John Mangia

Mangia also served as Overall VFX Supervisor on the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Netflix limited series The Queen’s Gambit, directed by Scott Frank and executive produced by Bill Horberg. His contributions included the visualisation of Beth Harmon’s chess hallucinations and the transformation of present-day Berlin into 1960s settings such as Paris, Moscow, Mexico City, and Kentucky.

His additional credits include M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s Dreamland, and The Code from CBS Television Studios.

In 2014, he was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Commercial for the Sony PlayStation spot Perfect Day. His portfolio also includes major studio features such as Men in Black 3, The Amazing Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. He served as an independent VFX consultant on the Academy Award-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild and has contributed to numerous television commercials and episodic series for networks including HBO, Cinemax, NBC, and Starz—frequently leading creative look development for complex sequences.

Mangia holds a Master of Science in Digital Imaging and Design from New York University, with additional studies at Rochester Institute of Technology and Rider University. He has pursued specialized training in creature design at the Stan Winston School of Character Arts. In addition to his industry work, he has lectured on advanced visual effects and computer graphics topics at New York University and the New York Film Academy.