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" I've gone through a whole series of careers where something started as a hobby of some kind. Almost everything I've been paid to do was something that was largely self-taught. "

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" I loved movies. In particular, I loved movies depicting places and events that obviously you couldn't have gone out and shot. It was obvious you were looking at something that had been manufactured in some way. I was fascinated by that. "

John Knoll

Looking

Events

Loved

" Life's too short to be spending all your waking hours doing something you're not excited about. And when people are that excited, you can see it in the work. "

" When I was a kid, one of my hobbies was as model-maker. "

John Knoll

Hobbies

Kid

" You can hardly turn around and not see something that was done in Photoshop. "

" 'Pacific Rim,' for me, was a chance to touch on those old Toho monster movies. 'Godzilla' and 'Rodan'... and then 'Ultraman' and 'Robotech' and all those kinds of things. "

John Knoll

Monster

Old

" Eighty percent of my job is to ask the question, 'If this were real, what would it look like?' "

John Knoll

Job

Ask

" A lot of us got into the industry because of 'Star Wars,' and we all have this love of the original source material. "

John Knoll

Star

Got

" I think it's an important part of the visual effects supervisor's job to get really deeply embedded in production and keep us all focused on trying to generate the best result. I'm not proprietary about, 'I would rather do this effect than let physical effects do it.' No, let's do the smartest thing for the movie. "

John Knoll

Job

Important

" Part of the process is always, 'Is there a better way?' We try to think through if there's something we can do better creatively or technically, or just is more efficient. "

" When I was a kid, I built miniatures, and that was actually the first thing I did professionally in the film industry. It was a demonstrable skill that I had, so I worked as a model maker. "

" I came in during the era of models, motion control, and optical printers. ILM had just started its own computer graphics division, after the Lucasfilm computer division had been sold off and became Pixar. "

" I started off as a model maker, so the first part of my career was a model maker and then a motion control camera operator, so I shot a lot of miniatures. "

" I've been on lots of movies where we've done a lot of planning of sets - how much you build, and is this big enough, and will this get us what we need? - just with foam-core models. "

" A spacecraft cockpit interior is a set where there are a lot of little techy bits, control panels and graphics displays, and other things that are kind of a job to manufacture well. "

" On every show, there's some amount of work that is brought to some state of completion - or even finished - and then cut out of the movie. "

" Every film tries to advance the state of the art, at least a little bit. Brand new techniques? A lot of them are just evolutionary: we're just building on something that's like something we've done before and just trying to do it a little bit better or make it a little bit more realistic. "

" Any tool can be used for good or bad. It's really the ethics of the artist using it. "

" Visual-effects shots should flow into the rest of the live action, and you shouldn't be able to see a difference. "

" Often if a picture is in trouble one way or another, there are ways to salvage it, through reshoots or whatever. "

" Almost everything I've been paid to do was something that was largely self-taught. "

" I've been lucky enough in my career to have opportunities to revisit things that meant a lot to me in childhood. "

John Knoll

Opportunities

Childhood

" A lot of filmmakers understand that the work is done digitally, and it's technically possible to change it late in the game. "

" We were in an atmosphere in the household that you could accomplish anything you set your mind to. If you were willing to put in the hard work, nothing was beyond your grasp. "

" Reacting is so important to the craft of acting. "

" As soon as you take your hobby and make it into your profession, it sort of kills it as a hobby. "

" I certainly have opinions about things, but we're a service organization. Our job is to try and realize the director's vision. "

" I have three daughters who grew up while I was working on the special editions and the prequels. They got to be big 'Star Wars' fans. And, you know, I would see them identifying with a lot of the male characters, and I just thought, 'Star Wars' could use more good strong female leads.' "

" 'Baby's Day Out' is maybe not a great movie, but... No, I've enjoyed and learned things from every project I've worked on. That was an important step in my career at ILM. "

" I don't have any particular loyalties to one technique or another. I'm just trying to use the best for the job. "

" There was a 3-foot-long model that was built for 'New Hope,' and then there was an 8-foot model that was built for 'Empire Strikes Back.' The 8-foot model and the 3-foot model are kind of different. A lot of the details are different between the two of them. "