Even by the inevitable other-worldly standards of all footage of the Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights, photographer and filmmaker Adrien Mauduit’s film is a special one. Because, among other things, it’s not just the lights but also the Milky Way that plays a starring role.
According to Mauduit, “Into the Polar Night tells the story of ten days of astrophotography spent within the Arctic circle chasing the darkest skies and the northern lights in the harshest conditions.”
Mauduit shot the videos that go into Into the Polar Night in biting cold, at minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, across areas in Norway and Sweden, which enabled him to encounter all possible Nordic landscapes, from the boreal forest and snow-capped mountains to huge frozen lakes, the northern fjords and the sea.
The filmmaker went through around 30,000 shots and five solar sub-storms to recreate the eerie, mystical atmosphere of the scenes in the film. “It really was the spectacle of a lifetime,” wrote Mauduit, “One that tops all the other natural spectacles you thought were unbeatable.”
This is how similar landscapes in Norway look in the summer and in daytime, also see in time-lapse:
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