Mark Youngren

Mark Youngren is a visual effects artist working as Senior Inferno Artist at Industrial Light & Magic. He was one of ILM's digital compositors on 's for Paramount Pictures and director J.J. Abrams.

Youngren holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an Emphasis on Film from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he attended from 1985 through 1989. After graduation, he was hired by Bajus-Jones Film Corporation in Minneapolis, where he eventually became a finishing supervisor on commercials for such companies as Chrysler, Coors beer, and Levi-Strauss.

In 1993, Youngren began working as a flame artist at Lamb & Co., where some of his representative work included commercials for Mattel and Dayton Hudson. In 1995, he was employed as Senior Flame Artist at Tele Edit, the largest edit facility in Minneapolis. Here, he worked on commercials for companies such as Timex, Coca-Cola, General Mills, and Motorola.

In 1997, Youngren was a digital effects artist on the short film The Interview. This film's cinematographer was David Doyle, who later photographed Trekkies 2.

From 1998 through 2006, was Visual Effects Supervisor in the Inferno department of Fischer Edit, where he worked on broadcast commercials for Target, United Airlines, and Best Buy, among many others. During his time at Fisher Edit, Youngren also provided visual effects for several short films, including The Ballad of Little Roger Mead (2001) and Death Becomes Them (2003), and music videos for the bands Motion City Soundtrack and Surfact.

Since joining ILM in September 2006, Youngren has worked on the digital effects for such films as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (featuring Lee Arenberg), Rush Hour 3 (featuring Tzi Ma), and Paramount's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (featuring Alan Dale and Pasha Lychnikoff).