Ray Feeney, president and founder of RFX Inc, has had a distinguished career in the entertainment industry, and has been celebrated for his pioneering contributions to visual effects and digital technology. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology and began his career at Robert Abel & Associates, where in 1976, he helped develop one of the first motion control camera systems. This innovative work earned him an Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement in 1988.
Feeney’s groundbreaking work continued, leading to a second Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in 1991 for the Solitaire Image Recorder. In 1994, he received two more Scientific and Engineering Academy Awards: one for developing film input scanners and another for the Cinefusion bluescreen extraction technology. Recognized for his pioneering efforts to improve visual effects, he was awarded the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in 2001.
In 2007, Feeney was honored with the Gordon E. Sawyer Oscar® by the Academy, and in 2008, he received the Visual Effects Society Founder’s Award. His contributions to the industry were further acknowledged in 2012 when he was inducted as a Visual Effects Society fellow. That same year, he accepted an Engineering Emmy on behalf of the Academy for the ACES project, which he co-chaired.
Feeney founded RFX in 1978 to provide leading-edge scientific and engineering solutions for the film industry. Through RFX, Feeney has helped to pioneer and implement numerous new technologies, many of which have become industry standard techniques and are currently in use to produce visual effects for films, television shows and commercials. In the mid-1980’s RFX was one of the first resellers of Silicon Graphics computer systems, establishing itself as the entertainment industry’s leading independent systems integrator. RFX’s clientele includes top film studios, post-production facilities, game development studios, and special effects houses.
In 1995, Feeney launched Silicon Grail to advance software development in the motion picture industry. Silicon Grail’s RAYZ software addressed the need for an efficient digital compositing tool in post-production. In 2002, Apple Computer acquired the technologies belonging to Silicon Grail.
Ray Feeney’s contributions to the industry have continued to be widely recognized. In 2008, he was named a Caltech Distinguished Alumnus and elected a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). He has frequently served on the executive board of the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy and as the chair of the SciTech Council of the Motion Picture Academy. With a career spanning numerous decades, Feeney has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of modern visual effects through his innovative work and leadership.