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John Nelson (b. 1959)

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Birthplace:
Detroit, Michigan, USA

Born:
July 21, 1959

Biography from TheMovieDB

John Nelson (born July 21, 1953) is an American visual effects supervisor. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects for his work on the films Gladiator (2000) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). He has also been nominated for I, Robot (2004) and Iron Man (2008).  He also won the 2018 British Academy of Film and Television Arts for the Special Visual Effects in Blade Runner 2049.  After graduating with high distinction from the University of Michigan in 1976, he worked as a cameraman, technical director, and director at the pioneering computer animation and commercial production company Robert Abel and Associates, where he won two Clio awards and earned six additional Clio nominations. Early in his career while at ILM, Nelson modelled, animated, lit, and composited several shots for Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), including the iconic scene in which the shotgunned head of the chrome terminator splits open and reseals. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Visual Effects Society, the International Cinematographers Guild, and the Directors Guild of America.  Description above from the Wikipedia article John Nelson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

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Film Performances

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Film Production

CG Animator:
1991  Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Visual Effects Supervisor:
1991  Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1993  My Life
1996  The Cable Guy
1997  Anaconda
1998  City of Angels
2000  Gladiator
2004  I, Robot
2008  Iron Man
2010  The Sorcerer's Apprentice
2015  Blackhat
2015  Point Break
2017  Blade Runner 2049
2025  Hurry Up Tomorrow

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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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