Bordertown III

I DP’d the third season of Nordic Noir “Bordertown” earlier this year, and it’s now streamable at YLE. In this season, I got a great chance to work with three directors, Juuso Syrjä, Marko Mäkilaakso and Jussi Hiltunen. As a “concept” Director of Photography I had a privilege to take this last season visually even further, make it look harsher and what was most interesting – make it also whiter and brighter. We shot the season during the winter of 2018-2019 and have to say, the scenery gets quite breathtaking at times!

World-wide release is to be announced later, but before that, 1st and 2nd seasons are already available as Netflix Originals in Netflix world-wide. I DP’d the 2nd season as well. For you whom might get access to YLE’s streaming service, here’s the link for the Bordertown III: https://areena.yle.fi/1-3677300.

New commercial work for Arla

We shot an one-take-film for Arla with director Otso Tiainen and producer Juha-Matti Nieminen in August. Just to add a bit more fun, I had a Cinefade ND & Iris Control and motorized slider, as well as Arri Alura zoom to add some Hitchcock movement to the take. Have a look:

Delicious food commercials

This year I’ve travelled a lot to shoot food and groceries. Since February I’ve had three fabulous commercial productions that took me to Australia, Uruguay and Hong Kong. In February I shot a food commercial in Australia for Finnish K-Supermarket directed by Juuso Syrjä and produced by Hasan Motion. We toured Sydney and areas around it for two weeks to grill meat, fish and vegetables. Delicious food shots in the style of polished documentary. It was such a great trip! In March I visited Uruguay to shoot five films for food market Lidl with director Teemu Niukkanen and production company Director’s Guild. This time, we focused more on the comic storyline of the commercial series, but made sure to cut in to delicious food shots as well. In April I shot a commercial in Hong Kong with director Otso Tiainen and Director’s Guild for a meat producer HKScan. That trip took me to film in a Michelin star restaurant and capture one the best known skylines in the world. What was the connection between these commercials was not only the food, but super nice teams behind them – directors, producers, agencies and clients.

Bordertown

It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog entry. I guess working hard has kept me busy! Last fall I DP’d the second season of Netflix Original called Bordertown. Bordertown is a nordic noir detective story that sets its story to a small Finnish town close to a Russian border. It was a fantastic experience, really demanding and highly educational! Me and my team were working simultanously with two directors Juuso Syrja and Jyri Kahonen. I was sharing the season with two great DP’s, HP Vitikainen and Mikael Gustafsson. My role was to oversee the whole look of the series as a “chief DP” and shoot ten episodes as a team effort. Shooting the series like this was an highly interesting experience for me as I haven’t shared the duties of DP with anyone in my past tv productions (this marked my 4th tv series) so I think it gave me a lot of new tools for the future productions. Please, check the trailer:

Welcome to Texas (Aallonmurtaja)

TV-series “Aallonmurtaja” (“Welcome to Texas”), directed by Mika Kurvinen and produced by Warner Bros. International Television Production Finland (in collaboration with ZDF Enterprises) has been released via C More Finland. The first season has 10 episodes (42 min each) and it’ll run also on national channel MTV3 in Finland next year. Aallonmurtaja is a crime drama that tells a story of criminals and their everyday family life. The story is set in a small Finnish town on a shore of the Baltic Sea, close to a Russian border. This sets a unique tone for the story that soon starts to get much darker tones as bigger plot patterns starts to shape.

I had a privilige to work on this production from the first steps of story developing to the last steps in post-production. During five years, it truly was a real collaboration between the key members of the team. Aallonmurtaja is written by Miira Karhula and Mika Kurvinen. Produced by Essi Tuukkanen, Seija-Liisa Eskola (executive producer) and Antti Väisänen (executive producer).

Watch Aallonmurtaja via C More Finland (first month is for free). Aallonmurtaja at IMDb.