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ScandoCrime, murder, art direction and scandavian interiors porn

Like many in the UK I'm hooked on Nordic crime dramas on the TV. The Killing, Arne Dahl, Wallander, Beck and best of all The Bridge.  The plots are great, the acting is amazing and it's pretty much always difficult to work out who did it before close to the end. But along with the plots and the acting is the design, both the production design in the way they're shot and, of course, those interiors. Almost nobody in a ScandoCrime drama seems to live in a house or apartment I don't want!

To take those in order, the production design is always wonderful, The Bridge has a great colour sense, muted palette pretty much throughout with Saga's car and coat sometimes the only splash of colour in the shot. Okay, with something as magnificent as the Oresund Bridge to keep using as the backdrop the visuals were always going to be something special though. There is also great use of the rural locations, either eerie empty birchwoods with treetrunks as far as the eye can see or vast open expanses of farmland or moor with nothing between you and the mountains on the horizon.

(image from https://burntretina.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/the-bridge-is-not-a-documentary/)

They also all seem to have wonderful kitchens, none of the pokey 'ready-meal focussed' kitchens of most UK detectives but airey open expanses of blonde wood and shiney worktops. Generally these lead through into living rooms full of bare floors, stylish furnishings and a feeling that somebody cared about how they looked. Well, okay, the production designer did care about how they looked but you get the feeling the characters do to. It's all about light and space, big windows letting the clear norther light stream into the rooms: okay so there's probably a nasty psychopath out there looking in through the windows but if I had that house there wouldn't be, alright? Even Beck, who lives alone in a city centre flat (and has strange oblique converstations with the old boy on the balcony next door) manages to have a living room you'd be happy to come home. And as for that amazing house with the long lounge/diningroom/kitchen Wallander has with huge windows looking out across the fjiord...

Destiny - I want that garden

As any regular player of Destiny will know, it's Iron Banner this week, which means playing loads of great games of crucible...and, for me equally importantly, it meant the Traveller's Walk was open and sometimes it gets dark. See, and this is probably not something uppermost in the minds of the concept artists, I want that garden. Or perhaps more accurately, I want that garden lighting effect. The design isn't that original, it's very much the sort of thing a modern designer might have come up with for a reasonably sized modernist home, central path flanked by two rills, flanked by two grass borders; various trees offset to either side. In daylight it's okay, but nothing special...but after dark the lights come on: horizontal side lighters on the two rills; uplighters on the buildings and the tree; various spots picking things out. It's amazing. The first time I saw it I was all about how much I wanted it. Actually, most of the tower comes alive after it gets dark. The game's lighting designer really got it right with various concealed lights picking out parts of the structure...and if you go down to the lower hanger where the keeper is there are lovely effects on the walls down there. I like wandering around in the rooms in the hangers too with all the armchairs and sofas (note to the game engineer, why if I can sit on the floor can I not sit on the chairs?), and views out of the windows. I love it.

But it's that garden with it's lights I really want!

Unfortunately the lighting effects don't really come through in a screenshot, but this should give you an idea of what it's like.

Okay, so we don't have a modernist home, it's a pretty conventional semi-detached house in a small rural town. But we could achieve this sort of look, we've got trees and large bushes which would take uplighters. Our pond is a wildlife pond so not suitable for lights but we're going to be adding more water features in the coming year which will be able to take underwater lighting.

I've been gathering things I like on my Garden Lighting pinterest..
https://www.pinterest.com/samspadeuk/garden-lighting/