Andreas Johannessen
"From the age of 10, I have been filming everything from skiing, mountain biking to base jumping, so I have never known anything else. I think my parents knew that this was my destiny too. I can remember shooting all of these urban ski films we would do as kids, that sometimes went all night and finished at 5am. I would then get home and then go straight to school by 7am! Sometimes I would be asleep within the first hour of classes."
"I didn't know it at the time, but I was already making decisions about my career path at that age. During my finals I was invited to show my films at the 'JOSS' film competition. This is one of the biggest free skiing and ski competitions in Scandinavia, called the Jon Olsson Supersessions. So I decided to go there for a couple of weeks during one of my exams. You could say that I have always poked my education, because I always figured I would end up doing films in the end."
"I thought I would need to go to film school first, but then I fell into work straight away. I didn’t even know that you could get your start just by working. But then I started to get all of this work through extreme sports. I had considered going to film school in Australia or the US, but film schools in America are insanely expensive. I always thought to myself, I will go to film school the next year. But each year, I got more and more great work coming in. In the end, I figured there is not much point now that I am working at this level."
"I started to get commercial work straight out of high school when I was still living in Bergen. Although I got my start there, the ad agencies are all in Oslo, so I knew I would have to eventually go east to get serious about my filmmaking. I just love living here in Oslo, as there is so much happening in this city. It's such a cool city to be living in. And as a filmmaker, it's so cool being around such diverse creative people."
"My opportunity to move to Oslo came through a job with an advertising agency called Los&Co. They are the second biggest agency in Norway, so this was a great start to get me going here in Oslo. The agency wanted an in-house film producer with experience, because they really wanted to grow this part of the business doing film projects for clients. Los&Co do really big commercials with big production companies, so I had a great opportunity to learn from really talented people while doing some smaller jobs for their clients."
"Although getting into advertising was a difficult thing for me to be able to do, I had good help getting there. My father was also a talented businessman and has a lot of experience with clients. I learnt a lot from him and my mother on how to run my business and manage clients too."
"Having a freelance film career has enabled me to travel extensively. I have traveled to France, Austria, Germany Switzerland, England, Canada and Panama to name a few places. That’s the great thing about doing this kind of freelance work, travelling everywhere. I get to spend a month in places like Panama shooting a wing-suit sky diving film. It's one of the perks of the job. It is really fun just getting to travel like that."
"You definitely mature when you are challenged with all of these diverse shooting environments as a DP. I have a lot of respect for DPs who can get a great shot out of anything they are working with. I really admire people who can make even the most planned commercials and films look real, natural and unplanned. That’s the style of shooting I like the most."
"In sports and outdoor shooting like I do, you can’t afford to muck things up. There is no second opportunity with a lot of what I shoot. So owning your own equipment also becomes important, because you really have to know your camera. I made a big investment in a Red Epic, which was a lot of money, but it really works for me."
"Working on this stuff can be hard going physically. Any day I can be carrying 25kg of camera gear on a 4 hour hike up a mountain, so it is very demanding work. Sometime the anamorphic lens sets, can be insanely heavy and you have to carry them all up the side of a mountain to where you will be shooting. Some of these lenses can be twice the size of my Epic camera. You certainly feel the weight of all that gear when climbing up these super steep trails in the mountain or wearing snow shoes or skis. It’s not your usual style of DP work. However, these usually turn out to be the most fun commercial shoots you could ever be on. We all have to work so hard to get these jobs done."
"When I first came to Oslo freelancing for Los&Co, I also started working with AntiMedia here. From the start, AntiMedia gave me the chance to work with them on an range of different productions. I do a lot of freelance work with AntiMedia nowdays. They have a really cool take on things and approach to their projects that really works for me."
"AntiMedia are the best in Scandinavia and one of the best in Europe when it comes to DRONEfilming, and they do really impressive full commercials for TV and Web. They have a really unique approach to film and the way of producing film. I learn so much working with these guys on these types of projects and it really is just the perfect life for me."