Old Bawn past pupil Richard is reaching for ultimate stars
Richard Baneham

Old Bawn past pupil Richard is reaching for ultimate stars

TALLAGHT will be well represented at the 95th Academy Awards after Richard Baneham was nominated for an Oscar, for the second time in his career, for his work on the Avatar franchise.

Baneham has been nominated alongside Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett in the Best Visual Effects category for massive box-office hit, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The hugely anticipated Avatar sequel brought audiences back to the world of Pandora, which is something Baneham was responsible for as Executive Producer and Lead Visual Effects Supervisor.

Originally from Tallaght, Baneham is a past pupil of Old Bawn Community School and studied at Ballyfermot College of Further Education.

Following the 53-year-old’s nomination, Old Bawn CS tweeted: “Congratulations to Richard Baneham on his Oscar nomination. Past pupils reaching for the ultimate stars!”

In 1994, Baneham got his start in the industry as a special effects inbetweener and assistant animator on Thumbelina and The Swan Princess, before serving as an animator for Space Jam starring Michael Jordan.

He made the transition to computer generated graphic while working on the cult-classic film, The Iron Giant in 1999.

Perhaps his most famous work was when Richard began working with WETA Digital and was responsible for bringing Golem to life in the Peter Jackson’s two sequels to The Lord of the Rings.

In the mid-2000s, Richard began working with James Cameron on his quest to finally bring his Avatar film to the big screen.

Massive box-office hit Avatar: The Way of Water

In doing so, Richard, who was an animation supervisor for the first film, and a crew of animators created the totally digital world of Pandora and its blue inhabitants, known as N’avi.

The technology that the crew developed was groundbreaking in the visual effects industry and audiences lapped it up, with Avatar becoming the highest grossing film of all-time following its 2009 release.

And Baneham also lapped it up on the awards circuit, achieving the highly-coveted Oscar in 2010.

With the sequel to Avater taking to the sea, the team had to develop new motion-capture technology to film actors underwater and it is making waves on the awards track once again.

Richard and co are up against tough competition in the Academy Awards’ visual effects category, rivalling The Batman, Black Panther, Top Gun: Maverick and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Avatar: The Way of Water, has also been nominated in the Best Picture, Production Design, and Sound categories in the 95th Academy Awards, which is scheduled for March 12 in Hollywood.

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