Interview by Massimo Intoppa
The interview is part of the Casa Chiaroscuro project for the Rome Film Fest, curated by Alessandro Chiodo CCS, coordinated by Massimo Intoppa CCS, and produced with the support of Nikon Italia, Fowa and RED Digital Cinema.
Luca, you recently worked on two very different documentaries: Comics & Games and Allevi Back to Life. Both premiered at the Rome Film Festival and were subsequently released theatrically. I’d like to discuss your visual approach, the challenges you faced, and your relationship with the directors. Let me start with visual style—particularly regarding lighting, lenses, and rhythm—in relation to these two distinct contexts: on one hand, the intimate and deeply personal world of Allevi Back to Life, which explores the protagonist’s illness; on the other, the collective, chaotic environment of Lucca Comics & Games. These represent completely different approaches, and I’m interested in understanding how you tackled them. More broadly, I’d also like to explore your methodology in documentary filmmaking—a field I find particularly compelling, especially for cinematographers who move fluidly between documentaries, narrative films, and other formats.
The documentary approach is extremely stimulating and fundamentally different from traditional narrative cinematography, as well as from advertising or music videos, where everything is much more structured, planned, and meticulously designed. Documentary filmmaking certainly involves writing and planning, but it also leaves considerable space for events to unfold organically, for improvisation. Consequently, camera placement decisions are often made in response to subjects who cannot be ‘positioned’ unless there’s an opportunity to guide what’s happening. It’s an exercise in observing reality, and the goal is to remain as consistent as possible with the visual language established from the outset. In the case of Giovanni Allevi, some context is necessary: he’s an exceptionally open person, not only regarding his art but especially concerning his most intimate, human struggles. He communicates primarily through music, through performance. When he discusses it verbally, he takes a more philosophical approach—an aspect also reflected in his books and very present throughout the film. The director, Simone Valentini, already had an established relationship with him from their previous collaboration on a long-running Rai series titled Allevi in the Jungle, which proved a significant advantage. The documentary emerged from Allevi’s return to the stage following his devastating illness. The very first thing we shot—when I didn’t yet know him—was his comeback concert after nearly two years away from live performance, a period during which Giovanni had genuinely feared he might never play again. His illness, myeloma, remains part of his life, bringing pain, debilitation, and trembling in his hands—elements that surface in the documentary and are part of his daily reality. Beginning with the return to the stage was incredibly powerful and established a different tone from the rest of the film.
For that first day, we shot multicamera with all the necessary equipment: dolly, onstage track, Jimmy Jib, drone, Steadicam, and several locked-off cameras—almost all Venices. For both documentaries I used Sony systems. For the Allevi film, I chose a set of Angénieux EZ lenses—EZ1, EZ2, EZ3—which allowed me to cover all focal lengths with excellent quality and remarkable portability, working primarily with two cameras and two operators.
Are they zoom lenses?
Are they zoom lenses?
Yes, they’re Angénieux zooms with a T2.8 aperture: very lightweight and extremely versatile. With the exception of the Venices used for the concert, we shot Allevi Back to Life almost entirely on the Burano and FX6, both large format. For the other documentary we used only the FX6, supplemented by the FX3 depending on the situation.
After the concert and initial Venice-shot interviews, we followed Giovanni over time with a more discreet approach, maintaining large format throughout the film, as we also did for Lucca Comics & Games. The main difference is that with Giovanni we were following a single individual, even beyond the interviews—which nevertheless remain a fundamental component of documentary language. In both films the interviews are always lit; however, in Allevi Back to Life, I aimed for a constant sense of naturalism, avoiding lighting that felt obtrusive. Some scenes, such as those in the hospital or during physiotherapy, are actually lit—even though they appear completely natural—because the conditions required it, but the intervention wasn’t meant to be perceived.
At Lucca Comics & Games, by contrast, we often deliberately pursued a pop lighting approach, with color always present, consistent with a world of comics, video games, and cosplay. With Giovanni, working on very intimate themes, the aim was to be present but invisible, especially during delicate moments such as rehearsals with the orchestra after years away.
Moreover, the work on Allevi Back to Life developed over several months, with shooting spread across different locations—Ascoli, La Spezia, and Milan—integrating archival material and revisiting the places of the musician’s life and formative years, gradually building a deeply intimate narrative.
By contrast, Lucca Comics & Games took place entirely during the festival days, within an extremely complex logistical context: a very small medieval city invaded daily by more than 100,000 people, with skeletal crews and significant mobility challenges. There, the narrative emerged from a loose framework, with several fixed points identified by director Manlio Castagna based on the event’s founding values—community, respect, and brotherhood—and a cast of characters chosen from fans and cosplayers with compelling stories to follow.
