Backstage of Shades of Red - behind the scenes of the first Steemit short film

Dear Steemians,

I want to express my gratitude for your support and positive feedback to my first professional short movie. Shades of Red was made in only two days in London by an incredibly talented cast and crew. Elena was on set, too. I wrote the script during my first weeks in London. My English vocabulary was very poor, and so I was! Like most of unprepared and delusional young immigrants after the first rent...
I mean, soon I realised that what I had heard about London - that is financially challenging - well, it actually meant that I had to choose either to buy food or pay the rent!

I wrote this film on the bus and in the underground on my way to job interviews. I could not afford a film school in London and soon I realised that I didn't even want to attend one. I rather preferred to teach myself all aspects of filmmaking, from script writing to directing, to operating the camera, to editing. And I took up sneaking into film sets to learn the craft of films where they were actually happening. I wanted the film to have a disturbing, dark, mysterious and ethereal look and yet I wanted it to retain a threaded air of malice and dark humour! It was meant to brush a nod at film-noir but eventually it escaped any genre and logic and opened up to nonsense. Who has watched the film knows what I am talking about. It's like the use of symbolism like the 'dance with the death' got out of hand...

I am aware that this is not a masterpiece, but it helped me immensely to improve my technique and my confidence and to search for my own style. Beside working side to side with a team of professionals. I paid for it myself, until I scratched the bottom of my bank account - with the help of a friend of mine, Federico Redaelli, who produced the film with his brand-new label Photopoise (https://www.photopoise.com). Filmmakers out there...get out and film, it is the only way to get better! You can learn the basics by others in two weeks, but you improve only through filming yourself!

Elena and me are editing another short movie together. This one will be very different. It is about a troubled long distance relationship. I myself shiver of excitement when I look at the rough cut, which I guess is a good sign... We hope to reach a final satisfying stage soon and show the premiere on Steemit within few weeks!

Yours, Alessandro & Elena