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Construction
QuickTime |
RealVideo
Swedish
Television had its own model builders construct the mini village. Working from
the archeologists' maps and sketches, the designers built the model in sections
so it could be moved into a film studio. All told, the model took six to eight
months to complete.
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Archeology
QuickTime |
RealVideo
The
model builders relied on the results of a five-year archeological investigation
of Birka that ended in 1995. The fieldwork provided a much clearer idea of the
layout of buildings and streets than had been known before, a layout that the
model faithfully recreates.
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Design
QuickTime |
RealVideo
Certain
streets in the model village were designed especially with filmmaking in mind.
Notice the extraordinary attention to detail and the powerful sense you get of
"walking" through the village at the eye level of a person scaled down 30 times
in size. To get these sequences, the filmmakers spent three to four days
filming the model.
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Equipment
QuickTime |
RealVideo
The
filmmakers used a jib arm, also known as a camera crane, with a
remote-controlled digital beta video camera fitted with a so-called snorkel
lens. This rig allowed the filmmakers to guide the camera through the village
without, Rengfelt notes, "wrecking the buildings."
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Harbor
QuickTime |
RealVideo
In
designing the harbor scene, the model's builders adhered to the same exacting
standards they used in designing the village—crafting the authentically
rendered Viking boats on the same 1:30 scale, extending the jetties into real
water, and paying careful attention to the most minute details.
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Compositing
QuickTime |
RealVideo
To
get sequences like this, the filmmakers shot the actors against blue screens
and, with one monitor displaying the previously shot footage of the model,
instructed them to walk around virtual objects and perform other maneuvers as
if they were 30 times smaller and actually standing within the model village.
Agaton and Rengfelt then composited together the two images—model and models—into what you see here.
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People
QuickTime |
RealVideo
To
size the actors down to the 1:30 scale, Agaton and Rengfelt had to move the
camera 30 times farther away than it had been during the model shooting, making
the actors appear tiny in any given frame. "For some shots," says Rengfelt, "we
had to move out into the corridor."
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