Making movie magic
She may be based in Adelaide, but movie executive Kacy McDonald works at the highest levels of Hollywood, including Zoom calls with Steven Spielberg and nights at the Oscars. Here’s how Kacy transformed her love of movies into a starring role in visual effects.
When Kacy McDonald was growing up in the rural New South Wales town, she loved to watch movies. Back then, her favourite film was Wizard of Oz which she’d watch on repeat with her aunty Vicky, another film buff. The duo’s other favourites were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Forrest Gump.
“We also saw Titanic together four times,” Kacy says.
“I remember in the school holidays you could hire 10 VHS videos for $10 for 10 days and that’s what we did. We just watched them for 10 days straight.
“It was all the classic John Hughes movies and ones like Can’t Buy Me Love, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and I also loved all the Steven Spielberg movies like ET, Indiana Jones and Hook.
Even as a youngster, Kacy had an innate sense that one day, somehow, the movies would be her life.
“I just knew I wanted to work in film,” she says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew it was in film.”
Fast forward 25 years and Kacy, who now calls Adelaide home, has carved out a remarkable career in the movie business, working on Hollywood blockbusters such as Star Wars, Wicked, Ready Player One and Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The 44-year-old is a visual effects executive producer. It’s a high-stakes, high-intensity role, but one Kacy loves and one that has led her all the way to the Oscars – three times.
“It was so surreal walking down the red carpet, from all those years ago when I dreamt of working in film to then actually be at the Academy Awards,” Kacy says.
“I attended in 2019, 2023 and 2025. It was such a privilege to represent the visual effects teams of Ready Player One, Solo, Batman and Wicked at the events.
“If you told 10-year-old Kacy she would be at the Oscars she would not have believed it. It was a total pinch yourself moment but also such a realisation that anything is truly possible. It was magical.”
Kacy’s husband Andrew has also worked in the movie business for many years, creating digital models and characters for hits such as Harry Potter and Happy Feet.
“My role was as a modeller or an asset creator where we created big environments for Harry Potter, things like the quidditch field, or ice models for Happy Feet or fantasy lands for the Santa Clause movies,” Andrew says.
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The walls of the creative couple’s Adelaide home are dotted with framed movie posters, a colourful collection of all the productions they’ve worked on.
When SALIFE visits the family, including daughters Sarah, 15, and Emma, 13, Kacy has just returned from the AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Televistion Arts) Awards on the Gold Coast where her team won another gong, this time for best visual effects and animation for the movie Tron: Ares.
“It was such an amazing industry event,” she says. “It is so inspiring to see what other film and television is happening in Australia and to be in the room together and celebrate each other.
“We were so excited to represent the hundreds of visual effects artists and support departments that contributed to our film and to take home the statue.”
Kacy reveals some other big news to SALIFE – she has just signed on the dotted line with Adelaide and Brisbane-based visual effects company Rising Sun Pictures as the Vice President, Production, starting in April.
“I’m really looking forward to putting down more long-term Adelaide roots,” she says. “It is such an exciting time to be part of this industry in South Australia with so much happening with the SA Film Corp and all the incentives to make movies here.”
Kacy’s path from childhood film fan to movie executive began in a creative household where her dad Mark was a guitarist in cover bands and he and Kacy’s mum Shirley were into music, art and design.
Kacy studied a degree in communications at the University of Newcastle, which included a video course where groups had to make short documentaries and videos.
“I loved pulling all the pieces together and organising everyone’s projects and planning them and coming up with strategies and location scouting,” Kacy says.
“We filmed in local cafes and restaurants and there was lots of scheduling and budgets and overseeing of things and that really resonated with me. That’s essentially what I do now.”
After university, Kacy stepped straight into the industry, scoring a job as a production assistant at DisneyToon Studios in Sydney.
“It was honestly the most magical place,” she says. “You walked in and it was full of animators creating everything that you grew up on, like The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.
“The first movie I worked on was Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch. It was 2D animation, so it was all hand drawn.”
Kacy’s role was to bring together the painted backgrounds of each scene and combine it with the animated character movements, literally laying out the animations and taping them together in the right order. She then had to photocopy everything and distribute it all to the different departments.
