You have been told about a few days ago, the Nikon Film Festival is underway, and allows filmmakers to submit their film of 140 seconds on the theme “I’m a fan of…”. Today, we ask a few questions to Marco Serri, director of the short “I’m a fan of Robert De Niro”.
Hello Marco, can you first introduce yourself ?
I am 44 years old. I’m not a filmmaker, professional, I work in the communication. In time immemorial, I studied arts and I have been a professional musician, as many members of my family. I also founded the studio Shot of Life before everything to make the story a musical, live recording, and clips that were done a small specialty. With the other founding members are already held to have a “narrative” of our musical films, but this is when I had the chance to be received in-service training at the FEMIS that I started to dream that I could write real stories ! This has also allowed me to taste a little of all the disciplines of cinema : the scenario, the realization, the photo, the cast, but especially the sound design (background musician requires) and the assembly, that I love above all … For me it is a natural way to continue to tell the story by articulating the narrative of a film.
You have just put forward a film for the Nikon festival. What is it about ?
The theme of the festival this year is ” I’m a fan “, and the idea we almost came by chance. In talking with my wife, and Benjamin Dayras, the main actor of the film, we thought it would be fun to do a homage to the cinema in the form of comedy : a burglar sneaks into a house, gathers his loot and discovers a paused movie on the DVD player, it is Casino. He is a fan of De Niro, it is said that he has 5 minutes to make you happy but it gets sucked into the movie and eventually is pinched. My first idea was to make a tribute to Ennio Morricone, Steven Spielberg or Francis Ford Coppola, given the immense admiration that I have for them, but it didn’t quite fit with the psychology of a thief. Also I wanted my character goes through all the emotions that cinema is capable of producing. Finally, we went to the obvious : Robert de Niro is one of the most comprehensive and popular history, he has a repertoire so diverse that it was enough to draw in his films … And I have all his movies !
Why have you chosen to participate in the Nikon Film Festival ?
Because I hope secret finally meet Virginie Ledoyen which I am in love ever since (laughs) ! But also because in the family we’ve always had Nikon in the house, and since the days of old Nikkormat film cameras. These boxes were so sturdy that one could even use it to hammer nails ! At one time, nothing equaled Nikon or Leica in the quality of the optics and the reliability of the boxes. In addition I am a member of the network, Nikon France, which has thousands of members and generates lots of stimulation around the art of photography. In regular user for many years, I wanted to participate in this festival, which corresponds completely to the dogma espoused by Shot of Life : community, popular, open to all styles … It is a good opportunity to show our willingness to make movies enjoyable and accessible : do things seriously, but without taking themselves too seriously. Why make movies if this is not to idealize the real ? Beyond this, it is necessarily very pleasant for a small association without a penny like ours to expect to win a superb kit from turning off of the price !
Was it hard to respect the constraint of 140 seconds ?
I feared that I indeed do not succeed to take in this format, but finally it was not so complicated. By clips, you’ll quickly get used to having heavy constraints in terms of duration, tempo, energy. It pushes me to do montages very tight, and I use to fund the principle that is dear to my prof for editing : “losing is winning “. We are starting to have the habit ! For example, last year we were invited by Varock Films to make a segment of ” a bullet without a name (link)”, the last clip of Caos Locos : we had 46 seconds to tell a story ! For the Nikon festival, on a small hour of footage, I first made a timeline of four minutes, and then it was the time of sacrifices. In the final edit, it was deleted, among other things, a sequence that, however, was a pure joy during the shoot : Benjamin we had reproduced the duel Pacino/De Niro in Heat, virtually by embodying the two characters … But we have not been able to exploit it : too long. So we chose “Mission” to express the Niro firm and determined.
Of course he is an actor legendary ! He has done a lot of great films, most notably with Martin Scorsese. I think it is the Casino that I prefer. Not so much for the actor’s performance, because it is awesome in almost all his films, but because I think it is the film with the most mastered of Scorsese with him. In any case it is the one that fascinates me the most, and it is well for it that I wanted to begin the sequence “fascination” of my short film by the introduction of Casino : it puts you literally in the film. I’ve seen it a hundred times and each time I am having. It makes me the same thing with Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, The Other and Custody. Otherwise, I also really like Leonardo di Caprio, that I would like for one of the strongest players of his generation. Scorsese was not deceived, and the other not more I am sure. There are many others and it would be useless to attempt to cite them all ; when you write movies, you have to be passionate actors. And is strongest in France where we have the chance to have great actors.
Good day and good luck for the festival
Thank you ! And don’t forget to vote for my film!