Behind the Västerbottensost campaign: The recipe for a magical forest sunset

Our latest campaign for Västerbottensost is running across Sweden right now.

When you quickly see it while scrolling on your phone or flipping through channels on TV, it might look like we just happened to find a beautiful forest and started filming.

But it was actually a mix of three carefully selected ingredients.

1. Finding the right forest

Västerbottensost has been made in northern Sweden since 1872.

We wanted the location to have some of that history too.

So we needed a forest that felt right for the brand.

We started by looking at really old, natural forests.

But then we realised they were often too overgrown, too dark, and even a little scary-looking!

So we also visited some younger, planted pine forests.

They looked clean and graphic, but they felt too new!

We wanted something in between..

To Old

When the forest gets old, it grows thick. Less sunlight gets in, and the trees start to fall over.

To Young

The planted pine forest looks very graphic, but to organised to feel magical.

Perfect

A fairly old forest with both spruce and pine trees, on slightly hilly ground where the sunlight could shine through. ✅

And finally, we found this one.

A fairly old forest with both spruce and pine trees, on slightly hilly ground where the sunlight could shine through.

2. Let the sun decide the schedule

We did most of the rigging and preparation during the day, and shot most of the material between 18.00 and 22.00 in the evening. Following the path of the setting sun.

You don't need huge lights and a big crew if you can use the real sun as your light source.

But this also meant that the sun decided our schedule.

We planned where the sun would be, when it would get low enough and when it would shine through the trees in the right direction.

So we did most of the rigging and preparation during the day, and shot most of the material between 18.00 and 22.00 in the evening.

3. Real sun. But fake fog.

Running a Smoke/Fog machine for long duration

In the background, we can see a long pipe on the ground with small holes in it, creating fake fog.

Real fog can look beautiful, but there is one problem:

You cannot order it for exactly 8 PM on a shooting day.

So to make sure we had the same amount of fog in every shot, we used smoke machines.

The smoke helped us bring out the sunlight between the trees and create the soft atmosphere we wanted.

Sometimes natural takes a lot of work

The final result may look like we just walked into a beautiful forest one evening and started filming.

But behind it were three carefully selected ingredients:

1. The right forest
2. The right sunlight and timing
3. A lot of fake fog

Sometimes creating a little magic takes a lot of planning.

See the full Västerbottensost case here:

anderssonmattias.com/vasterbottensost

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