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Getting Ready to launch
November 15, 2005
| If you stop and think about it, when you work on a project, no matter if it's been assigned to you or if you are creating it, you will probably agree that there are basically three steps: you think it, you write it down, you do it. For an event like ITS that takes a year to come to life, you need to think and plan the future in advance. When everyone was enjoying ITS#FOUR, some EVErs had their minds already projected into the future ITS editions. Something had already been planned. As any organisation, agency or company around the world, you have to think about what will be while you're working on what is if you want things to go on.
So when the lights and the computers were turned on again on September 1, and dust was cleaned off from our minds while holidays became pleasant memories you think of while looking out the window, someone had apparently never left that place. Like a mother with her child, she never stopped thinking about the future of her baby. Others had gone on holiday, she had just taken a break.
There's a lot of work to do just for the launch of a project like ITS, especially when you're bringing something new to the project like we are doing in ITS#FIVE with the Accessories Competition. There's lots of research to do, we had to think about the regulations for this new area, select the schools and discuss again and again with our partner the details of the project; Then we had to contact the schools, explain to them again and again the project until we were sure they know it by heart (the School and Contestants office worked really hard on this new field, while preparing the launch material for the fashion and photo competition) and keep in touch with them to have a final confirmation of their participation. Then there's the Press Office that goes on researching new magazines, works on the ITS#FOUR press review searching for all of the articles that have been written on the last edition...there's a tall blond guy that works on the strategies of the event together with the little girl, keeps in touch with the partners and sponsors of ITS...there's the Multimedia office that is starting to think about the new image of ITS. As I'm writing this down I realize how hard it is for me to know all of the things that the different areas in our offices are working on at present. There are dozens of things I know nothing about, and Barbara knows all, relating and coordinating with all of us in the office...my oh my...
The most interesting part of the launch is definitely the development of the new image, the image that will promote the new edition of ITS in the schools and on our website, and that will be sent to the press. It's the first thing people see of an event that will happen the year after. It's the image they will think about from that point on as representing ITS. When we launch the event, and the finger presses the "enter" button that sends thousands of emails presenting the new ITS to the world, the image is there, the most direct declaration of what it will be. You can therefore imagine how important it is to find a strong and powerful image that people will like and that will stay in their heads. A small project for a bigger project: you think it, you write it down, you do it.
So we sat down and started thinking of the new image for ITS#FIVE. Big discussions, some great ideas (and some bad ones also....), and finally a decision on which everyone agreed: as last year, we are going to do a photo shoot with a model, but this time we won't be shooting in places around the city looking for a nice background. The photos will be done in a studio.
First, we had to find the right place to shoot, because we needed space. The camera needed to be placed at about three and a half meters from the ground pointing the floor, to shoot pictures of an area of about 3mt by 3mt. We found a perfect solution not far from our offices, which made it easy also to carry all of the production material we had to use for the photo shoot. I obviously can't tell you a lot about what the image looks like....what I can tell you is that dozens of clothes, fabrics, shoes, hats, belts, portfolios of former finalists, objects, ITS bags and t-shirts were used. My beloved car, an old Fiat Panda that could tell lots of stories if it had a mouth, was the official production car, bringing back and forth from the office everything needed for the photo shoot. Soon we were in our location mounting the scaffolding necessary to hang the camera at the decided height. |
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| When the camera was set and ready, it was the moment to begin preparing our image. The photo shoot was divided in three day-long sessions. The first day was dedicated to photos without the model: we worked on what we can at the moment call the "background" (again, sorry if it's a bit difficult to understand, but I can't tell you too many details and I'm doing my best to explain it well without revealing too much!). To have the image we needed, we always had to work with little light (almost total darkness actually) around the photo shoot area and strong, white light pointed on the photo shoot area, so that we would have a perfectly lighted surface with no unwanted shadows. The creative director supervising the realisation of all the different images we shot was as usual our curly visionaire Fabio (head of Multimedia dept.), together with Barbara. And while the camera took the pictures, in the breaks when I had nothing to do I would work as the "backstage photographer", shooting with my small Japanese digital camera pictures of everything that looked interesting, just like a Japanese tourist... |
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| On the 2nd day it was time to have the model in the image. Remember who opened the fashion show at ITS#FOUR? The Grace Jones style black panther who walked the catwalk better than Naomi Campbell? She's a Brazilian friend of ours who accepted to be our model for the production of the new image. Deciding the right position she had to have was real tough work, because when doing this you have to think about the proportions of the final image, and there has to be the right balance between her presence and the background shs laying on, since we were shooting from above, and she was actually laying on the ground. So lots of time was spent deciding the best position she had to have in the photo. The camera was connected to a computer monitor, which made it a lot easier for us to immediately see the results of the shot and decide what we needed to change, be it the lights or the position of the model, the colors, or other details. We would shoot and see the result on the monitor, discuss, change things and shoot again. |
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| After an hour or two spent discussing different positions for the model, we started shooting really interesting images we liked, images that were beginning to capture the feelings we wanted to transmit. The result had to be an image that would tell who sees it what ITS is without words. It had to be first and foremost based on emotions, feelings, that break through from the photo to the viewer and instinctively tell him "this is what we are". It's hard to do that with an image! Luckily, while the 2nd day of the photo shoot was nearing to the end, we began realizing that what was coming out was what we wanted. So when the day was over, everyone went home quite satisfied with what had been produced.
The 3rd and last day of the photo shoot was a sort of outer dimension. I don't know about everyone else, but I felt this way. We put some music on and worked all day long, and it felt as if we were not in Trieste anymore, nor in Italy, or Europe, or the world. To me it was like being in space, or in a bright, white nutshell, as if all of the world had contracted into that little space and there was nothing beyond the confines of the photo shoot. The camera went on shooting while we tried other combinations and other images. The music went on playing and I went on snapping pics with my camera, feeling like a front-line journalist wanting to capture evidence of the existence of strange creatures working on a strange project, in a world where the kind of emotions we were trying to capture on film are not so common anymore. You're there and you feel different, you feel detached and you look in the eyes of the person who feels these emotions the most and you see how hard it is to live in the world today being so romantic, so emotional, always searching for passion and truth and beauty. The 3rd day was quite magical for me. |
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| When it had all fiinished, and we began dismantling everything and packing up all of the things we had brought, I really understood why I felt so strange and emotional. The Photo Shoot of the new image of ITS#FIVE for me was like a small ITS in itself, a small glimpse of what ITS#FIVE will be and the sentiments I know I will feel in July. A small project that announces a bigger one that is yet to come. You think it, you write it, you do it. And then you relate it, with articles like this one.
December 2005 is not far away anymore, and soon you will have the chance to see our restyled website with the blazing new image for ITS#FIVE! |
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