In Between Lines
What’s in between?
Directed by LEONE - Director’s Cut
Interview by Tatev Avetisyan
Produced by C41, in a collaboration between director LEONE and photographers Carlo Banfi and Simona Gentile, the O’Neill outdoor campaign celebrates the spirit of adventure. In particular, In Between Lines honours that place of waiting we experience in the snowboarding, kitesurfing, and surfing communities. To visually depict this lifestyle, the campaign went in search of three talents and asked them "What’s in between?".
Leone, an award-winning film director and photographer, began with writing for trade magazines straight to creating campaigns for major international companies. In conversation with Curation Hour, he shares the integration of the community feature in the O’Neill campaign and the challenges of working on the director’s cut to merge a mashup of three stories.
What was the inspiration behind In Between Lines? Tell us about your creative process and how the idea mould from it.
The idea of In Between Lines is to show not the sports but everything in between, what the athletes do when they are not doing their favourite activity. We decided to portray three characters and follow their different lifestyles and locations: surf & camp, kite & travel, and peak & street. The aim was to delve not so much into the sport itself but the life of this community in between seasons, breaks, weather conditions, travelling, camping, and hanging out with their friends. For these communities of athletes, the lifestyle is as much as important as the sports themselves. It is a way of living, often not recounted or explored in depth. The real inspiration came from the talents themselves, to whom we asked questions in the casting phase, where they told us their stories, passions, and habits.
How did you preserve the message of ‘community’ through the casting? Take us through the casting process.
Casting is always a fundamental part of the creative process. In this campaign, we decided to give voice to the talent by listening to their stories. They are, in fact, the focus of the entire narration, as we used part of their answers to our questions as the film’s voice-over, creating a link between them. The process started with the involvement of some athletes, and world champions, already sponsored by O'Neill. We expanded the casting with further research carried out by us to involve and be able to tell the stories of both athletes already linked to the brand and those not. But they all have something in common: they share the same passion for an outdoor sport.
How do you balance meeting commercial objectives without sacrificing your art and vision? Did you have complete creative freedom in directing the story, and if not, what did you have to compromise on?
I think the key is always to try to develop your own vision and creativity according to the commercial objectives required. The purpose of this campaign was the rebranding. The brief I received asked me to develop a campaign to relaunch brand communication. According to this, I tried to tell the stories of the different protagonists with a fresh and authentic point of view. In the construction of these stories and during the entire process, I always had a constant dialogue with the brand, in order to achieve the campaign goals in the best possible way without sacrificing the creativity behind the ideas.
What were some of the challenges, individual or collaborative, you encountered working on the film?
One of the biggest challenges, certainly, was dealing with a particular project divided into three chapters of very short duration. Being able to tell three powerful and equally engaging stories in such a short time, which are also somehow linked to each other, was not easy. Also, for this reason, I decided to work on my own director's cut that would combine the three different chapters into a single video. I thus created a mashup of the three stories, trying to join them together in the most fluent and engaging way possible. In the end, I am satisfied with the result.
“The aim was to delve not so much into the sport itself but the life of this community in between seasons, breaks, weather conditions, travelling, camping, and hanging out with their friends.”
What initially drew you to filmmaking? And what was the catalyst for focusing on commercial projects? What projects are you working on next?
Like many directors, I first started writing in trade magazines at a young age. Then I shifted to video clips and shot many of them. Then, after my first experience, I moved on from video clips to commercials. Working on commercials allows you to familiarise yourself with the craft. Because, after all, they are films, with the added challenge of being very short and having to deal with a client with commercial objectives. I have also shot several short films, including a documentary. My interest is moving more and more towards storytelling, and it was definitely thanks to my previous experiences that I was able to move on to feature films, working on the creation of my first movie. As for future plans, I will continue working on commercial projects and also develop my second feature film.
Head of Creative Services: Ricardo Rodrigues
Creative Studio Manager: Anouk Larry-Bleis
Art Director: Claudia Dader
Director: LEONE (@leonedirector)
DOP: Andrea Dutto (@duttodutto)
Photographers: Carlo Banfi (@carlo_banfi91) and Simona Gentile (@__simonagentile)
Executive Producer: Leone Balduzzi
Producer: Irene Rei (@irene.rei)
Creative Director C41: Leone Balduzzi
Creative C41: Inga Lavarini (@ingalavarini)
Junior Creative C41: Sofia Michaud (@marmellotta)
Casting C41: Kevin Ferretti (@de.terrente)
Stylist C41: Yaya Zeng (@yayazeng_)
The Playground (Service Portugal)
Editing: Filippo Raineri (@raineri_filippo)
Color Correction: Anna Visigalli (anna__visigalli)
Sound Design: Smider Agency (@smideragency), Guido Smider (@guidosmider), Tommaso Simonetta (@tommaso.simonetta)
Special Thanks: Movie People, Inspira Liberdade Boutique Hotel
Talents: Will Ocean Odiete (@willoceanodiete), Francisco Costa, Sofia Gaggero, Airton Cozzolino (@airtoncozzolino), Miguel Kilford (@miguel_kilford), Violeta Sanchez, Marta Segura, Yannek