Boston IFF

Client: Boston IFF
Production: Mercurio Films
Director of Photography: Esposito & Chiarello
Music: Restiform bodies
Actors: Sergi Sanchez & Carlotta Lossurdo
Sound design: Matteo Delgrano
Physics & kinetic research: Sergio Fonda

One day i had this idea that maybe if filming with a camera the falling of dominoes from a close point of view, maybe, and i repeat MAYBE, i could get an effect very similar to what the zoetrope produced. When the Boston Independent Film Festival asked me to create a trailer for them, i thought that it was a good opportunity to try and turn that maybe into something more concrete.
I asked my father to create an interactive data sheet to calculate all the factors i needed to have determined before even proposing the idea. We then decided to use a motorized camera travelling on rounded tracks. But when after the 10th take we realized that the dominoes would speed up or slow down in some points and the camera would bump into them, i was a little desperate. So i asked if we could move the camera manually. That's when key-grip Alvaro came in: he followed the fall so well that at the end of the take everyone clapped their hands. Another victory for man over machine.
The trailer was showcased at the CFPE-Shots Young Director Award in 2006.

The following is the Excel datasheet my father prepared. I could input the height of the dominoes, the width, the number and the distance between them. Then Excel would calculate at which height there would be the impact with the next domino, how much space was left to show the image, how big would the circumference be, and the diameter. All this mess was fundamental for the pre-production stage, to realize how big the tracks would have to be, if the proportions were right and countless other little details. The Excel datasheet was also crucial for me to decide how many seconds of video i had to shoot. Just imagine the satisfaction when i layed down the dominoes for the first time and they fit perfectly into the circumference...



some shots from the set.