The trailblazing VFX artist, who co-founded Robert Abel and Associates, helped usher in modern effects with his seminal work on Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’
Con Pederson, a pioneer in visual effects and CGI whose contributions helped bridge the analog and digital eras of filmmaking, died at age 91, according to .Pederson’s work on landmark projects and his early adoption of computational techniques helped lay the foundation for the VFX and CGI revolutions that define contemporary cinema.Pederson first came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, working on the visual effects for Stanley Kubrick’s seminal Oscar-winning film, , where his technical expertise supported Kubrick’s visionary approach to space imagery.
At a time when digital tools were nascent, Pederson was part of a small cadre of artists pushing the boundaries of what effects photography and early computational systems could achieve.Kubrick had seen Pederson’s 15-minute film, , made for NASA at Graphic Films.He hired Pederson and brought him to England in 1966, along with another CG and VFX pioneer, Doug Trumball, who worked for Pederson at Graphic Films.
In a far ranging and fascinating 1999 interview with Bill Moritz for AWN, Pederson spoke at length about his relationship with Kubrick and their work on the film.He shared, “As a marketing thing, I think it was an accident that was successful.I never understood that.
The first reviews, I have a stack of them, were mostly negative.No one quite knew what they were looking at, and they didn't know how to view it.But the generation of the '60s and '70s was such that it became a psychedelic sort of model, which had never occurred to us because I didn't know a single person in England that used drugs.
We were really ordinary people, except that Stanley had this sense of adventure when it came to filmmaking.He was a cameraman.He was a photographer.
He was an extraordinary filmmaker… He was a self-educated director… a do-it-yourself-er.He was a micro-manager.I have nothing against that.
We got along great.” In 1971 he co-founded Robert Abel and Associates with Robert Abel, a partnership that became influential in the commercial and film worlds for its innovative use of motion-controlled cameras, slit-scan techniques, and computer-assisted previsualization.Abel & Associates was among the first to integrate digitally controlled systems into effects production, creating work that presaged the later widespread use of CGI in films such as and beyond.Pederson’s career spanned decades of shifting technology, from practical effects on celluloid to the first shimmering steps of computer imagery.
His influence is embedded in the work of generations of VFX artists and in the tools and techniques that continue to drive innovation across film and animation.Born in Minnesota in 1934, Pederson moved to Southern California in 1943, where both his parents worked assembling bombers and fighter planes.He attended UCLA from 1951-1953 after studying at LA City College.
He wrote science fiction and was involved in model rocketry as well.He told AWN, “Somebody told me that it was a lot of fun doing animation, so I thought I'd try it, and made a couple of student films.The next thing you know, I was vacuumed up by Disney.” While at Disney, Pederson was drafted into the US Army, eventually working for famed German rocket engineer Werner von Braun after Disney himself put in a good word.
He noted, “I was drafted into the army in fall of '56, ended up in Alabama working for Werner von Braun.They had shipped me off to the First Armor Division in Louisiana, from which nobody was ever known to escape short of their time, but Walt Disney personally brought me to the attention of Werner von Braun because they had just got an animation camera there and didn't know how to use it.The next thing you know I was in a nice outfit of scientific and professional personnel at the Redstone Arsenal Army Post and Missile Agency doing very short films to present ideas to Congress, to explain what they were doing -- mostly secret undertakings of the Cold War, atomic testing in the Pacific for which we supplied short-range missiles.” He continued, “Von Braun was primarily a chemist.
He had a couple of hundred Germans there, whom they had managed to get before the Russians did.They had quite a level of expertise.These people were at White Sands for a while in '46 and eventually ended up in Alabama.
We were involved with all the test procedures for Cape Canaveral.We launched the first satellite in February '58.It was an answer to Sputnik, but it took us 40 months to put something up in space.
The first Explorer satellite was kind of fun.I worked in graphic engineering, which did illustrations.Mostly we worked on how to get to the moon.
It was called Project Nova, but actually everything about it was used by the Apollo project… .Our rocket was a much tubbier thing, more like the Soviet rockets, but basically the plan of taking off with a booster rocket, going around the earth, going around the moon, landing on the moon, and then going back up to the orbiter and bringing it back to earth, plus, the propulsion system based on unsymmetrical dimetholidozyne (which was von Braun's favorite rocket fuel) -- all of that was worked out at Huntsville in 1957 and '58.We also did a lot of stuff about Mars.
Everyone was interested in rockets for military use, and they were so efficient at testing things that they were able to squirrel away hardware and stuff that could be used at the advent of NASA.”
He is survived by his second wife, Carol; his first wife, Sharleen and son Eric; and his grandchildren, Alexandre and Viviane.Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
Talking with Con Pederson
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