We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Peter Pardini. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Peter below.
Alright, Peter thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.
The biggest obstacle to independent narrative filmmaking that never changes, especially as you grow, is that it feels like you never have a big enough budget. I have a lot of experience making documentaries and one of the things I’ve done that I think has helped in my narrative career is incorporate documentary elements in a way that feels completely real/unstaged. It’s not as simple as allowing improvisation but it’s kind of a deeper, more “method” style of filmmaking that began with what Curb Your Enthusiasm does. All of my narrative films so far have included scenes that are shot like documentaries where the actors are essentially acting “as if” the entire shoot day and I’m then cutting down an hour of usable footage to whatever that scene calls for. And like Curb, I’m giving people backstories and objectives, but rarely lines. This saves money because you’re able to shoot a lot of your movie on top tier cameras with lighting that makes it look like a “real movie” so to speak, but you don’t have to do the entire movie at that level. You can have documentary style scene shot with everything from iPhone, Zoom, prosumer cameras and not have to light and make portions of the movie cinema verite. I’ve done this in Black Cat, Rolling Thunder and my most recent film Man Goes on Rant and the style blends pretty seamlessly with the cinematic, “lit” portions shot on RED, Alexa, etc.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve been making movies since high school and worked my way up the “quality ladder” starting in college when every summer I’d try to take a step up by shooting on 16mm, then 35mm, etc. But the real step up was when I graduated college and had the opportunity to go on tour with the band Chicago. I’ve been documenting their history and current career all the way til present day. The film Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago was on CNN Films in 2017 and then Netflix and is now on Prime. My work with Chicago has given me the space to create small budget films and narratives without having to find a 9 to 5 job, and for that I’m very grateful.
For freelance work, I mostly do editing in between focusing on personal projects but I would love to direct more commercials too. I make my projects through my company Sonder Entertainment and the next few years should be very interesting.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
By and far, working with the band Chicago has been the greatest “vouch for” I could hope for due to their nearly 60-year success in touring and recording some of the greatest music of all time.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I want to maintain creative integrity in narrative filmmaking by telling stories in a way that they were in the 1970s while also being unique and modern.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.peterpardini.com
- Instagram: @petercurtispardini
- Facebook: N/A
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-pardini-62a77913/
- Twitter: N/A
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtgxoRBIgQvNX8XxY3WyqvA
- Yelp: N/A
Image Credits
Head shot by Michael Paletta Supplemental shots owned by Sonder Entertainment