Industrial Light & Magic (
ILM) is an American
motion picture visual effects company that was founded in
May 1975 by
George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company,
Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when Lucas began production of the film
Star Wars. For many years, particularly during the widespread inception of computer graphics in film during the 1980s, ILM was considered the leading industry standard production house for
computer graphics in film; many studios other than Lucasfilm sent scenes to the studio for CGI. It is also the original founder company of the animation studio
Pixar.