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By OLIVER WEBB Images courtesy of Peter Hjorth and Zentropa, except where noted. Peter Hjorth. (Photo courtesy of Danish Film Institute) When Peter Hjorth first started out, visual effects were virtually non-existent in the Danish film industry. “We had one guy at the lab who did work on the Oxberry [rostrum animation camera], and I worked at a video production company,” Hjorth states. “I trained as a videotape editor, then it went into online. When the first digital tools arrived, I joined one of the hot post places where they got the first digital VTRs. All my first years of experience were with commercial clients and music videos and making the transition from analogue to digital in video post-production. I did a little bit of work for friends of mine where we actually did it at the lab. I’m old enough to have done stuff with the optical printer and waiting for weeks to get it right. There were some very early start-ups in Copenhagen doing files to film, and I started working with them.” Hjorth’s first feature film came in 1998 with Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, where he served as camera operator and digital consultant. Festen also marked Hjorth’s first foray into the Dogme 95 movement. “We shot on MiniDV, and I was attached to the whole project. I shot the second camera and then was asked if I could do some advanced work in visual effects for commercials. I was then asked by Lars von Trier to help out on Dancer in the Dark when he was starting.” Working on Dancer in the Dark marked the beginning of Hjorth’s frequent collaborations with Lars von Trier. “That was sort of a two-fold thing because we had 100 DV cameras that needed some kind of infrastructure to work, and my television background was good for that. We also needed some visual effects work to get rid of some cameras. If you put 100 cameras in the same set, you’re going to get into a visual effects situation. So, I did that and worked on the editing. At that time, people were a little bit afraid of Lars, but I’m up for anything. We had a great time, especially during the editing and post-production.” Hjorth was pleased with his collaboration with director Tarik Saleh on the U.S. film The Contractor (2022), on which he served as Production Visual Effects Supervisor. (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures) “There’s a special thing about Denmark, which is that we tend to all stick together… It’s not competitive in this way because people will get the jobs they get. Everybody realizes we have to work together, and what really matters is that we put something on screen that gives the audience a good experience.” —Peter Hjorth, Visual Effects Supervisor Initially, production experimented with a wall of cameras, where Hjorth did a test compositing that into an image. Von Trier found it interesting, but felt it wasn’t right for Dancer in the Dark. He later came back to Hjorth with Dogville and explained that he wanted to implement the multi-camera technique for this project. “Lars didn’t want linear perspective, instead he wanted something more like visual arts, fine arts, a notion of perspective, even cubism maybe,” Hjorth adds. “At that point in between those two projects, I did the first big Vinterberg film, It’s All About Love.” Hjorth worked as Visual Effects Supervisor for the film. “We did lots of precise visual effects, matched lenses, matched camera heights, everything by the book. Then I went into this totally crazy project for Lars and really developed a close understanding of what Lars wanted. We’ve done eight feature films and a TV series together. The last one was the third season of The Kingdom. I also did his last feature film, The House That Jack Built. I was Production Visual Effects Supervisor on all the stuff in-between, such as Antichrist and Melancholia.” Hjorth explains that he was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. “Working on those projects has given me a network all over Europe with good people. We had some decent budgets, and people were thrilled to work on Lars’ films. I’ve made some excellent friends and good connections. If you wanted VFX for a movie in the early 2000s you hired someone from a post house for a specific scene. The notion of a production visual effects supervisor was not very common in Denmark, and the role has since developed. I find that my contribution is now mostly in pre-production. With post-production, I usually take a step back and leave it to the vendors to get right, but I’m happy I’ve been able to assist when the need arose.”  Throughout his career, Hjorth has worked across the board as camera operator, colorist and editor. “I did some camera work on the side for music videos, and so on,” he explains. “When I speak to the DP and the gaffers, I know the language. I wouldn’t say I did great work as a cinematographer, but I know the language, the equipment and the limitations. Actually, my first job before even going into post-production was as an electrician. I used to work on really old, heavy movie lights back in the day, so I also know a little bit about departments on set and how it works. That has made it a little bit easier for me to be on set because as a visual effects supervisor, it can be a super scary experience. If you feel like a tourist, it’s just horrible. I, of course, worked on the Dogme 95 films, where we worked closely with the actors, and I’m not afraid to have a conversation with an actor. No matter how good the VFX is, if the actors don’t believe a scene they are in, it doesn’t work. So, I’ve been lucky to do a bit of everything, and I feel blessed that things turned out the way that they did.” Starting out in Dogme 95 also proved to be a huge learning curve when it came to film language and understanding how to work within a