We have asked Ruth Borgobello, an Italo-Australian who’s a film-director, screenwriter, and a teacher of screenwriting and directing for film and TV at Swinburne University and at SAE Institute for an answer to this question.

At the moment, Borgobello is committed to finalising different projects. Among these, two productions to be filmed in Italy: one which was set aside because of Covid but which can now proceed again; the other, a TV series.

One tells the story of a group of Italian backpackers in Australia and the other addresses climate change.

“Italy gives me a particular energy, a feeling inspired by a passion with which Italians approach life and understand a particular situation. The people live in the moment and express their emotions in a direct manner. Personally, I feel very connected to the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, where some of my family is from; I love its landscapes”.

Borgobello’s film The Space Between was a Australian candidate for the Oscars in 2018. It was the first ever Italian-Australian co-production.

Filmed between Udine and Melbourne, it inevitably faced many logistical challenges. In the process of making a film there are at least 200 people involved, as well as investors, sponsors and distributors, and the time needed from when the idea is born to when the film is ready to be distributed can range from three to five years.

In this time period the director makes a lot of important decisions, following a path comprising six stages, all of which present a series of challenges.

Development

This is the stage in which the idea of the film is born. Everything revolves around the film script, the characters and the world they live in. Usually, this is a solitary process, but can be done in collaboration with another screenwriter.

“This phase can achieved very fast or it can take several years; it all depends on how quickly it can be transformed into a coherent script. It is necessary to ascertain that there is a story behind the idea; it needs to take shape so it can become unique and believable”, explains the director, who emphasises that in outlining the screenplay, you need to be poetic but also practical, because what is written affects the final budget.

“Personally, stories inspired by real stories are what interest me the most. But I am also driven by my passions; other times by an encounter with a person, or by a song, or an image”, comments Borgobello.

Photo credit: Freepik

Financing

Making a movie is very expensive. You need to find investors who are willing to believe in your creation and its potential; these can be private or public institutions, and a response time can even take up to 18 months.

Borgobello admits that this is the least fun phase of making a film, because “you need to wait for a response and if the outcome is negative the film could die there and then.”

Pre-production

“This is a particularly important moment, during which the director has to make lots of swift decisions”, explains Borgobello.

This is when collaborators are selected for the different aspects of the film: from the costume designers to the director of photography, from the casting director to the actors, the type of location, the lighting, the camera lenses and camera angles. The director shares these visual elements with the group, the location and costumes are discussed with respect to every scene, to decide the character’s mood and personality.

Once the cast is decided, the director tries to establish a connection with each actor: they rehearse for a week to perfect the character. The technical aspects are inspected in preparation for filming.

Production

Action! The lights turn on, the camera starts to record, the microphone is placed correctly and you have only six weeks to film all the scenes. Obviously, the bigger the budget, the more time you have.

“This is the moment that I prefer, even though I always get that feeling that time is ticking away. I like working with the actors, discussing the films script with them, then leaving them time to study their parts, to think about the script and come back to me with new ideas and personal inspirations.

This is a conversation that happens during the entirety of the filming”, Borgobello adds. Films are never done in the correct sequence; the scenes are planned according to the availability of the locations and of the cast.

This is why the producer plans how certain scenes are filmed together and when; it is therefore very important not only to make this schedule for the sake of time management but also for the budget.

Photo credit: Unsplash

Post-production

With the evolution of modern-day technology, the post-production stage can be brought forward; it isn’t necessary to wait until the end filming.

Every day you can send the editor what has been filmed who can put it all together and start to work on it. By doing this the editor will already have a draft of the film that they can already work on to finalise.

“For the next three months, the director sits in a dark room viewing the film with the editor, who wasn’t present during the shooting. The editor can help the director find a new and fresh point of view”, says Borgobello.

At this point, with less than six weeks before the release of the film, a draft is sent to the composer, who starts to work on the score. Some composers like to base the music on the screenplay; in this case they send the tracks to the director before the scenes are filmed.

“In my case, the composer created the music simply by reading the script. This was very helpful for me because it we played the music while shooting the scenes and it helped the actors.

Most composers, however, wait to see the final draft, even though beforehand there is already a lot of discussion about what the music should sound like, based on the scene and the overall atmosphere of the film”.

Distribution

Now, it is finally time to show the preliminary version of the film to the investors and to the distributors, who are responsible for sending the film to cinemas, on streaming services, on TV channels, with the aim of getting the audience as engaged as possible.

After this, the film is released and the director can start to work on a new project.