PROFILE
SARA BENNETT: OSCAR-WINNER TURNS PASSION INTO INSPIRATION FOR WOMEN IN FILM By TREVOR HOGG
Images courtesy of Milk VFX and Sara Bennett except where noted. TOP: Sara Bennett, Visual Effects Supervisor and Co-founder, Milk VFX. OPPOSITE TOP: Official Oscar photo of Bennett, Mark Ardington, Paul Norris, Andrew Whitehurst and presenter Andy Serkis. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: The multiple layers of water simulations made Adrift one of the most difficult projects that Bennett has ever worked on. (Image courtesy of STX Entertainment)
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During the 2015 Academy Awards, Sara Bennett became the second woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for her contributions on Ex Machina. The career path that led to her standing on the stage of the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood involved a change in profession and becoming a co-founder of a visual effects company. Bennett is the daughter of a police photographer and a nurse who still embraces the family tradition of being an avid reader. “I was born in Worcestershire in the West Midlands and grew up in a small town called Droitwich. I have fond memories but I couldn’t wait to move to London, and from the age of 14 I started planning my escape! My family were big readers, so I tended to read quite a lot from an early age. “My brother and I used to stay with our grandparents on weekends,” Bennett recalls, “and one occasion they rented The Dark Crystal for us. I must have been around 12 years old. I was blown away. That’s when I got my first real taste of inspiration to get into film. Legend was another film that inspired me and after that I started to think that makeup and prosthetics were the way to go.” Another of Bennett’s personal favorite films is James Cameron’s Aliens. “Everyone always says that Alien is their favorite, but for me it’s the second film, Aliens. I love the final scene with Sigourney Weaver and the alien Mama fighting. The visual effects are fantastic.” After graduating from what was a new course on makeup and prosthetics at her local college, the aspiring artist headed to London and found work with a special effects company as a receptionist. It was here that a casual conversation sparked her awareness and intrigue around the emergence of computer effects. “I applied to every VFX and production company in London for a runner’s job,” says Bennett. “A year later someone finally got back to me. From there, I fell in love with compositing. I gradually worked my way up through the ranks at various studios and learned different software, and that’s how I started my visual effects career.” There were no courses or mentors. “It was hard because you had to learn from everyone around you, and very quickly. I remember being surrounded by all of these fantastic senior compositors and getting frustrated as a roto and prep junior who was desperate to become a compositor. It was a steep learning curve. But I love a challenge, and the stubbornness in me ensured I pushed ahead with it and kept persevering. I learned a great deal of patience and pushed to learn as much as I could.” A change in corporate mandate resulted in Bennett co-founding Milk VFX in 2013. “Myself and the other Milk co-founders were part of The Mill’s film and TV team. The Mill decided to close that department to concentrate on commercials. There was a small group of us who had worked closely together for six or seven years at that point. We’d joked before about establishing our own company. Then this opportunity came along. We thought if we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it. We took a leap of faith and Milk was born. To have that level of control over your own venture was an amazing feeling. We hired key members of the old Mill TV and film team and we got a couple of key projects on board, including Doctor Who and Sherlock.
“I don’t think anything could have fully prepared us for Adrift. ... [T]his was a whole new level in terms of creating thousands of frames of stormy ocean. Just in terms of the rendering power required we used Amazon and Google cloud services because of the sheer number of caches from the effects that we had to render. The dramatic opening shot alone was 7,000 frames of water simulations. Then the end shot was 3,000 frames.” —Sara Bennett, Visual Effects Supervisor and Co-founder, Milk VFX “We did fly by the seat of our pants at the start,” Bennett acknowledges, “because it’s one thing to say that you’re going to set it all up, but doing it in reality is, of course, tougher than it looks. And, as we know, visual effects is a tough business. But what I love is that we started the company based on our ideas and passion for what we do. I headed up the 2D compositing department. We each managed different areas in the business so we never stepped on each other’s toes. Seven years on, I’m proud of what we’ve done with it so far.” Bennett feels that being a woman in the visual effects industry did not impede her career. “I never found any major issues when I was coming through the ranks. There were always people around who were difficult, but most of the time I had very good people around teaching me. There were only a few women back then as I was coming up, but more so now. We need to keep encouraging women into our industry until we have a more balanced ratio. Other than ensuring women in mid to senior roles in VFX are visible in order to inspire the new talent coming through, one of
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