Short Films

This was all I did. Every spare hour, every summer. I studied filmmaking harder than I ever studied anything in school. I wanted to be a film director.

What I made

Tens of films over five years. Comedies with schoolmates, documents for class that played in front of the whole school, and narrative shorts with cousins and relatives as the cast — we made it our summer activity and held proper premieres at home for everyone involved.

I watched hours of YouTube tutorials on storytelling, camera movement, editing, color grading. I filled notebooks with scripts, technique notes, shot lists. I learned to compose music for the films, design DVD covers, and burn the DVDs myself.

How I worked

Two seasons, two modes.

Winter was for technique. I experimented — special effects, camera angles, green screen (my mother bought me the green sheets), VFX composited in After Effects. Explosions, gunshots, whatever the story needed. I also taught myself Blender 3D Animations specifically to get CGI I couldn’t shoot for real.

Summer was for storytelling. I took the techniques I’d practiced and pointed them at real films. The rule I held was: use only what serves the story. Everything else is noise.

My favorite film is Ladri di biciclette. That should say enough.

I bought my own DSLR with money I earned doing forestry work in the summer. I built a camera rig myself. I didn’t have the equipment — I used creativity instead.

Why it ended

At 13 I decided I had to make money. Film directing felt like a dream that would leave me broke. I turned toward engineering.

The obsession didn’t disappear — it just changed form. The same drive to study something until I understood every layer of it, to control the whole stack, to care about story above craft: that’s still how I work.