Valley native wins technical Oscar

February 28, 2016 at 12:05a.m.

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

Seth Rosenthal, a Mahoning Valley native, has won an Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement for helping develop software used by special-effects filmmakers.

The software, titled RV, has been widely adopted in the editing of high-end visual effects and animation and was used in the making of Oscar nominees “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “The Revenant” and “The Martian.”

Rosenthal, who lived in Youngstown and Vienna, received the honor Feb. 13 in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annually recognizes the achievements of those who significantly contribute to the process of making movies.

Rosenthal received the honor along with the other principals of Tweak Software of San Francisco. Rosenthal co-founded the company and is its president. He was joined in receiving the honor by Tweak co-founder Jim Hourihan and Alan Trombla, a senior official with the company.

Rosenthal, the son of Pat Rosenthal and Richard Hill, is a 1984 graduate of Ursuline High School in Youngstown. He currently lives in San Francisco.

Tweak’s RV software is used for the playback and review for digital film images. A number of studios use it, including Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, Weta Digital, MPC and Framestore.

Rosenthal has worked in the film visual-effects industry since 1998, when he started at Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’ visual effects facility in Marin, Calif. At ILM, he worked on visual effects for several major films, including “The Mummy,” “Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace,” “Minority Report,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Rosenthal supervised the motion capture team at ILM, and also helped develop techniques and technology for virtual set production, 3-D reconstruction of sets and environments using photography and facial motion capture. He also was awarded a U.S. patent for an animation software he developed for the company.

In 2005, he joined Tweak Films and became the president.

“Tweak Films was a very small visual-effects facility co-founded by a friend, Jim Hourihan,” said Rosenthal in an email interview. “It is known for visual effects work on film such as ‘Hero’ and ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’”

Rosenthal and Hourihan co-founded Tweak Software in 2007.