DETAILS
a psychological thriller, the feature length cecilie shares much in common with films such as jonathan glazer’s birth, roman polanski’s rosemary’s baby, and robert zemeckis' what lies beneath. the film’s global premiere was on june 1, 2007 in copenhagen. a buzz surrounded cecilie, as it broke the mould of the traditional danish domestic drama by instead offering an intelligently crafted story complemented with very strong visuals. press reviews were very positive.

cecilie is a period film, with scenes taking place in the early nineteen seventies as well as in the present day. winter plays a featured role in this film, thus a lot of energy was put into the creation of physical environments that mimicked or commented upon the season. additionally, a lot of production design resources were put into weather related special effects: winter storms, ice, and frozen environments.
 
this is the second feature film that i have made with director hans fabian wullenweber, while it is at least the sixth time that i have worked with d.p. jacob kusk.
 
wullenweber offers a lot of freedom, as he relies on the substantial input from his dedicated collaborators. i have really enjoyed the open process by which we work and the team work between wullenweber, kusk, and my department (which consisted of 12 people, excluding the set construction crew and post-production – which i had some involvement with).
 
there’s a lot to say about the making of this film and the work that went into the production design. some of it has already been expressed in interviews that i have given, which will soon be available online. suffice it to say, the film took years to make, and my work on it started almost a year before production.

a significant number of pivotal scenes were shot in a studio with large set constructions, while many others were shot on location. some locations experienced 100% make-overs, which, in some cases, included extensive construction within an existing structure.
 
in the early stages of the film's development and pre-production, a lot of time and effort was put into creating psychological profiles for the characters as well as for the locations, which would then inform the choice of architecture, construction material, colour, texture and costume design. one of the principal responsibilities for the production design was to establish environments that exuded discomfort and dis-ease – we often approached this by creating environments that directly opposed the character’s central need. there are many examples of this in the film, and an easy one is a recurring scenario where our heroine, cecilie, finds herself in a constant struggle to stay warm: therefore some environments were created to appear very cold while others were created to come across as exceedingly hot. betrayed by her surroundings, cecilie is continuously fidgeting with her thick sweaters or turning up the thermostat to combat the inhospitable environments.
 
other themes included the concept of competing identities as reflected in the production design. to underscore this, in just about every scene, there are multiple versions of an object, often placed right next to each other for a stronger effect.
 
for more information, i have made available some of my notes that were provided for use as bonus materials for the eventual DVD release of the film. at present time, there is only a danish version available, as a word doc. which can be downloaded here.

additional background information can be found here, under featurettes, which includes video excerpts from interviews that christian svanes kolding has given regarding the film's production design.

to the left are a few images that are limited, for now, to the scenes involving the construction of the bathroom - the scenes from which, one can perhaps reasonably expect, will one day be a part of the cinematic pantheon of terrifying scenes.

here's a link to the film's official poster.