This little film was made in a month, most of the time went to do the sets, only quite few days for shooting..

on  youtube:

and on vimeo:

This video is made as a stop-motion video, lot of the running sequences are made with replacement character. The animation is shot wit a Bolex 16 mm camera from 1954. Due to the big sets, everything was shot in my parents barn in wintertime, so I had down to minus 4 degrees celsius on the set. The video was inspired by old german films like “The cabinet of Caligari” and the big anonymous city in “Metropolis”. So everything is crude made, with shadows painted directly on the set pieces. Everything was supposed to be quite lo-fi..

It is on Vimeo:

..and on Youtube:

Both places in HD.

Really a fun and different process doing this one, but quite a bit work to sort out all the pictures and do the editing..

I built the kitchen with all the props, including bakery. The set is in scale 1:8.

Here is the completed film:

This is the overview of the set at its early stage, it is built to match the brief from the production company; Storm Studios.

Here is the door and the window, all built in balsawood.

Details and bakery, the gingerbread are made from Fimo, and the breads are made from air drying clay, and painted.

More bakery, and a shelf.

Here is the set, almost complet,  without details..

It was a fun job to do, and it turned out to be a very nice commercial.

The Theater structure is made from foamboard, on a sturdy MDF base. The stage floor is made from a lot of small pieces of balsa wood.

On this pictures the wall coverings are on place, and the stage has got balsa wood and decorations, and it has been painted.

Here is the final look on the stage. Since this is a theater in the forest, I used elements from the forest. I painted a tree on each side, and painted in the seasons from summer on the lower left, winter on top, all the way until early summer in lower right. I really love to play with small details, and used toy plastic animals, that I paint as stone. I used some time to find the right ones, because I want the smallest to be the biggest, like the butterfly (which is a repeating thing both in the lyrics and in the video.) that is a small animal, but here it is bigger than the deer. And the butterfly is covering the winter in the seasons tree.

This is a picture from a deleted scene, I was thinking about putting in a small sequence with lights coming in the doors in the back before it opens..but this was cut for various reasons.

….And in the end, this is my Christmas card from last year, I used the theater…and, yes, thats me 7 times..

The video is also available on youtube now, see the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SYh0QpYtU0

…and, the first official screening of the video will be in Stavanger kortfilmfestival, it will be presented on 1. okt 09, and screened in the music video program on the 2. okt 09.

See the video here:

http://www.vimeo.com/6643521

Everything is made as a stop-motion, there is no digital effects, and no digital post production.

Close up of Helene in the forest.

This picture shows the forest, and you can see the camera rig, for the camera movement

Another picture of the forest set, notice the oversize bushes in the front, this one help to create depth. The camera is “God” so every piece of settings is placed so it looks right in the camera.

The same set..

..and from a different angle, the forest is build in forced perspective.

..and yet another one, all the forest scenes are made on this set, the ground has been repainted, and the trees relocated.

Here is an overview of the theater, the walls is removable, so only what is in the picture is needed on the set. The light rig in the ceiling are Christmas tree lights.

This is the shooting of one of the close-up scenes inside the teatre. Everything that not supposed to move, had to be fixed.

Here is the total set of the theater, and the loft set on the stage. the loft is here masked with blackwrap, so the light can be set in the window, and not in between walls etc..

The set here is also prepared for the opening of the doors on the stage set, so here is the forest placed behind it. I think this may be the most complicated set for the video.

Here is one of the sequence, in paper..

Another close-up scene inside the theater, notice the rig for exact placement of the cut-outs, and the two piles of cut-outs, one witch is shot one is not.

Same thing from a different angle.

Shooting details inside the theater.

I used a Canon 300D camera, with remote capture, and saving on hard drive on the PC.

Here is the rotating door sequence, the wall is supported on a rotating disk. this was a very difficult scene to shoot. since so much moves, is was difficult to get everything where it should be all the time. This scene was shot 4 times before it get right. It was easier to tilt camera and sets on this one.

This is the loft set. it was shot separately for the effect light scene.

The same as above from a diffrent angle.

This was a fun scene to do. This is when the light travels inside the room like a timelapse of sun in a window. The whole ting is made by putting the loft scene, and the camera on a rotating disk, it is shot with a 10 mm lens, really wide angle. on the big disk there is a scale for rotating a tiny bit at a time. Ater this picture was taken, I wrapped both tha set and the camera in with blackwrap, leaving only the window. Then there is a light besides the set, and set with camera is rotating.

The loft set is actually carefully build based on instructions made by Henrik Ibsen in the book “Vildanden” The wild duck.

I want everything to be as it was some sort of a dream, it’s familiar, and not…