Past editions
2006 — Digital Sets and Environments for Film
5–6 April, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshop.
The first Digital Storytelling brought together filmmakers, architects, and VFX artists to ask a question that felt genuinely new: what happens to film production when physical sets can be replaced by digital environments? The major studios were already excited. Norwegian audiences were about to find out what that meant.
Keynote: Alex McDowell, Production Designer, Matterlab — Non-Linear Production: The New Technology of Film Design
Also featured: Eric Hanson (The Day After Tomorrow,The Fifth Element) on digital environments in film; Dayne Cowan (DNEG) on the digital Chicago of Batman Begins; Aksel Jermstad and Torgeir Busch (Drylab) on the digital sets they created for the Norwegian film Storm.
Workshop: A full-day workshop on the design of digital sets, led by Eric Hanson and attended by twelve participants.
2007 — Digital Fiction: Innovative Filmmaking
16-18 April, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshop.
The second edition widened the lens from sets and environments to the full creative potential of digital technology in storytelling. Speakers from Norway, the UK, and the US explored how digital tools were changing not just what films looked like, but what stories could be told and how.
Keynote: Robert Legato, VFX Supervisor — Cost Effective VFX Techniques in Feature Films
Also featured: Eric Hanson and Greg Downing (xRez Studio) on innovation and economy in visual effects; Frazer Churchill (DNEG) on the invisible effects of Children of Men; Morten Moen and Otto Torbjørnsen (Storm Studios) on Norwegian digital production; Øystein Larsen and Rune Spaans (Toxic) on The Bothersome Man.
Workshop: A two-day Digital Sets Production Workshop for advanced VFX artists, led by Eric Hanson and Greg Downing, preceded the seminar on 16–17 April. The workshop was fully booked.
2008 — The Narrative Power of Visual Effects
7–8 April, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Two-day seminar and workshop
The third edition expanded the event to two days and introduced the BVE — Best Visual Effects — the first Norwegian award for visual effects in live action film, presented at a ceremony at Gamle Logen on the evening of April 8th. The theme put the storytelling argument at the centre: visual effects exist to serve narrative, not to replace it.
Keynote: Dr. Shilo T. McClean, author and filmmaker — Digital Storytelling: A Framework for the Narrative
Also featured: Brian Connor (ILM) on compositing work from Star Wars III; Dayne Cowan (DNEG) on the invisible effects of The Bourne Ultimatum; Bryan Jones (Framestore) on The Golden Compass; Jim Thacker and Mark Ramshaw (3D World) on ten years of visual effects in film; Espen Horn and Nikolai Lockertsen on the visual effects of Long Flat Balls 2; a Scandinavian VFX Omelette showcasing Norwegian and Swedish studio work including Storm Studios, Gimpville, and FIDO; and the inaugural Best Visual Effects Award ceremony at Gamle Logen.
Workshop: A workshop in digital compositing led by Brian Connor, Compositor at ILM.
2009 — Visual Effects and the Story World
9–11 September, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshops.
By 2009 the Norwegian VFX community had grown enough to warrant its own showcase — the Norwegian VFX Omelette, a regular DS fixture from this edition onwards, presenting the latest work from Norwegian studios alongside international perspectives. The keynote took the longest possible view: two thousand years of visual storytelling, from ancient theatre to the digital present.
Keynote: Michael Fink, CEO and Senior VFX Supervisor, Prime Focus VFX North America — Visual Effects Paradiso: 2000 Years of Visual Effects
Also featured: Arne Kaupang on Hellboy II; Morten Moen (Storm Studios) on Max Manus; Peter Spence (Qvisten Animation) on Knerten; Staffan Linder (FIDO) on creature work in The Kautokeino Rebellion; the BVE 2009 award ceremony.
Exhibition: Extreme Photography: Gigapixel Images in Print — an exhibition of extremely high resolution panoramic photography displayed in the foyer of Filmens Hus from 9–16 September.
Workshop: A two-day advanced Nuke compositing workshop on 10–11 September for ten senior Norwegian VFX artists, led by Dag Ivarsøy, compositor at studios including Cinesite, Digital Domain, and ReelFX/Radium in Los Angeles.
Workshop: A one-day Live Action Integration field workshop at Gol stave church, the Norwegian Folk Museum, led by Eric Hanson and Greg Downing of xRez Studio. A selected group of VFX artists and supervisors gained hands-on experience in location data acquisition, covering HDR capture, panoramic photography, photogrammetry, and 3D data capture.
