David DiFrancesco, (born Nutley, New Jersey, 1949), is a photoscientist, inventor, cinematographer, and photographer. He is a founding member of three organizations which pioneered computer graphics for digital special effects and film with Edwin Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, including; New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, Lucasfilm Computer Division, and Pixar, financed by Steve Jobs
Raised in Nutley, New Jersey, DiFrancesco graduated from Nutley High School in 1967.
As director of the Pixar Photoscience Team at Pixar, DiFrancesco and his team were responsible for the task of accurately transferring high resolution digital images to film. In this role, he developed the world's first laser scanning and recording devices for 35mm motion picture film and established reliable, commercially successful methods for this process, called PixarVision. This pioneering work earned him two Scientific and Engineering Technical Academy Awards and 16 patents. In 1996 the Society of...
