- Joe Letteri's pioneering work in visual effects has earned him four Academy® Awards for Best Visual Effects - for Avatar, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and King Kong. He has a long-standing interest in creating compelling, realistic creatures - from Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, to Gollum, the Na'vi in Avatar, and Caesar from the Planet of the Apes franchise. He has developed many techniques that have become industry standards for creating photorealistic digital effects. This includes co-developing the subsurface scattering technique that brought Gollum to life (winning an Academy® Technical Achievement Award), and pushing the development of large-scale virtual production.
Under creative Joe's leadership, Weta Digital has continued to expand and improve these techniques through films like The Hobbit trilogy, The Adventures of Tintin, and The BFG. Joe is currently working with James Cameron on the Avatar sequels.
- IMDb mini biography by: Weta Studios Official Site Bio
- SpouseAbby Joslin Letteri
- Left Industrial Light and Magic for WETA digital to work on The Lord of the Rings.
- Was one of seven valedictorians for his high school class (Center Hight School, Pennsylvania) in 1975. Originally earmarked to be the sole valedictorian, it was determined that the school's grade point average computation method was flawed, and that several other students actually had higher grades. So seven valedictorians were selected. Letteri subsequently delivered a rather interesting valedictory speech.
- Brother, Richard Letteri, is Asst. Professor and Chair of Communications Studies at Furman University.
- Graduated from Center High School (Pennsylvania) in 1975 and of the University of California-Berkeley in 1981.
- Has a daughter called Sofia Letteri.
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