MAGNUS (SEASON 1)

It's challenging to describe "Magnus", it's scope covers a wide range of nerdy genres. It's definitely a new, refreshing world! The universe is a kick-ass blend of contemporary Sherlock, Fargo, Dr. Who, Utopia, Inspector Clouseau and Lilyhammer.

"Magnus" is the brain child of the extremely talented actor / director Vidar Magnussen, who is a household name within comedy in Norway. He also plays the main character Magnus. Magnus is a police officer that nobody deems competent enough to solve cases, due to his unconventional methods. Where reenactments of crimes in disguise, augmented reality and weird and wonderful inventions are commonplace.

"Magnus" is directed by the highly experienced Geir Henning Hopland, and tastefully shot by cinematographer Jakob Ingimundarson.

During the initial discussions concerning the look for the series, Spike Jonze's awesome movie "Where the wild things are" was mentioned. The creatives loved the warmth that the movie has. Before the main grading started, I prepared a wide range of different looks to present on our first grading day. I really like to have some time to play around with the images before the first client sessions. Throwing the images around a bit and see what my gut feeling says.

We chose a realistic, yet stylized grade, where the whites and the blacks are slightly skewed, created with custom curves in Davinci Resolve Studio 15.

I graded directly on the RED RAW 8K files (source cached as Prores4444). All VFX shots were delivered as scene referred linear UHD EXR files (source cached as Prores4444). The Norwegian version of the series is aired / streamed at full HD, but the English version will be an UHD delivery.

The show has a healthy amount of VFX too. Roughly 450 shots were done by the NRK's internal VFX-department, and Stardust VFX.

And last but not least, "Magnus" has tons of impressive SFX-makeup and prosthetics, handled by Imaginarium FX. Their work blew me away! Several international magazines have covered the makeup work. Also check out this cool article at Filter Film & TV (written in Norwegian).

The series is produced by Anders Tangen, who also has produced successes like "Dag", "Lilyhammer", "Norsemen" and "One Night". As with "Norsemen", "Magnus" was shot in two different versions. One with Norwegian language, and one entirety shot with English language. This formula has previously created a lot of positive momentum, especially for "Norsemen", which got picked up as a Netflix Original series.

The Norwegian version of Magnus premieres on NRK January 4th 2019 (two episodes), after that NRK will release one episode per week. The release date and distribution for the English version is yet to be determined. The entire Norwegian season 1 can be viewed here! (only available for viewers with Norwegian IP-addresses).

Until the English spoken version of Magnus is ready for primetime, check out the trailer!