FUGLANE

“Fuglane” is based on the award-winning novel by Tarjei Vesaas, and tells the tale of Mattis, a mentally challenged man who is cared for by his lonely older sister, Hege.

Their everyday routine and isolated existence is interrupted when a lumberjack arrives at their lakeside cottage and falls in love with Hege, leaving Mattis fearful that he will lose his sister. With a limited understanding of the unpredictable power of nature, Mattis nonetheless turns to the elements to discover the answers with an unsettling result.

Anders T. Andersen not only directs this feature, he also stars as the lead character Mattis. His portrait of Mattis is simple brilliant, giving the character many nuances.

The movie was shot by Rune Kongsro, who is an highly experienced still photographer. He is well known for his high-end commercial still photography.

This was his first motion picture shoot. His imagery is breathtaking. The movie contains a nice mix of story driven pictures intertwined with gorgeous vistas from Telemark, Norway.

The movie was shot in colour, but the final grade was always intended to be in black & white.
When we worked on finding the initial look for the movie, we discussed different reference images from other black & white movies, which included "Control" , "Ida" and "Nebraska". In addition to these films we looked at images from several still photographers, including Sebastião Salgado, Daido Moriyama, Anders Petersen and Ed van der Elsken.

We went for a fairly hard contrast look, to emphasize the energy of the story and to capture the great texture of the surrounding locations. Paying attention to get to greyscale values of the skintones just right and balancing the contrast to maintain depth and richness.

It was the first time I have graded a monochrome drama, which made it an interesting challenge. I loved it!