{"id":588,"date":"2006-06-16T17:12:59","date_gmt":"2006-06-16T17:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=588"},"modified":"2006-06-16T17:12:59","modified_gmt":"2006-06-16T17:12:59","slug":"interview_with_dennis_muren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/06\/16\/interview_with_dennis_muren\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Dennis Muren"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re at all interested in special effects in the movies — the techniques that enable the Millenium Falcon<\/i> to fly and Jurassic Park<\/i>‘s T. Rex to run — then you probably know who Dennis Muren is. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce you: he was one of the founding members of Industrial Light & Magic<\/a>, the company that grew out of the team George Lucas assembled to do the effects (FX) work on the original Star Wars<\/i>, and he’s since gone to help pioneer just about every major advancement in the field over the last three decades. He’s worked<\/a> on an astounding string of groundbreaking, FX-heavy movies. He’s the first visual effects artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he also made a cameo appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/i> — he’s the Nazi agent who glances out from behind the Life<\/i> magazine when Indy boards the China Clipper to begin his quest for the Ark.<\/p>\n


\nThis is all preamble to an interesting interview<\/a> with him that I just found over at Wired.com<\/a>, in which he discusses the release of his very first movie project — a no-budget schlocker called Equinox<\/i>, made when Dennis was only a teenager — on a Criterion Collection DVD<\/a>, as well as the transition from traditional FX technology to computer-generated imagery (CGI) and what we’ve lost by rushing to adopt all things digital. As a movie-buff who’s not entirely sold on the Brave New World of CGI, I found this passage especially resonant:<\/p>\n

\nThe computer work today is so seamless, but it can be very cold. The trick is to make it feel handmade, like it’s not made by a machine, but by people using machines. A lot of folks doing effects can churn the material out, but they aren’t giving it any soul. Soul is inherent to the old style, the stop-motion and matte painting.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hear, hear, Dennis! Those are my feelings in a nutshell, and they’re coming from a guy who works with CG himself. The rest of what he has to say<\/a> is equally honest and thought-provoking. Go have a look…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re at all interested in special effects in the movies — the techniques that enable the Millenium Falcon to fly and Jurassic Park‘s T. Rex to run — then you probably know who Dennis Muren is. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce you: he was one of the founding members of Industrial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}