Behind the Västerbottensost campaign: Why “natural-looking” images still require planning
Our latest campaign for Västerbottensost is running across Sweden right now.
Most people see it on their phone, on TV or in the subway.
The feedback we get is something like:
"Oh, it looks so magical!"
And when I ask how they think we made it, the answer is often more or less:
"You just went out into the forest and filmed it one evening, right?"
It looks simple and natural.
But there was actually a lot of planning behind it.
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.
Old, but not overgrown.
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.
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 sun.
We wanted to use real sunlight in the films.
It actually makes the production lighter, because you don't need huge lights and a big crew hidden somewhere behind the trees.
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.
We had to shoot late into the evening and plan our most important shots around sunset.
This meant 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.
Real sun. But fake fog.
So to make sure we had the same amount of fog in every shot, we used smoke machines.
Real fog can look beautiful, but there is one problem:
You cannot order it for exactly 8 PM on a shooting day.
Our location was also close to the sea, which meant it could get quite windy.
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.
The result looks natural.
Sometimes natural takes a lot of work
Behind these natural-looking images were location scouting, sun planning, smoke machines and a shooting schedule built around the sunset.
The final result may look like we just walked into a forest one evening and started filming.
But sometimes making something look natural takes a lot of planning.
See the full Västerbottensost case here:
anderssonmattias.com/vasterbottensost
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