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Oscar winner John Knoll has been named chief creative officer of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), where he has served as a visual effects supervisor since 1991.
Said Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy in a statement: “In John I see a keen eye and an incredible mind for creative problem solving, and that’s what visual effects are all about. [ILM president Lynwen Brennan] continues to successfully navigate the business through these challenging times and I’m confident that with her business acumen and John’s experience and passion for combining creative art with technology, the company will continue to perform at the highest levels.”
No stranger to the community, Knoll earned Academy Award nominations for the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, winning the Oscar for Dead Man’s Chest. His credits as a VFX supervisor also include Star Wars Episode 1 and II, for which he also earned Oscar nominations; the animated Rango; and upcoming Pacific Rim.
Knoll is also well known for co-creating Photoshop with his brother Thomas.
During his time at ILM, Knoll founded the Rebel (Mac) unit, whose work led to development of some of the earliest examples of digital compositing for The Abyss, a tool to re-create optical lens flares in the digital realm first used on Hook, and digital camera projection techniques used on such films as Mission: Impossible and Star Wars Episode I.
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