We had no certainty about how the narrative would ultimately develop, and it was essential to avoid the risk of it becoming a promotional piece. I think Manlio succeeded in weaving all the stories into a single, coherent narrative that’s accessible even to those not necessarily interested in the event itself.
From a cinematography perspective, I worked in completely different ways on the two documentaries. For Lucca Comics & Games, I created a very pop LUT loaded directly into the camera, with a color palette inspired by comic-book movies—a strongly pronounced orange-and-teal split tone, blues shifted toward aqua green, and vivid saturation. For Allevi Back to Life, by contrast, I maintained more pastel colors, warm but golden skin tones, soft saturation, and a more painterly, naturalistic look—less ‘electronic’ and less sharp than the other film, which instead reflected a comic-book, pop universe.
Despite the great variety of lighting conditions, costumes and often barely controllable situations at Lucca Comics & Games, on a visual level I found a very strong coherence throughout the entire film, even in moments where the differences are more pronounced. In Allevi Back to Life , on the other hand, I noticed a different and very interesting formal choice, starting with the format: the use of 2.39, which is rather unusual for a documentary, more often shot in 1.78. It struck me as the right choice, because it heightened the dramatic intensity of the narrative and gave it an epic scope, consistent with Allevi’s journey and with the way he describes illness as a kind of battle. Beyond my personal considerations about this type of metaphor – which I wouldn’t necessarily agree with – the format seems to me to have helped amplify the film’s emotional emphasis. And more generally, it feels like you found a very precise visual key in both situations, even by making instinctive, ‘gut-driven’ choices. Moreover, beyond technical nuances – such as a few interviews not shot by you, where a certain discrepancy may be perceptible – the emotional force and sense of poignancy that Giovanni brings to the film ultimately hold everything together. I think the emotional impact covers and outweighs any small inconsistencies. How do you experience the balance between formal choices, technical coherence and the emotional strength of the narrative?
When I found out about the new interviews, I didn’t comment on it, because I believe that, in the end, the story is more important than the technical or aesthetic aspect, and the fact that those interviews were included was essential to the narrative.
Would you like to say something about your collaboration with the two different directors?
Yes, they are two very different directors, even generationally: Manlio is over 50, while Simone is younger, just over thirty. What they share, however, is a strong focus on narrative rather than on technical aspects, and this gave me a great deal of freedom. Not in the sense that I could do whatever I wanted, but in terms of being able to interpret their vision and their needs. I felt comfortable because I was able to set up the shooting autonomously, and this – especially in situations requiring great speed – made the work more dynamic. There was trust, but above all everyone did their own job: Simone was entirely focused on Giovanni and everything related to his situation, Manlio on the Lucca festival, and we divided the tasks accordingly. Over the course of my career I have worked extensively on major stages, with high-profile bands, across music videos and live concert films, even in contexts such as Hyde Park or Wembley, and I am used to shooting in multi-camera. It is a kind of training I consider fundamental: it teaches you how to manage many cameras at once, to find angles that work even in difficult conditions, both in terms of lighting and positioning. Over the years I have learned how to balance lights and cameras, to know that one camera will work in certain moments and not in others, and to
and to share these choices with the director. Many of these issues, which for me have almost become second nature, are often overlooked, yet they make a huge difference in the overall management of a shoot. In any case, there was discussion around photographic choices both before and after, in both projects. For Lucca Comics & Games, the director’s request was very clear and also fairly simple: he wanted a pop look, without adding anything further. Starting from that, I began to develop a few ideas. Being familiar with the visual language of Marvel films, I looked for a LUT that could evoke that kind of imagery (developed on set by the project’s DIT, Daniele Tartacca, and refined in post-production by the colourist Walter Cavatoi). Even though it is a documentary, the subject matter revolves around superheroes, comics and video games, so I worked on colour starting from the reality of the event itself, which already provided a very strong chromatic base, made up of masks, costumes and brands that were visually coherent with that universe. One particularly interesting aspect was the contrast with the city of Lucca, which is beautiful and extremely generous from a photographic point of view: almost any frame worked, and this dialogue between the contemporary pop world and the medieval setting created an almost fantasy-like dimension, perfectly in tune with the themes of the festival, from fantasy to Dungeons & Dragons. The idea of visually contextualising that world within the city was shared and immediately embraced by the director.
