A filmmaking team that included a Lancaster County native and helped create the magical worlds of Oz and Shiz University for the movie "Wicked," fell short of Oscar gold Sunday night.
New Holland native David Shirk and his three fellow team members, nominated for this year’s Academy Award for best visual effects for their work on “Wicked,” lost to the team from the movie “Dune, Part Two” at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood Sunday night.
Shirk, a previous Oscar winner, graduated from Garden Spot High School in 1985 and is an animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic.
New Holland native falls short of Oscar gold for ‘Wicked’ as ‘Dune: Part 2’ takes visual effects prize
By Mary Ellen Wright/LNP | LancasterOnline
Submitted
A filmmaking team that included a Lancaster County native and helped create the magical worlds of Oz and Shiz University for the movie "Wicked," fell short of Oscar gold Sunday night.
New Holland native David Shirk and his three fellow team members, nominated for this year’s Academy Award for best visual effects for their work on “Wicked,” lost to the team from the movie “Dune, Part Two” at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood Sunday night.
Shirk, a previous Oscar winner, graduated from Garden Spot High School in 1985 and is an animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic.
A filmmaking team that included a Lancaster County native and helped create the magical worlds of Oz and Shiz University for the movie “Wicked,” fell short of Oscar gold Sunday night.
New Holland native David Shirk and his three fellow team members, nominated for this year’s Academy Award for best visual effects for their work on “Wicked,” lost to the team from the movie “Dune, Part Two” at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood Sunday night.
Shirk, a previous Oscar winner, graduated from Garden Spot High School in 1985 and is an animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic.
The other three nominated members of the “Wicked” effects team from ILM — the San Francisco-based special-effects company founded by George Lucas and owned by the Walt Disney Co. — are Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould.
Shirk and Corbould were members of the team that won the best visual effects Oscar for the 2013 film “Gravity.”
A visual effects team including Shirk was also nominated for an Academy Award for the 2018 film “Ready Player One” but lost to the film “First Man.”
Shirk and the “Wicked” team were also nominated this year for a Critics Choice Award and the BAFTA award — both of which were won by the “Dune: Part Two” team — and a Satellite Award, which went to a different Industrial Light & Magic team for its work on “Gladiator II.”
Shirk previously worked as an animation supervisor on such films as the Oscar-nominated movie “Mank” and the TV miniseries “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and was an animator on movies including “Mission Impossible III” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
While a student at Garden Spot, Shirk won Scholastic Arts awards and acted in theater productions — directed by the late Stan Dean — with Garden Spot Performing Arts.
The story of how Deen mentored a troubled student is the subject of the new film “Brave the Dark,” which was shot in Lancaster County and premiered at the Fulton Theatre in January.
