Jonathan Erland
- Actor
- Visual Effects
- Additional Crew
Born in England in 1939, Jonathan Erland commenced his professional
training in the entertainment industry in 1954, studying theatre at the
Central School (where fellow students included
Vanessa Redgrave and
Judi Dench) and film at the London Film
School where he received his visual effects "baptism by fire" on the
student film, Brief Armistice, an anti-war, battlefield film set in
World War II. After additional studies at the Goodman Theatre in
Chicago, he began work with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
during the heyday of live television drama, including such classics as
William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, George Bernard Shaw's Doctor's
Dilemma, and Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. His knowledge of theatre
technology made him a desirable asset to the team building the
Charles Eames-designed audio animatronic
puppet theatres for the I.B.M. Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's
Fair. Moving to Los Angeles, he maintained dual careers in both the
entertainment and industrial / exhibit design fields. His eclectic
backgrounds merged harmoniously when his industrial design knowledge
made him a desirable asset for Industrial Light and Magic, the group
formed by John Dykstra, A.S.C., to
create the visual effects for the film
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He continued his
association with Dykstra, serving as Director of Research and
Development for Apogee Productions. At Apogee, he received patents and
Academy Awards for Reverse Bluescreen, the Blue-Max flux projector and
a method for making front projection screens. The author of some twenty
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineering (SMPTE) papers, he
has received the Society's Journal Award and the Fuji Gold Medal. In
1993, he served as program chair for the SMPTE Technical Conference. He
is a Life Fellow of the Society, an Associate of the American Society
of Cinematographers (since 1986 the A.S.C. Manual has carried an Erland
tutorial: "The Future of Traveling Matte Photography", and he was a
founder of the Technology Council of the Motion Picture and Television
Industries. In 1997, he became a founder of the Visual Effects Society.
In addition to serving as a Director for the VES, he has also served on
their Technology Committee, and, for seven years, as Membership Chair.
In 2006, the VES awarded him their inaugural Founders Award. In 2010
he, along with Douglas Trumbull and
Dennis Muren, became the first Fellows of
the VES. In 1984, Erland was invited to join the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences and in 1995, as Chairman of the Visual
Effects Award Steering Committee, he achieved the long sought goal of
establishing Visual Effects as a Branch of the Academy. He has served
eleven years on the Board of Governors of the Academy, twenty-five
years on the Executive Committee of the Visual Effects Branch and the
Scientific and Engineering Awards Committee. He has served also on the
Student Academy Awards Committee and the Foreign Films Committee. He's
a founding member of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Committee,
as well as the Academy Science and Technology Council, where he has
served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Research Committee
and the Solid State Light subcommittee. For the Council he has appeared
in a number of public programs such as, "Movie Magic" where he
presented the pre-cinema segment, "Minwa-Za Company of Tokyo" a program
on Japanese shadow puppetry, "Illuminating the Future: the Arrival of
Solid State Lighting" from which his presentation of "The Science of
Colour" can be seen on the Academy website. In 2011, at NAB and also
CineGear he presented, "Chromatic Chaos: Implications of Newly
Introduced Forms of Stagelight." a study of solid state lighting, which
was also presented for the ASC-sponsored International Cinematographers
Symposium, chaired by President Michael Goi,
ASC. The Council, located at the Academy's Pickford Centre for Motion
Picture Studies, is also home to the Esmeralda Stage(TM) an imaging
research laboratory Erland has been building for the past twenty-five
years. In 1993, he and his wife Kay founded Composite Components
Company, which specializes in traveling matte composite technology, and
in 1996 the Academy awarded them a Scientific and Engineering Award for
the Digital Series(TM) of traveling matte backings. In 2008, he
received an Academy Award of Commendation for "his leadership efforts
(in 1992) toward identifying and solving the problem of High-Speed
Emulsion Stress Syndrome in motion picture film stock." In 2012, Erland
was honored with the John A. Bonner Medal
of Commendation, which recognizes, "outstanding service and dedication
in upholding the high standards of the Academy."