Born in England in 1939, Jonathan Erland commenced his professional training in the entertainment industry in 1954, studying theatre at the Central School (where fellow students included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench) and film at the London Film School where he received his visual effects "baptism by fire" on the student film, "Brief Armistice," an anti-war battlefield film set in World War II. After additional studies at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, he began work with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the heyday of live television drama.

Moving to Los Angeles, he also worked in the industrial and exhibit design fields with designers such as Herb Rosenthal and Charles Eames for whom he worked on the audio-animatronic puppet theatres featured in the I.B.M. Pavillion at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. His eclectic backgrounds merged harmoniously when he became a member of the group formed by John Dykstra, A.S.C., to create the visual effects for Star Wars, and subsequently served as Director of Research and Development for Apogee Productions. At Apogee, he received patents and Academy Awards for Reverse Bluescreen, the Blue-Max flux projector and a method for making front projection screens.

The author of some twenty Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineering (SMPTE) papers, he has received the Society's Journal Award and the Fuji Gold Medal. In 1993, he served as program chair for the SMPTE Technical Conference. He is a Life Fellow of the Society, an Associate of the American Society of Cinematographers (since 1986 the A.S.C. Manual has carried an Erland tutorial: "The Future of Traveling Matte Photography.") and he was a founder of the Technology Council of the Motion Picture and Television Industries. He is also a founder of the Visual Effects Society, and since 1997, has variously served as Director, Membership Chair and member of the Technology Committee. In 2006, the VES awarded him their inaugural Founders Award.

In 1995, as Chairman of the Visual Effects Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he achieved the long-sought goal of establishing Visual Effects as a Branch of the Academy. He served eleven years on the Board of Governors of the Academy and eighteen years on the Executive Committee of the Visual Effects Branch and the Scientific and Engineering Awards Committee. He's a member of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Committee and a founding member of the Academy Science and Technology Council, which he serves as Chair of the Research and Development Committee, In 1993, he and his wife Kay, founded Composite Components Company, which specializes in traveling matte composite technology, and in 1996, the Academy awarded them a Scientific and Engineering Award for the Digital series of traveling matte backings. In 2008 he received an Academy Award of Commendation for "his leadership efforts (in 1992) toward identifying and solving the problem of High-Speed Emulsion Stress Syndrome in motion picture film stock."