I always think that the most complex moment before starting a film is the visual development of the project. Let me explain: I read a script and start thinking about the images I would like to create to make the film powerful and emotional.
The dialogue with the director is sometimes clarifying, sometimes initially confusing, only to later bring about sudden and unexpected perspectives. Then, I start looking for visual references: films, images from great photographers, or simple news images. I search for pictorial references from art history, whether the film is set in the past or is contemporary, in search of a colour palette to share with the artistic collaborators. I gather material and discard images I don’t consider coherent with the project.
Location scouting begins, or even before that, the initial scouting. This is my favourite moment: the first search for the “world.” It is here that the tangible and shared terrain of the film begins to take shape: houses, neighbourhoods, natural landscapes, vast horizons, or small rooms, sometimes extremely small. The best part is allowing oneself to be carried away by the pleasure of discovering places never seen before or seen many times and today discovered with a new, unexpected gaze. Surprising, whether in distant cities or countries, or unexpected if they are in the city we live in or the neighbourhood we inhabit. I always remind myself to be guided by pleasure rather than the often very justified fear of complexity and difficulty. There is a time for dreaming and a time for reality. When facing problems, without the dream, I don’t find the necessary drive to confront the difficulties.
During scouting, I take a lot of photos. Those photographs, often taken amid the chaos of the crew moving around me, stay with me for a long time and make me reflect. Then they blend with the references from films, photographers, and painters, becoming the wish book that one desperately tries to turn into reality, into images and movements.
As the preparation progresses, the cast of the film takes shape or is confirmed, and the faces of the actresses and actors become another wonderful, exciting landscape of our new visual narrative.
I have to find the tools to realise it: the sensor or the film stock, the lenses, the lighting, the technical solutions. I mustn’t be frightened by the extreme smallness of the spaces or the vastness of the night exteriors if these are right for the film (the difficult bets are the most stimulating and often the ones that yield the best results). I must be able, calmly and authoritatively, to correct wrong directions: unnecessarily difficult environments that require time and expenses without contributing to a useful result for the film, perspectives on exteriors that don’t match the strength of the narrative or locations to be interpreted only at certain times of the day.
And then there are the camera tests, which are always a way to start from scratch, in search of the perfection of the lens or its marvellous imperfection. In search of the sensor’s exposure latitude and its colour rendering. In search of a new path never walked before and therefore exciting.
In my mind, the panorama of the camera movement and the gaze opens up, the way of framing, and the necessary details. I imagine a film of long and fluid sequence shots, nervous handheld sequences, beautiful static shots, or deliberate randomness, like when the camera is placed on the ground and suddenly composes stunning and random images on its own. A film with extremely wide angles or telephoto lenses capturing stolen moments. A film with close-ups so near you almost touch the actress or actor, or of immense horizons. Or both.
And then, when filming begins, all of this disappears and remains at the same time. It disappears in the daily urgency of problems to be solved or the lack of time that steals our breath, our reflection. But it remains, in the visual memory of our references, in the constant search for emotion. It remains in the attempt to be the first to be surprised and sometimes moved by the images we manage to create.
I wonder, I’ve always wondered, what path my colleagues take when they approach a new film or series. What do they think about, what are they looking for, where do they search, what have they found in a film they are proud of, where did they arrive when they decided to continue without further changes, or do they desperately feel the need to always change, to be different from themselves each time, to try walking in unknown territory and start again from scratch?
Will we be able from now on to keep a short diary of our films? Or to share the diaries of our past films? Will we be able to create an archive of our projects? A database of successful bets, of achieved results, of mistakes that became random but wonderful images that made us happy? Of camera movements, we didn’t think we could achieve but managed to pull off. Will we be able to share our projects and results with all our colleagues, but especially the younger ones?
I believe Collettivo Chiaroscuro could be the right place to do this, and it would be an exciting surprise for everyone to browse through the archive of our realised dreams and won bets.
Paolo Carnera
