“We wanted to bring a cinematic touch to the whole story and steer away from the hassle of action movies and overly modern climbing gear.”

It was finally Piñata’s turn to take on the legendary Oltermanni character.

The brief from advertising agency Hasan&Partners was to develop a short story around mountain climbing and cheese, featuring Oltermanni guy and highlight the new Oltermanni Tilsit cheese, originally coming from Switzerland.

“We wanted to bring a cinematic touch to the whole story and steer away from the hassle of action movies and overly modern climbing gear. The mountain climbing movies of the legendary Leni Riefenstahl, made in the 1920s, were a big inspiration and supported the timeless and classic feel we were after. Oltermanni has this timeless charm too.”, animation director Mikko Vormala describes.

The cinematic story revolving around small cheese wheels meant a challenging shoot, so Piñata teamed up with Also Starring and All About Everything. The shooting was done using Technodolly computer controllable camera system to have a precise control over the smallest camera movements. A small macro landscape of cheese was created on the set. Piñata Lead Compositor Mika Rantala tells: “By having the right equipment and right people, shooting was very straight forward based on the hand drawn storyboards and animatic. We also 3D printed a small stand in for the Oltermanni guy to the shoot.”

A lot of effort was put to the hero of the story, the Oltermanni guy, to make him look expressive on many of the close-ups of the film. Special care and effort was also put to the materials of the guy, so that the look and feel matched the beautiful macro closeups we had in the film.

Juri Seppä composed a new version of the Oltermanni theme, inspired by classic adventure movies, which brought the final touch to the mood and film.