Most young people grapple uncomfortably with the question ‘what do you want to do when you finish school?’  Many people seem to float into their professions, hooking themselves up with nine-to-five routines more out of necessity than in the pursuit of dreams.  And then there are others, like Oscar nominated cinematographer and Hollywood visual effects whiz Pete Kozachik, who experience a defining moment early in their lives in which a certain occupation becomes engrained in their psyche, pointing very clearly towards a specific profession mapped out for their future.   

The films of Pete Kozachik Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride Director of Photography / Visual Effects Supervisor The Matrix 2, 3 Visual Effects Director of Photography 2003 Star Wars: Episode 2 Visual Effects Director of Photography 2002 Evolution High Speed Miniatures Director of Photography 2001 Monkeybone Visual Effects Co-Supervisor / VFX Director of Photography 2001 Starship Troopers Visual Effects Director of Photography 1997 James and The Giant Peach Director of Photography / Visual Effects Supervisor 1996 Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas Director of Photography / Visual Effects Supervisor 1993 Robocop 2 Visual Effects Cameraman / VFX Development 1990 Spaced Invaders Visual Effects Director of Photography 1990 Ghostbusters II Visual Effects Cameraman 1989 The Abyss Visual Effects Cameraman / Unit Supervisor 1989 Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Visual Effects Cameraman 1989 Willow Visual Effects Cameraman 1988 Innerspace Visual Effects Cameraman 1987 Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home Visual Effects Cameraman 1987 Robocop 3 Visual Effects Cameraman 1993 Hook Visual Effects Cameraman 1992 Hudson Hawk Visual Effects Cameraman 1991 Batteries Not Included Visual Effects Cameraman 1987 The Gate Stop Motion / VFX crew 1987 Robocop VFX technician 1987 Howard The Duck Visual Effects Cameraman 1986 The Friedman Cat Visual Effects Cameraman 1985 V Visual Effects Cameraman 1984 Deal Of the Century Visual Effects Cameraman 1983 Airplane II Visual Effects Cameraman 1982 Inside The Third Reich Visual Effects Cameraman 1982 Megaforce Visual Effects Cameraman / Miniature Lighting Tech 1982 The Man Who Saw Tomorrow Visual Effects Cameraman 1982 The Night They Saved Christmas Stop Motion / VFX crew 1984 Samson and Delilah VFX crew 1984 Dreamscape Stop Motion / VFX crew 1984 Q Motion Control 1982 The Thing Stop Motion / VFX crew 1982 Hangar 18 Visual Effects Cameraman / Model and Pyro riggin  1980

“Like a lot of my ilk,” Kozachik explains, “I got the animation/effects bug early in life from a pair of films, Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and King Kong.”  At the impressionable age of seven, seated in a theater next to his mother, Pete ogled at the screen in dumbstruck awe as the monsters in Sinbad relentlessly wreaked havoc across its fantastical landscape.  Concerned that he may be too swept up in the material, Pete’s mother leaner over and whispered in his ear: “look how they’re moving, sort of mechanically.  Think they might be robots?”  That slender question was enough to send young Pete’s head spinning, and it proved to be a vague premonition of the future career of one of Hollywood’s foremost visual effects maestros.

Kozachik, whose most recent job was as cinematographer of the darkly beautiful animated film Corpse Bride, entered Hollywood just as the 80’s emerged, establishing his career during a decade some film scholars refer to as The Temple of Dumb: a period of film history characterized by cinema as a spectacle, when the overwhelming onus for multiplex audiences was well and truly to sit back and be dazzled.  Not a bad time for a keen young techie to march into tinsel town, and in the two decades that followed Kozachik contributed to an extraordinary number of high-profile Hollywood films, many of which became global blockbusters: among them Howard the Duck, Star Trek 4, Willow, Honey I Shrink the Kids!, The Abyss, Innerspace, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Starship Troopers, James and the Giant Peach, as well as movie franchises Robocop, Ghostbusters, Star Wars and The Matrix.  The combined box office earnings of those films is a staggering figure, accruing well more than a couple of billion dollars. 

“For some time after seeing Sinbad with my mother,” he explains, “I had myself convinced that the US Army had a secret platoon of giant robots, covered in monster suits to frighten enemy troops.  Cool, but inaccessible technology to a kid. 

“Eventually I saw a photo of animator Ray Harryhausen with the same two creatures, mere puppets, on a table in front of him.  I was elated to learn that this was a kid sized craft, not a military enterprise, the sort of thing a normal person could duplicate with some effort, and that became my goal.” 

At the age of twelve Kozachik began his first movie project: reanimating King Kong on black and white 8mm film. To do this he snipped dinosaur shapes out of foam pillows, skewed them onto wires, recruited his friends to perform as fleeing sailors and even cast himself as the hero – “mostly so I could kiss the heroine.”  But somehow, he concedes, “we never quite got that scene shot.” 

How Kozachik broke into professional work in the film industry is a golden example of satisfying Hollywood make-it stories: two parts perseverance, one part happenstance.  After working at a local TV station in Tucson Arizona, directing professional wrestling (“it’s all fake,” he chimes), a hosted cartoon show and a few “wretched” televangelist shows (“even more fake than wrestling,” he adds)  Kozachik eventually hung out his shingle as a local animator and found enough work to put together a reel of cartoons and stop-motion commercials.  With this new portfolio in hand he entered Hollywood and began fishing for opportunities, and soon one eventuated from an unlikely location: a studio parking lot.   

