Swedish Production Company Filmlance Builds ‘The Bridge’ with Quantel

Leading Swedish independent production company Filmlance has completed the production and postproduction on seasons one and two of BAFTA-nominated Scandinavian crime drama ‘Bron/Broen’ (‘The Bridge’). Filmlance carried out the conform, online, and color grading of the series on its Quantel Pablo color and finishing system. The two 10-part series have been sold to more than 170 countries with successful remakes including ‘The Tunnel’ (France/UK) and ‘The Bridge’ (USA/Mexico). Bron/Broen season three is currently in production and is due to air in September 2015.

Filmlance, located on Stockholm’s northern docks, was founded in 1988 and is now one of Sweden’s longest established production companies and has since produced more than 100 major motion pictures, children’s films, high-end television series, feature films, short films and music videos.

Colorist at Filmlance, Per Sjökvist, said, “We’ve had a Pablo in the group for about seven years and it’s still going strong! Pablo is a very powerful, flexible and stable system. If your task is to make the best of every single image in a 10 hour drama, Pablo is perfect. There are so many tools in Pablo that make it so intuitive; however its shape tool is my favourite feature. It’s so flexible, fast and useful in so many ways. You can easily separate different objects in the image and grade and process them separately.”

Bron/Broen is a Scandinavian crime drama television series, co-produced by Sveriges Television, Danmarks Radio, ZDF and production companies Nimbus Film and Filmlance International. The series begins with the discovery of the body of a murdered woman on the Oresund Bridge – right on the border between Sweden and Denmark. The top half of the body is from a Swedish politician and the bottom from a Danish prostitute, leading Danish and Swedish police into an investigation to find the murderer.

“It’s not so easy to describe the look of Bron/Broen – it’s better to watch the series! Overall we try to do it low contrast and never crush the blacks or push the gains. The color is quite desaturated and usually we try to go cooler without losing the warmness in the skin tones. Having a post production department in house that can complete the DIT duties, editing, grading and VFX etc makes us rather unique and gives us an extra level of creative freedom,” Sjökvist concluded.