A long time ago in galaxy far, far away ... people used to believe whatever they saw with their own eyes.But do
you really believe a man can fly? Do you believe aliens are invanding Earth or that an evil empire will drestroy
freedom across the universe? For the makers of films like Superman,Independence Day and Star Wars, their
mission is to make you believe and that's when they come to someone like me.
Over the years,I've travelled throught time, breathed life back into dinosuars and blown up entire
planets.Today, I work at industrial Light&Magic, but my interest in special effects goes back to my childhood. I
remember seeing the alien in The War Of The Worlds zap some soldiers with a ray gun and I throught to
myself,"I want to do that.".My father had a home movie camera and I filmed my brother pretending to be a
soldier.Then I filmed some fireworks exploding.My mum went crazy when she saw it,but my dad throught it was
really funny and that was all the encouragement I needed.I finally got into the film business in the 70s. Stanley
Kubrick had amazed everybody with his beuatiful film 2001:A space Odyssey and I found my self working on
a similar film for a young guy called George Lucas .He kept talking about robots, or swords make out of
light,and superfast spaceship,and I kept saying,"Sure,George,but how are we going to make it?" Well,in the
end we found a way and Star Wars was a massive blockbuster.We made two more Star Wars films,and I had a
great time working on the Indiana Jones movies,but then along came Jurassic Park in 1993 and that changed
everything.
computer animation had been around for long tine,but now we colud make any kind of creature we
wanted.Suddenly,it seemed like every film had to CGI(computer generated imagining)and I think some people
forgot that films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy because they've got drama and emotion as well as great
special effects,but my kids like computer animated films like sherk.Sometimes I try to imagine what kind of films
they'll be watching when they're older,but then I look back at how far we've already come.Who could have dreamed any of this would really happen?