A Brief History

George Murphy has been creating images of the world for well over thirty years. It is a passion that has carried him up icy mountains, out to the launch pads of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and onto the studio sets of many Hollywood motion pictures. His drive to create imagery of the highest caliber crosses the bounds between still photography and motion pictures, journalistic reality and digital fantasy.

Murphy's roots are in traditional editorial, corporate and commercial photography, including a stint as a stringer for the New York picture agency Black Star. But it was his early work on educational multi-media projects that drew him to the cutting edge digital imaging tools that were emerging in the early eighties.

Industrial Light & Magic - By the time he joined George Lucas' special effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, in 1991, Murphy already had an Emmy and nearly a decade of experience as one of the country’s top digital effects artists. In 1995 he received the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his role on the film Forrest Gump and in 1999 dominated the Clio Awards Visual Effects category with ground breaking commercial effects work, sweeping the Gold, Silver, and Bronze levels.

ESC Entertainement - In 2001 Murphy left ILM to take on the challenging role, for ESC Entertainment, of supervising effects teams on the ambitious Zion Dock sequences for the Wochowski’s Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions films - an effort that involved nearly two years, work on two continents, and a crew of over 140 creative artists.

Weta Digital - In the fall of 2005 Murphy was invited New Zealand to supervise several sequences on Peter Jackson’s King Kong, building on a long relationship with Weta Sr. Visual Effects Supervisor, Joe Letteri. The success of Kong was followed by Murphy's work as a guest VFX Superviser for Weta’s work on the Fox film, Eragon. This project involved several weeks of blue-screen motion-bases work at Pinewood Studios in England, prior to directly supervising the Weta CG team in New Zealand.

ImageMovers Digital - Most recently Murphy has joined the staff of ImageMovers Digital to pursue the all digital performance capture work of director Robert Zemeckis and production designer Doug Chiang. The challenge of building a new studio around a "digital live-action" workflow, presented a unique opportunity to collaborate with some of the industy's best digital artists in defining this emerging film genré.

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Photography & Visual Effects - Concurrent with his work in visual effects, George Murphy has continued to advance his pursuits in the areas of editorial, documentary and fine-art photography. His collaborative experiences on motion pictures and commercials have added a depth and diversity to his vision as a photographer. Conversely, Murphy draws upon his photographic work continually as he strives to create a sense of reality and wonder in his visual effects assignments.

To learn more about George Murphy’s photography click here or follow the Photography link on this page's sidebar.