After the official opening of the 13th Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival, the British director Rob Savage held a masterclass by talking to John Bleasdale, writer, movie critic and Professor at Ca’ Foscari.
During the event, Rob Savage confessed to the audience that his first approach to the cinema was thanks to the film Apocalypse Now. The conversation then moved on a careful analysis of Savage’s works. Since childhood, he has always been very passionate the horror genre. The first clip shown to the audience was a music video that kept the attention of different producers, thanks to the many views on a streaming platform. The event proceeded with the screening of other clips, such as the trailer of Host (2020), which movie was realized with a very low budget by taking advantage of the lockdown caused by the Covid19 pandemic. As a matter of fact, the director also confirmed that the idea of the project came up as a reaction to boredom during the forced lockdown, when he had fun by pranking his friends. The exceptionality of this period led Savage to realise how an artist cannot only get inspiration only from his ego, but also from the daily life around him: «The great ideas do not just come from ourselves, we must always be able to be influenced by others». This wide-ranging creative process was also of fundamental in the realisation of Dashcam (2021), which stems from the desire to narrate the anger and bewilderment caused by the pandemic and when Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the US elections. The last video clip shown was the trailer for the horror film The Boogeyman, which takes its inspiration from Stephen King’s short story of the same title and is due for release next summer.
The masterclass ended with a few questions from the audience. Savage advised all young film enthusiasts to be motivated and have self-confidence in developing their artistic ideas: one can, in fact, hit the public even with a low-budget product, using social and multimedia visibility as a springboard for more ambitious and complex future projects.
