Rob Legato

Rob Legato is at the forefront of leveraging virtual production to create cutting-edge movies and commercials.    He most recently oversaw and created the virtual production pipeline for Disney’s The Lion King with Jon Favreau.    Rob is working in both Unreal and Unity game engines to create the next generation of live-action content; leveraging the power of gaming engines, while maintaining the visual and storytelling ethos of traditional filmmaking.

Rob has helped create visual illusions for some of the most well known films of all time – thinking deeply both about vfx’s expanding tech power and the truly new creative processes that can result. Legato won his first Oscar in 1998 for his work on James Cameron’s Titanic, after several years in television supervising effects on two Star Trek series. His 2012 Oscar win for Hugo, the 3D film about a boy who lives alone in a Paris train station, underscores his partnership with Martin Scorsese. Rob continued pushing the creative and technical boundaries with James Cameron on Avatar, the game-changing feature film and blockbuster.

He’s fascinated with the nimble new workflows made possible with digital tools. He designed the “virtual cinematography pipeline” that let James Cameron shoot Avatar like a feature film, not a software project.