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LIAMIANDOLI
BORN: 4 DECEMBER 1977, LEWISHAM, LONDON
How did you get into this industry, any family connections?
“I grew up being constantly bom- barded with films to watch as my dad owned a small chain of video shops in
South London. I would easily watch a film a night instead of doing my schoolwork, which pretty much explained my failure to
established artists and gained a good insight into the world of video art installation, shooting a large part of Buggyrace for artist Clio Barnard, a film/video installation centred around an illegal pony and trap race organised by gypsies on a motorway. The film plays with documentary and cinematic forms to address notions of artificiality and representations of the real.
NFTS, a short Stop Frame animation called For The Love Of God (about a man who has sexual feelings for God) and a short film called Ela about an eight-year-old girl who deals with loss for the first time.
Both films have enjoyed success at fes- tivals over the last year with For The Love Of God in official selection at many festivals in- cluding Cannes, Sundance, Telluride, Dinard and winning at Rhode Island IFF, Chicago IFF and Santa Barbara Film Festival and Ela win- ning the Kodak short film showcase for best Cinematography and taking second prize at LA Cine Gear along with numerous other wins worldwide. The film was also in the final shortlist for an Academy Award nomi- nation but sadly missed out.
Since leaving film school I have shot various different projects from documen- taries, pop promos, commercials and short films.
I recently shot a Documentary in the Philippines for RDF/C4 about 1500 inmates who are forced to dance to 80s pop all day long by a warden who is desperate to profit from the attention they receive from their performance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They have about 13.5 million views on You Tube at the moment.
The shoot was mentally and physically exhausting and at some point I wandered off on my own to get some cutaways and found myself locked in a cell with a bunch of mass murderers who were all to keen to have my name and face tattooed on their chests, again I thought of my career advisor at school and realised why he had not men- tioned film making as a career option!
What was your favourite job
to date and any unusual anecdotes whilst working?
One of my favourite shoots to date was a commercial for MTV’s Music Awards in Munich directed by Joe Tucker that required us to re-create the famous beach shot in Chariots Of Fire. I gave the late David Watkin BSC a call who was more than happy to rem- inisce with a perfect stranger and offer all sorts of advice until I asked him about diffu- sion filters and he nearly hung up on me!
The shoot itself was a lot of fun and I had some great toys from Panavision in the form of a remote gyro-stabilised head hang- ing off a crane on a tracking vehicle.
I shot the ad on ETERNA Vivid 160T and was very happy with it.
achieve academically and excel creatively. I think the only subject apart from Art and Woodwork that I was good at was Biology and that was probably due to my knowl- edge of human anatomy after seeing all those guts ripped out in horror movies!
It wasn’t till I was about 22 that I accidentally discovered you could actually study Film Making at University. I knew in an instant that that was what I wanted to do with my life and thought of my career advi- sor at school and how rubbish he was to have not mentioned Film Making as a career option... after all, he did take me seriously when I said I wanted to be a footballer!
Whilst studying Film and Video at University in Kent, I honed my skills as a Photographer in my spare time and subse- quently became interested in Cinematogra- phy. Upon graduating, I worked closely with
Before gaining a place at the National Film and Television School I worked on various short films and was fortunate enough to be asked to spark on a feature film called Kidulthood, which was shot by my then soon-to-be teacher Brian Tufano BSC. This gave me an idea of what is possible with very little resources and got me thinking of innovative ways to approach film making.
Studying at the NFTS has given me the experience and confidence needed to go out and work on multiple formats from 35mm, 16mm to all Digital formats, using various techniques, such as green screen, motion con- trol and stop frame as well as introducing me to many talented film makers whom I have collaborated with on many projects since and continue to do so in the near future.
I shot two Graduation films whilst at the
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