(written from a Production point of view)
John Phillip Goodson (born February 1963; age 61) is a studio model maker and digital modeling artist for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) who worked on three prime universe and two alternate universe Star Trek films. He was first a model maker on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and then became the model supervisor for Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact. As ILM's model project supervisor on First Contact, Goodson supervised the creation of the ten-foot physical model of the USS Enterprise-E that was used in conjunction with a CGI version.
Goodson was interviewed for the special feature "Industrial Light & Magic: The Next Generation" on the 2009 DVD release of First Contact.
In 2009, Goodson became one – having switched around 2004 from making models the traditional way, to constructing them digitally – of the relatively few ILM veterans, still employed at the company at that time, to work on the re-imagined alternate universe Star Trek film franchise, when he worked firstly on the digital models and simulations for the 2009 film Star Trek, and subsequently on the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness as digital artist. His work on the latter earned him a VES Award nomination, his first for Star Trek.
In November 2014 Goodson became again reacquainted with the Star Trek franchise when he was invited to become a part as consultant of a team of experts – including a host of former Star Trek alumni – to oversee a new restoration of the original eleven-foot Enterprise studio model, residing at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), for the franchise's 50th anniversary. [1] Having accepted the prestigious assignment, Goodson was flown in in May 2015 for the team's first meeting on 13 May. [2]
Career outside Star Trek
After graduating in 1988 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Product Design from the North Carolina State School of Design, John Goodson landed his first job at ILM as model maker the same year, and has, essentially, never left. His first film project with ILM was Ghostbusters II in 1989, followed by Back to the Future Part II that same year. His subsequent film credits include Die Hard 2 (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Mission: Impossible (1996), Starship Troopers (1997), X-Men (2000), the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). He was also a concept designer on 1999's Star Trek parody Galaxy Quest and did uncredited work for films like Pearl Harbor (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2003). In addition, Goodson did model work for all three of George Lucas' highly-successful Star Wars prequels. For the first two – Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) and Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) – he was credited as a concept model maker; for the last, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, he was a digital artist.
In 2007, Goodson made his one and only (short) foray outside ILM, to work as a concept modelmaker/digital artist at ImageMovers Digital, but returned to ILM within a year in May 2008. Since then he worked on the more recent projects, besides Star Trek, Iron Man 2 (2010, for which he received his first award nomination, the VES Award in the category "Outstanding Models in a Feature Motion Picture", though he had ironically not received an official credit), Hugo (2011, on loan to Matte World, as he was responsible for supervising the digital matte paintings used in that feature), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011, earning him his second VES Award nomination in the same category, again ironically uncredited), Red Tails, Battleship (both 2012), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014, earning him his fourth VES Award nomination, yet again not won), and Star Wars: Rogue One (2016), the first spin-off film of the revitalized Star Wars film franchise.
Star Trek credits
- Star Trek films
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – Model Maker
- Star Trek Generations – Model Supervisor
- Star Trek: First Contact – Model Project Supervisor
- Star Trek – Digital Models and Simulations
- Star Trek Into Darkness – Digital Artist
VES Award
John Goodson has received the following he Visual Effects Society Award nomination for his work on Star Trek in the category Outstanding Models in a Feature Motion Picture,
- 2014 VES Award nomination for Star Trek Into Darkness, shared with Bruce Holcomb, Ron Woodall, and Thomas Fejes
Star Trek interview
- "Starfleet Engineer", Sci-fi & fantasy modeller, Volume 23, October 2011, pp. 32-42