set of specific rules and guidelines. The movement was founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the Dogme 95 Manifesto. The Manifesto consisted of 10 rules, which included: camera must be handheld, shooting must be done on location and special lighting isn’t allowed. “It’s a good background to have,” Hjorth states. “We’ve had rules for all of the films I’ve made with Lars, even on projects such as Melancholia.” Setting rules hasn’t been limited to Danish cinema and extends beyond that. “We made kind of a set of rules for the films I’ve made with Ali Abbasi, and that’s always made things easier,” Hjorth says. “He first called me when he was in film school. He was doing some early tests and was audacious enough to ask me for a VFX shot. It was hard to understand what he was saying, but then he talked about a scene with a guy coming out of a cake and he kills his brother, slicing his throat with a knife, and he wanted to see that in close-up. I appreciate younger directors calling and asking me to work with them, and it has really paid off.” Hjorth was the Visual Effects Supervisor for several episodes of the 1994-2022 TV series The Kingdom and The Kingdom: Exodus. Hjorth has worked on eight feature films and a TV series with director Lars von Trier. (Photo: Peter Hjorth) Hjorth with director Lars von Trier, left, on the set of The Kingdom: Exodus. (Photo: Peter Hjorth) Hjorth was Visual Effects Supervisor on The House That Jack Built, directed by Lars von Trier. (Photo: Christian Geisnæs) Peter Hjorth was recognized for his work as European Visual Effects Supervisor for the Swedish-Danish feature and Cannes winner Border, directed by Ali Abbasi. (Image courtesy of Meta Film Stockholm) Hjorth was Production Visual Effects Supervisor on Lamb (2021), directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson. (Image courtesy of Go To Sheep and A24) Hjorth with Simone Grau Roney, Production Designer on The House That Jack Built (2018), directed by Lars von Trier. Choosing a favorite visual effect shot from his career, however, is a difficult task for Hjorth, though he’s particularly proud of the work achieved on Dogville. “Nobody noticed how messed up it was,” he explains. “Toward the end of the movie, you can see the masks, and you can see that we didn’t bother to match the grain between layers and all that. We did the first test on Flame, and when we went to layer 99, it just stopped working. We ended up doing it with combustion software, which was crummy, but it worked, and we got the shots done. I think we went to 170 layers on the opening shot. It was a learning experience for everybody involved, and I still work with some of those same people, most recently on the Netflix series I did this spring.” Hjorth worked as Visual Effects Supervisor on Holy Spider, directed by Ali Abbasi. (Photo: Nadim Carlsen. Image courtesy of Profile Pictures)   Hjorth served as Visual Effects Supervisor on Antichrist (2009), directed by Lars von Trier. Hjorth believes that there’s been an immense upgrade in professionalism in Denmark in the years since he’s worked in the business. “The beginning was much less industrial. The directors that I have worked with tend to work with me multiple times. A lot of the stuff I say in the first meeting is really defining for how that [job] is going to go. I’ve been so lucky to work on films that I actually think made a difference. It has mostly been art house films with limited budgets and resources. When we work together with the same producer or director a few times, sometimes they come back and say, ‘We’d like to have a creature or some special thing.’ It’s an evolving process.” Hjorth worked as Visual Effects Supervisor on the Lars von Trier-directed Melancholia (2011), and was also credited for his astrophotography of auroras for the film. (Image courtesy Magnolia Pictures) Hjorth was Visual Effects Supervisor on Dogville (2003), directed by Lars von Trier. Hjorth worked with director Lars von Trier to develop the Automavision technique, which was credited with the cinematography for The Boss of It All (2006). A computer algorithm randomly changes the camera’s tilt, pan, focal length and/or positioning as well as the sound recording without being actively operated by the cinematographer. Hjorth works closely with stunts, special effects makeup, animal wranglers and other specialists. “I know the craft and what they need from me. They know more about what’s going to be effective on screen, so I just leave them to it and make sure they have what they need. Same thing with animals and visual effects, makeup and stuff like that, physical things. You know I have a bit of a reputation for trying to get as many pieces of the puzzle as possible with a camera. Some production VFX people get quotes from, say, three different vendors, and then they pick all the cheapest bids for each sequence or shot, and that’s how they get down in budget. I tried to avoid that. I’d rather actually sit down with the director and say for example, ‘We should have some breathing space here.’” When it comes to the future of visual effects in Denmark, Hjorth takes an optimistic view. “I think this trend that we have more production supervisors is basically going to continue in the way that even if you have very little work, you hire someone from the get-go and you make sure that’s a balance in ambition and resources. There’s a special thing about Denmark, which is that we tend to all stick together, even people who are not in the same line of work. We have lots of experience sharing. There are no limits to who you can call and ask questions. It’s not competitive in this way because people will get the jobs they get. Everybody realizes we have to work together, and what really matters is that we put something on screen that gives the audience a good experience.”

