Janet Lewin remembers sitting at her own BU Commencement ceremony in 1992 and wondering what she would do with her career. Thirty years later she\u2019s returning to tell COM\u2019s undergraduate Class of 2022: The journey ahead may surprise you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon after graduating, Lewin (CGS\u201990, COM\u201992)<\/a> landed a temp job in the purchasing department at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM)<\/a>, the special effects division at Lucasfilm<\/a>. She learned the business, grew with the company and, today, well, she runs the place. As general manager of ILM, she\u2019s in charge of five studios, along with production, operations, talent management, strategic planning and all of the company\u2019s client management. On top of that, she\u2019s a senior vice president of visual effects for Lucasfilm, the studio behind the Star Wars franchise, overseeing budgets, scheduling, staffing and other planning for the company\u2019s movies, shows and theme parks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lewin has helped to produce visual effects for six Star Wars films and a long list of effects-packed franchises<\/a>, including Indiana Jones, Marvel, Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Terminator. Most recently, she\u2019s helped ILM implement its revolutionary StageCraft LED volume technology<\/a>. These virtual sets allow actors to perform in front of scenes projected on massive LED screens, creating the illusion of real settings but in the controlled environment of a studio.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lewin, who will address COM\u2019s undergraduate convocation on Friday, May 20, spoke with COMtalk<\/em> about Star Wars, pioneering film technologies and her message to today\u2019s college graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> The theme is that you don\u2019t know what the future holds, you don\u2019t know where your career will take you. You\u2019re about to start this exciting journey, but know that the world is going to change dramatically, as it did for me. And you will change along with it. Thirty years ago, when I was sitting where they are today, there was no such thing as Amazon and the internet, cell phones, distributed media\u2014and this explosion of innovations have evolved since then. When I graduated, I didn\u2019t really know what I wanted to do with my life, and that\u2019s OK. I found my path through curiosity and hard work and getting out of my comfort zone.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> Mostly, it\u2019s the brilliant people I get to work with. But, I think it\u2019s also because the industry is constantly evolving. It\u2019s innovative, it\u2019s challenging, it\u2019s global, and so I\u2019ve never felt like there was a ceiling for my growth or my learning.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> The big change is scale. When I started, visual effects was sort of a nascent art form. The digital revolution in filmmaking had just started and computer graphics were used very sparingly. Modern filmmaking now relies on visual effects in every medium and sometimes in every shot. Whether it\u2019s commercials or music videos or theme park rides or feature animation, we\u2019re involved in all of it. ILM is a reflection of that: when I started, ILM employed fewer than 200 people in Marin County, California\u2014now there are 3,000 around the globe.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> Virtual production. That includes the [StageCraft] techniques that really came to fruition on The Mandalorian<\/a><\/em>, but ILM has been at the forefront of developing these techniques for the last 20 years. StageCraft technology enables high-resolution computer graphic 3D imagery, projected in real time on LED screens to allow for in-camera visual effects. It\u2019s now a huge part of our business, in part thanks to the interest generated during the pandemic, since virtual production allows for fewer company moves to location. We\u2019re offering these services to lots of different clients in addition to Lucasfilm, like Marvel, and we recently completed virtual production on The Batman.<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> The major advantage is that all of your key creatives are there on the day that you\u2019re shooting, so they can make interesting choices about shot design that they might not make if the actors were just being shot against a green screen. LEDs are a lighting instrument, so you\u2019re also getting true interactive light on your characters and sets. That is very difficult to replicate in a composite. And the third advantage is your actors are immersed in their environment. They deliver a different performance based on what they\u2019re seeing and experiencing in real time. On Solo<\/em>, Alden Ehrenreich, who plays Han Solo, was in a shot in the Millennium Falcon cockpit, going into hyperspace. You could see the reflection of hyperspace in his eyes and he had this awestruck expression, because it was quite thrilling to be in that setting. It wound up being this amazing shot that the filmmakers never would have conceived without this technology.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> We did on-set, real-time visualization for AI<\/em> back in about 2000. That was sort of the beginning of virtual production for us. We started exploring the use of LEDs on Rogue One<\/em>, but at that time the pixel size of the LEDs was so large that you couldn\u2019t shoot directly into them without seeing the pixelation of the imagery, so they were primarily used for interactive light and actor immersion. In fact, to shoot into them, we had to use shower curtains to diffuse the LEDs. But we started to see the power of this technique, and it was really [creator and executive producer] Jon Favreau and [director of photography] Greig Fraser, on The Mandalorian,<\/em> who pushed us to get to that holy grail combination of shooting directly into the LEDs with real-time environments for in-camera visual effects shots.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Janet Lewin:<\/span> The heart of Star Wars is about friendship\u2014challenging the Dark Side and banding together with a team of friends to conquer evil. Although it\u2019s a simple story in today\u2019s world, it still resonates and we\u2019re embracing different perspectives, which makes it exciting and relevant. We have a lot more diverse characters in our projects and more diverse storytellers. So, we\u2019re fortunate to have a beloved franchise with vast opportunities to tell new, inclusive stories that still resonate from that original concept.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nQ&<\/span>A<\/h2>
With Janet Lewin<\/h4><\/div>\n
COMtalk:<\/span> What do you plan to say to the Class of 2022?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> Despite your uncertainty, you landed at a company where you\u2019ve spent almost your entire career. To what do you attribute that?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> How much does today\u2019s film industry resemble the one you started working in back in the 1990s?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> What\u2019s the biggest technological breakthrough in recent years?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> What are the creative advantages?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> How has that technology evolved?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> Members of every department at COM consider themselves storytellers, and Star Wars is one of the defining stories of our time. What\u2019s something that they can learn from its success?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COMtalk:<\/span> Obi-Wan Kenobi<\/a><\/em>, the next Star Wars project, premieres on Disney+ on May 27. What\u2019s something you\u2019re excited about with that show?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n