2010 — Visual Effects Into New Dimensions
14–16 April, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshops.
Avatar had just changed everything — or so it seemed. Stereoscopic 3D was the dominant conversation in global filmmaking, and this edition confronted it directly: was it a genuine new storytelling dimension or an overhyped novelty? The keynote speaker had co-production designed Avatar itself. Sixteen years later, his talk title reads differently: Art and Machine.
Keynote: Robert Stromberg, Production Designer — Art and Machine: Visual Effects Design and Its New Role in Film
Also featured: Theodor Groeneboom (Framestore) on compositing Avatar in stereoscopic 3D; Colin Doncaster (Storm Studios) on where the industry was heading; Kasimir Lehto on the cinematic language of 3D. The exhibition Visions for a Story World — concept art and matte painting — opened at Filmens Hus.
Workshop: A one-day introduction to VFX in film production for producers, directors, and scriptwriters, led by Jeppe Nygaard Christensen, VFX Supervisor and CEO of Ghost, Denmark. Covered planning, budgeting, and execution of visual effects, with a practical budgeting session for a scene from Island of the Lost Souls.
Workshops: Two one-day Nuke compositing workshops on 15–16 April at Filmens Hus, led by Matt Leonard of Sphere VFX — the first covering advanced 3D compositing, the second stereoscopic 3D compositing — in collaboration with The Foundry. Temporary Nuke licences provided by The Foundry.
2010 — DSLR Filmmaking with Philip Bloom
19–21 May, Villa Stenersen and Filmens Hus, Oslo. Masterclass and workshops.
A standalone event separate from the annual seminar, organised in cooperation with the Norwegian Film Institute and Canon Norway. Renowned filmmaker and cinematographer Philip Bloom came to Oslo to teach Nordic film, video, and photography professionals how to achieve a cinematic look using DSLR cameras. Two full-day hands-on workshops took place at Villa Stenersen, one of Norway's most celebrated works of modernist architecture, on 19 and 21 May. An evening masterclass lecture followed on 20 May in the Tancred cinema at Filmens Hus, where Bloom presented examples of DSLR filmmaking and shared his experiences shooting pick-up shots for Lucasfilm's Red Tails. Canon Norway provided cameras and lenses for the workshops.
Speaker and workshop lead: Philip Bloom, filmmaker and cinematographer
2011 — World Building in a Digital Universe
13–15 April, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshops.
Digital characters had crossed the uncanny valley. Avatar had proven that audiences could believe in a fully digital protagonist. This edition put the spotlight on how that leap was achieved — and what it meant for the future of actors, animators, and storytellers.
Keynote: Paul Debevec, USC Institute for Creative Technologies — From Spider-Man to Avatar: Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors
Also featured: Owen O'Brien (EA/DICE) on the genesis of Mirror's Edge; Matt Woodward (CCP Games) on EVE Online's storytelling; Arne Kaupang (DNEG) on bringing the alien star of Paul to life.
Workshops: Two one-day NukeX compositing workshops on 14–15 April at Filmens Hus, led by Matt Leonard of Sphere VFX — an intermediate session followed by an advanced session — covering new NukeX 6.2 features, matte painting, set extensions, CG integration, and 2.5D relighting, in collaboration with The Foundry.
2012 — The Art and Science of Visual Effects
14 May, Filmens Hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshops.
The seventh edition brought together the worlds of film, games, and emerging production technology under a single question: where does the convergence of artistic vision and technical capability lead? The keynote speaker came from Weta Digital — the studio whose work on The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes had redefined what was possible on screen. The Nordic VFX Omelette showcased the latest work from Norwegian and Nordic studios including Storm Studios, Gimpville, Qvisten Animation, Framestore Iceland, and others. Theory Interactive from Finland presented their in-development game Reset — a game where the world itself was telling the story.
Keynote: Sebastian Sylwan, Chief Technology Officer, Weta Digital — The Evolution of Storytelling Through the Convergence of Art and Science
Also featured: FIDO on new creature work; Dadi Einarsson (Framestore Iceland) on Contraband; Netron on their outdoor projection mapping the 350-year history of Fredriksten Fortress onto its own walls.
Workshops: Two one-day workshops on 15–16 May at Filmens Hus, led by Matt Leonard of Sphere VFX — returning for the third consecutive year. The first covered new NukeX 6.3 features including Deep Compositing, the Particle System, and OpenColorIO. The second introduced Houdini to Maya artists, completing a full shot from start to finish.
