“Dennis has the rare ability to view everything as a possibility.”
– George Lucas 

Perhaps only fans know his name, but all of us have enjoyed his work. Dennis Muren, the Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, is one of the preeminent visual effects artists in the world and, for that matter, in film history. The winner of nine Academy Awards, he has played a vital role in the field’s technical achievements from Star Wars (1977) to this day.

As a filmmaker, Muren is largely self-taught, beginning with 8mm films as a child in Glendale, California, where he honed his skills in stop-motion animation and in photographing miniatures, even paying visits to one of his heroes, stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen.

He joined the nascent ILM in 1976 to work on Star Wars and helped forge the company’s technical and artistic directives, spearheading the move from models and miniatures to CGI (computer-generated imagery). He has been a trusted collaborator with directors George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, and he has been involved with several landmarks of modern visual effects, from Star Wars and Indiana Jones to Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and beyond.

In 1999, flanked by Lucas and Cameron, he became the first visual effects artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is currently preparing a book, Art and Emotion, addressed to visual artists. While remaining actively involved in the evolution of ILM and the design and development of new cinematic techniques, he hasn’t lost his love for the “old-school” styles of pioneers like Harryhausen because the feeling in their work is so true. As the white-bearded elder tells Sabu in The Thief of Bagdad: “Everything is possible when seen through the eyes of youth.”