Danielle Feinberg is an American Visual effects supervisor, cinematographer and Director of Photography for Lighting at Pixar Animation Studios. She directed lighting for the Academy Award-winning films WALL-E, Brave and Coco and was the Visual effects supervisor for Turning Red.
Life and career Danielle Feinberg was born in Boulder, Colorado and graduated from Boulder High School. Growing up, she attended summer camps and after-school programs for students interested in computer programming and engineering. She attended Harvard University, where she was introduced to computer animation in a computer graphics course during her junior year. She graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in computer science.
After graduating from Harvard, she started working at Pixar in February 1997 as a technician managing the large libraries of data and images for rendering A Bug's Life. She has since been credited for leading work in visual effects, technical direction, and graphics.
Outside of Pixar, she mentors girls to help them find inspiration in STEM through groups like Girls Who Code. She gives talks in the United States and abroad, using them when she can as a platform to encourage girls to pursue STEM fields. In fact, Made with Code, which is an initiative launched by Google, was kick started with her inspiring keynote.
In 2015, she appeared in the documentary Code: Debugging the Gender Gap. In November 2015, she delivered a talk on science and art at TED Talks Live in New York at the historic Town Hall Theater. It was also streamed by PBS. In 2022, she was featured along with Domee Shi, Lindsey Collins and Rona Liu as the leading women of Turning Red in the documentary Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red.
She was elected to a six-year term on the Harvard Board of Overseers in 2024.
Filmography Feature films Year Title Role Notes 1998 A Bug's Life lead render technical director 1999 Toy Story 2 master lighting artist 2001 Monsters, Inc. master lighting artist 2003 Finding Nemo computer graphics supervisor lead development on ocean graphics unit 2004 The Incredibles lead lighting artist 2007 Ratatouille master lighting artist 2008 WALL-E director of photography for lighting 2012 Brave director of photography lighting 2015 Inside Out master lighting artist The Good Dinosaur master lighting artist 2017 Coco director of photography for lighting 2022 Turning Red visual effects supervisor 2024 Inside Out 2 lighting artist
Short films Year Title Role Notes 2003 Exploring the Reef technical supervisor short documentary film distributed with Finding Nemo 2006 Lifted lighting artist Initial theatrical release with Ratatouille 2008 BURN-E lighting consultant 2009 Partly Cloudy lighting Initial theatrical release with UP 2020 SparkShorts - Loop supervising technical director 2023Petedirectory of photography for lightingIndependent short film, directed by Bret Parker
Awards Year Movie Award Notes2011Marie Claire Magazine Women on TopRecognized as the top "Film Techie" 201315th Assembly District Women of the YearIssued by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner for Feinberg's work with girls in STEM2015NCCWSL Woman of DistinctionAwarded by the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders 2018 Coco Won Annie award Outstanding achievement for product design in an animated feature production. 2018Girls in Tech Creator of the YearAwarded by Girls in Tech2022San Francisco Business Times OUTstanding VoicesAwarded by San Francisco Business Times for Leaders paving the way for LGBTQ equality in the workplace2022Breaker of the Glass CeilingAwarded by the Women of Siggraph Conversations
See also
List of Pixar films List of Pixar shorts Women in computing
References