Conceptualization
Ace researched the visual language of Italian movies, Ialian art, and referenced photographs he took himself while in Milan. These images started to form the color palette, texture and mood; very much congruent with HK’s corporate identity and visual makeup. He explained to Czarah that Italian films focus on the overall mood and ambiance for their storytelling, sometimes even more than the characters. The attention to detail of this environment would eventually become the soul for the project.
Life would be breathed into the tools of the artists, right down to the torches, the carving knives, and the machines. A warm, amber earthy tone was chosen as the color palette so as to resemble old fashioned Italian blacksmith shops at the height of Roman Renaissance. In the following director-client meetings, Ace and Czarah decided on dramatic, violin and cello pieces to serve as the music behind the film to heighten the intensity and love of the jewelry making process, almost as if it were an opera.
La Grande Belleza
Based on the large location database Prodigium amassed, we were able to choose a location that completely suited the needs for the vision: an old mountainside property east of Los Angeles, containing several old buildings and homes, one of which ended up becoming the shop for where the jewelry would be made. It was of crucial importance to also showcase the design process: everything first must be sketched out from a source of inspiration. Czarah mentioned that the artists were inspired by seashells to create the Artisan Pave, the jewelry piece that we settled on as the flagship centerpiece of this film. We honed in on working with the production designer, Christine Cangelosi, to source seashell pieces as part of the set decoration.
The location we were able to find in the mountains east of Los Angeles.
David, the spokesman and CEO of Harry Kotlar, would be featured in the film and showcase his design process with one of HK’s artists. In his conversations with Tobias, Ace developed a style that combined wide, sweeping steadicam shots with extreme closeups of the hands of the craftsman building out the scaffolding for the piece. The inspiration for the lighting came from the Academy Award-winning Italian film “La Grande Belleza” – in English, “The Great Beauty.”
Filming
