Imageworks - Barry Weiss

Senior Vice President of Animation Production and Artist Development

Sony Pictures Imageworks

Barry S. Weiss is Senior Vice President of Animation Production for Sony Pictures Imageworks. Weiss is a widely respected animation producer and administrator with extensive experience in both feature film and television animation production. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Short Subject and Feature Animation branch Executive Committee. Weiss also serves on the Academy’s Science and Technology Council as the vice chair of the Councils’ Public Programming and Education Committee and chairs the Council’s Internship Program.

At Sony Pictures Imageworks, Weiss is responsible for the development and growth of the studio’s Digital Character Group, which made vital contributions to the Academy Award®-winning Spider-Man™ 2 and created the Oscar®-nominated digital character animation for the title character of Stuart Little. Weiss also served the company as Executive in Charge of Animation for the 2003 Academy Award® winning animated short The ChubbChubbs!™, Imageworks’ first original CG animated project.

He and his group also participated in Imageworks’ most highly regarded projects, the all-CG animated feature Monster House and Superman Returns were nominated for Academy Awards® in the Best Animated Feature and Outstanding Achievement in Visual Effects respectively in 2007. With these two nominations, Imageworks became the first studio to be recognized in the same year in these distinct areas, an indication of the diversity and quality of the company’s digital character creation capabilities. Other Oscar® nominated projects include The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Spider-Man™, Hollow Man, Stuart Little and Starship Troopers, for a total of nine nominations.

Having recently completed the internationally successful Spider-Man™ 3, artists in Weiss’ group currently are in production on I Am Legend, Hancock, G-Force, Watchmen and Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, which also is in 3D stereoscopic production simultaneously, along with Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Other animation projects during Weiss’ tenure include work on The Polar Express (which won the prestigious Australian Effects and Animation Festival Award for Best Animated Feature Film), Big Fish, The Matrix Reloaded, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Cast Away and many more. Imageworks also created new characters for Stuart Little 2, winner of the VES Award (Visual Effects Society) for Best Character Animation in an Animated Film.

Prior to joining Imageworks, Weiss was a producer with Turner Feature Animation. He planned and built the company’s animation facilities, supervised the company’s production facilities and oversaw budgeting and scheduling for more than 200 artists and other employees. While at Turner, his credits included co-producing Cats Don’t Dance, winner of the 1997 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, and served in the same capacity on the Turner/Twentieth Century Fox release of The Pagemaster. Weiss began his career at Hanna-Barbera Productions where he managed production accounting for more than 200 hours of television programming, as well as features and direct to video projects.

Widely regarded as an expert in digital character creation, Weiss has lectured at prestigious film, animation and professional schools all over the world, including University of Southern California, Northwestern University, The Kellogg School of Business & Management and the Ringling School of Art and Design. He also produces and hosts lectures at the Motion Picture Academy, most notably “The Animated Performance Part 2: Animation Invades Live Action.” In addition, Weiss has been a featured speaker in the Comparative Media Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and lectured at international animation festivals in Annecy, France, SIGGRAPH, and the World Animation Celebration.

Weiss received his undergraduate degree in television and film at Northwestern University and his master’s degree in film from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of a Chicago Area Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in children’s programming, as producer of “The Magic Door.”