“You might have 10 departments on a project and certain things have to happen in a certain order to get the finished product,” she says. “That job set me down a path. I just loved it.”
Hooked on animation after that, Kacy then worked with award-winning Australian director George Miller at Animal Logic. It was 2004 and the Kennedy Miller studios were working on a movie called Happy Feet, using cutting-edge 3D-technology and computer graphics.
Kacy was a production supervisor overseeing lighting and compositing, working out what key shots needed to be created and in what order – essentially project managing and scheduling the creatives.
It was long hours and hard work and it was also the gig where she and Andrew first met.
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The couple moved to London in 2006 after Andrew was offered a role with the Moving Picture Company, part of the Technicolour Group.
“We were living in London when I got an early morning call in 2007 from ex-colleagues to tell me that Happy Feet had won the Academy Award for best animated feature,” Kacy says. “It was so exciting.”
While in London, Kacy worked with visual effects company Framestore as a production supervisor working on their first animated feature film, A Tale of Despereaux.
When asked what qualities are needed to become such a successful visual effects executive producer, Kacy doesn’t hesitate.
“You need to be good with people,” she says. “I think that is probably my biggest strength. You have to have a good eye, you have to understand creatively what the project is because you still need to produce to a certain level, and you’ve got to be across the parameters of time and money.
“So, you’ve got to work with all these different teams, and on some of these projects I’ve been working with 200 to 300 people, and you are talking about creative people who are essentially artists who are trying to deliver someone else’s vision. It’s a real balancing act.
“You’ve got to keep the machine flowing and keep things on track. But you want to do that in a fun way, have empathy and be able to read the room in a way that includes everyone’s viewpoints.”
The family eventually moved back to Australia and in 2014 Kacy was snapped up by production house Shine (now Endemol Shine) to work on shows such as The Biggest Loser and MasterChef Australia.
“I had 14 shows at once and I mainly looked after the short term workforce, sourcing the freelance people for each show, negotiating salaries and contracts,” she says.
Then came a “career-defining offer” for Kacy – to work in Singapore as a visual effects producer with production house Industrial Light Magic, working on blockbusters such as Ready Player One, Avengers End Game and Star Wars Episode Nine, overseeing a portfolio of multi-million dollar budgets.
“I was managing the Singapore budget, managing the leadership team, building all the resources needed for the show and creating the overall budget strategy,” she says.
A highpoint of her career, she says, was being on zoom calls with one of her heroes – Steven Spielberg, who’s movies she had loved as a kid.
“The Spielberg movie I worked on in Singapore was Ready Player One,” she says. “It was a privilege to be able to see how his filmmaker mind worked and be a part of how the team was able to really lean into his vision.
“I went on to work on the most recent movie in the Indiana Jones franchise which wasn’t directed by Spielberg, but he started the franchise and it felt full circle to little Kacy.”
Kacy says what drew her to the movies as a child is a passion that still exists today – great storytelling: “That’s how you can tell it’s a really good movie, if the story holds you. You can have the best cast and the best director but if you haven’t got the best script, if the story doesn’t hold you, it all falls short.”
It was Andrew’s business The Rookies that led the family to relocate to Adelaide in 2022. The Rookies is an online platform that connects newcomers to the creative industries such as animators, graphic designers, gamers and film makers.
“It sets them on a professional path with mentorship and inroads into professional fields,” Andrew says. “It bridges a gap between what universities teach and what the industry needs in these fast-paced industries.”
Andrew’s business partner is based in Adelaide and suggested the couple come and check it out a few years back.
“Moving here was the best decision we ever made,” Kacy says.
“I’m so lucky. I’ve got the best husband, the best kids, an amazing job and I live in the best city in Australia. I remind myself of all the cool things all the time.”
Reflecting on her path from a young film fan to Hollywood’s red carpet as an award-winning executive producer, Kacy says she has always had a belief that anything is possible.
“That’s something I also try to instil in our girls,” she says. “That anything is possible if you work hard, and I see them doing that with their music and their sport.
“I am looking forward to seeing where their dreams take them.”
This article first appeared in the March 2026 issue of SALIFE magazine.
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