Scott Miller, DreamWorks, Technology Fellow, Systems Architecture
A look behind the screen into what it takes to create a feature animation film, from script-to-screen. You'll see an overview of the studio's production process and a deeper dive into the storage, file service, and data management systems used to bring a feature film to life.
Scott Miller, DreamWorks, Technology Fellow, Systems Architecture
Scott Miller is a Technology Fellow for Systems Architecture at DreamWorks Animation, where he guides the technical direction of the studio's infrastructure technology. Scott is focused on operations and implementing long-term strategies for high-performance computing, high-performance storage, and networking. He is responsible for the computational visualization infrastructure required for creating computer-generated 3D animated films.
In his role, Scott provides technology expertise and advanced systems architecture strategy. Working with HP, he implemented the first offsite grid computing for feature animation rendering on Madagascar and Shrek 2, including a wide-area NFS caching approach to enable offsite computing without pipeline or software modifications. This work continues today to empower DreamWorks' use of the cloud for compute, storage and analytics.
In his many years in the entertainment industry, Scott has credits on more than 40 productions including the Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon franchises. Prior to joining DreamWorks, Scott was a Senior Staff Engineer in Visual Effects at Walt Disney Feature Animation. He also worked in the aerospace industry for 11 years as a Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell Aerospace/Hughes Aircraft.
Scott received a B.S. and an M.S. from California State University, Fullerton.
author = {Scott Miller},
title = {Behind the Screen: Feature Animation Production},
year = {2020},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = feb
}