It's been over two years since I was approached by a director who had heard about a project of mine called Black Milk. It was a story set in a highly stylized and minimalistic world – a world seemingly impossible to imagine when told. I had a screenplay without words and dialogue.

Luckily I've been a visionary with trained abilities to visualize… I had a series of paintings – surreal and symbolically laden landscapes inviting to a trip of subtle nightmares that did not need to be explained. I witnessed great enthusiasm around my paintings. Though everyone seemed to understand the potential of these visuals, no one could really point out what they were about. One of the biggest enthusiasts was of course the soon to become director for the project, Skjalg Molvær.

Together with the director, we started developing this project into a film format. It was decided to become a short film. I got deeply into storytelling, read myself up on screen writing, and together we started enhancing and pull together the story while preserving the original vision and look from the original paintings.

And what a look this film was going to have! My concepts for the film meant a lot of difficulties. It soon turned out that this project would become huge! The project involves special effects, computer animation, green screens, and last but not least, a giant set piece.

After a series of technical tests, research and even a great deal of pioneering, we were finally ready for production. It turned out to be a huge budget for such a small film. The artistic value of the project and the line-up of a great and talented crew involved turned out to be quite convincing. We received financial support from Filmkraft Rogaland, Vestnorsk Filmsenter og Norsk Filminstitutt. The film has now a budget of over one million nok, and is being produced by Genesis Film and Vidvinkel Film. This is by far my biggest project, and I've learned so much from the process of being involved with just about everything during pre-production.

The film is being shot in a grandeur warehouse/office building in Haugesund, west coast of Norway. The building houses the living quarters for the film crew and the studio itself. Currently we live there as a great art collective building sets, eat good food and enjoying the most exciting and productive summer ever! I plan share some interesting and resourceful stories from the many challenges we met during our work with this film trough my blog.

Read more about the project at www.sortmelk.no (see also english version).
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