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| Visual Effects Designer
Sony Pictures Imageworks
Two-time Academy AwardŽ-winning visual effects designer John Dykstra began his career under the tutelage of noted visual effects visionary Douglas Trumbull, working on such films as "The Andromeda Strain" and the Trumbull-written feature "Silent Running."
While Dykstra is best known for his Academy AwardŽ winning visual effects work on "Star Wars," Dykstra was also the visual effects supervisor on such feature films "Batman Forever" and "Batman & Robin." He teamed with Imageworks in March 1998 to supervise visual effects and direct second unit photography for "Stuart Little" and he was again nominated for an Academy AwardŽ. Dykstra went on to design the visual effects for the Academy Award nominated international hit "Spider-Man," and last year he completed production on the highly anticipated sequel, "Spider-Man 2" which garnered him a second Academy Award.
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He came to the entertainment industry with a background in industrial design and still photography. In his early days, he built models and did effects photography, as well as designing, building, and operating a computer-controlled camera system for the National Science Foundation at the University of California at Berkeley. This sophisticated camera would later be acknowledged as the foundation of motion-control technology.
His imagination having been sparked by the feature film projects at Trumbull Film Effects, he returned to the University of California, Berkeley, to work on a project for the Institute of Urban Regional Development. This was a psychological study done on Marin County to determine how people perceive reality and whether architectural models could be photographed in a way that would be realistic enough to use it to evaluate potential architectural alternatives.
A few years later, Dykstra would find himself in a meeting with George Lucas and Gary Kurtz in a bungalow at Universal Studios, with Lucas explaining what he wanted conceptually for his film project, "Star Wars." Dykstra would be instrumental in the founding of the now world-renowned Industrial Light & Magic with Lucas and Kurtz. He would also assemble the creative team to design and build the "Star Wars" miniatures and camera systems. Dykstra won an Academy AwardŽ for Best Visual Effects for his work on "Star Wars" and was also recognized with an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award in 1977 for his work at ILM creating a facility "uniquely oriented toward visual effects photography."
Dykstra's next challenge was to bring the effects world to television with the groundbreaking "Battlestar Galactica." Dykstra produced the series and served as visual effects supervisor, working with his key creative team from "Star Wars" in their newly formed company, Apogee. Under his guidance, Apogee developed benchmark motion-control and blue-screen technologies. Also, using Apple's first personal computers as a basis for their motion-imaging systems, Apogee garnered an Emmy award for "Battlestar Galactica."
While at Apogee, Dykstra's effects team captured an Academy Award nomination for "Star Trek: The Movie" and Dykstra himself continued to design visual effects for many feature films, while also directing theme park attractions, designing video games and commercials.
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