Quotes by Dennis Muren

About Dennis Muren:

Dennis Muren is an American film special effects artist & supervisor, most notable for his work on the films of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas. He has won nine Oscars for Best Visual Effects.
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I have never had trouble with any actor being able to visualise things. They are amazing. As long as you have your monster head on a long stick, so you can hold it up there and you can wave it around and let them see it and explain it to them, they a...

Dennis Muren

I took business classes as a back up but I made movies all the time. I would get my classes done in two days and then spend the rest of the time making my movies.

Dennis Muren

So much of it is the design of the shot or the motion of the character; it's the work you do so that it has the same things that are in the movie. In just a few frames it's got to communicate something clearly and dramatically.

Dennis Muren

But you don't hire Ang Lee to do a typical children's movie. But it's such an interesting combination, whoever thought of getting Ang together with a comic book, that was just great.

Dennis Muren

Everyone is trying to do something that hasn't been done and that's a really good thing. You can only do so much with a story and some scripts don't give you the opportunities and other scripts do give you the opportunities to do things that haven't ...

Dennis Muren

And it's very hard to do this stuff too because there are so many effects movies being done, so many companies busy doing this work and the public just wants to see it. Good work is being done all over the world.

Dennis Muren

Steven and I have worked together a lot and I'm far ahead of the curve than most people in knowing what he wants, but he knows far more than I know about what's important for the story. So, most of the changes he will make will involve story changes.

Dennis Muren

Yes, if I had it my way I would do all the shots myself - I used to do that when I was just a cameraman, an operator - but there's no way; you can't do that anymore.

Dennis Muren

I've done enough of this that I can tell early on if it's going in the wrong direction or not.

Dennis Muren

And then you start getting into the technical side of it and the aesthetic side and with those areas you can come up with new ways to visualise things, new ways to render and use the computer to make things look different and new and stuff like that.

Dennis Muren

You know a lot of what worked on this was taken from Harry Potter 2, the little Doby character, we had a lot of our skin stuff worked out and that helped a lot. We have a lot of exchange happening.

Dennis Muren

To me the biggest breakthrough was when we did Terminator 2 that just opened the door for Jurassic and all of the others and that was as big as when we did motion control on Star Wars. But I don't see another big thing coming.

Dennis Muren

I just focus on one show, when this is over then I'll start looking at what is coming up.

Dennis Muren

Just going along with this, what I did, or what I do is I imagine not being myself seeing it, but imagine somebody else who's seeing it for the first time.

Dennis Muren

Because you're telling a story, and I'm sure people fifty years ago would tell the same story differently if they were telling it to you today. Because the time is different. The film is the work of today's audience.

Dennis Muren

And I also trust that there's more than one way to do something.

Dennis Muren

Other times you can get showy for three minutes, and that's OK with certain films. But that isn't right with an Ang Lee movie, you have to fit right in. You have to understand Ang, respect him and be part of the team and not be in charge of it - he i...

Dennis Muren

I see the tool set being the same and maybe doing virtual movies and that's fine for some stories but not for others. And maybe make all CG movies but they are already doing it.

Dennis Muren

It's harder for me to work on a Forrest Gump kind of movie, where everything is invisible.

Dennis Muren

What you want to do is, you want to get away from people being afraid to show their work, which is the first thing, because they don't want to be shot down.

Dennis Muren

Author Bio

  • NameDennis Muren
  • DescriptionAmerican film special effects artist
  • BornNovember 1, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionArtist
  • AwardsSpecial Achievement Academy Award; Academy Award For Best Visual Effects