In a recent interview, colorist Dylan Hopkin discusses how collaborating under a shared vision led to a truly inspiring grade for the award-winning Norwegian series The Fortress.
Winner of the Best Screenplay accolade at Series Mania, the eagerly anticipated series had its international premiere on Viaplay. Starring Russell Tovey (Years and Years), the dystopian drama delves into 2037, when Norway has chosen to sever global ties and has surrounded itself with an enormous wall. Initially flourishing in its isolation, the country’s fate takes a perilous turn when a deadly disease strikes, morphing the once protective fortress into an inescapable trap.
Produced by Maipo Film for Viaplay and directed by Cecilie A. Mosli and Mikkel Brænne Sandemose, this series echoes modern debates as it questions the relevance of migration policies while putting the subject of resource depletion at the heart of the action.
Shot in Norway and Lithuania, post production house Nordisk Film ShortCut Oslo conformed, graded, and finished the series with DaVinci Resolve Studio. The facility also handled sound design and mastering, with Troll VFX in Finland delivering the series' visual effects.
Having previously collaborated with Mosli and Sandemose, Nordisk Film ShortCut’s colorist Dylan Hopkin joined the production with principal photography already underway, revealing how he relished the challenge set by cinematographer Lars Vestergaard, DFF.
What was your starting point?
Dylan Hopkin: We initially discussed several visual directions to explore and how we could collaborate. However, when I asked for visual references, Lars immediately turned the table and challenged me to explore different looks that I thought would suit the series before we met in person for the first time. I found great joy in this approach and dove head first into how each scene spoke to me visually.
However, I ensured I never painted ourselves into a corner during the grade. Especially since we hadn’t designed a show look beforehand. I had to be able to accommodate changes to our look DNA throughout the grade.
How did you approach defining the series’ look?
Dylan Hopkin: Even though I had no concrete visual references to abide by, Lars had lit the scenes very specifically to achieve an overall tight contrast, a bold emphasis on reflections, and slightly softer contrast in the facial areas.
A keyword that entered our conversations early on was “metallic,” which meant embracing a subtle sense of retaining more silver in our digital film emulsion, paying homage to partially skipping the bleaching function while processing traditional analog color film, which yields deeper desaturated hues and a tighter contrast curve.
This helped underpin the different visual cues between the bliss in Bergen, and the stark reality of the refugee camps.
We first needed to view the colors at a macro level, using a broad stroke approach, where we developed a “digital filmstock” for the series. Something that respected and accentuated the essence of imagery to best serve the story, characters, cinematography, production design, costumes, hair, and makeup.
I enjoyed adding slight imperfections to the “show looks” at this stage by utilizing DaVinci Resolve Studio’s custom curves and DCTL scripts to mimic cross talk between color channels. The images breathe more when parts of the tonal range are twisted slightly off axis. Otherwise, you can end up with an uninspiring look.
How long did you spend on each episode?
Dylan Hopkin: For the primary grade, we spent roughly 36 hours per episode. However, additional time was allocated for look development, editorial changes along the way, and VFX shot grading.
During the final grade, every live action frame was passed through a common custom node tree in Resolve, which created the framework for the “show looks” we designed for the series. This framework was always the last transformation to be applied to the imagery.
How did DaVinci Resolve Studio aid this grading process?
Dylan Hopkin: I used subtle amounts of the face refinement tool to enhance the actors’ eye light so that audiences felt more closely connected to the characters during crucial moments.
There were also a couple of scenes where a uniformed police officer had a hat with a mix of black and dark blue textiles, so we had to grade the blue to match the black. This might sound like a simple task; however, the reflective qualities of the dark blue area were a lot shinier than the black areas, and the darker luminance ranges were very similar.
I utilized the magic mask’s built in object mask and a Power Window to separate the dark blue and black areas. Once I had a solid matte, I could change the dark blue area to match the black textiles in minutes.
I also used Resolve’s depth map FX for atmospheric details. Towards the end of the season, there is a scene that takes place at a refugee camp. There were many refugees, guards, and burning campfires with varied amounts of smoke throughout the scene. I occasionally generated depth mattes with the depth map FX to get an even better shot by shot match between different exterior shots. I let that drive the haze visibility created with the fast noise FX. This helped me achieve better atmospheric continuity.
Do you have a favorite scene in the series?
Dylan Hopkin: One of my favorite scenes to grade was the dramatic daylight sequence where Uma (played by Nina Yndis) is trying to illegally enter Norway aided by smugglers via the North Sea. The compressed warm highlights, with a touch of green, really enhance the nerve and uncertainty of the situation. This, in tandem with edgy cinematography, great color separation against the red ship, dense colors and stunning VFX work, gives it great energy!
Hopefully, the grade should feel somewhat invisible, in the sense that it should not compete with the story but instead help underline it. At the beginning of the series, there are subtle differences between the two locations. However, there is a slight sense of uncertainty, even in the bountiful freshness of Norway.