In 2018 I had the opportunity to be sent to Italy for the publish house Lingopont to direct a mini-series, “Tutto Bene!”, which would be part of a three-part course to learn Italian for adult beginners.
The series portrays the story of 4 characters, Sandro, Francesca, Anna and Antonello, through their quirky everyday life and adventures, every episode advancing the language used a bit more.
I’ve had the luck of curating many aspects of the series, and although the series run on a seriously low budget, my crew and I managed to make a little jewel that is already being used in language schools throughout the world.
Directing
Pre-production was incredibly fast. The first idea, for budget reasons, was to try to shoot all the dialogues and all the scenes with actors in interiors in Melbourne, and to hire a videomaker in Italy to make all the exterior establishing shots.
After all the casting was done here in Melbourne with Italian actors from Australia, we decided that no matter how much we dressed the set, it would never feel like Italy.
So, we decided to move the whole production to Italy, and after 5 days, we were in the city of Novara spending 15 hours a day rewriting scenes, casting actors, scouting for locations and scheduling the 5 days of shooting we had at our disposal to shoot the 10 short episodes.
And in just 3 people and 3 days to organise everything, production started.
On Wednesday, the DOP Joe Vittorio and audio boomer arrived from Melbourne, after a 23h flight, and with them all the equipment. They landed at 2 pm, and at 3.30 pm we were shooting the first scene of the first episode.
In 5 days we shot the impossible, we ran like crazy, we worked very hard and we had the best time.
The original first two episodes of the series didn’t end up in the final cut, as we weren’t satisfied with the story, and we reshot them the following year, with a different script and location.
For this series, I directed episodes 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8, while for the remaining ones I was assistant to Elio Guarnuccio, my boss at Lingopont.
We were then sent in Rome to shoot some exterior for one day, and all the exteriors of the red Fiat 500.
Editing & VFX
During production, there was no script supervisor, and because of the production speed and pressure, there were many continuity problems to be “solved in post”.
The opening scene has many CG elements that I created in Cinema 4D, and throughout the series there are so many invisible VFX that fix many aspects from continuity to set dressing to lighting and more.
Composing
The main theme of the series, “Tutto Bene!”, was born almost instantly after I was asked to direct the series.
I already knew what I wanted. The script was very quirky, the situations were almost slapstick comedy, and the characters weren’t fancy and pretentious, but real and “sfigati” (unlucky).
That’s why I didn’t want the music to be too polished or sophisticated, instead, I wanted it to come from the street, like a band of gypsy musicians that follows you around, as you can see in many parts of Italy.
I really wanted Hello Tut Tut, an incredible Balkan-music band from Melbourne, to perform the soundtrack for my series, so I composed everything for their ensemble: clarinet, violin, accordion, acoustic guitar, electric bass and drums, with the addition of a mandolin for an extra Italian flavour. They were very happy to take part in such a fun project, and after I mocked everything up in Cubase, I rewrote every part as a score, and we recorded it all in one day.
Although the title track is heard completely only in the first episode, the main theme is used and abused in every possible form throughout the 3 seasons.
While for seasons 2 and 3 I switched to a wider sound palette, it made perfect sense for the enclosed season 1 to have a small, imperfect ensemble to perform the score, and it’s one of the sounds I am the happiest about.
You can listen to a selection of themes down here.