A Disney engineer spoke to the ISU community about his experiences with Hollywood and “The Matrix.”Lewis Siegel, software engineer at Disney’s The Secret Lab, said Hollywood is in the deception business during his lecture “Visual Effects: The Role of Engineers in Hollywood,” Monday at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. in Lee Liu Auditorium in Howe Hall.”We ask audiences to suspend their beliefs when they enter the theaters so we can lie to them to tell them a story,” he said. “Audiences conspire with us in this and allow themselves to be lied to.”After graduating in 1994 from the University of Southern California film school with a master’s degree in fine arts, Siegel took a job with Creative Visual Effects, and was told he would only be committed to a film for six to eight months.In what he described as one of Hollywood’s lies, Siegel said the picture company hid the fact that they were going to need him for 18 months on a project called “Baby Geniuses.””The truth is hard to find in Hollywood,” he said.Siegel said he designed the computer and software systems that ran the whole operation of visual effects for the movie and managed 15 other animators.After the movie wrapped, he said he turned to freelancing, which included designing 3-D pinball effects for the Iowa State Lottery.Siegel’s next project was with Manex to create the effects for “The Matrix.”His main sequence had over 100 elements that were controlled by computers. He said it was some of his most difficult work to date.Born in Los Angeles, Siegel went to San Francisco State University and received a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1989, and then went on to receive his master’s degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago.While there, he met Carolina Cruz-Neira, while she was studying at UIC’s Electronic Visualization Lab.”We both liked to work very late at night,” said Cruz-Neira, ISU assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. “We met, basically, by being part of the vampire crew of the lab.”Cruz-Neira said their time together benefited them both.”Together, we came up with some very creative solutions [to software problems],” she said.After UIC, Siegel worked as a personal assistant to Benoit Mandelbrot, known for his work in fractal geometry and chaos theory from 1992 to 1994 in New York.”My time with [Mandelbrot] was satisfying because I know I helped to produce work that will truly live forever,” he said.Siegel said Disney has him preparing now for a project he cannot name to protect its confidentiality.”We’re trying to engineer ahead of our needs now,” he said. “We know what we will need for our next picture, so we are trying to make those demands a possibility before the time comes.”