Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Roberta Pia De Angelis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Roberta Pia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learnt to do what I do by taking a big risk in the development of my MA thesis film for my degree at the New York Film Academy, here in Los Angeles.

I chose to develop and shoot as a short film a proof of concept for a feature film I wrote back in Italy a few years ago, and that got selected to public calls in my region. From this small-big experience I acknowledged what being a producer means: build your own team and trust your people to pursue all together the same path for reaching the same goal and create Art.

For doing so, the most essential skills have been trusting others and their potential and artistic view, communicating the best way possible your vision as a director as well as a producer, and overcoming any obstacles that would come in your way.

It isn’t always easy to conduct an Union production, due to all the rules and laws given by the syndicate, but only the hands-on practice from an experience like mine can give you the possibility to learn the process. There’s no need to speed up your learning process: what counts the most is to give yourself time to learn as much as you can, in the best way possible.

Roberta Pia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m an Italian film producer, currently based in Los Angeles, who got in the industry after moving to America and taking part in an MA degree in Film and Media Production, here in Los Angeles.

After many years, producing short films both in Italy and in America, I chose to pursue my career in Film Production and Development, as well as in Management of Film Distribution.

Learning first from producing and distributing my own craft since my works in Italy, and then moving later to America to acknowledge a more International strategy, I got in the industry making as many contacts as possible, joining as many interesting and ambitious projects as possible, and offering all my knowledge and experience in production.

In the cases where I didn’t have the right knowledge yet, I sat and studied all the ways to establish the process in the best and rightest way possible.

Producing means “never stop learning, especially on what to do and how to bring and translate an idea from the scratch on paper to the big screen”. Most of the time for doing so, you need to learn all the rules and laws to be followed by the book, to have the most stable production possible and to reach all the creative goals you want for your film.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Pivoting is a constant and daily part of a producer’s journey.

As a producer, each time you get a new project, you need to adapt and apply your knowledge and experience based on the type of project you chose to invest.

Somehow, each obstacle comes on your way forces you to pivot and shift towards a new direction, with the goal of overcoming it and the purpose of changing it for the good.

Pivoting is also a constant part of being a freelance artist: you need to learn how to live day by day and how to adapt yourself to make things running smoothly for the good.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

In the past few years, something that is becoming more common in my region in Italy is that many regional film commissions which open public calls give young authors the opportunity to be selected and to pitch their own stories to important film production companies in Italy that chose to shoot their films in many specific landscapes and places of the region.

Something else that society should do is to create opportunities specifically for young authors to pitch their own stories in the film markets all around the world, improving the competition in these occasions.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roberta__deangelis__?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberta-pia-de-angelis-692545221