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html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" A recording of Blackmagic Design’s livestream of its announcements for NAB 2025. You can see the new features in Da Vinci Resolve 20.0 at 2:13:20 in the video. Originally posted on 6 April 2025 for the beta, and updated for the stable release. Blackmagic Design has updated DaVinci Resolve, its free colour grading, editing and post-production software, and DaVinci Resolve Studio, its $295 commercial edition. DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 is a major release, adding over 100 tools, including a set of new AI-powered features for video editing and audio production, and is free to all users. Below, we’ve rounded up the key features for colorists and effects artists, including a new Chroma Warp tool, a new deep compositing toolset, and full support for multi-layer EXRs. The new Chroma Warp tool makes it possible to create looks with intuitive gesture controls. Color page: New Chroma Warp, plus updates to the Resolve FX Warper and Magic Mask For grading, the Color page‘s Color Warper gets a new Chroma Warp tool.It is designed to create looks intuitively, with users selecting a color in the viewer, and dragging to adjust its hue and saturation simultaneously. Among the existing tools, the Resolve FX Warper effect gets a new Curves Warp mode, which creates a custom polygon with spline points for finer control when warping images. Magic Mask, DaVinci Resolve’s AI-based feature for generating mattes, has been updated, and now operates in a single mode for both people and objects. Workflow is also now more precise, with users now placing points to make selections, then using the paint tools to include or exclude surrounding regions of the image. Another key AI-based feature, the Resolve FX Depth Map effect, which automatically generates depth mattes, has been updated to improve speed and accuracy. For color management across a pipeline, the software has been updated to ACES 2.0, and OpenColorIO is supported as Resolve FX. Effects artists get deep compositing support in the integrated Fusion compositing toolset. Fusion: new deep compositing toolset For compositing and effects work, the Fusion page gets support for deep compositing.Deep compositing, long supported in more VFX-focused apps like Nuke, makes use of depth data encoded in image formats like OpenEXR to control object visibility. It simplifies the process of generating and managing holdouts, and generates fewer visual artifacts, particularly when working with motion blur or environment fog. Deep images can now be viewed in the Fusion viewer or the 3D view, and there is a new set of nodes to merge, transform, resize, crop, recolor and generate holdouts. It is also possible to render deep images from the 3D environment, and export them as deep EXRs via the Fusion saver node. Fusion: new vector warping toolset, plus support for 180 VR and multi-layer workflows Other new features in the Fusion page include a new optical-flow-based vector warping toolset, for image patching and cleanup, and for effects like digital makeup.There is also a new 360° Dome Light for environment lighting, and support for 180 VR, with a number of key tools updated to support 180° workflows. Pipeline improvements include full multi-layer workflows, with all of Fusion’s nodes now able to access each layer within multi-layer EXR or PSD files. Fusion also now natively supports Cryptomatte ID matte data in EXR files. You can read about the new features on the Fusion Page in our story on Fusion Studio 20.0, the latest version of Blackmagic Design’s standalone compositing app, in which they also feature. IntelliScript automatically generates an edit timeline matching a user-provided script. Other toolsets: lots of new AI features for video editing and audio production DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 also features a lot of new AI features powered by the software’s Neural Engine, although primarily in the video editing and audio production toolsets.The Cut and Edit pages get new AI tools for automatically creating edit timelines matching a user-provided script; generating animated subtitles; editing or extending music to match clip length; and matching tone, level and reverberance for dialogue. There are also new tools for recording new voiceovers during editing to match an edit. Workflow improvements include a dedicated curve view for keyframe editing; plus a new MultiText tool and updates to the Text+ tool for better control of the layout of on-screen text. For audio post work, the Fairlight page gets new AI features for removing silences from raw footage, and automatically balancing an audio mix. We don’t cover video or audio editing on CG Channel, but you can find a complete list of changes via the links at the foot of the story. Codec and format support Other key changes include native support for ProRes encoding on Windows and Linux systems as well as macOS.MV-HEVC encoding is now supported on systems with NVIDIA GPUs, and H.265 4:2:2 encoding and decoding are GPU-accelerated on NVIDIA’s new Blackwell GPUs. Again, you can find a full list of changes to codec and platform support via the links at the foot of the story. Upcoming features include generative AI-based background extension. Future updates: new toolsets for immersive video and AI background generation Blackmagic Design also announced two upcoming features not present in the initial release.Artists creating mixed reality content will get a new toolset for ingesting, editing and delivering immersive video for Apple’s Vision Pro headset. There will also be a new generative AI feature, Resolve FX AI Set Extender, available via Blackmagic Cloud. More details will be announced later this year, but Blackmagic says that it will enable users to generate new backgrounds for shots by entering simple text prompts. The video above shows a range of use cases, including extending or adding objects to existing footage, and generating a complete new background behind a foreground object. Price, system requirements and release date DaVinci Resolve 20.0 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 are for Windows 10+, Rocky Linux 8.6, and macOS 14.0+. The updates are free to existing users.New perpetual licenses of the base edition are also free. The Studio edition, which adds AI features, stereoscopic 3D tools, and collaboration features, costs $295, following a temporary increase in the US following the introduction of new tariffs. Read a full list of new features in DaVinci Resolve 20.0 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.