VES Awards: ILM Sweeps

That's me, hangin' onto the VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture.

This weekend, ILM cleaned up at the 6th Annual VES Awards, which took place in the Kodak Theater Ballroom in Hollywood. "Transformers" took home four awards, and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" garnered two awards.

It was a terrific night for visual effects fans. Steven Spielberg was honored with a lifetime achievement award, presented by Dennis Muren, and award presenters included Brad Bird, John Knoll, Michael Bay, "Transformers" star Megan Fox, Douglas Trumbull, Harrison Ellenshaw, and many more. There that night were other legends of visual effects having fun, like Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Jim Morris. Best of all, I had the opportunity to catch up with a lot of old friends that I worked with in Los Angeles, like my mentor and friend Van Ling, my Pixel Magic cohorts George Macri and Ray Scalice, Reid Paul, Bonnie Kanner, Johnathan Banta, and all the ILM'ers and... boy, it was a dizzying night! And it was over too soon.

Here we are accepting our award for Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture for "Transformers": compositing supervisor Pat Tubach, sequence supervisors Todd Vaziri and Mike Conte, and roto/paint supervisor Beth D'Amato.


Working on "Transformers" was an amazing opportunity for me, and a genuine honor to have been working side by side with such a great team at ILM. Big kudos go out to visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar and the brilliant visual effects producer Shari Hanson for putting together a magnificent team and for setting just the right tone for this immense project.

The complete list of the "Transformers" wins:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture
TRANSFORMERS
Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, Russel Earl, Scott Benza

Best Single Visual Effect of the Year
TRANSFORMERS - Desert Highway Sequence
Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, Shawn Kelly, Michael Jamieson

Outstanding Models or Miniatures in a Motion Picture
TRANSFORMERS
Dave Fogler , Ron Woodall , Alex Jaeger, Brian Gernand

Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture
TRANSFORMERS
Pat Tubach , Beth D’Amato , Todd Vaziri , Mike Conte

For a complete list of winners, click here.
Variety article: "Transformers," ILM Light Up VES
The Hollywood Reporter article: "Transformers" Tops VES Nods

I'll be posting a lot of photos and stories from that night in the near future. And here it is! Click here for more photos.