Craig Barron (born April 6, 1961) is an American visual-effects supervisor who specializes in seamless matte painting effects. He is also a filmmaker, entrepreneur, and film historian. Barron is a member of the Academy Board of Governors, representing the visual effects branch.

Biography

Craig Barron has worked on notable VFX shots in feature films, including the secret government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Gotham City skyline of Batman Returns, the approach to Dracula's castle in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1970s-era Las Vegas strip in Casino, the Carpathia rescue ship at the end of Titanic, and 1970s-era San Francisco in Zodiac. In 2009, Barron won Academy and BAFTA Awards for achievement in visual effects for his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.



Early career
Barron was born in Berkeley, California in 1961. He started working at Industrial Light & Magic at age 18, then the youngest person at ILM, to work on the matte-effects photography for George Lucas' Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. At ILM Barron would continue to composite matte-painting scenes on such landmark productions as Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. From 1984 to 1988 he was supervisor of photography at ILM’s matte department.


Matte World Digital
In 1988, Barron co-founded Matte World with matte painter Michael Pangrazio and executive producer Krystyna Demkowicz. The company provided realistic matte-painting effects to clients in the entertainment industry. Barron renamed the company Matte World Digital in 1992 to reflect the new technological tools available to matte painters. MWD created digital-matte environments for feature films, television, electronic games, and IMAX large-format productions.

Matte World Digital served the visions of such filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, and David Fincher. In 1990, Barron and members of the MWD crew won an Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects for the HBO production By Dawn’s Early Light. Its feature-film work ranged from the traditional painted-on-glass matte work of Batman Returns, to the digital effects of Hugo, Captain America: The First Avenger, Zodiac, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which won the Academy Award for achievement in visual effects in 2009.

In 2012, MWD closed after 24 years of service. The last shots worked on at MWD were for Martin Scorsese's Hugo.


Independent work, presentations and authorship
Earlier in his career, Barron conducted interviews with traditional matte painters and matte-painting technicians, many who revealed the secrets of their techniques for the first time. This oral history of movie-making, along with an extensive collection of VFX film clips, movie stills and behind-the-scenes photographs, led to the first comprehensive book about the history of matte painting, The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting, co-written with Mark Cotta Vaz and published by Chronicle Books in 2002.

Barron independently directed the science-fiction short, The Utilizer and a companion "making of" documentary, both of which were broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1996. The Utilizer won a number of film-festival awards, including best special effects at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Barron is a founding member of the Visual Effects Society (VES), formed in 1997 to represent VFX producers in film, television and video games. In 2013, he received the VES Founders Award, and will serve on the 2014/15 VES Board.

Barron is an ongoing lecturer for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Theater Programs. Since 2006, he has presented public screenings, often partnering with sound designer Ben Burtt, demonstrating the art of matte painting and VFX techniques of classic films such as Modern Times, The Rains Came, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Gunga Din. In the 2010 Academy screening of "Me Tarzan, You Technology," Barron demonstrated how the MGM visual effects crews of the 1930s Tarzan films used rear-projection and matte paintings to create what film critic Leonard Maltin describes as a vivid atmosphere with majestic settings.

Barron and Burtt teamed up again in 2011 to demonstrate the groundbreaking visual effects and sound design for Forbidden Planet, the classic 1956 science-fiction film. For this Academy screening, "Mysteries of the Krell," presented in Los Angeles, Barron and Burtt rediscovered and presented rare miniatures, production designs, props and analog source tapes from the electronic soundtrack of the film. The screening was in conjunction with an Academy gallery show featuring artifacts from the movie, including the original Robby the Robot prop.


Current VFX work
In 2013, Barron worked at Tippett Studio, developing digital matte painting environments for film and commercial productions, alongside his former co-worker on earlier Star Wars films, Phil Tippett. As of 2014, he will partner with Magnopus (a consolidation of "Magnum Opus"--"Great Work" in Latin), a visual research and development company based in downtown Los Angeles.

Best films