The new CGI Fridays retro logo, click to play
Join us for the live kickoff event for Ed’s new podcast, “CGI Fridays” on TheCompanion.app at 10:00am Pacific, Saturday May 28! Visit www.thecompanion.app/ed-kramer for a free three-month subscription, to join Ed live and participate in the Q&A.
“CGI Fridays” is a podcast featuring the some of the pioneering artists who created computer animation for blockbuster movies in the early years – when CGI was still new, exciting and jaw-dropping! Ed gets in-depth with each artist about the particular shots they contributed to, coaxing their personal behind-the-scenes stories, and exploring how each project pushed the boundaries of what was possible with the new art form of Computer Animation. In “CGI Fridays” you will meet some fascinating people, and learn the secret history of your favorite CGI movie moments!
Ed has been at the forefront of CGI since 1979, when he used the physics department computer at the University of Texas, Austin to create crude wireframe animations for a TV show while earning his Master of Arts in Film Production. His first job out of film school was in Hollywood, where Ed programmed the Scanimate analog computer – by plugging wires into patch panels, turning knobs and flipping switches!
Working with each new CGI technology as it was introduced in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Ed was on the animation team that created the Columbia Pictures “Lady with a Torch” logo, and was incredibly lucky to have supervised a CGI attraction for the Luxor Hotel, working with the late VFX legend Douglas Trumbull. After working with Kleiser/Walczak to create the Helmet Morph shots for Stargate (1994) Ed ultimately became a Senior Technical Director in 1994 for George Lucas’s groundbreaking company Industrial Light + Magic. Rising to Sequence Supervisor, Ed’s work there included supervising the “Scarab Beetle” shots from The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001), supervising the “Rock Monster” shots from Galaxy Quest (1999), and supervising shots on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) in the “Droid Factory” and “End Battle” sequences.
After 24 feature films, six of which were nominated for Visual Effects OSCAR’s – including the 2006 winner Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – Ed left California to raise his family in Denver, Colorado. For the past 12 years Ed has been a full-time Professor in the Animation and Game Arts departments of the Coloraado Film School, the Art Institute of Colorado, and currently at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD). Ed is also currently the Chair of the SIGGRAPH Pioneers group, an organization of about 600 educators, researchers, artists, founders of studios, and inventors of the software and hardware it took to create the CGI industry.
CGI History has always fascinated Ed, and he has a YouTube Channel exploring many projects, artists and companies: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa2OzKEXQfIqAHlXOjJ8seA
For the past few years he has been interviewing these amazing pioneers for a documentary feature film called Wizards of Hollywood, and this “CGI Fridays” podcast is the current incarnation of that project, with the documentary still in the works for the near future.
For this podcast, Ed joins the staff of The Companion, a science-fiction super-fan site featuring in-depth writing and events around science fiction TV shows and movies, both classic and current. Fans find articles exploring the Stargate franchise and classic shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek, and Quantum Leap, right alongside current fan favorites like Dr. Strange, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Expanse, The Mandalorian, and the brand-new Star Wars-themed show Obi-wan Kenobi. As one fan put it “It’s like an entire Comic-Con from the comfort of my home!”
-edk 5/25/22