To celebrate Women’s History Month, Lucasfilm.com spotlights company’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, Lynwen Brennan, following a path that began in Wales.
Lynwen Brennan’s introduction to the visual effects industry came, literally, by accident. Raised in the coastal town Tenby, Wales, as the daughter of two school teachers, the now executive vice president and general manager of Lucasfilm grew up loving music and movies, but could not have fathomed she’d find a path into the film industry half a world away in California.
Then tragedy — which would lead to opportunity — arrived. Brennan had just graduated from the University of London with a degree in geography and biology, when she fell off a bobsled-style rollercoaster. She was so badly injured that the doctors anticipated amputating her foot; hearing the dire prognosis, her mother took action. “My mother spent 12 hours straight massaging my leg, determined to get a pulse in my foot,” Brennan tells Lucasfilm.com. When the physicians arrived to wheel Brennan to the operating room, her mother begged them to perform another ultrasound and check again. “And they heard a very, very faint pulse,” Brennan says. Those same doctors were able to save the limb, but the story would have ended quite differently if not for her mother’s insistence and proactive problem solving. “I think that was a great example of not taking ‘no’ for an answer and just so much determination and strength of will,” Brennan says. The ordeal “definitely built resilience in me and taught me that sometimes bad situations can lead to something unexpectedly good. I also recognize how lucky I have been.”
Brennan comes from a long line of determined Welsh women, including her grandmother. “We’re not from money. My grandmother was a scullery maid in a big house and she was determined that her only child, my mum, would get to go to the grammar school, which up until then had really been focused on boys,” she says. “So, my mum ended up being the very first person in our family to go on to further education.”
Had the accident not-upended her life, Brennan was on-track to follow her mother’s path to a more typical vocation, perhaps in education or law. However, in the year it took for her to relearn how to walk, her brother was serendipitously launching his own special effects software start up.
Fear, love, excitement
Brennan grew up in awe of the movie industry. She can still recall going to see her first movie in theaters, the blockbuster hit Jaws, in her Brownie uniform. The film left her both terrified and entranced by the power of the screen. “It definitely was an awakening of how all-encompassing those stories can be, and how they can really make you feel something, whether that be fear or love or excitement,” Brennan says. “It began a lifelong fascination with film and storytelling but never occurred to me that it was something I could be a part of.”
While Brennan recovered from her accident, her brother was creating a company called Parallax and a digital paint software called Matador, and asked her to join him. Brennan intended for it to be a detour; instead, it was a launching pad, and she’s now spent nearly 25 years with ILM and Lucasfilm. “I fell in love with it almost immediately,” she says. “In a startup, you’re a part of a really small, scrappy team, and you’re doing something that seems impossible and you’re working on something that has never been done before.”
And one of the small firm’s first clients was George Lucas’ own Industrial Light & Magic, which was working on Jurassic Park, the groundbreaking film that would bring dinosaurs back from extinction and change the future of visual effects with computer-generated imagery. For Brennan, watching a brachiosaurus lumber onto screen reaffirmed her decision. “I remember just knowing from that moment, ‘Oh, I’m not going back to university. I am staying in this industry. I have no idea how, but I’m going to work at ILM one day.’”
“Of course we can”
To quote Brennan’s mother, “Everything happens for a reason.”
In the late 1990s, Brennan got a call about an entry-level position at ILM, working on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. At the time, she once again thought the foray and move to northern California would be a short-term stop over. Instead, she stayed and worked her way up the ranks within ILM, eventually becoming president while on maternity leave in 2008. In 2015, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy tapped Brennan to serve as general manager of Lucasfilm and oversee all day-to-day operations of not only ILM, but all the Lucasfilm businesses. In her time with Lucasfilm and ILM, Brennan has had a hand in countless innovations that included the launch of the company’s immersive entertainment division, and the creation of Stagecraft, the technological marvel that immerses the cast and crew of The Mandalorian and other productions in a cutting-edge wraparound LED screen environment, allowing for planet-hopping escapades filmed in a single real-world location. She oversaw the expansion of ILM from a small northern California operation to a global entity, with studios in Singapore, Vancouver, London, Sydney, and most recently Mumbai. And day-to-day, Brennan meets with every department across the franchise, from budgeting and finance to publishing, games, and franchise strategy.
“One of the things I love about my job is that every single day is different and, in each day, the unexpected always makes an appearance and I always learn something new,” Brennan says. “I could be talking with ILM about their global expansion or I could be meeting with Skysound about the advancements they are making in sound technology, or with our games team in a greenlight meeting for an upcoming console game or with our franchise creative team about our upcoming Young Jedi Adventures series and the accompanying toy lines for the youngest Star Wars fans. I can genuinely say that I get to work with the best teams in the business who I learn from every day — but most importantly they are wonderful colleagues who are drawn to Lucasfilm because they are fans themselves and every single team is looking at what they do through the eyes of the fans.
“Many of us were lucky enough to work with George [Lucas] and we take the responsibility of carrying forward this incredible galaxy he imagined very seriously,” she continues. “At the same time, it is important to not be too reverent that you become afraid to make some bold choices and also be afraid to have fun. We get to make Star Wars. That’s a pretty joyous thing!”
Brennan’s last 10 years have been spent working alongside Kennedy on strategic planning and every aspect of business operations. They are two of the top executives at a company where more than 50 percent of the leadership team are women, including Carrie Beck, executive vice president of Lucasfilm development & production streaming, Momita SenGupta, the executive vice president of physical production, Pippa Anderson, the senior vice president of post production and Janet Lewin the SVP Lucasfilm VFX and GM of ILM, among others.
“I’m incredibly lucky to work for Kathy. She is so often described as a force of nature, and it is just so very apt for her,” Brennan says with a laugh. “I feel like I naturally gravitate to women who have that determination, have that energy, but also have an empathy and are willing to really support the people around them.” Brennan has found that to be true of Kennedy as well as former ILM president Chrissie England and former vice president in animation Gail Curry. “I’m really lucky to have had such amazing colleagues,” Brennan says. “Kathy is such a fearless leader that she’s always pushing us to do our best work.”
Read the article in full at the link below.
