Iron fillings and ferrofluids are really cool to play with — hold a magnet under them and you get amazingly intricate pillars of metal. This atmospheric short film Ferro puts this concept to the test. As the camera settles on a bank of silver snow, it becomes clear this miniature world is made to look like out own, though crafted from an alien-like material.

What’s most impressive with this video is the tiny snippet of a story that they inject it with: there’s the spooky atmosphere, a gunshot and a startled deer, all leading to a figure walking away from a tiny body in the snow.

Not all of this film is done with iron fragments — the deer and figures are computer generated. The team put together a short making-of video that shows off some of the tests and work that went into the final product.

The clip appeared a couple of months ago from Barcelonian creative studio Norte. The project initially began as a sort of photography project for their website, but when they noticed that the images that they were getting looked eerily like Nordic landscapes, they transformed the project into a short film.