(written from a Production point of view)
Scott Douglas Farrar (born 26 June 1950; age 73), is a visual effects (VFX) supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a position he held when he worked on the effects for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
His first contribution to the Star Trek franchise, however, was as photographic effects cameraman on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the employ of Douglas Trumbull's Future General Corporation, after leaving Robert Abel & Associates when that company was pulled from the project. [1] In 1980 he joined ILM by a lucky happenstance when he was called by a friend who worked at that company, "They needed a union cameraman. They were starting to get more shows in and wanted someone who knew visual effects but who could also shoot plates on set." [2] The project he was called in to help with, was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. During his early years with ILM, he also worked as VFX cameraman on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Farrar has been interviewed on his work for Star Trek in the "Space Docks and Birds of Prey"-special on the Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Special Edition) DVD. Aside from this, he was the cameraman that was featured on the cover illustration of Susan Sackett's March 1980 reference book, The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Career outside Star Trek[]
A graduate of UCLA film school and graduate school, Farrar was hired at ILM for seven months back in 1980, but has never left the company. Joining as a VFX cameraman, Farrar's early work includes Return of the Jedi, Willow, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. His camera work on the film Cocoon helped ILM win an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1986. After becoming an ILM VFX supervisor in 1988, Farrar helped the company earn three more Academy Award nominations for their VFX work in the films Backdraft, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His other credits as an ILM VFX Supervisor include Cocoon: The Return, Back to the Future Part II, Back to the Future Part III, Wolf, Amistad, Deep Impact, The Mummy, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Minority Report, and Transformers written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman). He was also an additional effects plate photographer on Jurassic Park and supervised the VFX of the end sequence in Men in Black.
In 2009 Scott Farrar was inducted into the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).
Scott's daughter, Katherine, is a VFX coordinator at ILM. According to the Internet Movie Database, she has worked on the eleventh Star Trek film, simply titled Star Trek, as VFX associate production manager.