Cinesite has brought Jesper Kjölsrud aboard its London office as VFX supervisor. The 20-year industry veteran has successfully led teams both as a VFX and CG supervisor on many award-winning projects.
Kjölsrud has worked on a wide range of feature film and episodic television fare. His credit list includes Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Outlander, The Lone Survivor, The Thing, Alice Through The Looking Glass and District 9.
Kjölsrud is well known in the industry for his mastery of CG. Having initial studied in northern Sweden, he then moved to the UK in 1997 where he worked as a 3D Artist at MPC before becoming one of the original members of Double Negative when they opened for business as a small boutique in 1998. Over 10 years at DNEG, Kjölsrud supervised CG and VFX on many projects including Enemy At The Gates, The Chronicles of Riddick, Doom, The Da Vinci Code and 10,000BC. In 2009 he made the move to Vancouver joining Cinesite’s partner company Image Engine as sequence supervisor on District 9. Kjölsrud went on to work as both production side VFX supervisor on The Thing and Lone Survivor as well as facility VFX supervisor for Image Engine’s work on The Losers, R.I.P.D and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Kjölsrud returned to the UK in 2016 to supervise a number of projects at Goodbye Kansas including Robin Hood, season 2 of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and seasons 3 and 4 of Outlander.
Kjölsrud’s appointment comes at a busy time for Cinesite, which is in production on various projects, including The Witcher & Lost In Space (season 2, Netflix), Outlander (season 5, Starz) and a special live action experience project based on a high-energy franchise for Universal Studios. Recent VFX credits include Avengers: Endgame (Marvel), Rocketman (Paramount Pictures) and Murder Mystery (Netflix).
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More