Lucasfilm General Manager, and President of ILM, Lynwen Brennan has spoken with her national newspaper, the Welsh Western Mail, about her role at Lucasfilm, woman in tech, and what the future holds for a female directing Star Wars.
Lynwen, who has worked for the ground-breaking and blockbuster-producing company for almost 20 years seeing the likes of Star Wars spin-offs and sequels created, Marvel’s superhero universe brought to life and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park resurrected, wants more girls to know that the world of visual effects, film engineering and many other roles behind the camera are not just for computer and maths whizzes.
“We’ve got a long way to go we’re still nowhere near where we need to be,” said the mother-of-one whose first foray into the world of visual effects was helping her brother set up Parallax Visual Effects in the 1990s, one of the first films they worked on being Jurassic Park.
Lynwen said: “At Lucasfilm there’s always been a great balance in the leadership and one of my favourite things to say is that I was promoted when I was on maternity leave. I felt supported the minute I walked through the door.
“Kathy’s [Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm’s president] leadership team has always been 50% women because they happen to be the best at their job. We haven’t had a quota at that leadership stage, however we are getting a lot more pragmatic and specific about not accepting the level we have regarding women in visual effects and technology.
“At the moment 75% of the people in visual effects are men and that’s unacceptable. Our ratio at ILM is better than that, but it’s still not enough.”
