He creates worlds that don’t exist and breathes life into fantastic creatures. Sounds like playing god, but it’s the work of a visual effects supervisor like Denis Behnke. Born in Hesse, he has worked with all major German film productions over the past 20 years and done more than 90 projects; in October he did the German film award for the best visual effects for the science fiction thriller “Tides” to get. “We visual effectors generate things that do not exist, no longer exist, or do not yet exist in reality, that cannot be found as motifs or that you may not even be able to build in the studio,” says Behnke of his job. “This applies to sets that we expand digitally or worlds that we manufacture, but also creatures.”
The VFX expert is currently shooting the fantasy series “Der Greif” in Tenerife, a Wolfgang Hohlbein adaptation that is being produced by Wiedemann & Berg Television for Amazon Studios. The team has already been shooting for more than 90 days. You don’t notice the stress of the sometimes very elaborate fantasy shoot from the likeable specialist in computer effects, on the contrary: Behnke takes a lot of time to explain his job in a zoom conversation. You can tell from the way he talks about working with directors, special effects and computer-animated images that he is passionate about cinema and loves what he does.
“There is actually nothing left that cannot be made on a computer.”
As a supervisor, Behnke is responsible for the entire planning, implementation and implementation of the visual effects of a project, in which he is often already involved in the script phase. He advises direction, camera and production on the feasibility and effort and develops the visual face of the film in close cooperation with the art department. Depending on the project, he directs a more or less large team of experts who design concepts, 3D models, lighting, animation and simulated effects, among other things.
During filming, Behnke prepares the scenes in which effects are required so that they can be produced in post-production, for example by making markings on the actor or the costume and coordinating processes with blue-green screen walls on the set . In post-production Behnke selects effect companies and artists who then implement the project together as a team. “I am ultimately responsible for the final picture and have to make sure that it is implemented in terms of the direction and camera,” explains the supervisor. A good knowledge of people and the ability to get involved with different characters are among the skills required for this job, according to Behnke.
From advertising salesman to world creator: As a visual effects supervisor, Denis Behnke creates storm surges and wild creatures on the computer.
(Photo: Florian Liedel)
The trained advertising salesman has realized the job he dreamed of as a little boy when he sat in the cinema and let “Star Wars”, “ET” and “Indiana Jones” transport him to other worlds. The job of visual effects supervisor did not exist in this form as Behnke explains today when he began studying digital post-production and animation at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy in 1995. There the students initially worked with classic trick effects, built miniature models and created the first computer animations, in which the computer initially calculated all night long. A lot has happened in the meantime: “There is actually nothing left that cannot be produced on a computer. And we are not yet at the end of technical development. The only limit is the time you are given and the budget,” says Behnke, who experienced the digital boom live.
“Sass” (2001) was Behnke’s first film as an independent supervisor, “Bibi Blocksberg” (2002) brought him to Munich, where he has lived since then. At the beginning of his career he shot a lot of historical material like “Die Sturmflut”, “Dresden”, or “Our mothers, our fathers” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/. “These films don’t work without visual effects”, explains Behnke, who was primarily concerned with making historical adjustments on these projects. “If you succeed in making the effects well, you don’t even notice them,” says the supervisor who historically restored the wall for “Bornholmer Strasse” or completely computer-generated Checkpoint Charlie for “Same Sky”.
He discussed a computer simulation with Roman Polanski for days
Behnke mega-projects like the “Medicus”, in which he completely created the Isfahan of that time, or “Mogadishu”, where the aim was to make the emergency landing of the hijacked aircraft in the desert, are particularly remembered. “It’s just as exciting as letting any digital creatures run through the landscape,” says Behnke. Probably the most impressive film project for him, however, was the surprisingly pleasant and inspiring collaboration with Roman Polanski on “Ghostwriter” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/. “This man fascinated me because he is a perfectionist,” he says Effects specialist who reports how he spent days discussing with the director’s old master exactly where the electricity pylons of a beach house he had generated on the computer would have to be.
The current high demand for content through streaming services is leading to a boom in the film industry and also in the visual effects area, because genre films are finally being made in Germany, according to Behnke. A good example of this is Tim Fehlbaum’s gigantic science fiction thriller “Tides”, for which the supervisor designed a huge ship graveyard made of old cargo ships, wrecks and tankers. Since most of the film was shot in the studio, there was a lack of long shots that would give an idea of the size of this area. “Making such completely computer-generated images appear realistic is an art and hardly possible without a great team at your side,” says Behnke. And it was laborious: Making this one large long shot took about three months in post-production and more than 20 people worked on it. In the end, it is the great art for him to create images from pixels, which in the best case scenario impress the viewer or take them away, says Behnke. Just like the little boy back then who marveled at the Star Wars.