2014 — The Making of Gravity
5 April, Westerdals School of Arts, Communication and Technology, Oslo. Masterclass
In cooperation with Westerdals and NFI:LAB, this event marked Digital Storytelling's return — a deliberately scaled reboot after the 2013 hiatus. The idea came from Tor Fosse at the Bergen International Film Festival, who suggested Theodor Groeneboom and the story of Gravity. Theodor had presented his Avatar compositing work at DS 2010, and Alfonso Cuarón had been the subject of one of DS's most memorable earlier sessions through Frazer Churchill's Children of Men presentation in 2007.
Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity had just won seven Academy Awards. Theodor Groeneboom, who served as both on-set Lightbox technician and Sequence Lead at Framestore, gave a first-hand account of the entire filmmaking process — covering the innovative on-set technology that allowed actors to be immersed in digital environments in real time. The masterclass ran from 15:00 to 17:00, followed by mingling in the Westerdals Café. During breaks, VFX showreels from Storm Studios, Rune Spaans/SuperRune, Storyline Studios, Stripe, Gimpville, and Hocus Focus played on monitors. Three DS Honorary Award winners were present: Øyvind Bråss, Martin Gant, and Morten Skallerud.
Speaker: Theodor Groeneboom, Senior Compositor and Sequence Lead, Framestore
2014 — Guardians of the Galaxy
22 November, Westerdals School of Arts, Communication and Technology, Oslo. Masterclass
The second 2014 masterclass was enthusiastically received by the Norwegian VFX community. The audience included professionals from the leading Norwegian VFX and animation studios alongside a selected group of students, with Kim F. Dubois, Counsellor for Press, Education and Cultural Affairs at the US Embassy, among the guests.
Theodor Groeneboom returned alongside Otto Torbjørnsen to take the audience inside the Marvel universe — creature work, alien world-building, and the pipeline behind one of the year's biggest productions. The masterclass ran from 14:00 to 17:00, followed by mingling in the Westerdals Café and a prize draw for Marvel/Disney Blu-rays. Feedback from attendees called for more masterclasses, professional workshops, and a return to the full-day seminar format at Filmens Hus. Digital Storytelling had found its way back.
Speakers: Theodor Groeneboom and Otto Torbjørnsen (in memoriam), Framestore — Talking Raccoons and Alien Worlds: Bringing the Marvel Universe to Life
2015 — Norwegian VFX 2015
5 December, Westerdals School of Arts, Communication and Technology, Oslo. Seminar
This edition turned the spotlight entirely on Norwegian VFX talent — a showcase of what Norwegian studios had achieved in the years since Max Manus had first demonstrated that world-class visual effects work could come from Oslo. Storm Studios, Gimpville, and Storyline Studios each presented recent work, and the programme reflected how far the industry had matured since DS first gathered the community together in 2006.
Featured: Espen Nordahl and Magnus Petterson (Storm Studios) on The VFX of Pixels; Lars Erik Hansen (Gimpville) on The Wave; Ivar Rystad (Storyline Studios) on recent productions; Alf Martin Løvvold on independent VFX work.
2016 — VR: Universes of Virtual Reality
19 November, Filmens hus, Oslo. Seminar and workshop
The final edition before DS's decade-long pause asked a question the industry was asking everywhere: was virtual reality the next frontier of storytelling, or another technology in search of a use? The keynote speakers had made some of the most acclaimed VR work in existence — Google Spotlight Stories' Pearl had just become the first VR film ever nominated for an Academy Award. Norwegian and international VR practitioners from games, journalism, sport, and commercial production joined the conversation. The foyer hosted an extensive exhibition of VR experiences from both Norwegian and international speakers, giving attendees a hands-on encounter with the work being discussed on stage.
Keynote: Jan Pinkava and Scot Stafford, Google Spotlight Stories — VR and Storytelling: Inside Google Spotlight Stories
Also featured: Greg Downing (xRez Studio) on cinematic VR; Elijah Freeman (Crytek) on Robinson: The Journey; Kevin Mack (Shape Space VR) — The Art and Science of Virtual Reality — who has described the fundamental innovation of VR as "the ability to communicate spatial presence"; a Pecha Kucha showcase of eight Norwegian VR projects spanning architecture, games, journalism, sport, and space exploration.
Workshop: The seminar was accompanied by a sold-out full-day workshop. Eighteen professionals spent the day learning to create cinematic VR using stereo 360 video capture, spatial audio, and cloud-based stitching — filming hands-on with the Nokia OZO camera under the guidance of instructors from Nokia OZO Huren and Frameless Adventures.
