LYNWEN BRENNAN: KEEPING LUCASFILM AT THE FOREFRONT OF ENTERTAINMENT By TREVOR HOGG
Images courtesy of Lynwen Brennan and Lucasfilm. TOP: Lynwen Brennan, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Lucasfilm. OPPOSITE TOP TO BOTTOM: Brennan with ILM leadership team Hal Hickel and John Knoll posing with the Oscars and VES Awards won by ILM. Brennan with the Marvel Studios leadership team of Victoria Alonso, Peyton Reed, Kevin Feige and Joe Russo. Brennan is interviewed by Andi Gutierrez of The Star Wars Show during the 2019 “Star Wars Celebration” in Chicago.
Looking at the responsibilities of Lucasfilm Executive Vice President & General Manager Lynwen Brennan, which involves overseeing Lucasfilm, ILM and Skywalker Sound, one could imagine her head spinning around in bewilderment, but via Zoom she has a ready smile and good sense of humor. “Sometimes it does feel like that! I have an amazing team that helps to keep me on track.” San Francisco is half a world away from Tenby, Wales where Brennan was the youngest of three born to two school teachers. “It’s as far away from Heathrow Airport as you could possibly get on that island. Everybody knows everybody. My childhood was spent either in the harbor, on the beach or on a boat. My dad was a larger-than-life personality. I got my drive and values of being respectful and interested in other people from him. My mum was definitely the organizer and her work ethic is a thing to behold even now at the age of 84.” Music rather than movies had a big influence on the family. “My sister and niece are music teachers,” states Brennan, who is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. “Those experiences of playing in orchestras and being involved in a team at such an early age, having those social experiences and having that self-motivation to do your part and practice were hugely important. I play the piano every day. It was the first instrument that I learned. I played the violin and viola in the orchestra, which I still play but not well.” Tenby had one cinema that has since closed down. “I was a [Girl Guide] Brownie when my father took us to see Jaws. Bear in mind I was in a coastal town and spent my whole life on a boat. I was terrified to go into the sea or to even have a bath for ages afterwards! That was the first one I remember going to see. Watching movies became a social thing with friends. When there was a good movie on terrestrial TV, we would get together to watch it. When we were able to get VHS tapes, I watched E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Grease over and over again. Then I got into wanting to actually understand more about movies and what I should be watching, like Casablanca and Citizen Kane.” Her career path to the movie industry was paved by accidents. “I did biology and geography at the University of London and specialized more on the ecology side,” remarks Brennan. “I was interested in the history behind human behavior and how that leads to either sustainable land use practices or environmental damage. I had intended to take a year off after university and return to do a Masters or PhD or go into law. The week after I graduated, I went to a local theme park with some friends and fell off of a rollercoaster. It took me about a year to learn how to walk again. In that time my brother, who had been working in broadcast television graphics, had an idea to do some software for film visual effects. He was thinking about setting up Parallax Software and asked me if I would help him. There were only five us in the beginning. I was doing everything from hiring people, payroll, customer support, marketing, public relations, office management to sales. About nine months later, we went to our first tradeshow and Doug Smythe at ILM was looking for the type of paint and roto software that we had created, called Matador. ILM was our first customer and Jurassic Park was the first film that they used it on.
26 • VFXVOICE.COM WINTER 2022
PG 26-32 LYNWEN BRENNAN.indd 26
12/5/21 4:35 PM
