Årets Bild 2014 – Production

Recently I’ve worked in secrecy with photographer Terje Lindblom to produce a video for Årets Bild (Picture of the Year). Now the secret’s out I can finally share what we did…

Årets Bild is Sweden’s most prestigious photography contest, they wanted a video to announce which town will host the next ceremony. The town that will host in 2014 is Sundsvall.

The video flies the viewer around iconic locations in Sundsvall, and visits places where the ceremony will take place.

The Concept

Our idea was to create a fly-thru tour of Sundsvall. The challenge was keeping the camera moving gracefully whilst constantly on the move. The plan was a non-stop tour that takes you up & down, in & out, & around Sundsvall.

To realise our vision we had a day with the guys from Aviatorfoto who brought their RC Helicopter along to shoot the aerial footage. The ground shots were made using a DSLR rig and a mini-jib crane, shot on a Canon 6D.

Behind the Scenes

One of the production highlights was getting to work with RC helicopters.

We were fortunate that Aviatorfoto had agreed to come down for a day. However… that particular day was in sub-zero temperatures and the weather turned from overcast to completely clear as the day progressed. As a result editing became a headache so a little digital trickery was needed to match the shots 😉

Another challenge was the VFX, mainly camera tracking and mixing 3D with the live footage.

The tracking was done in After Effects CS6 and 3D created in Cinema 4D. The two were a powerful combo and made the process run smooth. The VFX part of production is a blog post in itself so I may take that up another time.

If you’re a photog heading to Årets Bild 2014 we’ll see you there 🙂

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