YOUR WORK AWARDED A PRIZE AT ANIMOWEB
You took part in the 3rd Edition of aniMOweb on the themes of women and equal opportunities and you won a prize. Congratulations! First we would like to know how you spent the aniMOweb money prize (if you won a money prize). Then, how you created your work: what software did you use?, How long did you take? Did you work alone or with someone? How did you get the idea? Did you expect to win a prize?
1) The prize was shared with the people who helped me to "perfect" my movie: my business partners Elena Castellani, Andrea Castellani and David Berrettini.
Honestly, I didn't spend the money in a particular way…I simply put it in a bank!!!
2) Flash MX 2004
3) The planning (the story board, the style of the movie and the model sheets of the characters) lasted an indefinite time... I worked during spare time between a job assignment and the other. The movie making was in 2 stages of about 20 days each.... so, summing up it took about 2 months in total!
4) For a long time, I had been thinking about doing something set in Paris at the end of the 19th Century, but I couldn't find the right idea. I only had the figure of this red-haired girl in mind. First I would have liked her to be a prostitute, but at a certain point…. I don't know why… I thought it could be interesting to make her a disguised man. In addition, I wanted a love story (Paris suggests that!), but I didn't know how to develop it, until I decided to create the male personage as a mirroring and opposite figure: a woman disguised as a man.
Once I had identified Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's works as the most suitable to influence the style of the movie, the rest came by itself!
5) Absolutely not! Of course I hoped to …Animoweb's was the first "first prize" (excuse the play-on-words) I'd ever won as author/director... until that time I'd never thought of being one! It was a real success!
LIFE OF YOUR WORK AFTER ANIMOWEB
Did you present your work in similar contests or in personal promotions on other sites? Was it selected in other festivals? Did you win other prizes with it?
Actually, yes! After AniMOweb, I sent the movie to many other festivals and I must say it was successful: it won 2004 edition of Visioni Animate and the first prize in the section Amore ed Eros (Love and Eros) at a festival in Chianciano. Another success was the official selection for the section "Film pour l'Internet" at 2005 Annecy Festival.
IDEA AND EXECUTION
What do you prefer in the creative process, the planning part or the implementation? How would you describe these two phases in your way of creating? Do you keep them separate or do you have a flexible approach?
The planning part is absolutely what I like most: studying the characters, defining their style, costumes, colours; planning direction by designing the story board, imagining scenes…All this enthuses me! I generally try to delay the making of the movie…this stage makes me anxious. It's not because I don't master the Flash instrument, but because I have to make what I have planned, with all its pros and cons…what up to that moment potentially has existed and has been perfect in my mind, suddenly has to be put into practice and rendered visible to everybody….not always what you imagined works or is successful as you believed. Generally I would say I keep the two stages separate. Until I am convinced of the story, the directing, the characters and scenery, I don't start movie making.
ANIMOWEB ON CONFLICTS, WAR AND PEACE
The 4th Edition of aniMOweb is on the theme of conflicts, cult of war, culture of peace: how do you feel about these subjects? Do they trigger your fancy? Do you think you'll take part?
It is certainly an interesting theme suggesting plenty of ideas... The risk is reduction to the banal. I think a good dose of originality is necessary to tackle such theme, but above all irony and cynicism. Only in this way is it possible to avoid telling rhetorical and pathetic stories.
FUTURE PLANS
We would like to know something about your present and future plans. How do you see yourself in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years? Do you imagine doing the same things you are doing now?
Currently, I'm working with a new short film in the planning phase. I hope I will be able to submit it at 2006 Annecy. If I can imagine, I hope in a near future to be able to expand my animation company (employing personnel, getting a nice and large centre of operations) and to work on our own projects rather than working for other people. My greatest dream is producing a film in 2D animation out of a project I've been developing in long years and that I like very much: Monnalisa.
"Si tu n' étais pas là", prized short animated film by MATTIA FRANCESCO LAVIOSA (1st place section C 2004, theme: WOMEN AND WORK, WOMEN'S TIME, HEROINES AND FEMALE CHARACTERS, SOCIAL ROLE OF WOMEN, RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN):
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