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Rich Thorne is an American film director, visual effects production executive, visual effects supervisor and one of the original pioneers of the digital video effects industry in the 1980's and 1990's. He is the leading digital visual effects pioneer that conceived and implemented the digital video technology that made it possible to move Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent Star Trek series into the digital visual effects production world.

Director
Thorne first directed episodes of the television series Walker, Texas Ranger over a three year period from 1997-1999, and subsequently directed 2nd Unit action sequences on a series of 20th Century Fox films, including A Midsummer Nights Dream (1999), Dude, Where’s My Car (2000), X-Men (2000), and Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001). The opportunity then arose for him to direct the critically acclaimed independent feature, Mother Ghost (2002), a film about a man dealing with the loss of his mother. This movie starred KLOS-FM radio personality Mark Thompson, and also featured Dana Delaney, Kevin Pollak, Garry Marshall, Joe Mantegna, and James Franco. The film went on to win Thorne two Best Director awards at the Great Lakes and Marco Island Film Festivals. Mother Ghost also won Thorne and Thompson Best Narrative Feature awards at the Long Beach Film Festival, the Marco Island Film Festival, and the Ojai Film Festival. Thorne continued to direct 2nd Unit action units for 20th Century Fox on Black Knight (2001), the acclaimed aerial action unit sequences on Behind Enemy Lines (2001), and he was Visual Effects Supervisor and action unit 2nd Unit Director on Fox’s Blockbuster Daredevil starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Among other sequences, including the church fight climaxing the film, Thorne is known for designing and directing “Shadow World”, which was the film's iconic representation of how a blind superhero sees the world using his hypersonic superpower. Thorne completed another Fox 2nd Unit assignment as one of the 2nd Unit Directors on Steven Norrington’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) starring Sean Connery.

After this string of box-office hits, Thorne was tapped to direct Dr Dolittle 3 (Starring Kyla Pratt and John Amos) by 20th Century Fox and Dr Dolittle franchise producer, John Davis. Dr Dolittle 3 was intended to be a DVD Fox Home Entertainment Film, but upon its completion, 20th Century Fox decided to release the film theatrically and it would have been the first Made-for-DVD film to hit the big screen, had it not been for a dispute between Regal Cinemas and 20th Century Fox, following a January 2006 Fox Stockholder's meeting where the emphasis was turning bigger film profits by releasing DVD’s immediately after films left the box-office to bolster fiscal year cash flow. Regal disputed the proposed policy and opted to refuse the running of Fox’s first three theatrical releases of 2006 (including Dr Dolittle 3). Dr Dolittle 3 went on to become a highly successful home video release, and spawned the continuation of the highly profitably Dr Dolittle franchise for Fox Home Entertainment with Dr Dolittles 4 and 5.

Thorne later continued as 2nd Unit Director for 20th Century Fox on Dragonball Evolution (2009), The Pyramid (2014), and Hitman: Agent 47 (2015). Thorne is a current member of the Director's Guild of America and the Producer's Guild of America.

Early career
Upon graduation with a degree from the Film School at Cal State Northridge, he began his film career as an editor and compositor for The Post Group, and worked with Ampex Corp, Quantel Corp and Abekas Video Systems to design and build the early predecessors to today's CG compositing and graphics systems. With CG, compositing, and paint system technologies, Thorne designed systems and techniques that allowed television shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Max Headroom and Pee-wee's Playhouse to be shot on film and with visual effects composited on video. This made it possible to bring high-end visual effects to the television industry at a significantly lower cost with faster turn-around than traditional optical visual effects techniques. Thorne continued to serve as a consultant with Ampex, Quantel, Abekas and Sony to provide insights into next generation visual effects systems.

Work on Star Trek
Star Trek veterans Peter Lauritsen, Dan Curry, Rob Legato and Fred Chandler approached Thorne and The Post Group in 1984 to attempt to recreate select VFX shots from the film Star Trek: Wrath of Khan (previously done for the film release using optical VFX techniques by George Lucas' ILM). Upon successful seamless replication of the select shots using photography and motion control elements from the original film, The Post Group (Thorne) completed the shots using their proprietary techniques, and was awarded all of the VFX work on ST:TNG and all subsequent Star Trek series for years to come. Thorne eventually left The Post Group to form Digital Magic and continued the Star Trek VFX work there. Digital Magic artists garnered five Emmy awards and an International Monitor Award between 1992 and 1996 for Star Trek: Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, collectively.

Other Television Work
During Thorne's tenure, The Post Group and Digital Magic were also well known for using the same techniques and systems for hundreds of high-tech national commercials and music videos for major recording artists such as Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Prince, Joni Mitchell and many others. Both houses provided special effects for numerous television shows, specials, and major motion pictures, including entire seasons of the following primetime and mini-series : Freddy's Nightmares, Lonesome Dove, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Northern Exposure.

Teaching
Thorne taught a course called "Techniques of Visual Effects for Television" at UCLA from 1984-1995, and one of his former students cited him as being "Legendary in the field of television visual effects at The Post Group in Hollywood." He also actively fostered a generation of film and television students and professionals by participating in industry related seminars and panels during this era.

Visual Effects Production Executive
From 1996-2006, Thorne was Senior Vice President of Production at 20th Century Fox. A partial list of award-nominated or award-winning films during his tenure include The Arrival (1996), Jingle All the Way (1996), Alien: Resurrection (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Hope Floats (1998), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), Dr. Doolittle (1998), The Siege (1998), Fight Club (1999), Anna and the King (1999), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999),  Never Been Kissed (1999), Anywhere But Here (1999), Big Momma's House (2000), X-Men (2000), Men of Honor (2000), Bedazzled (2000), Dude, Where's My Car (2000),  Planet of the Apes (2001), Shallow Hal (2001), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), Daredevil (2003), Cheaper By The Dozen (2003), X-Men 2 (2003), I, Robot (2004), Alien VS. Predator (2004), Elektra (2004), Fantastic Four (2005), and Idiocracy (2006).

Other
His name appeared on an Okudagram in the ST:TNG fifth season episode Violations.

He is "Perfect Neighbor Rich", a recurring character on KLOS-FM's now archived Mark and Brian morning radio show.

His son is Justin Joseph "JJ" Thorne, the musical artist and performer formerly in the bands NLT and One Call.