John Dykstra
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John Charles Dykstra (born June 3, 1947 in Long Beach, California, United States) is a special effects supervisor and pioneer in the development of the use of computers in film making.
After studying industrial design, Dykstra landed a job working with Douglas Trumbull on Silent Running filming model effects. When George Lucas was recruiting people for the special effects work on Star Wars, he approached Trumbull who pointed him towards Dykstra. Dykstra led the development at Industrial Light and Magic of the computer controlled motion capture camera system, Dykstraflex, that was responsible for many of the films groundbreaking effects. The system was made possible by the availability of off-the-shelf microprocessors at relatively low cost and secondhand VistaVision cameras.
However, there was tension between Dykstra and Lucas who later complained that too much of the special effects budget was spent on developing the camera systems and that the effects team did not deliver all the shots that he had wanted. Regardless, following the release of Star Wars Dykstra secured his status in the industry with Academy Awards for best special effects and special technical achievement.
Dykstra had a Production credit for the television series Battlestar Galactica and contributed to the series' effects but after Star Wars these stock shots were a bit of a disappointment. Universal Studios that produced Battlestar Galactica also had a legal dispute with George Lucas so that when work started on The Empire Strikes Back, Dykstra was not invited back. Dykstra also worked on the effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture with some of these effects being recycled in subsequent films.
Dykstra's next major achievement was the effects work on Firefox in 1982. Here he took on the same challenge that Lucas had set with The Empire Strikes Back of combining miniature effects with actual backgrounds and matte work on white backgrounds using reverse bluescreen. The film secured further awards but was only a modest box office hit.
Dykstra was also involved with the laserdisc-based arcade game spin-off from Firefox that proved a big hit and for the next decade concentrated on video games. Dykstra was supervisor for the special effects of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Dykstra was Visual Effects Designer on both Spider-Man films, and was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his efforts on Spider-Man 2.
[edit] External links
- John Dykstra at the Internet Movie Database
- The American Cinematographer's Star Wars coverage Under the Episode IV heading on this page is a link to Miniature and Mechanical Special Effects - an article written by Dykstra for the American Cinematographer concerning his work on Star Wars. (An exact link is not given because the exact link does not link to the entire page, since the site is set up in HTML frames.)
- 2006 IMNO Interview with John Dykstra
