Rosenbaum began his career in
visual effects at the reconstructed Computer Graphics Department of
Lucasfilm's effects division
Industrial Light & Magic in 1989. The previous members of this department moved to the building next door and formed the company
Pixar. This new group of artists received their first chance to make a computer generated character when
James Cameron asked them to create the Pseudopod water creature for
The Abyss. Cameron followed with
Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the group expanded the artist base and created one of the first digital manipulations of a human character. The artists continued to thrive with opportunities to animate and render the seminal dinosaurs in
Jurassic Park. Rosenbaum then oversaw the digital excision of Lt. Dan's legs, Forrest's mastery of ping pong, and the fanciful feather animations in
Forrest Gump. These movies help spark the rapid evolution of traditional film-processed visual effects and inspired an industry-wide shift in filmmaking methodologies and commercial digital imagery manipulation. Rosenbaum spent several years working on various projects at
Weta Digital, and in 2007, he began work on
Avatar. For two years, Rosenbaum worked with Cameron in Los Angeles during
performance capture and in New Zealand during live action photography. For the third year of the project he returned to New Zealand to help complete the
CGI on the movie. Since Avatar, Rosenbaum has been immersed in Virtual Production and the persistent drive toward realtime visual effects and more believable digital characters. His focus has been on capturing and faithfully reproducing actor performances of recognized personalities, including famous musicians such as
Michael Jackson and the band
ABBA. In 2010, Rosenbaum was hired by
Digital Domain to start a character animation development group. He brought together some of the best computer graphics geeks, and they built a modernized approach to creating physically and behaviorally realistic digital humans and creatures. Leveraging the new pipeline, he designed and supervised the giants for the movie
Jack the Giant Slayer. In 2014, Rosenbaum directed the creation of a virtual
Michael Jackson posthumously performing a previously unreleased song
live at
2014 Billboard Music Awards. He then spent the next two years creating the reimagined
King Kong for the movie
Kong: Skull Island. Rosenbaum then partnered with acclaimed music luminary
Simon Fuller to recreate the band
ABBA as their younger digital selves performing a new song. He established a virtual musician production company of 50 plus, built a cloud-first production pipeline, and in 2018 they completed an eight-minute promotional video of the photo-real virtual band members talking and singing. == Filmography ==