Imageworks - Stan Szymanski

Senior Vice President Digital Production and Creative Resources

Sony Pictures Imageworks

Stan Szymanski is Imageworks’ senior vice president of digital production and creative resources. His professional career has included a wide range of visual effects experience on the creative, managerial and administrative sides of the business. This includes stints as a department manager, visual effects producer, production manager, postproduction supervisor and digital artist.

On a daily basis, Szymanski supervises the overall direction and everyday operation of the digital production artists, the largest department at Imageworks. In this role he is responsible for computer graphics supervisors and digital artists of all types. Currently, the artists in Szymanski's department are in production on Hancock, G-Force, and Watchmen along with Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

During his tenure at Imageworks, the company has grown significantly, creating the visual effects for such films as The Polar Express, all three Spider-Man™ movies, Big Fish, The Matrix Reloaded, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Cast Away and more.

Imageworks has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Oscars® for its work on Spider-Man™ 2 and the CG animated short film The ChubbChubbs!. In addition, two of 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 capabilities. Other Oscar® nominated projects include Surf’s Up, 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.

Before joining Imageworks, Szymanski was director of operations for Pacific Ocean Post, where he supervised the digital film division and line produced the digital postproduction of over 200 visual effects shots on Independence Day, winner of the Academy Award® for visual effects in 1996.

Prior to this, Szymanski served in a variety of roles for MetroLight Studios, a CGI production company. He started as digital production manager, quickly expanded his role to include postproduction supervision, and was later named director of production. Szymanski left MetroLight to join film director Brett Leonard (Lawnmower Man) and his company, L2 Communication, as digital postproduction supervisor on Virtuosity.

He started his career in the Los Angeles visual effects industry as a graphics and effects producer for Editel/LA. While there, Szymanski worked on a variety of award-winning broadcast commercial spots for numerous clients. One of these projects, Nike's “The Wall,” is included in the collection of television commercials at the Museum of Modern Art.

Szymanski is also a recognized film scholar and researcher and has presented lectures at MIT and UCLA on film genres and visual story and has served on numerous SIGGRPAH and Visual Effects Society panels. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design from State University College at Buffalo, New York.