The SOFA Industry Advisory Council consists of SOFA alumni and industry friends who donate their time and effort to advising our faculty, staff and students on everything from curriculum content to technology, and facilitate for SOFA important industry connections.
Mark Henry
Mark has over 24 years in the industry. He works for Kodak and is a '77 alumnus of RIT's Biomedical Photographic Communication program and '83 MS graduate in Instructional Technology. He has been on staff at RIT, and worked on major projects like the "Snow White" restoration at Kodak. Today he is the Director of Entertainment Standards for Kodak Entertainment Imaging and works closely with SMPTE, ICC and ATSC.
Mike Krummhoefener
After graduating from RIT, Mike worked as a Project Engineer for Bausch & Lomb and then opened Hoefner Digital Studios, the first digital studio in Rochester to offer state-of-the-art 3D animation and visual effects.
In 1996, he was approached by PIXAR Animation Studios and was offered a position as Feature Technical Director and Lead Sculptor. He's been at PIXAR ever since contributing to all of the Academy Award winning (and nominated) films
as a Technical Director, digital artist and senior character sculptor, helping to create many of the Pixar characters- from Bullseye and Jessie from Toy Story 2, to Mater, Red and Sarge in CARS.
In February 2007, Mike received the highest honor from the Visual Effects Society in Hollywood for his character work on CARS as "Outstanding Animated Character in a Motion Picture".
Amotz Zakai
Amotz recently became a partner at Echo Lake Productions where he manages writers and directors and produces motion pictures. Echo Lake produced AWAY FROM HER nominated this year for two Oscars. Last year the company produced WATER, which was nominated for an Oscar and the year before, Echo Lake produced TSOTSI which won the Best Foreign Oscar Award. He lives with his wife and daughter in Los Angeles.
Kurt Nellis
After graduating with his BFA in 1998 Kurt worked as a multimedia producer, editor, and onset grip/electrician in Boston. In 2000 he returned to RIT to earn his MFA and upon graduating went west to work in the special effects industry. His credits include, background animator/layout artist on Matrix Revolutions at ESC, Layout Artist on Star Wars: Episode III and XXX2 at Industrial Light and Magic, Pre-visualization artist on Beowulf at Iceblink (now Image Movers), Layout/Matchmover on King Kong at Weta, and Layout artist for Clone Wars animated series for Lucas
Animation. He is currently working as a Cinematics Designer at Bungie (recently Halo 3) on an unnamed project.
Jane Potenzo
Jane is a Vice President with HBO's Original Programming, Strategy and Planning department. Her primary focus is overseeing the development of programming related concepts, across a variety of forms and formats, as they relate to series, film and documentary production. Additionally she functions as liaison between program production and the marketing, promotion and scheduling groups - managing cross-platform usage and the creation of original scripted content.
Jane began her career in the '70s at WIVB, Buffalo's CBS affiliate and in the late 80's began work for the Nickelodeon Cable Network, heading their on-air promotion efforts. In addition to building brand awareness for Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, Jane oversaw the launch of the Nick Jr and Nick Toons brands as well as the development of TV Land.
In the mid 90's Jane joined Lee Hunt Associates and as Executive Director of Strategy and Editorial she led numerous banding and design jobs, including the re-branding of USA Network and the re-launch of the Disney Channel. With Lee Hunt Associates acquisition by Razorfish, Jane transitioned into the role of Executive Producer - specializing in the field of media and entertainment. While with Razorfish she lead design and strategy work for PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcast, Scholastic, Oxygen, and creation of the Peabody Award winning Band of Brothers web site for HBO.
Steve Wright
Steve is a Senior Compositor, 2D Technical Director and a senior industry veteran in visual effects compositing with over 60 film credits such as Blade: Trinity, Ray, Solaris, Traffic, U-571, Air Force One and many, many more. Starting out in 3D animation at Robert Abel's and Associates, he opened his own VFX studio in Hollywood for seven years before joining Kodak's Cinesite digital imaging studio. Steve travels around the world conducting VFX compositing training for major visual effects facilities, produces training programs, conducts classes and workshops, and published two books on this fascinating subject.
