lord of the rings: digitally speaking

When Kory Juul ('00) found himself buying rounds and partying into the wee hours of the morning with Lord of the Rings: Return of the King actors Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom, he felt pride in his part of the movie trilogy. The box office smash swept the 2004 Oscars, and the conclusion of the trilogy features Juul's work. In his role as digital compositor, Juul composited 10 shots for the King of the Dead sequences and the massive assault on Minas Tirith.

Juul's hard work scored him an invitation to the movie's gala New Zealand premiere and after-party. "It was probably one of the most rewarding days of my life," he says. "It's such a great feeling to put so much hard work and effort into something and then be recognized by the community in such a passionate way."

  Juul's intense work ethic was rewarded, and tested, when he was hired as a compositor for The Matrix Reloaded. "We were pushing limits, redefining what cinema can do," he says. The 100-hour workweeks for 13 straight weeks made the Matrix one of the hardest jobs Juul has faced. He worked side-by-side with top Hollywood technical workers to piece together a 14-minute battle scene. Juul was called upon again to serve as sequence supervisor for The Matrix Revolutions. The first shot he worked on aired during the 2003 Super Bowl.

Juul also served as compositor for Ghost Ship and Final Fantasy. His interest in telling stories visually began at JMU. One of his first ideas was telling a story about a water drop traveling up a tree root to a leaf. "The only practical way to do it was on the computer," explains Juul. "My interest in computer motion graphics came from me wanting to do things like this -- to make things that didn't exist or were too expensive to build."

After graduation, Juul worked on four movies before joining California-based ESC Entertainment, which creates special effects. "In this profession, you work on a project and then take a breather, and then strive for the next big thing," he says.

Juul has now teamed up with an entrepreneurial friend and started a new effects company, Meticulous Effects Group, to focus on visual effects for film and television. The duo has completed work for an Olympics bid by the city of Washington, D.C. View Juul's original work at www.helioglyph.com/gks.

-- Lisa Freedman ('05)