Could you start from the beginning please – how did the desire to tell this story and the idea come about? Did the narrative reveal itself through researching the paintings or did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to convey from the outset?

The idea of BEAUTY was born out of the challenge to describe the most important emotions that everyone can feel in their life, from birth to death, through fear, sexuality, pain and love. And Classical art for me has been always the best way to visualize these kind of feelings.

I first choose Caravaggio and William Bouguereau because their figurative art fit very well with the atmosphere that I had in my mind and wished to represent.

You edited, composited and animated the film yourself. The body language you evolved, even the very slightest movement, produces such a powerful and new dynamic to paintings we’re familiar with – did you experiment extensively with effects before deciding how you were going to manipulate the images? How did you composite the images?

In my work there is always a lot of research on the bodies and especially their transformation and movements. I always try to give life to something inanimate.

Technically, I first process each individual artwork in a photo editing software (Photoshop) using the “digital cut-out” technique, I crop all the elements from the background of redesigning the hidden parts. Then I animate subjects with a post-production software (After Effects).

Did you introduce any of your own elements into the paintings?

Yes, if you talk about the additional elements to the original work.
Sometimes I had to readjust vertical works to the horizontal format of the video.
So often I had to rebuild the background of landscapes completely with new elements.
I added my own style especially in the fear and pain moments. If you take a look at my previous videos, you can understand why.

Was the music and sound design specifically created for the piece?

Of course! When I finished editing the video I commissioned the music from the sound designer Enrico Ascoli and he perfectly understood what I had in my mind.

Was this a labour of love, long nights and weekends at the screen? How long did it take to create? When did you know you had finished the film?

Exactly. BEAUTY, being one of my personal projects is entirely self-financed. I worked on this video in my spare time, on weekends and at nights with passion and perseverance.

It tooks me about five months to make BEAUTY, excluding the research phase.

Scrolling through your other work, you have everything from huge video installations to music videos – we particularly love Orax, Rockers. Could you give us a brief history please of where you trained, worked and what has led you to where you are now?

Orax//Rockers is a creepy music video directed with Laila Sonsino, who I collaborate with often both in shooting and post-production.
There are, as in many of my works, references to art, and in this case the works of the great artist Dino Valls. In an abandoned insane asylum, in a surreal and disturbing atmosphere, some young patients, forced with pliers and scalpels, suffer weird mutations.

I’m an Italian experimental animator and director. I have studied at ISIA in Urbino and at IED-European Institute of Design in Milan.
I love to create unusual worlds, invoking suggestions and, memories that will live in the mind; always striving to excite, surprise and disturb the viewer, through a strong and careful attention to aesthetics but at the same time relying on important creative research and experimentation.

I have experience in the world of music videos, creating clips for various artists such as Four Tet, Stumbleine, Digitalism, Mobbing, M+A, ORAX and in the world of fashion, having made videos for Antonio Marras and Kenzo. I have collaborated with teams and video, artists creating interactive video projections for exhibitions, museums and special events too.

I have participated in many festivals and competitions, receiving international awards.

Are you signed to a production company?

Not yet. My videos are too strange 😀

Music videos, commercials, fashion – what genres you do you enjoy the most? Are you usually expected to develop the creative idea considerably?

Yes, I always create the idea, concept and art direction for all my works.

Surely the experimental videos, being born exclusively from the need of expression, allow me to stage my imagination without any constraint, limit or business need to be respected.

While being commissioned, the music video can also be very challenging because it combines my two passions: music and video.

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