Douglas Trumbull

Visual effects (VFX) pioneer Douglas "Doug" Huntley Trumbull from Los Angeles, California, was the director of (what was then still called) Special Photographic Effects on the  film.

He has served in the same capacity for the science fiction films ' (starring Teri Garr) and ' (starring Joanna Cassidy), each of them considered signature classics of the genre. He shared Academy Award nominations with the rest of his VFX team for all three films. In 2012 he received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award at the 84th Annual Academy Awards for his contribution in film making.

He first served as a visual effects director on the 1968 science fiction classic  (starring Gary Lockwood, and which started his long association with colleague and friend Richard Yuricich, who would continue to contribute to most of Trumbull's projects) after working for NASA. In 1971, Trumbull directed the film  which built upon a number of special effects techniques developed for 2001. It was on this feature that Trumbull hired a young John Dykstra for his very first professional VFX job. One of the techniques was, which he himself would later try in vain to apply for the "going-to-warp" sequence of the refit-USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) in The Motion Picture. His technique was later successfully used by John Knoll for a likewise conceived sequence of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) in. Silent Running, though a critical success, was not a success at the box office ostensibly due to poor advertising. The plot line reflected the emerging ecology movement of the early 1970s, and is today regarded as a science fiction classic. Following Silent Running, he was a developing partner in the Canadian science fiction series  devised by writer Harlan Ellison, but eventually bowed out before the project went into production. In the mid 1970s he also served as a VFX supervisor for  (with a cast that included Gregory Sierra, Elizabeth Rogers, Paul Comi, George D. Wallace, and John Crawford).

Trumbull's preferred method of working was not as an employee but as a (semi-) independent contractor, and to this end he has founded over the span of his career no less than eight companies. One of these was Future General Corporation (FGC) he founded in 1975, with full funding by Paramount Pictures, which, in the process, became sole shareholder. Purpose of the company was further development and exploitation of filming techniques Trumbull had invented by that time, most notably, an early filming technique. As such the company was set up as a research/VFX house. It was FGC that was offered the job of providing the VFX for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978, but was turned down by Trumbull as he and his company were then deeply committed to the production of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The pre-production of this feature also made Trumbull turn down George Lucas' overtures in 1975 to have him work on the original Star Wars movie, though he directed Lucas to his former apprentice John Dykstra, thereby catapulting him into fame.

A year later, FGC was again approached to do the effects, as the production ran into troubles after Robert Abel & Associates were pulled from the project. By that time relations between Trumbull and the Paramount management had deteriorated considerably due to the fact that, "Paramount had no vision at all and going through a big management change. The guy that I did the deal with was ousted, and Michael Eisner and Barry Diller came in and they couldn't see what I was trying to do and wanted to get rid of it. I don't know, there's just a whole train of disillusionment that accompanies my history in movies." Trumbull used the problems the studio were in as leverage to secure a proviso that he would be released from his contractual obligations if he accepted, as well as the permission to establish a subsidiary studio model shop, the Entertainment Effects Group (EEG). The troublesome and stressful production of The Motion Picture strained Trumbull to exhaustion, and he has spent ten days in a hospital upon completion of the project. He acted upon his proviso, and immediately left FCG, while maintaining ownership of "Showscan" as well as EEG.

In 1993, he won a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his concept of the first modern 65mm camera developed in 25 years, the CP-65 Showcase Camera System. He shared the award with three engineers. For Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Trumbull won a Saturn Award in 1980 for Best Special Effects, as well as an Academy Award nomination in the category "Best Effects, Visual Effects".

He also produced and directed a few films, most notably the 1983 science fiction thriller , starring Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actress Louise Fletcher, the aforementioned Silent Running, as well as a few episodes of the television series The Starlost (1973). Brainstorm was his last major movie project, and Trumbull has afterwards, until 1996, directed or produced predominantly shorts, Luxor Live, the last recorded one. In 2011, he shortly returned to the motion picture industry as a VFX consultant for Terrence Malick's Tree of Life.

While Trumbull's body of work is relatively small, it has been of significant importance, as it has redefined the way science fiction in particular is depicted visually on screen, with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner elevated to cult status.

Star Trek awards
Trumbull has received the following awards and nominations in the various Special/Visual Effects categories:

Academy Awards

 * Academy Award nomination for, shared with John Dykstra, Richard Yuricich, Robert Swarthe, David K. Stewart, and Grant McCune

Saturn Awards

 * 1980 Saturn Award win for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, shared with John Dykstra, and Richard Yuricich