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Gary Hutzel

Revision as of 09:50, 21 October 2013 by Sennim (talk | contribs) (→‎Career outside Star Trek: corr.)
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Gary Dean Hutzel (born 4 November 1955; age 68) is a visual effects (VFX) supervisor who worked as visual effects coordinator and visual effects supervisor on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Hired in early 1987, Gary Hutzel started out as visual effects coordinator for the franchise and has fulfilled that role for the entirety of his tenure at the franchise. After the production of the pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", it was soon realized that the new show was the most visual effects laden television production of its day, much like its illustrious predecessor, Star Trek: The Original Series was in its. A fourth senior visual effects staffer was deemed necessary to alleviate work pressure on the senior visual effects staff which included up to then, besides Hutzel, Robert Legato and Ronald B. Moore. To that end Dan Curry was brought in, partly on recommendation by his friend Moore. In order to streamline and increase production efficiency, the four were paired in two teams to work on alternating episodes, Hutzel being paired with Legato. The two-team visual effects format went into effect halfway through the first season, the 16th episode, "Too Short a Season", being the first episode Moore and Curry worked upon as a team. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, 3rd ed., p. 31) The format worked so well, that it has remained in use for almost the entire subsequent run of the Star Trek television franchise, and Legato and Hutzel remained a team ever since.

Upon the conclusion of The Next Generation's fifth season, Gary Hutzel and Robert Legato transferred to the new television production Deep Space Nine to fulfill the same role. On that occasion Hutzel was promoted to visual effects supervisor. Their place on The Next Generation for the remaining two seasons was filled by a new team that consisted of David Stipes and David Takemura. Upon the conclusion of the first season of Deep Space Nine, for which he and Legato served as the only senior visual effects staff, supported by Dan Curry and one of the few Star Trek television series seasons that did not utilize the two-team visual effects staff format, Legato decided it was time to move on and left the franchise late 1993 to join Digital Domain. Glenn Neufeld replaced him on Deep Space Nine, and it was Neufeld who teamed up with Hutzel for the remainder of the series. After Deep Space Nine was completed, Hutzel too, left the franchise in 1999, as there was no position for him available on the other Star Trek production at the time, Star Trek: Voyager.

Along with James Martin and Herman Zimmerman, Hutzel was instrumental in the creation of the Defiant-class USS Defiant. He also built the blown up Borg cube breakaway model seen in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II". He appears in interviews on several of the DS9 DVDs. His work on Star Trek earned him two Emmy Awards, as well as additional seven nominations.

Unlike fellow VFX Supervisor David Stipes and others, Hutzel, for practical reasons, was the effects supervisor who resisted the application of the computer generated imagery (CGI) techniques, the longest, preferring instead the traditional techniques of producing visual effects, holding on to them well after CGI was firmly established in the franchise. Friend and close co-worker Doug Drexler has explained Hutzel's stance, recalling:

"I'll tell you why Gary held out on CG for so long. When you hire a CGI facility to create your visual effects, it represents a loss of control for the VFX supervisor. Especially for someone like Gary, who is a card carrying D[irector of]P[hotography], and accustomed to shooting his own footage.

"When your shots are being created at a facility, you tell them what you want, and when you come back, you hope it looks like what you are expecting. Not only that, the bureaucracy at the facility can be slow moving, and if you need a change, it could take days to get the wheels turning. That is why the visual effects for Battlestar Galactica, which is Gary's show, are in house. Gary runs the CGI from top to bottom, without the middleman. Gary Hutzel is one damned amazing guy. Now he gets his CGI exactly the way he wants it, without any bureaucracy, egos, facility overhead or games. Gary did use some CGI on DS9, but it was always a struggle for him to get what he wanted.

"Ultimately, CGI... if you have a set up like Gary... is faster, cheaper, and can look better. The models never wear out, internal lighting never needs to be changed, alterations are a snap, you don't need a teamster to pick it up from the warehouse and drive it to the stage either. I can go on." [1](X)

Career outside Star Trek

Hailing from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gary Hutzel originally began studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. [2] Hutzel decided to change his career to the motion picture industry and moved to Santa Barbara, California to study photography at the Brooks Institute, from which he graduated in the mid-1980s, together with class mate Dana White. [3](X) His motion picture industry career started with a job as a driver and video camera operator for a commercial production house, Filmfair, where he became interested in visual effects. After a stint as freelancer for CBS on the new Twilight Zone series, he was approached in 1987 to work on The Next Generation, coincidentally reuniting him with fellow Brooks Institute graduate White.

As mentioned by Drexler, Gary Hutzel joined Ronald D. Moore's revamp of Battlestar Galactica, in 2003. He worked as miniature cinematographer and visual effects supervisor on the first mini television series in 2003 and as visual effects supervisor on the mini series Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance in 2006, Battlestar Galactica: Razor Flashbacks in 2007, the television movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor in 2007, the mini television series Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy in 2008, the video production The Plan (2009), the spin-off series Caprica (2009-2010), and on the original remake Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009).

For his work on the Battlestar Galactica projects, Hutzel earned Emmy Award nominations in 2004, shared with Lee Stringer, Emile Edwin Smith, Jarrod David, Kevin Quattro, Aram Granger, and Kyle Toucher, in 2005, shared with Lee Stringer, Adam Lebowitz, and Gabriel Koerner, another one in 2005, in 2006, shared with Doug Drexler, Chris Zapara, and Kyle Toucher, and in 2009, shared with Kyle Toucher, Shawn M. Jackson, Pierre Drolet, and David R. Morton. Hutzel won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series in 2007, shared with Doug Drexler and Adam Lebowitz, and in 2008, shared with Doug Drexler, David Takemura, Kyle Toucher, Sean M. Jackson, Pierre Drolet, and Derek Ledbetter. He also received an Emmy Award nomination in 2010 for the spin-off series Caprica, shared with Doug Drexler, Kyle Toucher, Pierre Drolet, David R. Morton, and Derek Ledbetter. Hutzel and his team also received the Visual Effects Society Award for their work in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 and another nomination in 2008.

Beside his work on Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, Gary Hutzel worked as miniature director of Photography on the science fiction thriller Red Planet (2000, his first post-Star Trek credit), as visual effects director of photography for Image G on the science fiction comedy Spy Kids (2001), and as visual effects supervisor on the television movie A Wrinkle in Time (2003), the pilot episode of the Bionic Woman remake (2007), and the action film Drive Angry 3D (2011). For his work on the television science fiction thriller Virtuality in 2009, Hutzel received another Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special which he shared with Derek Ledbetter and Pierre Drolet.

In 2011/2012 he again worked with his fellow Star Trek alumni on the Battlestar Galactica spin-off production Blood and Chrome, and subsequently followed Drexler to work on the science fiction television series Defiance.

Star Trek credits

(This list is currently incomplete.)

Emmy Awards

Hutzel received the following Emmy Award wins and nominations in the category Outstanding Achievement in Special Visual Effects for his work on Star Trek:

Star Trek interviews

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