At Mofilm, we are always looking for opportunities to give our vibrant community of creators a voice, and dig a little deeper into how their wonderful creative minds work. To continue with this ambition, we are super excited to launch a new series of themed interviews that we are conducting with members of our community from all over the world. Each month we’ll interview different creators, and each month we’ll be asking them questions on a different theme within filmmaking and the creative industries.
The first theme we are looking into is ‘Behind the Scenes’, and our third interviewee is Mattia Rambert – the Milan-based Digital Director who is currently deep in post-production on an epic documentary for O.P.I Nail Varnish about challenging gender stereotypes.
If you want to get involved and be a part of this interview series, or have an idea for an interesting theme you’d like us to explore, please email us at community@mofilm.com
Lorie: In your own words – what do you do?
Mattia: I take care of the creative aspects of a film project. I develop the treatment, craft the idea and then go and shoot it. I prefer to say digital director as I tend to shoot digital content with small/medium budget. I never used an ARRI! Hopefully in the future.
Lorie Jo: What do you like about your job?
Mattia: The craftsmanship of the job – when you are producing the idea and you bring it to life and taking care of every small aspect of it.
Lorie Jo: So it’s in the detail?
Mattia: Yeah – applying the idea to every single aspect of it, using every department to get there.
Lorie Jo: If you weren’t doing your job, is there another job on set that you would like to do?
Mattia: I was recently on set for a Barilla huge global brand campaign, the person I was really fascinated by was the food stylist. It was incredible, it was so detailed. There were so many special effects and tricks of the trade, using brushes and olive oil to keep the food looking alive and all these tools they have/ I was really fascinated by that. I’m not sure I would want to do it as it’s not really my thing, but if I had to say something I would say that.
Lorie Jo: Yes I Directed a food shoot once and its very, yeah it’s very technical. It’s really good fun actually.
Mattia: Yeah there are so many tricks actually.
Lorie Jo: Yeah and also working with something that feels almost alive. It has a life span and you have to capture it very quickly. You don’t think of food like that until you have to capture it in this perfect moment.
Mattia: Yeah it’s Hollywood detail attention, but dedicated to something you usually just eat and eventually bring back to the world under another aspect.
Lorie Jo: Great this might lead on to the next question here which is who is your unsung hero on set?
Mattia: The first thing that pops into my mind is the producer, so line producers. Not the executive producer as he is more on a bigger wider vision but the line producer is very detailed in his job and they remember so many things that you wouldn’t even think about. The producer always knows that “thing” and that’s really strong, I think.
Lorie Jo: Yeah it’s amazing. I wish I had a brain like theirs sometimes. But then maybe I wouldn’t be able to think like I do – so maybe it’s a good thing. I am really interested in how we come up with ideas and what we mean by creativity and what people expect from creatives. For me, I’m really interested in process around creativity and particular looking at serendipity and how creative thoughts and ideas and innovation are linked to that. I was curious about what your process was for coming up with ideas?
Mattia: Yeah sure, I don’t have defined ones but I’ll throw out what I like to do when I’m in that process. First of all, I like to read a lot of books, in particular Classics, thick Latin bricks and Proto Italian Language. Even if I don’t understand them it still gets into your brain. As an Italian with our heritage and the way we grew up and in high school, we did a lot of Latin Classics and all that which sets the pace for everything I think.
I also do a very deep research in to what is going on, from all angles. For example, if I have a client I try and see their brief from a musical perspective, from a design perspective, from a lifestyle perspective, a fashion perspective. I try and see it from passion points and try and anchor it down into a culturally relevant group.
Something I think is really strong is breaking the daily routine somehow maybe even just really simple stuff, like brushing your teeth with your left hand or walking to work rather than biking there. As much as I would love to fly over to Sri Lanka or Peru for to break my routine each time I have a project, I need to be realistic. So breaking small habits in your daily routine is really helpful. Somehow it works, and its accessible – everyone can do it.
You open up your brain to new ways of thinking if you aren’t used to doing something. So whenever you do something new, like brushing the teeth with the left hand somehow you have an intervention.
Lorie Jo: I’ll send you this piece on Serendipity – it’s really interesting. It talks about how in order to create you have to bring things together that weren’t there before and you only decide to do this when you see these things around you differently to how you may have before and I can really see how habit breaking could aid this.
Mattia: About being realistic about it too – so what is realistic to induce a creative idea? Another thing here is to relax and stay calm. (laughs) And it all comes together in the end. It’s very frustrating when you have ideas but its not coming together, it’s not there yet but you have to stay calm, it’s incubating. and this is something I’ve learned over the years because in the end, it comes together. Somehow it always comes together.
Lorie Jo: Do you have any top tips for clients when making work?
Mattia: Okay so I think there is one key word here which is empathy, to try and understand what the client wants exactly and why. Mainly why. Why do they want to get there? And questioning if that’s the right direction, give them options. But in the end they are a human beings so it’s really just trying to understand what they want and then aligning their vision with yours.
Lorie Jo: Wise words. Thank you very much Mattia.
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