By Sarah Lang/The Lebanon Reporter
Lebanon — Sherry Hitch put a “happy dollar” in the bucket at Friday’s Lebanon Rotary Club meeting at Ulen Country Club.
Her reason was that she’s, “just blessed to be here,” she said.
Hitch, a Lebanon native and 1988 Lebanon High School graudate who moved to Los Angeles in 1992 to pursue her career, served as the parade marshal in the Boone County Fourth of July parade Saturday. But she made a stop at the Rotary Club’s meeting a day before to share her thanks with the town for bringing her back for this visit.
Hitch lives in San Fransisco and works for George Lucas’ digital artistry company, Industrial Light & Magic. She has four Emmy nominations and as worked on dozens of movie hits, most recently “Transformers: Return of the Fallen.”
“It’s great to be back here,” Hitch said specifically of the Ulen Country Club. “I worked here the summer before I moved out to California.”
Hitch took questions from the audience and explained exactly what she does.
“My job is the take the blue screen and make you believe what you’re seeing is real,” she said.
In “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Hitch used as an example, Johnny Depp would be sitting in a boat with a blue screen behind him. Hitch and her team worked to make the blue screen appear to be the Caribbean landscape audiences see in the film. And for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Hitch worked on creating legs for some of the Narnia creatures appear to be goat-like. The actors wore blue tights.
“There’s always something new, and there are new challenges,” she said. “I love what I do, and I never get bored.”
In the new “Transformers,” Hitch said oftentimes she was working seven days a week because director Michael Bay kept making changes.
“The movie was released June 24, and we didn’t finish until a week before,” she said.
Hitch also spoke about her hometown, saying how much she missed the Fourth of July celebrations in Lebanon.
“Something special happens in Lebanon,” she said. “They don’t do much out (in California). Everyone who has moved away from here says the same thing.”
As a thank you, the Rotary presented Hitch with a box of Donaldson’s Chocolates.
“I haven’t had these in years,” Hitch said with excitement. “Lebanon is amazing. I’m so glad I grew up here.”
