He shepherded together acting stalwarts like Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, experimental film-makers like Adam Beckett (who supervised the effects), and military uniform historian John Mollo; it would otherwise be inconceivable that these people would have all worked on the same project.
Because he's made a career of making both subtle and spectacular effects look effortless, he was an ideal choice to supervise the visual effects in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray on November 30.
Roger Guyett will supervise the visual effects for the new Star Wars film, having previously worked with Abrams on his Star Trek films.
Dennis Gassner returned as production designer, the costume designer was Jany Temime, Alexander Witt was director of the second unit, the stunt co-ordinator was Gary Powell and Chris Corbould supervised the special effects, while the visual effects supervisor was Steve Begg.
Brought in were Stan Winston to create the animatronic dinosaurs, Phil Tippett to create go motion dinosaurs for long shots, Michael Lantieri to supervise the on-set effects, and Dennis Muren of Industrial Light & Magic to do the digital compositing.
Concocted by Robert Rodriguez, a kind of filmmaking Black Box (he wrote, directed, edited, produced, photographed, composed some of the music and supervised the visual effects), "Shorts" feels underwritten and overdressed.
Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich supervised the special effects for the film.
After reading about the film in Wired magazine last year, Brice Parker, a producer at Athena Studios, and his colleague David Tanaka, Bay Area chair of the Visual Effects Society, offered to supervise the film's restoration for free.
The majority of Sleepy Hollows 150 visual effects shots were handled by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), while Kevin Yagher supervised the human and creature effects.
Cooper hired magician James Randi to design effects for the show, and Randi traveled with the tour to supervise and coordinate the effects.
