TURIN, ITALY — Industrial Light & Magic’s new chief creative officer, John Knoll, has been tapped to highlight Italy’s largest computer graphics conference.
"We are deeply honored and incredibly excited to announce that John Knoll, who has been such an important leader in the world of visual effects and computer graphics, will be our 2013 keynote speaker," says VIEW Conference Director Maria Elena Gutierrez. "John will present ILM's work on Guillermo del Toro's amazing film Pacific Rim and share his knowledge with VIEW attendees during our annual conference, October 15 to 18."
At ILM, Knoll led the award-winning studio's work on LucasFilm's Star Wars Episodes I, II, and
III, and Disney's first two
Pirates of the Caribbean films. He was a computer graphics designer on Director Jim Cameron's 1989 film
The Abyss and more recently, visual effects supervisor at ILM for the Oscar-winning films
Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
, Rango (Gore Verbinski) , and
Avatar (Jim Cameron) , three of the 35 films for which he's credited.
In 2007, Knoll received an Oscar and a BAFTA film award for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. In addition, Knoll has received five Oscar nominations, four BAFTA nominations, nine VES nominations, and two VES awards for visual effects. The ILM veteran and long-time member of the ILM brain trust became the studio's first chief creative officer in 2013.
"In addition, of special interest to all our VIEW conference attendees is that in the early 1990's John Knoll and his brother Thomas invented the program everyone now knows as Adobe's Photoshop," Gutierrez says. "I can't think of a more influential computer graphics program."
"Each year we try to make the VIEW Conference in our beautiful baroque city of Turin, Italy something our attendees will remember for the rest of their lives," Gutierrez adds. "This year, I have no doubt we will do just that and more."
Registration is now open for the 14th annual VIEW Conference, which typically finds 8,000 students and professionals from Italy, throughout Europe, and beyond enjoying the carefully crafted, practical, and inspirational conference program. The VIEW Conference immediately follows the annual ViewFest, the Italian evolution of Resfest.