Matt Castley

Matt Castley

Lighting & Rendering Technical Director · London

I’m a Lighting Technical Director and Area Technical Specialist at Industrial Light & Magic in London. I started out lighting shots on high-end VFX productions, and now spend much of my time making lighting and rendering faster, more reliable and easier to work with at scale.

That means profiling and optimising Katana and RenderMan scenes, building tools and workflows, contributing to team development, debugging difficult production problems, and working between artists and engineers to turn technical ideas into practical solutions.

I was the first Area Technical Specialist in both ILM Sydney and ILM London, helping establish the role across the two studios.

Outside production, I build tools and independent software, including Folkery.

Contact

  • LinkedIn

Résumé

Experience

  1. – now

    Lighting Technical Director & London Area Technical Specialist

    Industrial Light & Magic · London

    • First Area Technical Specialist in London, leading technical work on rendering efficiency and production workflows across shows.
    • Build profiling and testing tools that inform performance decisions.
    • Work with department heads and engineers across sites to align tools and share documentation.

  2. –

    Lighting Technical Director & Sydney Area Technical Specialist

    Industrial Light & Magic · Sydney

    • First Area Technical Specialist in Sydney, linking production and technical strategy across multiple shows.
    • Optimised lighting scenes for faster renders and smoother artist workflows.
    • Triaged and debugged show-stopping lighting issues.
    • Wrote reusable tools, templates and documentation for lighting and lookdev.

  3. –

    Junior Lighting Technical Director

    Industrial Light & Magic · Sydney

    • Built lighting and sequence setups with department leads.
    • Lit shots, optimised scenes and ran quality control.
    • Debugged lighting scenes and assets, and documented workflow improvements.

Education

  1. Master of Animation & Visualisation

    University of Technology Sydney

Skills

Programming
Python · Lua · USD · PyQt
Systems
Katana · RenderMan · Houdini · Nuke · Blender · ShotGrid · Perforce · Git · Jira · Confluence · Google Workspace · AI
Technical
Scene optimisation · Performance profiling · Tool development · Artist mentorship · Workflow design
Interests
Running (founder of Maestri Run Club) · Writing · Acting · Filmmaking