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Steven Lisberger
Steve
Steven Lisberger in Syd Mead's documentary
Born: April 24, 1951 in New York, N.Y., USA
Active: 1973-active
Notable works: Tron, Animalympics


Steven Lisberger (born April 24, 1951) 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.

Before Tron

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 an animation studio 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. 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. Lisberger and his business partner Donald Kushner moved to the West Coast in 1977 and set up an animation studio, Lisberger Studios to develop Tron. 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".

Lisberger82

Steven Lisberger being interviewed in 1982.

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.

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.

Lisbergertron

The Lisberger Studios logo featured a character created with "light" (backlit animation). This character was named, "Tron" and would form the basis for Tron and the circuitry effects.

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.

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