An artist from young
I started as a background actor for commercials and TV seat fillers when I was very young, what happened when I was 3 years old is very funny.
I was watching Jurassic Park with my parents, they had already taught me that dinosaurs were extinct, so when I watched the movie, the question arose spontaneously "How did they film the dinosaurs?". My parents bought a VHS with the extras and behind the scenes and I learned that there was a whole world behind it. I was more fascinated by the behind scenes than by the story itself, even though Jurassic Park obviously has a special place in my heart. At that moment I decided that whatever job it was, it would be my job. My parents thought it was a phase but here we are almost 30 years later.
Regarding my studies, after high school, I attended a film academy in Milan and I've studied directing (filmmaking, including all the fields such as screenwriting, cinematography, film history and so on...), acting, photography and makeup. It definitely gave me my first professional bases, because before that I had only directed shorts on my own, without any knowledge, simply as a cinema enthusiast. So, for the first time, I really learned how it was properly done, in the European way, especially the fact that you don't have to do everything yourself. As any novice filmmaker tends to do. Discovering that more people could help me on my sets, in preproduction and postproduction, was certainly a factor that gave me relief. Producing a short or feature is stressful enough, knowing that more people can take some work from me, is an incredible feeling. I have also learned about many European, Asian, and American filmmakers, the true pioneers of cinema, and this has heartened me because many have started exactly like us, filmmakers who love to experiment, to shoot with homemade equipment and by using friends and relatives as talents. The most important thing was definitely having the basics to set up a script and also the first steps towards acting, that is also useful to give you the actor's perspective once you have to direct them, what is useful to say? When is it time to let the actor figure out who his character is? When do I step in? How do I communicate properly to let them understand what feeling I need them to portray? Once I finished the directing school in Milan I studied in Rome with Sergio Stivaletti, Dario Argento's make-up artist, I learned to build film prosthetics and to create wounds and cuts in the most realistic way, learning from the best. This helped me a lot to communicate with my current makeup artists on set and now I know exactly what it takes and how long it takes to get a specific wound for my actors. In 2016 the New York Film Academy, which I had followed through their newsletter since I was 12, announced that it was looking for directors in Milan, for an interview, to admit them to Los Angeles. Without saying anything to my parents and my boyfriend at the time, I went to Milan and brought my works and a few months later I received the news "We accepted you; you got a scholarship to come and study in Los Angeles, your works really impressed us ". I immediately moved to California and finally attended the academy of my dreams. I met professors with a titanic curriculum, mentors and most of all people who had worked in Hollywood for years. I have to thank them all, especially James Pasternak that helped me emotionally and professionally, he recently passed away and it was a great loss for me, but his legacy will live in me and all his students that loved him so dearly, the world needs professors like him, that take the time to listen and pass his knowledge as gracefully as he did. I learned a lot, it's a very heavy and fast-paced academy, but it gave me so much and I would do it a thousand times over and over again. We studied everything, from directing to acting, film history, women in film history and art, even sound design, and I was able to improve my editing and after effects skills, script developing and characters' arcs, psychology and relationships. I think I have a well-rounded knowledge, not in the sense that I know everything, I still need to learn a lot and lately I've been learning from new filmmakers, even younger than me, but I know enough in order to be clear with each department. The course has always been based on directing, so obviously I have more knowledge in that field, but knowing other professions also made me understand directing in a clearer way. I also found that I really love the casting process, so now, when I'm not directing, I'm also a casting director and I love it as much as directing.