Program

11:00 - 12:00 Registration, mingling and coffee/tea

Tancred opens 11:45 and there is free seating.

12:00 - 12:15 Welcome Back: The Story of Digital Storytelling, 2006–2026

Presented by co-founders and 
co-directors Kim Baumann Larsen and Angela Amoroso

12:20 - 12:50 “The History of Norwegian VFX — from Rookies to Oscar Nomination”


Presented by Associate Professor Morten Moen (Kristiania University 
College, Oslo)

Norwegian visual effects has travelled a remarkable distance in a short time — from the miniature craft of Sofies verden and the first digital effects of the early 2000s, to an industry whose work earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects with Sinners in 2025. This talk traces that journey through the films, the studios, and the artists who made it happen. A story about passion, growth, and how a small industry punched well above its weight.

12:50 - 13:00 Short break — leg stretch

13:00 - 13:35 “Building Worlds from the Real”

Eric Hanson 
(Blueplanet VR, Los Angeles) in conversation with Tahir Tanis (Creative 
Director for ARC Raiders, Embark Studios, Stockholm).

How do you build a world that feels genuinely lived-in — one players believe in before they can say why? In this fireside conversation, Digital Storytelling co-founder Eric Hanson, a leading figure in photogrammetry and real-world environment capture, sits down with Tahir Tanis, the creative director behind ARC Raiders. Together they trace how the game's richly detailed world was grounded in real places, real objects and real reference — from decaying mid-century technology and the crowded arcades of a subterranean city, to the machines, characters and threats that inhabit it. Tanis shares how the invented is made to feel real: the capture, the reference, and the art direction behind one of the most immersive game worlds of recent years.

13:35 - 14:00 Break

14:00 - 14:30 “On The Shoulders Of Giants — Combining Practical and Digital Effects”

Espen Nordahl, Academy Award nominated and Emmy Award 
winning VFX Supervisor and Head of VFX (Storm Studios, Oslo).

Practical effects are having a renaissance. Audiences and directors are looking for gritty, grounded scenes that come from shooting on real sets with real people and real effects, but modern productions still require the flexibility of pushing things further in post. This requires a different approach to visual effects than shooting on bluescreen stages, creating full CG shots or capturing character performances separate from the shoot. Espen Nordahl talks about the collaboration between prosthetics, special effects and visual effects in productions like Sinners, The Last Of Us, Percy Jackson and more.

14:35 - 15:10 ”Practical First: The VFX Behind Rocky & Grace”

Stuart Penn, VFX Supervisor (Framestore, London).

Some of the most convincing visual effects are built to sit alongside something real; a practical puppet, an actor's performance, a set you can stand in. For Phil Lord and Chris Miller's adaptation of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, Framestore's work began not in post-production but on set, in collaboration with the filmmakers from earliest planning to final delivery. VFX Supervisor Stuart Penn traces how the alien Rocky was brought to life alongside a physical puppet, sharing the screen with astronaut Grace, and how zero-gravity sequences were rebuilt, shot by shot to remove rigs while holding on to every trace of the actors' performances; a look at what it takes to make the invented feel genuinely present, and why the real remains the place to start.

15:15 - 16:05 Keynote presentation: Image-Based Lighting: Past, Present and Future

Dr. Paul Debevec, Fellow, Content Production Research (Netflix, Los Angeles); Adjunct Research Professor, USC ICT.

Realistically inserting digital characters into real scenes shot with a camera, Iron Man, the tiger in Life of Pi, the CGI versions of Neo and Agent Smith in The Matrix Reloaded, has been a core visual effects challenge since the early days of computer-generated imagery. Today, this is often done using Image-Based Lighting: illuminating the CGI elements with panoramic high dynamic range images shot on the set or location. First presented at SIGGRAPH conference in the late 1990’s, the technique was just recently recognized with an Academy Award for Pioneering Technical Achievement.

Image-Based Lighting has also been the genesis of today’s virtual production LED Volumes, seen in movies such as Gravity and TV Series such as The Mandalorian to light actors with the light of the virtual environments they are meant to be seen within. Improved techniques use multispectral LED lights which include broad-spectrum white and amber LEDs to improve how scene elements are lit on set, and time-multiplexed lighting to record live action in multiple lighting conditions simultaneously for relighting in postproduction.

The latest LED volumes, including the Light Dome at Eyeline Studios, are being used not just for real-world image-based lighting, but to acquire training data for machine learning models to relight scenes in postproduction. These new techniques are making it possible to estimate lighting and relight actors all in software, and combined with advances in volumetric capture, to change camera and lighting in postproduction.

16:05 - 16:15 Short break — leg stretch

16:15 - 16:55 “The Artist and the New Machine - a Conversation and Audience Q&A” 


Panel moderator Jim Thacker (Editor, CG Channel, UK) in conversation with Stuart Penn, Espen Nordahl, and Theodor Groeneboom (Rebel Unit, Bergen)

In 2006, when Digital Storytelling first gathered, the tools were the obstacle; the talent was here, but the means to compete were not. Twenty years on, the tools are within everyone's reach, and a different question has taken their place: not what we are able to make, but what we ought to, and how much of the making should still pass through the hands of an artist. To close the day, Jim Thacker will sit down with a few of the people who live inside that question, answering it not in the abstract but shot by shot, on real productions, before handing the conversation over to the room. We don't pretend to know where all of this leads, but there are few better places to wonder about it than among the people already building what comes next.

16:55 - 17:00 Thanks from all three co-founders

17:00 - 19:30 Lemongrass Reception


The seminar closes with the 20th anniversary reception at Lemongrass, on the ground floor of Cinemateket: mingling, networking, and a few short speeches, with finger food, cake, and a celebratory drink. A cash bar runs through the evening.

Every paid ticket also enters the prize draw. The headline prize is a one-year Houdini FX licence from SideFX valued at $5,269. Chaos contribute a one-year V-Ray Premium licence and a one-year V-Ray Solo licence. Prizes are drawn at the reception, and you must be present to win.

Two special VFX showreels will be presented and run on loop during the reception. The first, “Where It Began — Norwegian VFX at Digital Storytelling, 2006–2016” showcases short clips of work by Norwegian VFX artists presented at Digital Storytelling during the first 10 years of the event. The second, “How Far We've Come — Norwegian VFX, 2016–2026” presents award winning Norwegian VFX from 2016 through today. These showreels have been curated and edited by Stephanie Erso, chair, The Norwegian VFX Association and CEO, Vespertine FX.

19:30 Event ends