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Ron Thornton

Revision as of 06:45, 15 November 2012 by Sennim (talk | contribs) (→‎Star Trek credits: corr.)
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Ron Thornton is a British-born cinematographer and was a key member and co-founder of the visual effects company Foundation Imaging. He worked on a number of Star Trek productions, receiving an Emmy Award nomination for Star Trek: Voyagers fifth season episode "Timeless".

Much of Ron Thornton's early visual effects career was spent working with miniatures and motion control technology, on British television series such as Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and The Tripods, prior to his move to America, where he initially worked on Warner Bros. Television's Babylon 5, adopting CGI techniques that he later brought to Star Trek. He remembered, "The reason I got into CGI work in the first place is purely because the limitations of motion control suddenly disappeared." Thornton went on to say that he specifically meant the limitations of shooting models. Thornton was also attracted to animating such CG creations as Species 8472 for Star Trek: Voyager. Regarding the task of giving a performance to such a being, he noted, "That's something I love to do." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #16, pp. 36 & 37)

Ron Thornton was instrumental in the changeover of Foundation Imaging from Babylon 5 to Star Trek. He recalled, "It was only after Babylon 5 decided not to renew us that I turned around to them [meaning Star Trek: Voyager's producers] and basically begged for work. We were in such dire straits; I had to lay everybody off–and I never thought that was going to happen–but Voyager was really wonderful and started coming in with stuff." Thornton also said, "When Babylon 5 decided they were going to do it on their own, it was absolutely devastating, but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me." Thornton was so eager to work on Star Trek that he would have liked Foundation Imaging to be given more work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine than they ultimately were. "I would love to do more work on the show," Thornton said, during the sixth season of the series, "but it's very much up to the supervisor." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #16, pp. 35, 38 & 39)

After Thornton moved to the United States in 1984, but prior to founding Foundation Imaging in 1992, he has worked as free-lancer for a multitude of companies, among others Apogee, Inc. Quick Silver FX Studio, VCE, All Effects, and Todd Rundgren's Nutopia, as visual effects staffer, usually as a prop and model maker. Productions he worked upon in that period included Critters (1986), Spaceballs (1987), Robot Jox (1989), After Midnight (1989) as well as the science fiction series Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future (1987-1988), where some early CGI was employed, and which introduced Thornton to the new technique (as well as to the precursor of the software package LightWave 3D, the package of choice at Foundation Imaging). An uncredited contribution as model maker for David Stipes Productions, proved in hindsight to be Thornton's earliest contribution to the Star Trek franchise. He built the alien studio model, designed by Steve Burg, for the 1986 movie Night of the Creeps, that was later reused for the Star Trek: The Next Generation third season episode "Booby Trap" as the Cleponji.

After his experiences with CGI on Captain Power, Thornton started to entertain in 1990 notions to go into the possibility of creating a digital effects facility utilizing the latest advances in desk-top computer technologies, together with his friend Paul Beigle-Bryant, with whom he had worked in Great Britain in 1983. This led in 1992 to the founding of Foundation Imaging, with Thornton selling off all his own camera equipment and motion control systems in order to raise capital for the new computer systems. Rock musician and multimedia artist Todd Rundgren, with whom Thornton had worked on a short computer-animated film, was the one who suggested using computers for all the visual effects on Babylon 5, the company's first project. Thornton and Beigle-Bryant created a one-minute video of proposed visual effects for the series that was instrumental in selling the show in July 1992. The pilot episode of the series won the duo an Emmy Award in 1993, complemented by an International Monitor Award the next year for the pilot episode of the television series Viper.

Star Trek credits

Emmy Award

Thornton received the following Emmy Award nomination in the category Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series:

Bibliography

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