If you’re at all interested in special effects in the movies — the techniques that enable the Millenium Falcon to fly and Jurassic Park‘s T. Rex to run — then you probably know who Dennis Muren is. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce you: he was one of the founding members of Industrial Light & Magic, the company that grew out of the team George Lucas assembled to do the effects (FX) work on the original Star Wars, and he’s since gone to help pioneer just about every major advancement in the field over the last three decades. He’s worked on an astounding string of groundbreaking, FX-heavy movies. He’s the first visual effects artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he also made a cameo appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark — he’s the Nazi agent who glances out from behind the Life magazine when Indy boards the China Clipper to begin his quest for the Ark.

This is all preamble to an interesting interview with him that I just found over at Wired.com, in which he discusses the release of his very first movie project — a no-budget schlocker called Equinox, made when Dennis was only a teenager — on a Criterion Collection DVD, as well as the transition from traditional FX technology to computer-generated imagery (CGI) and what we’ve lost by rushing to adopt all things digital. As a movie-buff who’s not entirely sold on the Brave New World of CGI, I found this passage especially resonant:

The computer work today is so seamless, but it can be very cold. The trick is to make it feel handmade, like it’s not made by a machine, but by people using machines. A lot of folks doing effects can churn the material out, but they aren’t giving it any soul. Soul is inherent to the old style, the stop-motion and matte painting.

Hear, hear, Dennis! Those are my feelings in a nutshell, and they’re coming from a guy who works with CG himself. The rest of what he has to say is equally honest and thought-provoking. Go have a look…