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John Knoll (b. 1962)

Birthplace:
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Born:
October 6, 1962

Biography from TheMovieDB

John Knoll (born October 6, 1962) is an American visual effects supervisor and chief creative officer (CCO) at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). One of the original creators of Adobe Photoshop (along with his brother, Thomas Knoll), he has also worked as visual effects supervisor on the Star Wars prequels and the 1997 special editions of the original trilogy. He also served as ILM's visual effects supervisor for Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Along with Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall, Knoll and the trio's work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest earned them the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.  Knoll has been praised by directors James Cameron, Gore Verbinski, Guillermo del Toro, and Brad Bird. Del Toro, who worked with Knoll for the first time on Pacific Rim, stated "He basically has the heart of a kid and the mind of a scientist, and that's a great combination."  Knoll is also the inventor of Knoll Light Factory, a lens flare generating software inspired by his work at Industrial Light and Magic.

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Film Performances

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Film Production

Executive Producer:
2016  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Story:
2016  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Visual Effects Supervisor:
1990  Spaced Invaders
1990  The Hunt for Red October
1991  Hook
1991  Hudson Hawk
1994  Star Trek: Generations
1996  Mission: Impossible
1996  Star Trek: First Contact
1999  Deep Blue Sea
1999  Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
2000  Mission to Mars
2002  Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
2003  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
2005  Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
2006  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
2007  Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
2008  Speed Racer
2009  Avatar
2009  Confessions of a Shopaholic
2011  Hugo
2011  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
2011  Rango
2011  Super 8
2013  Pacific Rim
2016  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
2018  The Other Side of the Wind
2021  Jungle Cruise

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TV Performances

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About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.