Here we are, it’s already January! To anticipate the release of the new album of the Amari (Kilometri, Riotmaker Records / Audioglobe, coming out on 15th January online, 22nd January hard copy), we have decided to interview the video director of the first single on the album.

I’m very pleased to speak to Uolli, a talented filmmaker (and animator) from Udine (Italy), with whom the group decided to collaborate.

WPD:  First of all, tell us about you and your debut: how did you start working on the production of videos and animations? How did you get to where you are now? And how did you consequently come to define the artistic identity that is very noticeable in your works?

Uolli: I started as a graphic designer. I worked in several companies at the beginning of my career and then, as a self-taught, out of pure passion I started to get interested in animation and stop motion. So I opened a studio in Udine and started my career as a freelance worker. I now enjoy doing advertising campaigns, videos, advertisements, experimenting new ways to convince clients (this is the most difficult part) to undertake hazardous risks.

After a while, I got tired of using the computer and started creating graphic works and videos using sets, fonts, logos and so on, entirely done by hand. At first, I just used paper and then embroidered some cross-stitch works or modeled cardboard, polyester and many other materials in 3D to build entire real worlds that I then photograph and film to make the ultimate ones.

WPD:  Let’s focus on the video “Il tempo più importante” (“the most important time”):  it’s very interesting how you worked on the concept. Indeed, the video throws the spectator into a nearly magic dimension. This allows us to concentrate on many moments in our lives, the ones we often don’t appreciate due to the frenetic life we live. We are, in fact, used to passively watch our lives pass by.
How did you think of doing the video that way and how did you choose the scenes and subjects?

Uolli: Straight away after reading the lyrics of Amari’s song I had this idea: to stop and catch moments of everyday life, details that often pass unnoticed and that suddenly hade to become the main protagonists. With a hand from two very good helpers I tried to make every day gestures more beautiful. This is not a video: they are 44 photographs one after another, and the attention you can give to each one of them is different from the one you could give to a filmed video. We tried to create some “suspended” atmospheres, never in the need to identify a precise place – like the whole photograph was there to interpret the text of the song – playing more on the atmosphere than on the pure caption of the text itself.

WPD:  In the production of the video you came to use a very particular and new technique that gives you the opportunity to stop time and isolate just some details. How did you work in post-production phase to obtain such an astonishing result?

Uolli: The very particular Cinemagram technique doesn’t always grant a good result and not all the actions you make still work: we understood this by trying it many times before making the video. There’s an application used by many other people that cannot communicate the concept of something moving while everything else is still: often there is no magic, because the care for details and actions must be studied very well. The object or the action that has to be blocked must be something we are explicitly used to seeing in movement (water, the spikes of a bike, a watch, etc..). On the opposite case, if these elements move, human interaction with them must be explicated through actions, hands and positions that look unreal and unnatural so that the perception of the still image is amplified as much as possible.

In the post-production phase, some pictures have been masked frame by frame to obtain a better result. Others, instead, have been modified in an easier way. Color correction was the part we put more effort in, because we tried to make the photographs as naturally beautiful as possible, without using exaggerated filters or instagram-like fictions.

WPD:  In recent years there have been many technological innovations that have made digital animation grow and spread exponentially. How do you imagine the world of animation in ten years time? What are your expectations for the future?

Uolli: I’ve kept up to date with progress in animation for many years. I’ve cured many musical video exhibitions here in Udine, often focusing exactly on animation. I’m always interested in coming to know all the ultimate innovations.

But I’m not a technological innovations-maniac: I prefer home-made works, using post-production tools just marginally. I am always in search of the right idea, of the right concept and escamotage to picture the perfect humor of the song and transform it into visuals. I care about this more than anything else. Technology helps me only to transform my ideas into reality. In the next 10 years I’m not expecting many technologic changes. Images will be clearer, perfect and with astonishing resolutions. But, as I already said, I hope there will always be someone that will firstly think about having a good idea and use technology as a final means.

WPD:  We are very happy to have had the possibility to interview you! Would you like to leave us with a video that particularly inspired you and marked your artistic progress?

Uolli: A video that always inspired me is “Protection” by Massive Attack, filmed by Michel Gondry. I think the care in every shot, the succession of little worlds in all those windows, the attention given to styling and little details, the poetry of the sequencing of the scenes and some visual expedients were very inspiring for the making of my video.

In the field of photography I’m getting interested in the work of a crew from Barcellona called “Canada!”: they put a lot of effort in their videos, developing them in a succession of bizarre and artistic photographs, with very interesting lights and colors that need a lot of work but that apparently seem natural.

These are the works that influenced me the most for the making of the video for Amari.