Sehsucht: A Hybrid State of Mind

Like a band of medieval image-makers, Sehsucht mix up the media in service of the message, and at its new Berlin office, Mate Steinforth and Martin Woelke talk ambition, connection and quality.

Call Sehsucht an animation studio. Call it a post production company. Call it a VFX lab. You’d be right every time. And wrong.

“We don’t fit in the classic scheme of things. We have different types and titles for what we do,” says Mate Steinforth, creative director at the company’s Berlin office. “Some say Sehsucht is a kind of hybrid. We’re more into thinking that we’re a film production company – design-driven, of course but the full concentration for us is the story-telling itself, based on any kind of craft you are using for that.”

The kinds of craft he’s referring to include everything from 3D animation to claymation to live action. “It’s based more on what kind of solution do you use for the idea,” he says, and even though the majority of their output is design and animation-led, he’s keen to establish the role that Sehsucht performs. “It’s a production company. Our main clients are advertising agencies in Germany. We always say the story-telling aspect is the most important.”

Steinforth was working as a creative director at Psyop in New York when he first met Sehsucht’s executive producer Martin Woelke, and the two discussed opening a Berlin branch of the company that had already been established in Hamburg in 2000. It was an easy decision for both of them, he recalls, having already lived in the city. “In New York, everyone was totally psyched about Berlin,” he says. “Everyone was like, ‘woah, that’s where it’s happening’. There’s a lot of stuff happening culturally and a lot of really great designers living here, and then obviously those guys [Woelke and his colleagues] brought the business side to the story, which we all felt was very promising because a lot of agencies are moving to Berlin.”

Woelke adds: “The influence of culture is more intense in Berlin. That’s one of the reasons we came here. The other one is that we felt an international exchange is more likely to happen here. Not just on artistic levels, but as an exchange of minds.”

The office opened last November but has already turned out some stunning work, including a beautiful film for Google Street View that merges animation with images from the website to take you around the world, and a dazzling MTV ident featuring some incredibly cute, animated Star Wars-like creatures.

Those spots mostly use the animation and VFX that Sehsucht is renowned for, but Woelke envisages them going on to incorporate more live action shoots in the future, as the Hamburg office did with a spot for the Lamborghini Aventador recently, directed by Ole Peters. “This is a learning process but we think that it’s time now to take over that part too. There’s a change coming about in production and post production studios. We join those things together. We join up the disciplines we have and make a good mix out of it, getting the best solution for the idea.”

And he’s confident that they can silence any critics of the one-stop shop they’re offering. “We have a straight view on quality. Every piece we work on, you can see that there’s a lot of focus on quality. That’s what deflects the critics.”

So call it a studio, call it a post house, call it a production company. Call Sehsucht whatever you want, because its work speaks for itself.