Qualche volta: shooting a fashion film among the architecture of Ivrea
Production diary of Qualche volta, the fashion film shot in Ivrea with Giorgio Armani garments: Olivetti locations, black and white, a small crew.
A fashion film is not an advert and not just any short film: it has to make you want a garment while telling something else. Qualche volta, shot in May 2022, is about memory, regrets and lives that take unexpected turns. This is the diary of how it came about.
The idea. An essential film, in which places spoke as much as the protagonist. It needed somewhere with a history and a precise form, recognisable even in a few seconds.
The place. The answer was an hour from Turin. For decades Ivrea was Olivetti’s town, and since 2018 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an industrial city of the 20th century. Adriano Olivetti invited some of the best Italian architects to build factories, homes, nurseries and canteens designed for the people who worked there. The result is a unique landscape: large windows, external staircases, clean lines. Around it, the Canavese, with its lakes and hills.
The architecture of Ivrea: glass, metal, staircases leading out of the building.
Location scouting. It was half the work. For each place we looked for the right hour, the point where the building becomes a backdrop rather than a postcard, the space for the protagonist to walk.
The garments. The house of Giorgio Armani provided a selection of tailored garments. In a fashion film the garment is not displayed: it moves. Every shot was designed to show how a fabric falls when the protagonist walks, stops, turns.
Beneath a concrete canopy: the architecture frames, the garment stays at the centre.
The protagonist. Edelfa Chiara Masciotta gave the film a face and a way of inhabiting space: few gestures, a lot of gaze. A small crew makes it possible to work calmly and adapt to the light, which outdoors changes all the time.
Black and white. Removing colour focused attention on form: the architecture, the drapery, the face. It also gave the film a suspended time, right for a story made of memories.
The face, in black and white: a story made of memories.
The edit. I directed and supervised the edit. In a film like this every cut counts: in the end what remained were the images holding together the three real protagonists, the woman, the garments and the places.
The full film is on the project page.