Ex-Marvel Executive Victoria Alonso Says She ‘Looks Forward To Coming Back’ As She Accepts SMPTE Engineering Honor

Victoria Alonso saluted the engineering community and hinted at a return to filmmaking as she accepted Honorary Membership in the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers during its annual conference’s closing gala, Thursday at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood. In what may have been her first return to the stage since her very public 2023 split with Marvel, the studio’s former president of physical production concluded her speech by saying, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I look forward to coming back and telling many, many, many more stories.

“The last 18 months I have been doing a lot of thinking and been quiet, which is not who I am,” said the producer and VFX vet. “I have chosen tonight to come and be my first appearance because of the respect I have for this community of thinkers. You are the grounding force that defines how we come about and who we become in our storytelling and how we show it, what it sounds like, the depth by which we can show everything that we think and dream about. And you allow us to touch people, to make them laugh, to make them cry, and, God forbid, to make them think.”

She began her acceptance address by recognizing the engineering community. “You are, indeed, the troublemakers that I want to hang out with …. Your embody the capability of what is possible because you think the impossible is possible,” she told the membership, adding, “I am incredibly honored that you welcome me into this beautiful, intelligent room of people. Storytellers look up to you for what you can do. … Thank you for never, ever, ever giving up. Thank you for continuing to push the boundary to what is possible within our impossibility at that moment in time, and thank you for always allowing us to dream big.”

She also spoke directly “to those of you who are having a bad day or a bad week,” saying “I’m here to let you know bad moments come and go. Just remember that that one thing that you have inside, the one dream that you haven’t done, the one possibility that you haven’t even attempted because you’re busy or for whatever your reasons are, this is the time. Get out there and get it done.”

SMPTE Honorary Membership — the society’s highest honor — was also given to Dolby’s Ioan Allen and retired ARRI managing director Franz Kraus during the evening. Of Alonso’s selection, SMPTE said she “relentlessly communicates her story vision to artisans and technicians and is a strong and outspoken champion for underrepresented groups in the entertainment industry.”

During a half century at Dolby, honoree Allen worked closely with Ray Dolby to advance motion picture sound, for which the pair earned Oscar statuettes in 1988. He’s perhaps best known for developing the Dolby Stereo film program, and was also recognized by SMPTE for his efforts to foster industry collaboration. “Standards is the most important thing that the SMPTE is involved with. I’m in awe of what’s achieved,” he said, recognizing the members who volunteer their time to do this work. “I have so much respect for what they have achieved, what they are achieving, and what they will achieve.”

Honorary Membership was also awarded to Franz Kraus, who spent four decades at ARRI and as managing director guided the company into the digital age by developing digital film scanners and the widely-used Alexa cameras. He received an Oscar statuette as a developer of the ArriLaser film recorder. “Without a brilliant engineering team and the advice we have been given here in Los Angeles by earlier adopters of our products, I would not stand here. And therefore I want to thank everybody, especially the ones who criticize — that not only said we are doing great — because you don’t learn a lot [without honest feedback].”

During the ceremony, outgoing SMPTE president Renard Jenkins bestowed Presidential Proclamations on NVIDIA’s Jensen Hsang (who was not in attendance), Universal’s Annie Chang-Ferguson, UHD Alliance’s Bill Baggelaar, educator Corey P. Carbonara, cloud innovator Marina Kalkanis and Disney Research Fellow Lanny Snoot.

The close-knit engineering community also awarded several medals. The David Sarnoff Medal was awarded to John Mailhot for his contributions to the rollout of the SMPTE ST 2110 standard for the carriage of media over IP. The Excellence in Education Medal went to Chaitanya Chinchlikar for his work, alongside Whistling Woods International, an India-based Film & Creative Arts institute.

The Workflow Systems Medal honored Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and the Digital Processing Medal went to Jens-Rainer Ohm for video compression standards work. The James A. Lindner Archival Technology Medal went to Karen Cariani for efforts to preserve and provide access to public broadcasting archives.

During the gala, 10 new SMPTE Fellows were recognized, including Alex Forsythe (senior director of science and technology at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), Naveed Aslam, Peter Brightwell, Michel Proulx, Brian Quandt, Pierre-Hughes Routhier, Alexandre Rouxel, Paola Sunna, Stuart C. Young, and Gene J. Zimmerman Jr.