NICOLÒ GALLIO – Marketing & Communication
A HOLISTIC VISION FOR CULTURAL & CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Cine-Excess is one of those places where you can spend your lunch break eating sandwiches and fresh fruit while speaking about moviemaking, crowdfunding and gatekeepers in the film industry with veteran horror directors such as Jeff Lieberman. That’s exactly what happened to me on 15 November, while I was waiting to present my paper at…
In the film industry there is one very specific place where creativity meets business: the market. It’s the place where scriptwriters, filmmakers and producers have the concrete chance to secure a budget for their projects, or find co-production opportunities that might open new international doors to develop their films. It’s also the place where, in…
Big tech companies’ CEOs can be quite unusual people, praised as those few enlightened individuals able to bring grounbreaking visions to the world. On the forefront of design, innovation and technology, they’re worshipped for their unique ability to inspire people and open new roads. But what if these paths lead to unknown territories that question…
What would the best detective on the market do nowadays to solve more cases? Elementary, my dear readers: they would run a blog. If you’re searching for inspiration about personal branding, you then should have a look at Sherlock Holmes’ The Science of Deduction. I am admittedly quite late in catching up with the latest…
After discussing the project’s genesis and some aspects of the storytelling process, I asked director Anrick Bregman to share more insights about immersive tools, music and sound design featured in his web doc The Most Northern Place. Prominent Monkey: Which are the main features that create the immersive experience you designed for the viewer? Anrick…
After discussing the genesis of The Most Northern Place with director Anrick Bregman, I wanted to know more about the engagement aspects of his interactive documentary and discover how he and his team approached this compelling story. Prominent Monkey: In this post you said that a traditional documentary would not achieve the same sense of exploration.…
There is no doubt that digital media is pushing the boundaries of filmmaking. When it comes to documentaries, web docs leave linear narratives behind and allow viewers to experience a more engaging connection with the story portrayed. Very often they are large-scale projects with very consistent budgets, but who said you can’t achieve immersive outcomes…
What happens when The War of the Roses meets American Psycho in the age of talk shows, celebrity TV and social media? If you shake all these elements and add a New York Times bestseller you get Gone Girl, David Fincher’s adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Gillian Flynn. Even if…
Finally I made it: I watched the pilot for Vikings. And after seeing it, I’ll give the Canadian-Irish TV series a chance. We’re actually well into it, with Season 3 scheduled to air on the History television channel in 2015, but better late than never, given the fact that I’ve always been fascinated by Norse…
I’ll start this post by jumping back into memories. Over a year ago, I was on a night flight on my way back to Verona after pitching at the STARTinMED startup forum in Barcelona. After a few hours of sleep I took my car and on a rainy early morning left for Udine to give…
An American photojournalist gone insane in the middle of the jungle, waiting for the crew of a boat with arms wide open: to me this character from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is still the most iconic among those Dennis Hopper portrayed onscreen. Coincidentally or not, besides being a director and a painter, the actor…
I usually say that crosspollination is the key to today’s creative landscape: film and digital media, storytelling and coding, multi-platform worlds and social innovation, smart cities and interactive stories, gaming technologies and journalism. I couldn’t then resist when I heard that Learn Do Share was coming to London for a free two-day conference packed with…
The Lack is quite an appropriate title for the latest work of Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni, aka Masbedo, an Italian creative duo active within video art, performance and photography. On 31 August their first feature film was screened at the 71th Venice Film Festival as a special event within the Venice Days section. The…
Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Ingrid Bergman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Gould, Paul Newman: some of the most iconic portraits of celebrities, artists and human rights activists of the 20th century were taken by a self-taught photographer born into poverty and segregation in Kansas. Gordon Parks (1912-2006) is probably the most important African American photographer in the…
This post might look a little bit off topic, but it’s for a good cause. Just a few years ago I was an assistant press officer at the Italian Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation. FFC is a non-profit organisation focused on supporting scientific research in order to find therapies for patients affected by a genetic disorder…
Hey, it happens. Scientists design a virus to get rid of Alzheimer’s and as a result they wipe out almost the whole of mankind, enhancing the intelligence of apes on the way. Too bad, I’m sure next time they’ll do it better and manage to exterminate us all. Wondering how this idea will affect your…
In the last few years Sons of Anarchy has proved to be one of the most successful American TV series. Its seventh and final season will be airing in September in the U.S. Now might then be the best time ever to be a fan of outlaw motorcycle clubs on the screen. Not long ago…
