Kaptein Sabeltann og skatten i Lama Rama (English: Captain Sabertooth and the Lama Rama Treasure) is the first in a series of three movies starring the gold-loving pirate Captain Sabretooth and it will be Norway’s most expensive family film so far. In this movie the orphan boy Pinky follows the Captain on an exciting and dangerous journey across the big oceans to the kingdom of Lama Rama, hunting for a treasure and the answer to who is Pinky’s father.
Storm Studios delivered close to 200 effect shots for the movie, making it one of our biggest projects to date. The shots contain a huge variety of effects from the entire city and surroundings of Lama Rama to adding fog to sequences at sea to creating digital water and fast paced action with animated coconuts flying through the air.
Storm Studios’ VFX Supervisor Morten Moen explains: “It is far too seldom that we get to work on a real adventure like this one where we can create larger-than-life environments and effects. In this film we could let our creative powers flow while creating both the rickety pirate town of Abra Harbour and the gold adorned paradise of Lama Rama. Lama Rama was a fun task because it is supposed to be a mountainous country by the sea and it was filmed in a flat desert in Morocco, a very long way from the nearest shore.
Another challenge was all the fog shots at sea. We were asked to add fog to a number of shots with ships in them. Since most of the fog needed to be behind the ships, we had to painstakingly roto the ships including all the ropes and small details to produce masks for the fog.”
Storm Studios’ VFX producer Tine Teigene Dalen says: “This project was a perfect project for us because we were involved a whole year before principal photography started. Our supervisor was able to give input to the production even before the script was finaled, thus enabling optimal use of vfx within the scope of the budget. Also, frequent pre-production meetings with cinematographer and director John Andreas Andersen and extensive on-set supervision made sure that we were able to work efficiently and produce a high number of high-end effects within the modest time and budget.”
