Ray Feeney, president and founder of RFX Inc, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology and began his career with Robert Abel & Associates. While there, in 1976, he helped to develop one of the first motion control camera systems for which he received, in 1988, an Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement. A second Academy Award followed in 1991 for his work on the Solitaire Image Recorder. In 1994 he received two more, one honoring his work in developing film input scanners and the other for the development of the Cinefusion bluescreen extraction technology. In 2001 The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) awarded Ray Feeney the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation for his pioneering efforts to improve visual effects in the motion picture industry. In 2007, The Academy Honored Ray Feeney with the Gordon E. Sawyer Oscar®, and in 2008 he received The Visual Effects Society Founder’s Award. Most recently, Ray was inducted as a 2012 Visual Effects Society fellow, and accepted a 2012 Engineering Emmy on behalf of The Academy for the ACES project which he co-chairs.
Ray Feeney founded RFX in 1978 to provide leading-edge scientific and engineering solutions for the film industry. Through RFX, Feeney has helped to pioneer and implement numerous new technologies, many of which have become industry standard techniques and are currently in use to produce visual effects for feature films, television shows and commercials. In the mid-1980s, RFX became one of the first resellers of Silicon Graphics computer systems. RFX quickly became the entertainment industry’s leading independent systems integrator and serves a clientele that includes the industry’s top film studios, post production facilities and special effects houses.
In 1995 Ray Feeney launched Silicon Grail, in order to facilitate software development in the motion picture industry. Silicon Grail’s RAYZ software was created to respond to the post production need for a digital compositing tool that could be used to efficiently create visual effects for feature films. In 2002, Apple Computer acquired the technologies belonging to Silicon Grail.
In 2008, Ray Feeney was named a Caltech Distinguished Alumnus and now serves on the Board of Directors of the Caltech Alumni Association. In addition, Feeney is a founding member of, and on the Board of Directors of the Visual Effects Society as well as a Fellow of SMPTE. He is on the executive board of the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy and a member of the Technology Council of the Motion Picture and Television Industry. He is a member of the Scientific and Engineering Awards Committee of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences and has often chaired their Digital Imaging Technology Sub-Committee.