As for Giovanni Allevi, the approach was different. With Simone Valentini we discussed it, but the indication was to maintain a very naturalistic look, without overly evident visual solutions: the focus had to remain on what was happening. In that case I worked by trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, using a Rec.709 conversion LUT. Before the colour grading we spoke again, discussed it, and together with the colourist I proposed a look that would make the image feel less electronic and more cinematic, with more pastel colours and reduced saturation. One of the risks in documentary filmmaking is often stopping at a very generic, almost televisual treatment, limiting the work to a simple image balance; instead, we decided to intervene in a more conscious way, also adding grain and working on a curve
similar to that of film stock. I referred, for example, to Kodak 5279, with the idea of achieving more analogue-looking blacks and tonal transitions. At the beginning I might have pushed this aspect a little further, but some choices were later toned down at Giovanni’s request, as he perceived them as excessive. In any case, the process was very fluid and straightforward, without any particular difficulties. Then, together with the colourist on Allevi Back to Life, Leonardo Siniscalco – who had already collaborated with Simone Valentini and with whom I had worked years ago in advertising – we focused extensively on the treatment of archive material, tying it into the discussion of format. From the outset, we proposed making the archive images clearly recognisable as such. Initially, the idea of bringing them as close as possible to the footage we had shot was considered, but we ultimately chose to maintain a clear distinction. Some interventions were made, especially on overly strong or electronic colour rendering that felt disturbing, but without fully homogenising the material. We decided, for example, not to crop the archive footage to adapt it to 2.39 – in fact, in some cases we restored it to 16:9 – and to apply an effect to all archive images that evoked television scan lines, precisely to mark the separation between the present narrative layer – interviews and Giovanni’s everyday life – and the account of his past. I think this works well and makes the film’s temporal layering clearly legible. In the other documentary, by contrast, the work on archive material took the opposite direction: there we tried to make it as homogeneous as possible with the footage we shot, and overall I am satisfied with the result. There are only a couple of situations where the quality of the original cameras was so much lower that it becomes noticeable, but adopting a very strong, recognisable look helped integrate that material as well. They are two completely different approaches, consistent with the nature of the projects. One last aspect I would like to emphasise concerns lighting: as I mentioned earlier, in Allevi Back to Life there are several lit situations that I tried in every way to make imperceptible, whereas at Lucca Comics we often found ourselves shooting in darkness or in visually unappealing environments, such as spaces with anonymous white walls. In those cases, with very few lights, often coloured, I was still able to construct a coherent image. At the beginning there was a lot of scepticism: a reduced crew, very little time, all the equipment having to be carried on a single vehicle in the middle of 200,000 people, and me insisting on lighting. But for me it was essential to avoid a ‘stolen’ documentary look, a grab-and-go aesthetic: I wanted the image to always be carefully crafted and to retain that pop character. If you look closely, scenes such as the one where father and son play Tetris, or their conversation inside the bar, stem precisely from this need. The night-time van scene, for example, is entirely lit, even if it probably does not register overtly: the light is there, but it remains invisible.
In this regard, would you like to dwell a bit more on the choice of cameras?
Using Sony cameras was certainly an advantage, especially because of the dual ISO, and that was one of the reasons I chose them. In the case of Allevi Back to Life, however, the choice of the Venice cameras was not so much driven by dual ISO as by the desire to work with that system: I liked them, I wanted to use them, and I was particularly interested in large format. One very useful aspect of the Sony ecosystem is the breadth of the range, from the Venice down to very compact cameras such as the FX3: although these are very different cameras, they share the same colour space and a very similar rendering, a coherent ‘texture’. Sensors and dynamic range change, but they remain close enough to allow for a smooth workflow in colour grading, which in documentary filmmaking is always very tight in terms of time. On Lucca Comics & Games I confirmed the Sony system precisely because of the dual ISO, as I knew I would be facing very challenging lighting conditions. Working with T2.8 zooms, I needed to gain sensitivity somewhere, and dual ISO allowed me to push without introducing unpleasant noise, or rather to ‘dirty’ the image in a controlled way. I found it worked very well, even though in the meantime new systems have come out and today similar solutions also exist with other brands. A year ago, however, this was not so obvious. Both documentaries will most likely end up on a platform, although at the moment it has not yet been defined which one. Allevi Back to Life is linked to Rai, while for Lucca Comics & Games contacts are being explored with platforms such as Netflix or Amazon.
Would you like to add something about the two colour grading processes?
I would really like to mention once again the two colourists: Walter Cavatoi, who did an extraordinary job on Lucca Comics & Games, going well beyond the scheduled time, and Leonardo Siniscalco, who did the same on Allevi Back to Life. In both projects, despite them being documentaries with limited budgets, there was a great deal of commitment from everyone involved and a strong desire to give their very best, which made both experiences extremely rewarding.
