Adriano Cirulli is a director, filmmaker and video effect mastermind born in Rome, Italy, in 1973, currently based in London. He got his start in filmmaking during his university years: “While I was studying architecture I made a short film which won a few awards and later got me a job in the visual effects industry. After I got my degree I kept honing my skills in post-production and gradually began using them in my personal projects.”
Looking at his IMDb page you’ll be impressed: he has worked on famous and acclaimed productions as a digital compositor – from the The Da Vinci Code to the more recent The Theory Of Everything (5 Oscar Nominations), from Doctor Who Tv series to Eastwood’s American Sniper (6 Oscars nominations – including the ones in Editing / Mixing / Sound Editing).
But we especially know and love him for his work in his indie experimental movie FALLING, Cirulli’s short film released in 2012 and acclaimed by critics – it won the 1st Prize Art Lab Award at 2012 Festival Internazionale del Cinema D’Arte, the Best Experimental Film at 2011 Wimbledon Shorts Film Festival and it featured in The Mill’s Time installation at Cannes Lions 2011 among other film festivals around the world.
FALLING started off as an experiment with a VFX compositing technique called tracking. “I discovered that by digitally stabilizing bodies in motion I could achieve something that resembled movement in a void. The hard part was then channeling all those experiments into something coherent and structured” Adriano explains.
The film was a spare-time project, so it took him a couple of years to develop it. The most challenging part – as you will easily understand after watching his movie – was the post-production phase: “The shoot was relatively easy and took only a couple of days. The challenging part came later, in the visual effects, editing and music composition stages, in other words when dealing with the structure of the film.” He then tells us: “I find that in abstract filmmaking there is a high risk of getting lost in the footage and ending up with something which might be spectacular but is eventually empty and incoherent. As a result since the beginning I tried to be as clear as possible on structure. I was greatly helped in this by collaborating with renowned music composer Antonino Chiaramonte, who created the time-stopping soundscape for FALLING and helped give the project a clear direction.”
The inspirations behind FALLING are a very interesting mix: “The concept originated from experimenting with a post-production technique, so, initially, the inspiration came, in fact, from a piece of software. Later on however I did some research and came across a film by Maya Deren titled The Very Eye of Night, her last film, which I think originated from the same sort of experiments, only in an age when modern computers and visual effects did not exist.”
Switching the conversation to indie cinema world and the role of independent artists nowadays, Adriano says that “Being an independent filmmaker is, on a personal level, extremely rewarding. It however requires a lot of sacrifices, also from those around you. Some people manage to make it work, but without a support network I really don’t know how much longer I can keep doing it.”
Looking at the future, he tells us that he has just finished his new film, RESPITE, which he is currently releasing, after working on it for 2-3 years. It’s a 20-minute film about a man who abandoned his wife and young daughter and moved into his car. More information, including a teaser trailer, can be found in the link section at the bottom of the page.
And talking about internet and cinema, Adriano shares his point of view on online streaming – and on our platform too: “I think screening films online is a great opportunity for both filmmakers and audiences. I have been able to watch inspiring work online that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. With it however comes the issue of discoverability. The fact that anyone can easily publish their film online doesn’t mean that anyone will watch it. You still need to market it properly and go through the right channels – or some might call them gate keepers – for audiences to be able to discover it. In order to allow interesting work to find their audiences, curation is essential. Highly curated portals like EuroIFC can make the difference between a film being lost in the ocean of videos that get uploaded on the internet every minute and the same film inspiring audiences around the world.”
/ USEFUL LINKS /
Watch FALLING here >>
Find out more about ADRIANO CIRULLI projects and contacts here >>
Watch the trailer of his new project / RESPITE here >>
Watch Adriano’s inspiration / Maya Deren’s THE VERY EYE OF THE NIGHT here >>
