Midsummer Cows

Last Midsummer 99% of  all Swedes were out eating food, dancing and most likely drinking somewhat too much.

But I was out hunting clouds for Warner Brothers and Avalanche Studios Mad Max. I drove to Torhams Udde outside Karlskrona and have spent many hours there. It was a truly magical evening with a glowing red sunset over archipelago and we’ve got some spectacular skies.

Around 11pm the sun was gone, the gloomy misty twilight have descended and it became really, really chilli (+5),  I have packed my gear and headed on a long hike back to the car. However not coming too far I met some cows grazing in the open. They seemed to be just as curious about me, as I was about them and soon they have called more cows to come and look. Half an hour later I had a full house gathered around… and a party!  They were dancing, having frivolous (lesbian!) kissing and all in all enjoying Swedish Midsummer at its finest. I didn’t have the Red Epic with me but Canon 5D was able to capture the merry cows.

For half a year I didn’t do anything with the footage even though I thought it was hilarious. Until half a year later when our friends at WSPA mentioned that they ran a campaign for Milk Cows. I remembered the footage and got ready for some serious post production challenge in making the dark, gloomy, very shaky material look shippable.

After many passes in DaVinci, Final Cut Pro X and creative colour grading we managed to lift up the gloominess of a dark twilight and create a feeling of a warm evening sun. This film was subsequently used for educational purposes in schools and helped to gather the much needed signatures to improve the cows’ conditions in the milk industry.

I have learnt that no matter what you always want to have a camera on you and capture interesting things going around. Many times we do not know what to use the randomly captured footage for, until one day when it proves to be essential for a project.