John Dykstra
John Dykstra
John Charles Dykstra, A.S.C.is an American special effects artist, pioneer in the development of the use of computers in filmmaking and recipient of three Academy Awards, among many other awards and prizes. He was one of the original founders of Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects and computer graphics division of Lucasfilm. He is well known as the special effects lead on the original Star Wars, helping bring the original visuals for lightsabers, space battles between X-wings and TIE...
american-scientist consider directors riches screen stuff
It's an embarrassment of riches because you have directors who don't better. You end up with so much stuff going on the screen that you don't know where to look, and that's what I consider self-indulgent.
component critical sensitive telling tsunami
The tsunami is a critical component in the telling of this story. It's a sensitive storytelling issue.
american-scientist area artistic far gets released took
Film, as far as I'm concerned, is my area of artistic endeavor, so I never think of a movie that gets released as being all done-it's just when they took it away from you.
engineering creative input
I like engineering, but I love the creative input.
boys lord episodes
Boy, am I glad there wasn't a fourth episode of Lord of the Rings.
character opportunity creating
With the advent of digital imaging I made the transition from trying to figure out how to do things to creating objects, characters and the whole cloth. It kind of freed up the analytical part of my brain and I had the opportunity to use more of the creative side of my brain for how things interact with light and integrate into stories.
technology hands creative
Digital imaging has untied our hands with regards to technical limitations. We no longer have to be arbiters of technology; we get to participate in the interpretation of technology into creative content.
school people depth
Because I come from that old-school optics environment, I know stuff about depth of field and camera movement and things that are not necessarily a part of the curriculum for people who started on a box and have never done anything that wasn't on a box.
engineering mph looks
You had to make a camera look like it's traveling at 300 mph, but you couldn't make it actually travel at 300 mph so you had to slow everything down and build devices to do that. So you were constantly engineering.
photography stars war
George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that.
photography airplane college
I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands.
depth easy luster
It's easy to create something that has a lot of luster, but it's very hard to make something that has a lot of depth.
american-scientist ate good great hours lived slept stayed
We stayed there 24 hours a day. We lived and ate and slept that movie. We were enthusiastic, not just because of the movie, but because we had such a great collaborative team. We had a really good time. It was very much a family.
american-scientist blow blowing effects enjoyable special stuff
We still get to blow some stuff up. One of the most enjoyable things about doing special effects was going out and blowing up miniatures.