Lucas wanted his 1977 film
Star Wars to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. After discovering that the in-house effects department at
20th Century Fox was no longer operational, Lucas approached
Douglas Trumbull, best known for the effects on
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and
Silent Running (1972). Trumbull declined, as he was already committed to working on
Steven Spielberg's film
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but suggested his assistant
John Dykstra to Lucas. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers and set them up in a warehouse in
Van Nuys, California. After seeing the map for the location was zoned as
light industrial, Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which became the Special Visual Effects department on
Star Wars. Alongside Dykstra, other leading members of the original ILM team were
Ken Ralston,
Richard Edlund,
Dennis Muren,
Robert Blalack,
Joe Johnston,
Phil Tippett,
Steve Gawley,
Lorne Peterson, and Paul Huston. , where the visual effects of the first
Star Wars movie were produced In late 1978, when in pre-production for
The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas reformed most of the team into Industrial Light & Magic in
Marin County, California. From here on, the company expanded and has since gone on to produce special effects for over three hundred films, including the entire
Star Wars saga, the
Indiana Jones series, and the
Jurassic Park series. After the success of the first
Star Wars movie, Lucas became interested in using
computer graphics on the sequel. He contacted
Triple-I, known for their early computer effects in movies like
Westworld (1973),
Futureworld (1976),
Tron (1982), and
The Last Starfighter. Triple-I made a computer-generated test of five
X-wing fighters flying in formation. He found it to be too expensive and returned to handmade models. Nevertheless, the test had shown him it was possible, and he decided he would create his own computer graphics department instead. As a result, they started investing in
Apple and
SGI computers. One of Lucas' employees was given the task to find the right people to hire. His search would lead him to
New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), where he found
Edwin Catmull and his colleagues. Catmull and others accepted Lucas' job offer, and a new computer division at Lucasfilm, named The Graphics Group, was created in 1979, which technically belonged to another division than ILM, with the hiring of Ed Catmull as the first NYIT employee who joined the company. Lucas' list for them was a digital film editing system, a digital sound editing system, a laser film printer, and further exploration of computer graphics.
John Lasseter, who was hired a few years later, worked on computer-animation as part of ILM's contribution to
Young Sherlock Holmes. The Graphics Group was later sold to
Steve Jobs, renamed
Pixar Animation Studios, and created the first CGI-animated feature,
Toy Story. In 2000, ILM created the
OpenEXR format for
high-dynamic-range imaging. ILM operated from an inconspicuous property in San Rafael, California until 2005. The company was known to locals as
the Kerner Company, a name that did not draw any attention, allowing the company to operate in secret, thus preventing the compromise of sensitive information on its productions to the media or fans. In 2005, when Lucas decided to move locations to the Presidio of San Francisco and focus on digital effects, a management-led team bought the five physical and practical effects divisions and formed a new company that included the George Lucas Theater, retained the "Kerner" name as Kerner Technologies, Inc. and provided physical effects for major motion pictures, often working with ILM, until its Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2011. In 2005, ILM extended its operations to Lucasfilm
Singapore, which also includes the Singapore arm of
Lucasfilm Animation. In 2006, ILM invented IMoCap (Image Based Motion Capture Technology). By 2007, ILM was one of the largest visual effects vendors in the motion picture industry and had one of the largest
render farms (named
Death Star). In 2011, it was announced the company was considering a project-based facility in
Vancouver. ILM first opened a temporary facility in Vancouver, relocating in 2014 to a 30,000-square-foot studio on Water Street in the Gastown district, and again in 2025 to a 40,000-square-foot studio at The Stack office tower in the Coal Harbour area. In October 2012, Disney bought ILM's parent company, Lucasfilm, acquiring ILM,
Skywalker Sound, and
LucasArts in the process. Disney stated that it had no immediate plans to change ILM's operations, Following the restructuring of LucasArts in April 2013, ILM was left overstaffed and the faculty was
reduced to serve only ILM's visual effects department. ILM opened a
London studio headquartered in the city's
Soho district on October 15, 2014. On November 7, 2018, ILM opened a new division targeted at television series called
ILM TV, to be based in ILM's 47,000-square-foot London studio, with support from the company's locations in San Francisco, Vancouver and Singapore. In July 2019, ILM announced the opening of a new facility in
Sydney, Australia. In the same year, ILM introduced
StageCraft. Also known as "The Volume", it uses high-definition LED video walls to generate virtual sceneries and was first used in
The Mandalorian. Following
Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox,
Fox VFX Lab was folded into ILM, including the Technoprops division. In October 2022, ILM opened a new studio in
Mumbai. In May 2023, ILMxLAB was rebranded as ILM Immersive. In August 2023, Lucasfilm announced it would close the ILM studio in Singapore due to economic factors affecting the industry and the
2023 Hollywood labor disputes. The closure affected 340 Singapore-based jobs. Employees continued working until the end of the year. Disney confirmed that it would be helping employees to either find work with local companies with similar skills requirements or relocate to ILM's other studios in
London,
Vancouver,
Sydney and
Mumbai. An ILM Singapore employee confirmed that the closure of the Singaporean studio was linked to the strike. == Milestones ==