The Snowman is a  thriller from director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), written by Hossein Amini and Peter Straughan and based on Jo Nesbø’s global bestseller of the same name.

The film follows grizzled, elite crime squad detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) as he tries to uncover the identity of a serial killer calling himself The Snowman.

The Snowman is a Working Title Films production in association with Another Park Film for Universal Pictures.

Union were the sole VFX vendor on the project working closely with Tomas Alfredson and his creative team from pre-production allowing VFX Supervisor James Roberts to previs key sequences and help build a plan for technically difficult camera moves.

The film’s Norwegian locations provided a stunning snowy canvas that required little enhancement, however we did add atmospherics and frozen lakes all of which were carefully planned with director of photography Dion Beebe to look as natural as possible.

Most of the snow was captured in camera, but towards the end of the shoot a thaw necessitated the addition of snow and ice to roads, ground and mountains for continuity.

The film’s gory plotline required some pretty forensic photograph props, which Union provided to production designer Maria Djurkovic.  These were created from staged shoots of the murder scenes. 

Union also designed a camera rig with an array of 8 cameras on a 4x4 to do the in car photography with VER.  This was then played back through LED screen.

After filming wrapped most of Union’s work was gore related - bringing gruesome reality to The Snowman’s horrific torture and killings.  Some particularly nasty sequences involved cutting off a finger with piano wire and blowing up one of the victim’s heads.