Berney joins DDMG from Sony Pictures Imageworks where he spent 17 years, four of those leading teams at the company’s New Mexico studio where he also lead the daily studio operations. He has worked as visual effects supervisor for many years, credited on more than 20 feature films including ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’, which earned him an Academy Award nomination, ‘Green Lantern’, ‘I Am Legend’, the IMAX version of ‘The Polar Express’, ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’, ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’,’ The Matrix Reloaded’, ‘The Matrix Revolutions’ and others.

Jim said, “The emphasis on bringing education and production together, the goal to make this studio a place that people can build their careers and lives around is what drew me here. I’m looking forward to partnering with Digital Domain studios in California and Vancouver on big studio films, with the feature animation teams here, and helping to take the art and technology of this studio into areas beyond entertainment.”

Prior to Imageworks, Berney was a research technical director and software developer at MetroLight. Berney began his career working for DARPA in a software engineering consortium, and he has developed rendering tools, visual effects lighting pipelines, lighting and flocking software and other technologies. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science and Economics from the University of California, Irvine.  www.ddmg.co