled at Stanford in their film program. She spent some time teaching and later found a job working at a film production company where Lucasfilm was one of her first clients. This later led to an opportunity to come to ILM and work on their Production Services team. Paula worked as the Head of Production Services for 27 years. She has an amazing story and i...
Scott Squires
July 26, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 61.2 MBScott Squires grew up in Indiana. As a kid he built his own microscope and was fascinated with bugs and ants. He worked for the local paper as a photographer in high school and was always interested in filmmaking. He travelled out to California shortly after high school and would up with a job opportunity working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he helped develop the “cloud tank”. Scott worked at ILM for 20 years where he served as Visual Effects Supervisor and directed multiple ...
Barbara Townsend
July 19, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 50.1 MBBarbara Townsend was born in Florida, spent some time in Arizona, Texas, St. Louis, and lived her formative years in Memphis. As a young person in high school, she had her own radio show. She attended Arkansas State earning a BS degree in Radio/TV. After school, Barbara moved back to St. Louis and worked at a local access station running cameras for college football, taping interviews with fans, and doing general production work. She continued a successful career in broadcasting working on...
Stu Maschwitz
July 12, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 65.2 MBStu Maschwitz grew up in Minnesota. As a kid he loved movies. His dad was an entomologist and his mother was an artist working with textiles. He made short animated movies as a young kid and later shot numerous skateboarding videos with friends. He eventually made his way to CalArts and made every opportunity at the school count. After graduation he landed a job at ILM where he’d work for the next 4 years. He was a founding member of the Rebel Mac group at the company and eventually left t...
John Goodson
July 05, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBJohn Goodson grew up in North Carolina, Alaska, and Northern California. His dad was a surgeon in the Air Force and John loved airplanes and science fiction. Space 1999, Star Trek, and later Star Wars captured his imagination as a young person and he began building models. He earned a degree in Product Design from North Carolina State. He loved to draw hard surface models and objects and he's always made his own models and props. He got a 1966 Ford Mustang as his first car and it needed so...
Mark Moore
June 28, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBMark Moore grew up in the Pacific Northwest. As a kid he loved art, movies, cars, and airplanes. He attended University of Washington as an undergrad where he studied industrial design. He moved to San Francisco after graduation to be closer to ILM and found work in the city building architectural models and toys. A mutual colleague led to a friendship with John Bell, who was working as an art director at ILM, and they shared a laugh corresponding for a time via FAX machine. Mark soon lan...
Ellen Poon
June 21, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBEllen Poon grew up in Hong Kong in the 1960s. She was a middle child out of five and her mom loved going to the movies. From a very young age she was motivated to excel, and was always an independent thinker. A great teacher at university got her interested in graphics by challenging students to make images and patterns using Pascal. She realized that computer science was an area where she could be super creative. She went on to earn a PhD in computer science from the University of London. ...
Neil Lim Sang
June 14, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 54 MBNeil Lim Sang was born in Jamaica. His family emigrated to Canada when he was six. His dad was diagnosed with ALS and passed when Neil was only fifteen. He was partnered with a Big Brother who had a strong influence on his interest in making art. He attended art college and worked with all kinds of traditional media. After finishing there he continued on at Sheridan where he studied both computer graphics and animation. His first jobs were in New York City and Mexico City doing animated fl...
Habib Zargarpour
June 07, 2021 04:00 - 57 minutes - 39.2 MBHabib Zargarpour was born in Iran. He moved to Belgium at an early age (4th grade), moved to the south of France for high school, and Vancouver for university. For a time Habib was interested in airplane design but later gravitated towards architecture. Attending Art Center to study industrial design he honed his skills and interests. One of those interests took the form of doing a 3D design for a lawnmower on the computer. His work in the digital space continued to grow. After school he w...
John Schlag
May 31, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 69 MBJohn Schlag grew up in Baltimore and became the church organ player from the ages of 13 to 17. Everyone thought he'd grow up to become a music major but instead he studied electrical engineering at University of Delaware and later attended Carnegie Melon for his Master's degree. He spent a few years at NYIT and then drove across the country on his motorcycle. He later landed at MacroMind (later to become Macromedia) where he worked with Alex Seiden developing a 3D program that never launched...
Robert Bruce
May 24, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBRobert Bruce, "brucer" was his ILM email nickname, grew up in California. He attended a number of schools and flirted briefly with the idea of becoming a classical guitarist. He eventually landed in Sonoma where he earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Rob later came to work at ILM, but wound up leaving after an unexpected health issue forced him to change gears. He returned to school earning a master's degree in Library Science and began his own career in academia. Rob is am...