about
ARTHUR VAN BERCKELAER
Production Designer / Visual Artist
I am a production designer and visual artist with Danish and Flemish roots, based in Norway. My work moves between raw realism and more abstract, poetic worlds, always with an interest in how space can carry emotion, memory and conflict.
STORYTELLING PROCESS
There is no single way into a design process. Every story asks for a different method. I usually begin with the story itself: what is being told, what is hidden underneath it, what themes, symbols and emotional conflicts are already present.
From there, the work can begin in many ways. Sometimes it starts with tone, texture and colour. Sometimes with research into a place, a period, a social world or a specific practice. Sometimes it begins with a single object, or the feeling a character leaves behind.
For me, production design is not decoration. It is a way of making the inner life of a film visible. A room can reveal class, grief, control, desire, shame or distance before anyone says a word. The design must support the story emotionally, stylistically and physically.
The process is also deeply collaborative. The most important work happens in conversation with the director and cinematographer, finding a shared language for the film before anything is built. My role is to help shape a world that everyone can believe in, move through and tell the story from.
MY STORY
I grew up close to scenography. Both my parents studied and worked within the world of stage and spatial storytelling, and from early on, scenography became part of my life. As a child, I built installations and small universes from whatever I had around me. The stories were often already there before I knew how to explain them.
Later, music became another way of understanding space and telling stories. Sound felt like an invisible architecture, a room you could not see, but could still enter. Through music, acting, video work and visual art, I began to understand storytelling as something physical, emotional and atmospheric at the same time.
For a while, I tried to move away from that world. I studied law, thinking it might give me another kind of future. Instead, it made clear how deeply I needed to work creatively. Production design became the place where everything came together: image, space, rhythm, character, atmosphere and the practical act of building something real from something imagined.
EXPERIENCE
I studied Production Design at the Norwegian Film School and have worked across short films, music videos, installation, commercial work and international collaborations. My projects include films such as Gi et lille pip, Hringdans, HJEM and Utopia, each of them asking for a different relationship between character, space and atmosphere.
My experience moves between concept and execution. I work with visual research, concept development, SketchUp models, Photoshop, Twinmotion renderings, technical drawings, moodboards, concept art, set building, set painting, prop making and practical problem-solving on set.
I am interested in both the poetic and the concrete parts of production design. A space must hold meaning, but it also has to function. It has to work for the camera, for the actors, for the director, for the crew and for the story. I enjoy the tension between the imagined world and the physical work needed to make it believable.
