The Screenwriter
- Best Cinematography, Premio Submarino Peral at the 54th Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena 2025.
- Best Foreign Short, GTX Film Festival 2025.
- A noir short film directed by Mark Petrasso, produced in Italy in 2025.
- An independent set, where the light was built by studying how the old films did it.
How It Was Made
The Film
The Screenwriter (Lo Sceneggiatore) is a noir short film directed by Mark Petrasso, with Hustonian echoes: a precious object, a killer, a body on the floor and a femme fatale, an ensemble that winks at meta-cinema. A screenwriter builds a story, and the story starts building itself around him. My job was to make a modern apartment feel like 1950s black-and-white noir.
My Role
Director of Photography. Mark is a friend, and when he brings me one of his stories I don't say no: he puts his trust in me and that means something. This is independent, low-budget filmmaking, not a conventional set. Everyone lends a hand, and everyone does it for the pure pleasure of making it.
The Production
Independent and low-budget, shot on a Sony FX3 to pull every stop of dynamic range out of the camera. A small group of people who all pitch in, driven by the want to be there. What it lacked in money it made up for in craft: the production design, costumes and make-up gave me a real world to light.
The Challenge
The hard part was recreating the atmosphere of 1950s black-and-white noir inside a modern, narrow space, a house entrance with white walls standing in as the backdrop for most of the scenes. I leaned on the excellent production design, costume and make-up, and for the image I went for hard, cut light and full shadows, drawing shadows even where there were none and pushing the chiaroscuro. I judged everything on the monitor through a black-and-white LUT I had built in advance, so I could see close to the final look while shooting. Fixed, often off-balance frames, all planned in pre-production, finished it. Challenges won, I'd say, given the awards the film collected, and for me personally the Best Cinematography prize at the Cartagena Film Festival.
Behind the Scenes
On set in the narrow period apartment: the noir lighting rig overhead, the cast in fifties costume, and the black-and-white image taking shape on the monitor beside the colour reality of the room.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a Director of Photography do on an independent short film?
More than the camera. An independent set has a different air from a commercial one: there is no department for everything, so everyone helps everyone, and the Director of Photography ends up solving problems that on a bigger job would belong to someone else. It is one of the reasons short films are worth doing.
What determines how long a short film shoot takes?
There is no standard answer, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. It depends on the script, on the resources available and on how long the finished film runs. A dialogue scene in one room and a night exterior with a crowd are not the same job, even at the same running time. Tell me the script and I can tell you the days.
What lighting does a noir short film need?
It needs a study of how the old films did it, because the light of that period has a quality that present taste has moved away from. And it is not only the light: the framing, the focal lengths and the shot sizes belong to the same grammar. Shooting noir properly means working in techniques you do not use every day, which is a good exercise.
Planning something similar?
If you're preparing a short film or a narrative piece in Italy and want a Director of Photography who's been there, let's talk.
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