Wildfire Inc., also credited as Wildfire/L.A. and Wildfire, LA, is a special effects company specialized in the use of ultraviolet light and effects. The company has been providing film, television, and print projects with the equipment and the technology since 1989. The company provided their technology to the Star Trek: The Next Generation fourth season episodes "Identity Crisis", "The Nth Degree", and "The Host" and also to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. R. Green was among the employees who worked on Star Trek.
As explained in Trek: The Unauthorized Story of the Movies (p. 176), "Wildfire produces transparent paints sensitive to ultraviolet light. Different shades achieve a variety of effects. Special lighting equipment is required to photograph the effects. Wildfire provided that as well. The equipment can illuminate the special paints from as far away as sixty feet. Nicholas Meyer learned the possibilities of the effects and suggested they increase the intensity of the ultraviolet light to communicate pain" for the horned alien Kirk defeated in The Undiscovered Country.
The company started in 1989 as a garage-based company in Venice, California, and moved into its own offices in Los Angeles in 1990. The company creates images of black light effects including invisible images, fluorescent images, dual images, day/night transitions, and 3-D images. The company is currently headed by chairman and founder Laurence Friedman and CEO/President John Berardi.
Wildfire has provided its techniques and equipment to entertainment centers, themed architecture projects, night clubs such as the Pallazo in Phoenix and the Studio 54 in Las Vegas, amusement parks including Disneyland in California, Walt Disney World in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, Universal Studios in California, and Warner Bros. Movie World, stage productions such as Grease, Tommy, A Christmas Carol, the Blue Man Group, and Cirque du Soleil, artists including Britney Spears and Chris Brown, and commercials for products such as Ocean Spray, Mercedes Benz, Miller Lite, Honda, and Tombstone Pizza.
The company also worked on the television series The Tonight Show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Beverly Hills, 90210, Boston Legal, House, Bones, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and Without a Trace and films such as The Lawnmower Man (1992), Alien 3 (1992), Embrace of the Vampire (1995), Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), The Game (1997), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Coyote Ugly (2000), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Collateral (2004), The Da Vinci Code (2006), and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009).
Star Trek effects[]
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External links[]
- WildfireFX.com – official site
- Wildfire Inc. at the Internet Movie Database
- Wildfire/L.A. at the Internet Movie Database