Afterlife (a requiem)

I am so excited about this because I have finally had the chance to collaborate properly with James Mountford on a commissioned film.

James and I go quite a while back, right back to my teenage years in Rome. While I delved into the nerdy world of web and programming, I felt little connection to his own work even though it always fascinated and inspired me. But this year has been the year where I have taken a new direction with things by leaving Flash behind and entering a new world of video, and James’ photography has really inspired me to work with him on fashion-based concepts, bringing his stark style into video form.

So after trying things out together on simple videos like Angie and Lydia K, we often spoke about making something a bit more substantial. And coincidentally Wonderland Magazine asked him if he wanted to make a fashion film for them, which he involved me into to collaborate with.

We developed the idea of a live projection feed, featuring two characters on two different film sets, one set being projected onto the other in real time. The concept was to use light and shadow from one set to hide and reveal parts of the other set, which opened up a mind-boggling combination of different options, the variables being the background and character colours of each set, in different combinations with each other.

Soon enough we had found our two stars: Nick Cave’s son Jethro Cave and his girlfriend Sophie Willing. Finding a couple was perfect: our two film sets were to be opposite each other so that the characters could interact with each other across the studio, so the fact that they actually had a special connection was the icing on the cake.

So here is a story about afterlife.

The makeup is by the fabulous Adam de Cruz and the hair by Ben Mohapi, both from Punishment.
A big thank you goes to Way Perry from Wonderland Magazine for making all of this possible.

Oh and here‘s a video I shot on my phone that might give you a better idea of how this was set up.

Credits
Commissioned by Wonderland Magazine
Directed and edited by: James Mountford & David Terranova
Styling by Way Perry
Make-up by Adam De Cruz
Hair by Benjamin Mohapi

Lydia K

With the end of the year approaching I’ve had to push a little extra to wrap up any outstanding work before my life gets turned upside down in four weeks. First on the list is Lydia K.

Marko Perendija and I were asked by Mark Knight to produce some visuals to back him over the course of his world tour. So with the help of James Mountford we put together a shoot with dancer/model Lydia.

For the purposes of the visuals we actually processed the footage in such a way to make Lydia barely recognizable: the photographic elements were stripped down to become rather graphical, as opposed to photo-realistic, which is in fact more suited for club-visuals.

We delivered these visuals quite some time ago now, and it felt like a bit of a waste to have all this footage crushed down to an unrecognizable pulp of shapes and colours, so I thought of making something else out of it. So here is a short promo dedicated to Lydia as she worked so hard for us and had so much patience under those hot lights.

The amazing sounds are by a talented duo from Rome who make disturbingly good experimental/electronic music. Their unreleased album “Platforms” is played on repeat during my every night shift in the studio. They are called Plaster (plastersounds.com | facebook).

Thanks also go to Holly Silius for the hair and makeup, and to Bayo @ The Eye Casting for finding Lydia!
And of course to my buddies Marko Perendija and James Mountford (blog | portfolio), who nowadays I find extremely hard to work without.

Credits
Directed by: David Terranova, James Mountford, Marko Perendija
Editing: David Terranova
Dancer: Lydia Kowalska
Music: Plaster
Press & Screenings
Finalist: Vice/Kopparberg Klash July 2010
Finalist: Videoart RomaEuropa Webfactory March 2010
Screened: Big Screen Project, NYC Winter 2009
Included in the CD release of PLATFORMS, by PLASTER