VFX -- 1975-2015

Industrial Light and Magic's handiwork in sixty-four seconds.



The studio had an IA contract for a lot of years, then it didn't. ILM was the "go to" facility for visual effects over a lont stretch of time. When Disney set up its own visual effects studio -- called "The Secret Lab" after the villainess Yzma's laboratory in The Emperor's New Groove -- a part of Disney Feature Animation sixteen years ago, the Mouse still sent Pearl Harbor with all its plane and water effects up to ILM in Northern California.

Now, of course, ILM is one of the many fiefdoms in Disney's expansive empire, and visual effects is a global business, created by big studios, small studios, and clusters of VFX wizards working out of their workshops and garages.

Technology. She marches on.