L’Artista

L’Artista is a short film written and directed by Can Erduman about an artist who struggles with his art. In this case, literally. The film focuses on the process of making art, the challenges artists encounter during their learning paths and the difficulty of being completely satisfied with one’s work.

I wanted to create something humorous that shows an artist battle with his art.

Two main characters, with the first one (Antonio Riggertoni) creating and giving life to the second one, an internal conflict transposed into an external one, a focus on art, humor, and staging that mixes traditional art tools with digital ones are the elements of this short.

L’ Artista is staged in two scenes, the first one takes place in the past (1520) during the period of the Italian Renaissance, the second one in a museum in the present. The effort dedicated to research and quality aesthetic work is worth noting, with careful attention dedicated to lighting, color and composition, as well as character and environment design. The production process clearly took place in an established, professional pipeline, allowing for a highly polished result. The strong emphasis on aesthetics is in line with the artistic theme of the short.

Cameras progress from wider to tighter shots. First to establish the action and cover the artist’s work, then switching more frequently to close-ups to focus on characters’ expressions, through which conflict and comedy are transmitted. Visual rhythm is handled through editing, motion within the frame (varying playback speeds help increase rhythm), and a number of camera moves, a few used to signal emotional displacement, others to describe the location. Camera position is employed also to create surprise, by withholding information from the viewer. The use of music is also worth highlighting, as it adds a lot to the film: it’s used extensively for expressive purposes, to underscore and potentiate different moments of the story.

What makes L’ Artista work so well? A highly imaginative take on the artistic creation process, bridging traditional with modern digital art, quality aesthetic work, playful staging with abundant humor and a widely appealing subject all artists will feel related to, and which can also reach non-artists.

L’ Artista was commissioned by German company Maxon, to promote a release of their Cinema 4D computer graphics and animation software that incorporated new character animation tools, thus the focus of the short film on characters’ expressions.