Black – An Interview with Sara Taigher

Black is the first Italian cross-media project that melts together a short animated film, a music album and a live electronic music performance. The project is currently on Kickstarter (learn more here), so we caught up with it’s creator Sara Taigher to find out more.

Hello, can you introduce yourself to our readers

Hello! My name is Sara, I’m a motion graphic artist and I work in Rome for my production company So What.

What is your role at So What?

I founded So What three years ago with Ippolito Simion and Lorenzo Giordano. Our idea was to create a company to support our personal projects while doing our commercial work, and now it’s working exactly in this direction. I’m in charge of animation and motion design, Ippolito is an awesome director and camera operator while Lorenzo is a high-skilled photographer, documentary filmmaker and production manager.

How did ‘So What’ start, and what’s the journey been like?

Me and Ippolito met previously in another studio where we were co-working. Lorenzo joined us afterwards, together we decided to link our forces to build a bigger chance to work as  a company. We started working on some TV branding design and producing mixed-media (live action and motion graphics) videos for advertising agencies for quite big clients. Last year we had less commercial projects to work on, less money, but far more time and energy to work on our personal stuff.

Can you tell us about your latest project ‘Black’?

Black is an animated short film. It depicts Rome, our city, living one of the biggest modern nightmares: a long inexplicable black-out. The main characters are Greta and Matteo; a writer and an electronic music producer. The sudden lack of electricity kills Matteo’s latest track and leads him to a huge depression over the days, because he can’t work at the computer no more. On the other hand Greta is amazed and inspired by the new big change so she will help Matteo to gradually rediscover the positive situations created by the black-out and eventually they will find time to fall in love 🙂

Now the project turned out to be bigger and more complex : we would like to produce a whole music album by Matteo but in the real world. So when the film will be ready, the album will come out as well, and possibly a live music tour will be organized too.

What’s the key message behind the story?

I think the main key message is raising the consciousness that our modern lives are based on some things that we usually take for granted, just like electricity. What would we do if all of a sudden we couldn’t start our computers, recharge our telephones or watch telly ?

What inspired ‘Black’?

We were having pasta for lunch with some friends in my previous flat. While putting the water to boil, someone notices that there’s no gas. At that time in the kitchen we had no direct gas but the tank, « It must be finished ! » someone claims.

I noticed something special was happening: we sat down and started chatting and playing games in a way that I had completely forgot.

We were truly “there”, very hungry but enjoying the moment and there was no hurry in the air at all. Then someone went to the tank and turned the knob open »it was just closed ! » he said.

It was the best pasta I ever had, not taken for granted at all.

‘Black’ has a strong intricate design style, can you tell us a bit about the artistic process

I wanted to do something with quite a realism in it. We started going around this area of Rome, Monti, and taking pictures. We decided where Matteo and Greta would live, and where Matteo would go when he goes out. Then we did the storyboard, decided the shots, and imagined the characters. I have always loved realistic illustrations but for Black we had to make a compromise between something very « detailed » and something very « vector » especially for the characters. In the meanwhile the illustrators made a test background based on a picture of Via dei Serpenti in Rome and I thought it was the perfect starting point. Next step would be to find the way of integrating the characters on the backgrounds so we decided to produce a little teaser as a test. Here you can see the result :

You are now turning to crowdfunding to raise funds towards black, what made you want to use crowdfunding?

I had a contribution from the government that covered less than half of the budget so I started struggling to find some private financing to cover the other half, with no success. I guess because a short film hasn’t really a market, moreover Italy is not exactly the easiest country to develop an animation because most people think of that in terms of cartoon for kids and not as an authorial movie.
Black is not exactly a movie for kids and wills to talk to people’s hearts, hopefully. So I’m sure that crowdfuding is the best way we have to find the right audience, because through that we can talk to everyone who could be interested worldwide. People will naturally link to the project if we manage to communicate it in the best way.

What do you think crowdfunding brings to independent filmmaking?

New life and a new way of producing media and to get the right audience.

When can we expect to see ‘Black’ in full?

God knows…Just joking: Hopefully September 2016

Whats been your favourite project to work on at ‘So What’?

Probably Valse de Meduse, a mixed-media music video. See it here: www.sowhatpictures.com/music-video/le-cardamomo/

Whats been the most challenging project at ‘So What’?

Black’s the winner!