User:Steve Grumette

Steve Grumette is a graduate of UCLA, from which he received a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering and a Master's Degree in Physics. After spending two years working in the aerospace industry, Steve returned to the UCLA motion picture department to study filmmaking.

In the aftermath of the wave of inner city riots that took place in the late 1960s, Steve was hired by the Brooks Foundation, operating under a grant from the Kettering Foundation, to guide a group of teenage high school dropouts from South Central Los Angeles through the production of a 45 minute film based on a screenplay one of teenagers had written. The film that resulted from this process received a highly favorable, full-page review in Newsweek Magazine.

Later that year, Steve joined the staff of the Cally Curtis Company, a small film production company, as editor and cameraman. In that capacity, he edited a series of 30 science education films for Harper and Row, several of which he also directed and photographed.

In 1969, Steve and four other people, collaborated on the production of a 15-minute documentary called "The Magic Machines," a whimsical look at the work and life of kinetic sculptor Robert Gilbert. This film, on which Steve served as editor and co-director/cameraman, was nominated for two Academy Awards: "Best Short Documentary" and "Best Live Action Short Subject," winning the latter award and earning a place in film history as one of the only two short films ever to receive Academy Award nominations in two different categories. The film was also awarded a special prize at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.

Over the next few years, Steve produced several other short films on which he also functioned as director, cameraman and editor. Most notable among these was "An Afternoon with Gregor Piatigorsky," a highly acclaimed documentary on the world-famous cellist, and "Bright Tempest: The Art of Jesse Allen", a cinematic study of a well-known San Francisco painter. The latter film went on to win twelve major film festival awards, including a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival, a Gold Medal at the Atlanta Film Festival, a Gold Cindy Award at the IFPA Film Festival, and a CINE Golden Eagle.

In the mid 1970s, Steve became interested in the newly-emerging technology of the personal computer, and soon started looking for ways to utilize this powerful new tool as an adjunct to filmmaking. His first opportunity to do so came in 1982 in the form of an offer from MGM/UA to produce computerized special effects for their upcoming film, "WarGames." This film, which subsequently became something of a cult classic, was the first Hollywood motion picture in which live computers were used on a large scale to generate real-time displays on computer monitors, a now-common practice which Steve pioneered. Since then, Steve has worked as Computer Effects Supervisor on over a dozen major Hollywood films, including "Buckaroo Banzai", "Beverly Hills Cop (I and II)", "Black Widow", "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", "Singles", "Sneakers" and "Leap of Faith".

Steve is an active member of the Ojai Art Center Theater and has participated as actor, director and/or technical director in most of the Theater's productions during the last several years.

Steve was among the original members of the Ojai Film Society, a non-profit organization devoted to enriching the cultural life of the Ojai Valley through its ongoing program of film-related events. Since 1992, Steve has served as the Film Society's Program Director in which capacity he has the responsibility of selecting the more than three dozen feature films exhibited by the Society each year.

Since 1998, Steve has been a juror at the Canyonlands Film Festival, which takes place each April in Moab, Utah. That same year, he proposed to the Board of the Ojai Film Society that they establish their own film festival, and on November 15, 2000, the first Ojai Film Festival opened with Steve serving as Artistic Director.

In 1999, Steve was selected by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts to serve as a Film and Video Panelist in their annual nationwide scholarship competition. Steve and his fellow panelists, each representing one of the fine arts, choose 127 high school seniors from all over the country to receive cash awards of up to three thousand dollars each. The top fifty are then referred to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, which selects twenty to be named Presidential Scholars in the Arts.

Steve is also a pioneer in the emerging fields of Digital Gicleé and Photo-Mosaic, a new art form in which thousands of small images are used as mosaic tiles to construct a larger image. His posters are featured in bookstores and museum gift shops throughout the world. For more information, please contact Omega Design at 805-649-4000.