By Sarah Dolan

Northeastern professor Terrence Masson had to put his experience with visual effects and image analysis to the test when he watched home videos of suspected UFO’s.

Masson just finished working as an expert image analysis consultant for UFO Hunters on the History Channel. He is also a recent addition to the Northeastern faculty in the Art and Design Department.

Masson is an animation and visual effects producer and consultant. He has served as a technical director or computer graphics supervisor on films such as “Fantastic Four,” “nterview With the Vampire” and “Hook.”

Masson said that after having seen movies such as the “The Abyss” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” in the late 1980s, he decided that he wanted to go into the field of special effects design.

The History Channel contacted Masson to use image analysis to help analyze home videos of suspected UFO’s.

“The fun part was that I got to scientifically eliminate everything that it could not be,” Masson explained.

When asked if he believed in the UFO’s that he saw on the videos, Masson referred to himself as an “open-minded skeptic.”

Masson said that he enjoyed the work and explained that the tapes that made it to air did in fact contain images that he could not explain as visual effects or lighting.

“Terrence literally wrote the book for imaging,” said Johnathan Walton, associate producer for the UFO Hunters series. “We were lucky to have him on the project,” explained Walton.

Masson has also written a book on the subject, “CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference” and been an active member of the Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH).

Masson said his proudest professional accomplishment came when he was asked to work as the technical director for the “Star Wars’ special edition trilogy.”

“I saw “Star Wars” when it first came out in 1977 and grew up a huge “Star Wars” fan,” Masson said.

The job allowed him to work side-by-side with George Lucas and help with the visual effects that inspired him to work with computer graphics as a kid.

Since January, Masson has been a member of the Northeastern faculty as a professor for the multimedia studies capstone course. He was also asked to help the program develop a new curriculum for video game design classes.

“The most exciting thing about teaching has been seeing an individual student in my class who just gets it. I sit back and think, ‘I’ll be working for them in 20 years,'” Masson said.

Samantha Kanter, a senior photography and multimedia studies dual major, who is taking Masson’s Multimedia Studies capstone course, said his experience makes the class stand apart.

“Terence’s experience in the field is evident in how he critiques our work,” she said. “He turns the class into a little company because he is used to working in that environment.”