Hoyt Yeatman - Visual Effects Artist and Supervisor

08/07/23 • 15 min

Hoyt Yeatman (born January 23, 1955, in San Francisco, California) is an American visual effects artist and supervisor. He has worked with Jerry Bruckheimer on a number of films, including Armageddon, Con Air, and The Rock. He made his directorial debut with the film G-Force.

Yeatman is an alumnus of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

In 1979 Yeatman, Scott Squires, Rocco Gioffre, Fred Iguchi, Tom Hollister and Bob Hollister co-founded Dream Quest Images, a groundbreaking visual effects house, winning the Academy Award for Visual Effects in 1989 for the motion control and underwater effects in James Cameron's The Abyss. In 1996 Dream Quest was purchased by The Walt Disney Company, which became Disney's "The Secret Lab" in 1999.

He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1999.

Yeatman is an alumnus of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1999.

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Ken Ralston - Visual Effects Supervisor

Ken Ralston (born 1954) is an American visual effects artist, currently the Visual Effect Supervisor and Creative Head at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Ralston began his career at the commercial animation and visual effects company, Cascade Pictures in Hollywood, where he worked on over 150 advertising campaigns in the early 1970s. In 1976, he was hired at Industrial Light & Magic by Dennis Muren to help George Lucas create the effects for Star Wars. He remained at ILM for 20 years before joining Sony Pictures Imageworks as president. Ralston is best known for his work in the films of Robert Zemeckis.

Ralston has won five Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, including a Special Achievement Oscar for the visual effects in Return of the Jedi (1983), and regular awards for his work on Cocoon (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992) and Forrest Gump (1994). He was nominated three more times for Dragonslayer (1981), Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Alice in Wonderland (2010).

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Scott Ross - Digital Media Executive

Scott Ross (born November 20, 1951) is an American digital media executive with a career spanning three decades. In the 1980s he led George Lucas' companies and in 1993 he founded, along with James Cameron and Stan Winston, Digital Domain, Inc.,

In the 1980s Ross was general manager of Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and under his leadership, ILM won five Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Innerspace, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss, Death Becomes Her). The company re-organized in 1991 and Ross was named senior vice president of the LucasArts Entertainment Company, which comprised Skywalker Sound, LucasArts Commercial Productions, LucasArts Attractions, EditDroid/SoundDroid and ILM.

Under Ross' direction, from 1993 to 2006, Digital Domain garnered two Academy Awards and three nominations, receiving its first Oscar in 1997 for the ground-breaking visual effects in Titanic. That was followed by a second Oscar for What Dreams May Come. Digital Domain received additional nominations for True Lies, Apollo 13 and I, Robot and won three Scientific and Technical Academy Awards for its proprietary software.

Today, Dr. Ross sits on several boards, consults with international companies and lectures on Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and was one of the early adopters of Mixed Reality technologies. Dr. Ross was an early advisor to Magic Leap (an AR hardware and software startup that eventually raised over $2B), is a board member to Eyellusion (one of the world's leading hologram company which brings back deceased rock stars) and was a founding partner, along with Brett Leonard, the director of LAWNMOWER MAN in VR production company, Virtuosity. Dr. Ross has presented keynote speeches addressing new technologies such as AR/VR to SIGGRAPH in Shenzhen, BOAO in Hong Kong as well as to the Beijing Film Academy.