Academy Award Winners Include a Barron Park Resident and a Gunn High Alum

.. by Greta Gize Olbrich

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the recipients of the Scientific and Technical Achievements earlier in January, and two of the winners have connections to Palo Alto. Lawrence Kesteloot (San Francisco), Drew Olbrich (Palo Alto – Barron Park Resident), and Daniel Wexler (Soda Springs – Gunn High graduate) will receive an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for their creation of the Light system for computer graphics lighting at PDI/DreamWorks.  Kesteloot, Olbrich, andWexler will be honored for their achievement in filmmaking  at the annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation in Beverly Hills on February 9, two weeks prior to the televised Academy Awards.

Kesteloot, Olbrich, and Wexler worked at PDI/DreamWorks for a number of years when the office was located on Park Ave. in Palo Alto, near the Fry’s building, before its move to Redwood City off Seaport Blvd. PDI/DreamWorks’ Light system has been used to make several of DreamWorks’ most successful films such as the Shrek and Madagascar series. The first Shrek movie won the Academy Award for Best Animated Picture in 2002. One of Palo Alto’s Bol Park Donkeys was used as model for the donkey character, which was voiced by Eddie Murphy. Bol Park is right around the corner from Barron Park School, where Drew Olbrich’s children attend school.

More about the Light System:

The Light System is virtually unchanged from its original incarnation over 15 years ago, and is still in continuous use due to its emphasis on interactive responsiveness, final–quality interactive render preview, scalable architecture and powerful user–configurable spreadsheet interface.

Unlike other Academy Awards, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have been developed and introduced during 2012. Rather, the achievements must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures.

For more information, please see:

http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2013/20130103.html