8111

This 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 classic...

Frank 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 maintenanc...

Scott 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...

This 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 o...

This 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”. ...

This 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...

This 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 r...

This 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 fi...

This 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...

Jeff 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 b...

Julija 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...

John 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...

Kim 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...

Trish 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...

Chris 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 la...

This 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...

Alex 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 presentati...

David 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 tri...

Paula 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...

Scott 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...

Barbara 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,...

Stu 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...

John 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'...

Mark 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 d...

Ellen 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...