Lilyhammer (SEASON 3)

Lilyhammer season one & two were a huge hit world wide. The New York gangster Frank Tagliano, played by Steven Van Zandt, is under the witness protection program in Lillehammer, Norway. He´s a long way from home, but seems be doing well as a successful nightclub owner. Although he does bend the rules. The series is a weird, yet delightful mix of American and Norwegian culture and how it sometimes collides. Season three has a even larger budget than the previous seasons, and you can really see and hear the difference. Great great acting and interesting storylines. Stunning team work!

This year the characters have to deal with some serious business in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As well as the ongoing problems in Lillehammer, Norway. There has also been a lot of buzz due to the fact that rock-legend Bruce Springsteen has his acting debut in season 3. He plays a really cool character, just wait and see! Being a Netflix original series, Lilyhammer has been sold to over 130 countries world wide! That is an impressive achievement!

On season 3 I got the opportunity to grade a large portion of the series. I just wrapped up grading six episodes (ep3 - 8), and also did additional grading on the first two episodes (ep1 - 2). On top of that I also was the online editor on ep1, 2, 7 and 8. It's been rather busy lately, that's for sure. Lilyhammer is a fun show to grade. A wide range of characters, locations and storylines make room for a large number of looks to create.

My colleague, Senior Colourist Julien Alary, was the main Colourist for ep1 and 2. I followed some of the basic looks that were defined by Julien, DOP Johan-Fredrik Bødtker and director Simen Alsvik.

Due to the diversity of the story I had to create lots of new looks / colour combinations as the story progressed. I worked closely with DOP Pål Bugge Haagenrud and the different directors through the entire grading-process. Directors Steven Van Zandt, Øystein Karlsen, Tuva Novotny and Simen Alsvik were all inspiring to work with. In addition to the colouring, we also added filmgrain to the images for a more filmic texture using Filmconvert.

This season Lilyhammer takes us to four different regions: South America (Brazil), Europe (Norway), Nepal (Actually filmed in Morocco) and North America (New York City). All these different locations needed their own characteristic looks. Spanning from exotic vibrant Brazilian beaches, the gritty slums of Rio, picturesque small town Norway, The Godfather inspired NYC palettes and the clear mountain air of Nepal.

Lilyhammer Season 3 has approximately 5600 shots in total.

The image above shows coloursamples from all eight episodes compressed together.

Maintaining a cohesive look throughout a long production like this is always a challenge, especially when working with different directors and DOPs. Grading will never be an "exact science", there is no "correct way" to grade a scene. The story, characters, emotion and energy are important factors. Perception of colour, and how it effects someone can differ a lot. However it's all about getting the creative vision of the director and DOP on the screen. After all, they have thought things through, and have a clear picture of how they want to tell the story.

As a Colourist, my job is to translate that in to colours. Following the wishes of the creatives, but also bringing new ideas to the table. Hopefully creating looks that make the visual language even better, and guiding the audience to look at the important parts of a scene.

The main camera for the series was Arri Alexa (Quicktime Prores4444 Log-C), with additional footage shot on GoPro, BMD Production Camera 4K and a Magic Lantern hacked Canon 5D Mk3. Arri Alexa is my favorite camera apart from "real film". The Alexa images are very organic and contain a large dynamic range that gracefully rolls off towards the highlights and shadows.

The entire season was graded with DaVinci Resolve. We used Resolve 10 for the first six episodes, and jumped over to Resolve 11 for the last two episodes. New features in Resolve 11, like the updated group-functionality, keyer and smart-caching, really made a difference. As always, the amazing shape-tracker made my life a lot easier while dealing masks (Power Windows). When grading some of the more complicated VFX-shots, I used seperate mattes to finesse certain elements. Resolve is a great grading tool, artist friendly and fast. Just what you need for a tight schedule like we had for this show.

The final online editing and last minute visual fixes were done with Adobe Premiere CC and Adobe After Effects CC. This was the first time we had used Premiere CC on a larger production. Our facility, ShortCut Oslo, had several people working concurrently on different episodes handling various duties after the principle grading was finished. Adobe CC is a great package, it has it's pros and cons, but performed well enough for us to consider using it on future projects. For Norwegian viewers, the complete season three will be available at NRK.no from 29.10.2014. International viewers have to wait until 21.11.2014 for the Netflix release. Be sure to check it out, it´s great work and extremely entertaining! The brand new official Netflix trailer for season three has just been released. Enjoy!