Inassenza is a short film directed by Domenico De Orsi.
It tells the story of two sisters coping with two different deaths in two different times.
Their memories start crossing and the world becomes the cold projection of their heart of hearts.
The past is a solid bond which is impossible to escape.
This is the very first project of our team. This is were everything started for us.
The idea was to tell a story that could put on screen the relationship between the pain of coping for someone's death, and the way our brain processes memories.
We didn't have any money. And so we went for some stylistic decisions that could help us with the limited budget. One of these was to use one single lens for the entire movie. A 100mm macro lens attached to a Canon 5D Mark II bought with a little help from our friends.
Using this kind of lens forces you to tell the story staying very close to the characters, paying attention to every little detail. Every little change in the actors expressions.
Shooting was split in two. The first half in Apulia (south of Italy) and the second in London.
Preparation in Apulia took a long time.
Having very limited time and a crew cut to the bone, location scouting had to be accurate and done almost shot by shot, so that we could be sure that once on set we already knew exactly what to do. Especially since we designed some very complex shots.
The London shooting was a completely different story. We didn't have the money to stay long or to travel comfortably.
There was no time to scout locations. We had to make the best of what we figured out from the pictures and what we found once there.
It wasn't easy.
First we had one long take on a crane, turning at almost 360 degrees inside a photography studio. With no time for preparation.
And then we needed a shot of a character riding a double deck bus, and a dolly shot in the middle of the road.
All without permits...
But recklessness and and irreverence can get you a long way :)
Once the movie was finished we needed money to get distribution across festivals. But we had none. And so we decided to give a shot at crowdfunding on Indiegogo. And it was very funny.
And we reached our goal.
http://www.purpleneonlights.com/inassenza-crowdfunding-on-indiegogo
This is probably our dearest project and if there is something that kept us going (no matter the difficulties) that we would like to pass along, are the words of one of the directors we admire the most:
If you want to make a movie, steal a camera.
Werner Herzog