You’ll feel old many times when watching Boyhood. But not in a negative way, like, for instance, when you go to a rock concert and find yourself surrounded by screaming teenagers younger than you, and a quick look at the bar area is enough to realise that their parents are waiting for the gig…
Optimus Prime wielding a sword and riding a fire-breathing Dinobot is the epitome of the last instalment of the Transformers franchise, a film series that is heavily based on excess, sensory saturation and, here and there, a total lack of self-consciousness. Over the past years I have come to realise that enduring a movie directed…
Videogames, interactive documentaries, VFX: whether you are a media archaeologist, a nostalgic lover of game consoles from the 1980s, a curious investigator of wearable technologies or a fan of the latest hi-tech blockbuster, there is only one place to be in London this summer: the Barbican Centre, home until 14 September to the Digital Revolution…
The above sentence may sound like a pretentious bellicose statement pronounced by a director on the chaotic and high-tech set of the latest summer blockbuster. Instead it was calmly expressed by writer and director David Pope within the small and intimate walls of the Filmmaking Foundation Course at London Film Academy, where the only rotors you…
When it comes to films, I don’t often experience serendipity. When I decide to buy a ticket for a screening I always know what I want to see and it’s very rare for me to change my mind at the latest minute. Yet on 26 June I was forced to do so. I wanted to…
Living conditions in a refugee camp or in a street devastated by a bomb sound abstract to the majority of us. What if technology allowed people to experience these scenarios in an immersive environment, reproducing real events through actual audio, video and photographs taken at the scene? Nonny de la Peña calls this technology-driven opportunity…
As X-Men fans know well, the movies of this franchise can be either really good or quite horrific. I think that Days of Future Past is among the former. Despite the abundance of special effects, it is a film driven by its characters, which manages to balance furious rhythm with moral dilemmas, and action-packed sequences…
I have always thought that part of the success of street art lies in the fact that these artists manage to integrate their oeuvres within urban spaces in the most unexpected ways. Their provoking works interact with what’s around them and force us to view walls, bridges, doors and windows through different eyes. Outside of…
I have seen it happening over and over again. Comic books, horror movies, rock & roll, violent videogames… So I wasn’t surprised at all when an Internet meme made it to the headlines as the new outcome of creativity to be blamed for spreading fear, threatening order and transforming children into psycho killers. Whether a…
“In another time I guess I would have been content with filming girls and cats. But you don’t choose your time.” Chris Marker Judging by some of the works displayed at his first UK retrospective, not to mention the title of the exhibition itself, Chris Marker really loved felines. I think the French artist and…
Like the catchphrase says, “haters gonna hate”, but the King of monsters couldn’t care less. Gareth Edwards’ reboot of one the most popular franchises in the history of Japanese sci-fi films has already destroyed the box office using its signature atomic breath (and some brand new marketing tools). As for fans and detractors, they are busy…
After discussing how Claude Mossessian started his career, in this second instalment of the interview with the filmmaker Prominent Monkey focuses on his work with French digital artist Miguel Chevalier. Prominent Monkey: I find your long-lasting collaboration with Miguel Chevalier particularly interesting. How did you start to work with him? Claude Mossessian: I met him…
You might have heard about his work first after The Huffington Post spread the word about one of his latest collaboration with French digital artist Miguel Chevalier, but Claude Mossessian has had a camera in his mind from a tender age. Young Claude, who is now 49 and lives in Sorède, in southern France, was…
If you’re an artist trying to break into the crowded music business, then Lenny Abrahamson’s film Frank will speak to you because it addresses one of the most delicate questions for creative professionals nowadays: how do I reach my audience? [some SPOILERS ahead] When wannabe musician Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is offered the chance of a lifetime joining…
When we’re asked about a colour to describe war, we hardly find ourselves thinking of bright pink. Yet this is the palette that Irish photographer Richard Mosse has chosen to describe the cycle of violence in Congo. His work on the topic is well known to the international public, at least since his exhibition The Enclave at the 2013…
Despite some remarkable exceptions, Wally Pfister’s ambitious directorial debut has been plagued by worrying box office results and very bad international reviews so far. Yet, I wanted to give Transcendence a chance. So a few days ago I was sitting in a cinema in London asking myself: a) why hipsters could not be on time for…
If the recent Heartbleed bug got you worried that someone could take advantage of your online assets, you might now want to know some more about “info threats”. Luckily, you don’t need to hang out with international wanted criminals to have a glimpse of what a cyber attack looks like: projects like Netwars are here…
I wasn’t a fan of “hard sciences” when I was younger. Actually, I had a fatal attraction for social sciences (if the difference still makes any sense). Maybe I never fell in love with physics and chemistry because of the lack of passion – not to mention the poor will of engagement with students –…