Videa has helped to place Italy on the vfx map. Fifteen years ago, that country viewed vfx as America’s domain. All images © Videa Visual Effects.

About 15 years ago, special effects was synonymous in Italy with a very specialized American professional art form, but since that time, thanks to the visual-art evolution, minds have been open to new technologies and new ways of thinking in my country. One of the last countries to make the entrance into visual effects has been Italy, earth rich in history and culture and home to many artists. Taking its creative cues from the rest of the visual effects communities and looking to make its own creative and culturally elevated contributions, Italy refused to be shut out any longer. All of this clamour allowed the birth of new postproduction facilities, and consequently the evolution of new visual effects professions even in Italy.

Once upon a time, it was very difficult to conceive of the birth of a company gaining financing only through the creation of visual effects for movies. In fact, my role as visual effects supervisor was misunderstood by both the old Italian production system and the specialized schools (excluding some software courses focused on teaching particular products instead of sharpening visual perception).

Surely the kind of movies produced from this country doesn’t permit surreal or futuristic images to be created in such an artificial way, because of the main nature of the Italian movie industry, which is focused on the auteur, and not on pure entertainment. This is one of the main reasons for this artistic lag. Fortunately, in the last few years we have assisted in a more perceptible approach to digital technology for moving images, and have been utilizing visual effects to serve the story directors want to tell. The slow understanding of this complex but, at the same time, fascinating art form has allowed for the rise today in specialized schools that teach broader forms of visual communications beyond the technical, which in turn has spawned a generation of professionals that work in this new industry for several prominent companies.

Actually there are nearly 15 Italian companies that work on visual effects in one capacity or another for national distribution according to strategic reasons: those who work for commercials and advertising are usually located in Milan, which is an industrial town, instead those working on movies that are in Rome because of the closeness to studios such as Cinecittà, Roma Studios.

I work for Videa, which has been one of the leading companies in our country for 12 years, offering its services and creative skills for movies, TV and advertising.

Personally I owe my knowledge to my attendant at the European Academy of Special Effects, directed by three-time Academy award-winner Carlo Rambaldi (E.T., King Kong and Alien). There, I had the opportunity to enhance not only my duties on painting techniques, sculpting, special make up, miniatures and, obviously, computer graphics, but also on cinematography and other mediums of expression. This great didactic experience and periodic visits to American postproduction offices were so fundamental because they gave me a wide know-how of this area from a technical and artistic point of view, and a precious knowledge of technical matters, which is that thing that allows you to put in practice your artistic stimulus, pushing you further to experiment with other ideas in search of technical and creative solutions.