Bryan H. Shepard
Emmy award winning director of photography, Bryan is a 1989 graduate of RIT with over 20 years of professional broadcast television experience as a director of photography and camera operator. He was instrumental in unionizing the entire Los Angeles sports local with the International Photographers Guild. As owner of EagleVision Entertainment Corporation, he produces entertainment and sports television for all the major U.S. networks and studios as well as broadcast outlets from more than five countries worldwide. He helped launch NBC's Access Hollywood, which he continues to service today. He also has more than 50 health and fitness titles to his credit, eight of which are Telly Award winners. In 2003, Bryan began RIT-IA to create a community for all RIT industry alumni in the greater Los Angeles area.
John Dowdell
John pursued pioneering efforts in color grading of feature films. He has supervised feature mastering for Woody Allen, Robert Altman, the Coen Brothers, Jim Jarmusch, James Ivory, Ang Lee, Mira Nair, Ken Burns, Julian Schnabel, John Sayles and many, many more. John started with EUE Screen Gems before he founded, in 1979, the Tape House Editorial Company in New York. He left Tape House in 2003 to be a VP at Technicolor and is now with Goldcrest Post. John is often asked to present at John is one of the leading colorists in the industry. After leaving RIT in 1973 conferences, has published many articles and often consults on technology development.
Scott Saldinger
Scott has worked in broadcast television for 15 years. For his first five years he worked in news production and then became the sales manager for KPXL26 in San Antonio Texas. He went on to work for CBS 47 (Clear Channel Communications) in Fresno California and is currently an account executive for FOX4 in Dallas. Scott also owns his own photography company and is founder and chair of MS150 Cruisin, a coast bike tour for the Northern California Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Chris Dumont
Chris is director, advanced development and systems engineering for entertainment imaging, Systems Technology Division with the Eastman Kodak Co. He has worked at Kodak for 21 years and in motion picture systems studies for the past 19 years, developing new negative, intermediate, hybrid and digital products for use in the motion picture industry. His most recent contributions have been in the systems design of the new Kodak Color Management systems. Chris has authored and presented at numerous SMPTE conferences. He was a 2003 and 2004 SMPTE Journal Award co-recipient. He holds nine patents in the motion picture imaging science field for Kodak. He has a BS in imaging science and an MS in analytical chemistry, both from RIT, and is a SMPTE Fellow.
Peter Postma
Peter is the US Product Manager for Filmlight. He is a Film and Animation alumnus of RIT '01 and also worked for Kodak for 5 years in the area of color managed workflows.
Margaret Campbell
Meg Campbell graduated from RIT in 2006 with a focus on producing. During her time at RIT, she produced senior thesis films in her sophomore year and became executive producer of Riot TV.
Meg worked to bring RIOT TV to the digital age and make the show a better showcase of all the film work produced at RIT. From RIT Meg moved to Los Angeles for an internship at Fox Searchlight, which turned into a job in the creative marketing department with a focus on the web/online front. She combined her HTML and editing skills to help shoot, edit, and post creative marketing videos for such films as: Little Miss Sunshine, Last King of Scotland, Juno, The Darjeeling Limited and others.??After Fox Searchlight, Meg had a brief stint in the Editor's Guild working for 20th Century Fox's Digital Department. This gave way to her current position in Cupertino where she works for iTunes Movies at Apple. Meg currently works with Lionsgate, MGM, Disney, Paramount, Viacomm, Pixar, and ABC to ensure their content goes live on the iTunes Store.??In her spare time Meg helps out friends with their podcasts (totallyradshow.com and works on her own website/podcast girlhack.com
Mitch Bogdanowicz
Mitch is currently the Executive V.P. of Imaging Science at Post Logic Studios in Hollywood. He also consults for the motion picture industry as MJB Consulting LLC.
His work centers on systems modeling, photographic simulation, computer algorithms, color perception, color reproduction and basic photographic system problem solving. Mitch has created systems for 3DLut genesis and applications for post production. He has developed algorithms for numerous digital camera applications. When working for Kodak, Mitch designed the Kodak Look Management System (KLMS) for previsualization in a motion picture system and the heart of the Kodak Display Manager (KDM) as well as the Kodak Preview System. Mitch has over 20 US patents and numerous other foreign patents in Color Science and Photographic processes with the vast majority related to the Motion Picture Industry.
Throughout the years Mitch has received honors such as:
- Two Technical Achievement Awards from the Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Fellow of the SMPTE
- 2000 Kalmus Gold Medal Award
- Associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers