MARKETING, COMMUNICATIONS, AUDIENCE DESIGN
With the end of the year approaching fast, I figured this was the right time to follow up on the 2022 projects roundup started in my previous post. I left you when I was planning my staying at the Cannes Film Festival, so let’s pick up from there. Cannes 2022 was a whirlwind of conferences and…
Sometimes – more often than not, actually – I get asked what I do exactly for a living and how a year in the industry I work in looks like. Although the answer changes according to the industry I am involved at the time of the question – sometimes it’s the film business, sometimes other cultural and…
The year that is now drawing to a close has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult for the film industry. However, in the face of closed cinemas, cancelled festivals, postponed new film releases and sets on pause, it is with great pleasure that Roberto Braga and I returned to collaborate with Filmmaker, the documentary…
August has just begun and the first session of the 2020 edition of the Script 2 Film Workshops, the Mediterranean Film Institute’s (MFI) development program for films, documentaries and TV series, has just ended. Given the difficulties caused by Covid-19 in organizing international travels for participants from all over Europe and abroad, and in making them work…
The Thesis It’s been seven years since I defended my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Bologna’s Department of the Arts. Framing Death – La morte in diretta, tra cinema e media digitali was a multidisciplinary work aimed at accounting how death was portrayed in some audiovisual products and disseminated by what, at the time,…
Developing social media campaigns for films is always exciting for me, and my involvement with Giancarlo Soldi’s documentary Cercando Valentina – Il mondo di Guido Crepax, which I recently wrote about, was far from being a rare event in my collaboration with Roberto Braga within an industry we both deeply care about. In this post I wanted…
As I mentioned in my previous post, the isolation imposed for the COVID-19 pandemic is deeply affecting the film and entertainment industry. At the beginning of the lockdown in Italy, many agencies and consultants in the marketing and communication sector wondered what they could do to help their community go through this difficult time and make…
People are already saying now that there is a world before and one after the lockdown enforced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not only true for our personal lives but also for our jobs. Being involved in many projects for the film industry, I initially witnessed this transition while working on…
Spring has arrived (finally!) and it brought back (old) new collaborations. After completing a few exciting digital PR projects for the Milan-based entertainment marketing agency QMI Interactive over the past five months, I have resumed some of my favourite teaching duties. In March I again joined the team of the Buyer 2.0: Professional Manager in Fashion Activities…
If you were following me on social media in the past few days, you might have noticed that I was on another assignment for the online magazine Bobos.it – a trendy one, actually. While Milan was going crazy for Fashion Week, I skipped some of the glamour to sit in the dark of the screening…
Let’s face it: we all have some wrongs to right. Sometimes, though, you need a pair of extra hands in order to get a revenge while getting your a** out of a complicated situation. And who’s better than a professional to help you out? Since former CIA agent Robert McCall is one of the best…
Among the many film festivals in the world, there is one I hold particularly dear. It’s the Verona Film Festival – Schermi d’Amore, born in the city of Romeo and Juliet and entirely devoted to sentimental cinema and mélo. This is where I started to work in the film industry a decade ago, when I…
The premise of this post goes back in time over ten years ago, when I was studying for my MA in Cinema, Television and Multimedia Production at the University of Bologna. One of my pals over there was Markus Duffner, who was into Monty Python and unconventional audiovisual narratives. Fast forward a decade, he has…
As I am writing these few lines, I have just come back from the first residency of the Script 2 Film Workshops 2018. With my luggage still half unpacked, having arrived home last night straight from the island of Nisyros, I am glad of having joined the Mediterranean Film Institute for the third time in a…
Because of my activity as a researcher and film marketing consultant, I regularly meet many professionals operating across all of the areas of the industry. A good portion of them are worried about the future, but just don’t know how to face what’s changing in the film business. One of the key theme everyone is…
Gli amanti di film e serie televisive in Italia sanno che il martedì hanno un appuntamento fisso con il proprio edicolante di fiducia (o la cassetta della posta, o lo schermo del proprio pc/tablet/smartphone). È il giorno in cui il nuovo numero di Film Tv, settimanale di cinema, televisione, musica e spettacolo, raggiunge i suoi…
This week I ran a crash course in media, audiences and communication at ifs internationale filmschule köln gmbh. I was invited to ifs to host a two-day workshop with the students of the MA Digital Narratives, a full-time study program combining theory and practice while enabling the development of projects with digitization at the core.…
Imagine you’re surrounded by one of the bluest seas, fed delicious seafood while watching breath-taking sunsets, and discuss story arcs and characters’ motivations over a few glasses of ouzo, Greece’s traditional anise-flavoured drink. It may sound like paradise, but it’s actually hard work too if you’re a scriptwriter, filmmaker or producer attending a full immersion…
November brought a bunch of great news for TorinoFilmLab-supported films (which month did not, anyway?). For my ongoing series of posts focused on TFL releases and work in progress projects, especially related to the 2012 Script&Pitch and Audience Design Programmes, I’m glad to share three updates from Chile, France and Italy. Principal photography for La…
The reason why I like follow-up posts is that, at least in my case, they add good news to good news. This one in particular is an update of an ongoing series focused on the release of TorinoFilmLab-supported films. I read the first draft for Kevin Meul’s debut feature film My First Highway in 2012,…
It’s no secret that film is a tough industry and it usually takes a while to enjoy the fruit of one’s hard work. But if you don’t give up and keep on pushing your project, that time will come. If you read my blog it is also no secret that I have had the privilege…
[Scroll down for the Italian version] It is very easy to get used to beauty. Being awakened by the sound of the sea; seeing freshly caught octopuses hanging in the wind in front of the restaurants on the waterfront; walking in the bottom of a volcano… All these things become normal after a few days.…
While fans of Penny Dreadful are still mourning the recently announced ending of Showtime’s horror drama TV series after the Season 3 finale, I thought it was a good idea to catch-up with someone who worked on the show. You may remember Davide Melini from my previous interview on his homage to the “Giallo” film…
[Scroll down for the Italian version] At the UK premiere of Tale of Tales at Curzon Mayfair on 1 June I was expecting that the audience would be fascinated by the locations of this sumptuous re-telling of Giambattista Basile‘s fairy tale collection Pentamerone. Very soon into the presentation director Matteo Garrone said jokingly that with…
[Scroll down for the Italian version] As soon as you think you have spread the word on the latest marketing stunt implemented to promote Deadpool, a new one takes its place in a never-ending process. For over a year now we have been used to the release of news related to the cinematic universe of…
[Scroll down for the Italian version] Last week I kicked off my complementary membership at Curzon Cinemas with a gleefully blasphemous film, which made me laugh a lot, but understandably won’t appeal to some viewers with little sense of humour when it comes to religion. Between satire and dystopian fantasy disguised as a black comedy,…
[Scroll down for the Italian version] I have always respected László Nemes‘ integrity as a filmmaker. On 12 April, at a special event for the launch of his first feature film at Curzon Soho, the Hungarian director once more showed his uncompromising approach to the screening of his debut. As per his request, no one would…
[Scroll down for the Italian version] In a sense, this post comes full circle, as almost two years ago on this blog I wrote a comment on the promotional campaign for X-Men: Days of Future Past. I used Bryan Singer’s film as a case study for lectures and masterclasses, and after a while, when Professor…
Let’s be frank: ideas need to circulate as much as possible, and new terms as well. So I thought I’d spread the word a bit again, given that “Audience Design” is a fairly recent concept introduced just a few years ago by the TorinoFilmLab to raise awareness of the need for a strategic approach to…
I started to research interactive documentaries back in 2013 when I was living in Italy, because this hybrid form of storytelling matched my interest in digital narratives and audience engagement. As soon as I moved to London I looked for people interested in the topic and immediately found out that one of the leading researchers…
After discussing how director Davide Melini started his career, let’s delve into his new short, Deep Shock. Produced by Fabel Aguilera and Melini himself, it is supported by the most important institutions of Malaga, such as the “Diputación de Málaga”, the “Ayuntamiento de Málaga” and the “Málaga Film Office”. According to the official synopsis, the…
It’s not a secret that the film business is one of the most competitive among the creative and cultural industries. So I’m always keen to support emerging filmmakers who are trying to break into it. Davide Melini is an Italian director born in Rome in 1979 and who relocated to Spain a few years ago.…
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…
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…
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…