Fellow effects enthusiast Tom Scherman gave Kozachik an odd request – he asked if he could somehow obtain a movie prop for him that he’d seen in a tropical themed Tucson restaurant.  The prop was a submarine door from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Kozachik convinced the restaurant’s manager to give it a new home.  This made Scherman a loyal insider at the studio, and to show his gratitude Scherman agreed to put up a poster of Kozachik in the studio toilet rooms.  Eventually, as a captive audience of the right people began to regularly gaze at Kozachik’s mug shot, that yielded results.  Soon Kozachik was working as a model maker, animator and cameraman at Coast / Cascade Effects in North Hollywood, a place which provided the first work experience for many of the luminaries who went on to form George Lucas’ brainchild, Industrial Light and Magic.   

Six years later Kozachik was in the ILM interview room, surrounded by top end VFX supervisors shooting him all sorts of technical questions.  VFX legend Ken Ralston, who worked on the first run of Star Wars and Star Trek movies (among countless other blockbusters) was listening to it all quietly, with his arms folded, before eventually saying “"I've got one question for you: what was Ray Harryhausen's best monster?"   

“Apparently the Cyclops from 7^th Voyage of Sinbad was the right answer,” Kozachik reminisces, “because Ken got up, said ‘you’re hired!’ and walked out of the room.” 

One of Kozachik’s early gigs was working as a visual effects cameraman for Lucasfilm’s infamous box office bungle Howard the Duck, a zany film about a Marvel comics character who is catapulted from his home planet – a planet of ducks – onto Earth, where he fights against an alien invader.  The film is widely regarded as a creative disaster.  “It certainly was a cause for disappointment among those of us who worked on it,” Kozachik admits.  “Lots of beautiful, painstaking work was done in service of that show.  I wish the story had deserved it.” 

One year later Kozachik contributed to a story that did deserve it, working again as a VFX cameraman for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home which he describes as “the one with the whales.”  Ken Ralston was his boss, and lived up to his earlier decisiveness in the interview room.  “I came to him with a proposed solution for making a close view of the sun's roiling surface,” Kozachik explains.  “Thought I was going to have to make a hard sell of it, but he looked briefly at the reference film, said "great, you've got it figured out.  Do it."  And again, he strode out the door.” 

Ron Howard’s Willow (1988), a fantasy adventure about a dwarf who protects a special baby from an evil queen, was Kozachik’s first of several jobs for VFX supervisor Phil Tippett, who he describes as “another kindred spirit in stop-motion work.” 

“He was effectively directing a sequence featuring a two-headed dragon,” Kozachik continues.  “Within the studio, the creature was called "the Eborsisk", in honor of the film review team of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. 

“Working that close with Phil, I got a good dose of the keep-it-simple philosophy in filmmaking.  He pared down each shot to a single, key action, and had me do the same with lighting and camera.  It left a lasting impression, which I've put to use on subsequent projects.” 

In the five years that followed Kozachik worked on a spate of high-profile releases (including Honey I Shrunk the Kids!, Hudson Hawk, Ghostbusters 2 and all three Robocop movies) before striking his first job as a director of photography, for the Tim Burton produced A Nightmare Before Christmas.  The film’s striking visuals earned Kozachik the career-high honor of being nominated for an Academy award. 

“Getting nominated was a pleasant surprise considering all the great visual effects work going on at the time,” he explains.  “The Oscar went to friends and mentors Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett for their pioneering work on Jurassic Park, but I felt honored to be nominated along with them.  The nomination ought to be shared by the 100 or so people that worked on Nightmare.  This kind of work is very much a collaboration.  If one person had all the skills to do all the work on the show, it could be done alone, but it would take 200 years.” 

In 2003 Kozachik was again recruited to direct photography for a stop/start animated film of similar visual panache, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, which features stunning textures and entrancing surface detail.  Kozachik speaks highly of Burton’s directorial flair: “Tim has a strong design sense, easily noted in all of his work, and cares about the details and the big picture, “ he explains.  “My first tasks on the show were testing lighting characters and sets, not just to set a lighting look, but to help in choosing paint colors, skin treatment, wardrobe details. You'll always know when you're watching a Tim Burton film.  He's got his style on every frame.”

Out of all the 37 films Pete Kozachik has worked on, he ranks A Nightmare Before Christmas as the one that defined his career path and “is a precise match to what I had set out to do.”  Now Corpse Bride joins Nightmare as another favorite and both, which boast some significant innovations, set high water marks for cinematography in the stop/start animation field.   

A producer friend of Kozachik once told him not to “fall in love with a job, it’ll never love you back.”   

“I haven’t been able to follow that advice,” Kozachik explains.  “After sinking months or years into a show, my secret pleasure is to sit in the middle of a real audience and listen for their candid reactions.  If they engage, if it makes them laugh or shed a tear, or just get swallowed up in the flow, that's the best reward.  If not, it's at least a learning experience for next time.”