Jim Berney is an Academy Award® nominated freelance visual effects supervisor. His most recent works include visual effect supervising for Warner Brothers’ Aquaman and the MINECRAFT movie, as well as Legendary’s PACIFIC RIM 2. As one of the four founding partners, Berney was the President and Head of Studio for Pulse Evolution, a creatively driven, digital production and IP Company, established to produce specialized, high-impact applications of computer-generated human likeness for use in entertainment, life sciences, education and telecommunication. Pulse was the company responsible for bringing Michael Jackson to the 2014 Billboard Awards show. In 2013 Berney started his own visual effects company, WormStyle. A small company dedicated to high-level compositing for feature films. WormStyle was responsible for nearly 100 shots for DIVERGENT, a Lionsgate project where he acted as the principle visual effects supervisor.
Before starting his own company, Berney acted as the Head of Studio for Digital Domain Florida. There he was faced with the challenge of coordinating the efforts of four visual effects related disciplines; Computer Generated Features, Visual Effects for Feature Films, 3D Stereo Conversion, and Military Simulation. In 2008 Berney relocated to Imageworks New Mexico to provided creative supervision and direction for all artists in the Albuquerque office. In addition to his regular supervisory responsibilities on projects, he served as General Manager for the first two years of the facility’s infancy, before being dedicated full time to GREEN LANTERN. Berney acted as the principle visual effects supervisor for GREEN LANTERN, where he oversaw the designs and creation of the Green Lantern Corps, their suits and constructs, plus the stunning environments in and around the alien plant of Oa. Before GREEN LANTERN, Berney was the visual effects supervisor on EAGLE EYE, where he oversaw 250 visual effects shots including a full 360-degree view of the inside of the supercomputer and a heart stopping chase through a Chicago tunnel with an all CG spy plane.
Just prior to EAGLE EYE, Berney served as the visual effects supervisor on I AM LEGEND where his team was responsible for over 800 shots including a fully digital replication of New York City and complete digital “infected” humans. Berney joined Imageworks in 1996 and had served as visual effects and CG supervisor on several notable projects. He supervised the creation of over 500 shots for the Academy Award® nominated THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, for which he was nominated for the Oscar® for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Effects. In 2004, Berney was visual effects supervisor on the IMAX version of the state-of-the-art performance capture feature THE POLAR EXPRESS. He was responsible for supervising the conversion of over 780 shots from the beautiful traditional 2D version of the film into the large format 3D IMAX version. Previously, Berney was the visual effects supervisor on THE MATRIX RELOADED, THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS and HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER¹S STONE. Berney also served as CG supervisor for HOLLOW MAN (2000 Academy Award® nominee, Best Visual Effects). In 1998, Berney was an invaluable member of the Imageworks team as CG supervisor on the feature film STUART LITTLE (1999 Academy Award® nominee, Best Visual Effects), having been involved in the development of the costuming technology. The cloth dynamics utilized on the film enabled the design, building, and simulation of 13 costumes for three CG characters.
Berney also supervised the development of the versioning and publishing system and cosupervised the development of the lighting pipeline, which facilitated the seamless integration of the Stuart Little character into live action scenes. Before the groundbreaking STUART LITTLE, Berney served as CG supervisor on the feature film GODZILLA and was lighting lead on CONTACT, STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997 Academy Award® nominee, Best Visual Effects) and ANACONDA, during which he developed rendering tools and the pipeline for photorealistic lighting techniques. Prior to joining Imageworks, Berney worked at MetroLight, where he was a research technical director and part of the software development team, authoring flocking software for BATMAN FOREVER and procedural natural phenomenon lighting software for UNDER SIEGE 2 and MORTAL KOMBAT.
Berney began his career working for DARPA as an ADA programmer for a large software engineering consortium. He received his Master’s degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, specializing in the research and development of a new global illumination paradigm. He majored in Computer Science and Economics at the University of California, Irvine, focusing in AI research. Berney also studied computer architectures at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.