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{{Actor Infobox
 
{{Actor Infobox
 
| name = Steven Lisberger
 
| name = Steven Lisberger
| image = [[Image:Steve.png|300px]]
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| image = [[File:Lisberger_2010.jpg|300px]]
 
|birthname=Steven M. Lisberger
 
|birthname=Steven M. Lisberger
 
|gender=Male
 
|gender=Male
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===Personal Life===
 
===Personal Life===
Lisberger is married to Peggy Flook Lisberger, an attorney and Vice President of Business Affairs at MarVista Entertainment. They have a son named Carl.
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Lisberger is married to Peggy Flook Lisberger, an attorney and Vice President of Business Affairs at MarVista Entertainment. They have a son named Carl.
   
 
==Filmography==
 
==Filmography==
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<center><gallery>
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File:Steve.png|Steven Lisberger in "Visual Futurist", a documentary about [[Syd Mead]].
 
File:Lisberger_cameo.jpg|Lisberger's cameo in ''Tron''
 
File:Lisberger_cameo.jpg|Lisberger's cameo in ''Tron''
 
File:Lisberger_on_set.jpg|Steven Lisberger with [[Barnard Hughes]], [[Bruce Boxleitner]] and [[Cindy Morgan]].
 
File:Lisberger_on_set.jpg|Steven Lisberger with [[Barnard Hughes]], [[Bruce Boxleitner]] and [[Cindy Morgan]].
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[[Category:People]]
 
[[Category:People]]
 
[[Category:Crew]]
 
[[Category:Crew]]
[[Category:Users]]
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[[Category:Tron Legacy Crew]]
[[Category:Male Users]]
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[[Category:Tron Crew]]

Revision as of 04:19, 28 September 2010

RWbg1L This article is written from a
Real World perspective.
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[[File:Lisberger 2010|250px]]
Steven Lisberger
Birthname Steven M. Lisberger
Gender Male
Date of birth April 24, 1951
Place of birth New York City, New York, USA
[[File:Lisberger82|250px]]
[Source]


Steven Lisberger (born April 24, 1951 in New York City, New York) is the creator, co-writer and director of the movie, Tron. He also worked on the film's unique special effects, especially the trademark "glowing circuitry" of Tron. He is currently working on two movie projects including the long-awaited Tron Sequel.

Biography

Beginnings in Animation

Lisberger attended the Hill School of Pottstown, Pennsylvania for five years and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Steven Lisberger's beginnings in animation started in 1973, with a short film that he directed and animated with fellow animator, Eric Ladd, called Cosmic Cartoon. The cartoon itself is very psychedelic and features many different animation techniques.

A couple of years later, Lisberger founded the animation studio, Lisberger Studios in Boston, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, very few animators lived on the East Coast of the United States and work was hard to find, thus the animation studio had very few employees. Lisberger and his business partner Donald Kushner decided to move Lisberger Studios to the West Coast in 1977 in order to get more work and employees. It was during this time that Lisberger saw video games for the first time. He was immediately fascinated by them and wanted to do a film incorporating them. According to Lisberger, "I realized that there were these techniques that would be very suitable for bringing video games and computer visuals to the screen. And that was the moment that the whole concept flashed across my mind." He was frustrated by the clique-ish nature of computers and video games and wanted to create a film that would open this world up to everyone. The Lisberger Studios' logo featured a character created completely out of light, by using backlit animation. Lisberger named the character, "Tron" after the word, "electronic".

After doing several commercials and animations segments for children's shows like Sesame Street, NBC commissioned Lisberger Studios to make an animated made-for-tv movie to be shown along with the network's 1980 winter and summer Olympics coverage. That movie would be, Animalympics. However, only the part of the movie made it to the small screen, as the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan caused President Jimmy Carter to boycott the Moscow Summer Olympics. As America stayed away, NBC canceled its Olympic coverage, and Lisberger's hour-long companion special along with it. After this, Lisberger decided to put all of the focus onto making Tron. (Animalympics would eventually be released on cable television by Lorimar-Telepictures and later by Warner Brothers.)

Making Tron

Originally, Tron was conceived to be predominantly an animated film with live-action sequences acting as book ends. The rest would involve a combination of computer generated visuals and back-lit animation. Lisberger planned to finance the movie independently by approaching several computer companies but had little success. However, one company, Information International, Inc., was receptive. He met with Richard Taylor, a representative, and they began talking about using live-action photography with back-lit animation in such a way that it could be integrated with computer graphics. At this point, Lisberger already had a script written and the film entirely storyboarded with some computer animation tests completed. He had spent approximately $300,000 developing Tron and had also secured $4-5 million in private backing before reaching a standstill. Lisberger and Kushner decided to take the idea to Disney, which was interested in producing more daring productions at the time. However, Disney executives were uncertain about giving $10-12 million to a first-time producer and director using techniques that, in most cases, had never been attempted.

The studio agreed to finance a test reel which involved a flying disc champion throwing a rough prototype of the discs used in the film. It was a chance to mix live-action footage with back-lit animation and computer generated visuals. It impressed the executives at Disney and they agreed to back the film. The script was subsequently re-written and re-storyboarded with the studio's input.

Personal Life

Lisberger is married to Peggy Flook Lisberger, an attorney and Vice President of Business Affairs at MarVista Entertainment. They have a son named Carl.

Filmography

  • Animalympics (1980)
  • Tron (1982)
  • Hot Pursuit (1987)
  • Slipstream (1989)
  • Tron 2.0 (2003) (Special Thanks)
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II (2006) (Special Thanks)
  • Soul Code (2009)
  • Tron Legacy (2010) (Writer/Executive Producer)

Gallery