Oscar award-winning, visual effects luminary Mark Stetson has joined Zoic Studios to lead the company's feature film division.
Stetson's career is the stuff of dreams, where art and experimentation unite to entertain. Stetson has been working in the world of visual effects since the late 1970s, first as a model maker on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Close Encounters of the Third Kind - The Special Edition, and Escape from New York.
"I remember seeing Star Wars in the theater, that first space ship shot in the opening of the movie," recalls Stetson. "I thought: 'wow this is something I could do.' Within the next year, friends of mine went to work on miniatures for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I pestered my friends, left school a semester later and joined them in the model shop."
From there, Stetson's career expanded to miniature effects supervision for numerous, high-profile companies, where his creative imprint touched the likes of Blade Runner, Ghostbusters, 2010, Total Recall, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, The Hudsucker Proxy and Dick Tracy. Stepping up to visual effects supervision in 1995, his work on The Fifth Element earned Stetson his first BAFTA Award. He was a visual effects consultant on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and earned an Academy Award for his contribution to The Fellowship of the Ring. Over the years he has worked on numerous feature film projects including Bryan Singer's Superman Returns and Jonathan Mostow's futuristic thriller Surrogates.
A longtime friend of Zoic Studios' Creative Director/VFX Supervisor Leslie Ekker, Stetson met Zoic co-founder Loni Peristere while serving on the Board of Directors for the Visual Effects Society, and previously worked with VFX Supervisor Rocco Passionino at Digital Domain. These connections and the opportunity to foster growth and development within the respected company were the elements that brought Stetson to Zoic.
"Mark Stetson is an incredible addition to Zoic," said Co-Founder Chris Jones. "He extends our commitment to excellence. We look forward to Mark's creative leadership and the evolution of feature film within the company."
Stetson is excited for what the future holds for him at Zoic Studios, "I like the challenge of expressing a new vision for a director, getting inside his or her head and figuring out what they want. I want to make the visual effects more than they expected and first dreamed about. That is my goal here at Zoic, to have fun working with the artists and other great supervisors, enhancing each project and continuing to build a team to expand Zoic's role in feature films. I hope to drive that vision forward for Zoic Studios."