Film Moodboard
Bestie is the new film by Adriano Foraggio, director of the Documentary film Se una notte di mezza estate i Bottom Brother . The film tackles the powerful and sensitive theme of gender-based violence, exploring its emotional and psychological impact through a raw, intimate narrative.
For this project, I am collaborating on the artistic direction, using Artificial Intelligence to generate a range of visual assets, including moodboards, sketches, and storyboards, that help shape the film’s creative identity.
01
Tiziana’s Universe
The Vision: Isolated from the world in her studio apartment, Tiziana studies microorganisms under a microscope. The silence is suddenly broken by her mother’s broken voice on the phone.
Director’s Notes & Concept: Inside Tiziana’s workspace. A sharp visual contrast between the scientific precision of the herbarium/microscope and the glowing monitor displaying microorganisms. Cold, sharp neon lights dominate the interior.
02
Roots & Trauma
The Vision: A final, poignant embrace with her maternal grandfather. His last words echo like an exhortation to escape: “Tizià, go far away from here. Stretch out. Like trees do.”
Director’s Notes & Concept: A dramatic and poetic composition paying homage to the grandfather’s figure. The scene is dominated by a striking crucifix made of small lightbulbs on the wall, the only source of warm, red/yellow light cutting through the gloomy darkness of the room.
03
The Distortion
The Vision: The return of the father after years of absence, cold and solely focused on the high costs of the grandfather’s funeral. Tiziana remains silent, defending herself by weaponizing her imagination to disfigure and transform the reality around her.
Direction’s Notes & Concept: A psychological point-of-view shot. To represent Tiziana’s emotional detachment, her father is artificially aged, his eyes are erased by deep black shadows, and his posture turns beastly as he hunches over the table next to the mother.
04
The Underground Performance
The Vision: For her 34th birthday, Tiziana projects live images of microorganisms from her microscope onto the wall during a techno night in an underground club in Naples. That same night, she ends up in bed with Diego.
Direction’s Notes & Concept: Set in a dark, smoke-filled underground club packed with people. Tiziana is at the console performing live. The atmosphere is dark and gritty, shaped exclusively by a few fixed, sharp green lights. On the back wall, a visual layout of shifting bacteria is dynamically projected.
05
The Escape
The Vision: The beginning of her relationship with Diego and the sudden revelation of her pregnancy on the crater of Mount Vesuvius, met by Tiziana’s impenetrable silence.
Direction’s Notes & Concept: A dynamic outdoor scene set during a summer storm at dusk. The characters run along a dark lava path, looking down to avoid slipping. The atmosphere is defined by a raw, gritty realism: gray bad-weather lighting, overcast skies, and a complete absence of direct sunlight.
06
The anthropomorphic transformations
The Vision: Enduring the judgmental, inquisitorial tone of Diego’s art-dealer parents and witnessing middle-aged men aggressively making advances on young girls in the street. Absorbing the discomfort, Tiziana mentally mutates their faces into animalistic, deformed entities.
Direction’s Notes & Concept: Nighttime interiors and exteriors where metamorphosis stems from intense psychological disgust. Anthropomorphic features (a vulture, a naked mole-rat, a stray dog, a bat) are integrated into human faces to enhance the twisted, degraded, and suffering postures of the people surrounding her.
07
The Predators
The Vision: Two of Diego’s middle-aged friends, around their fifties, aggressively hit on two young women in their early twenties. Tiziana watches them in disgust; her mind quickly takes over, disfiguring and morphing them into predatory shapes.
Director’s Notes & Concept: A dark, cinematic street scene at night. The lighting is dominated by the warm, harsh yellow and red tones of public street lamps, casting long, unsettling shadows. The human figures are subtly altered to express a menacing, animalistic nature, highlighting Tiziana’s psychological discomfort.
08
The Overwhelm
The Vision: Completely overwhelmed by the psychological weight and disgust of the evening, Tiziana locks herself in the bathroom, purging her sickness as she vomits. Diego eventually finds her and takes her back home.
Director’s Notes & Concept: A cold, claustrophobic interior shot of a bathroom. In stark contrast to the warm street lighting outside, this scene is bathed in a harsh, clinical white neon light. The framing emphasizes isolation and physical vulnerability.
09
The AI Creations
The Vision: Back in her studio, Tiziana uses Artificial Intelligence to generate video art of anthropomorphic, distorted figures. These grotesque entities mirror the exact people she mentally disfigures in real life whenever they trigger her. Her digital art prompts act as a secret diary, slowly unveiling pieces of her deeply hidden personal history and past trauma.
Director’s Notes & Concept: A dark interior scene inside Tiziana’s apartment. The room is completely dark, illuminated only by the glowing blue light of her computer screen reflecting on her face. The screen displays morphing, half-human, half-beast textures, creating a cold, cyberpunk-inspired atmosphere.
10
Soundscapes of the City
The Vision: Tiziana records the chaotic and atmospheric sounds of Naples, from the quiet hills down to the historic center, to compose electronic music. Back home, it is revealed that she is the author behind the film’s entire soundtrack.
Director’s Notes & Concept: A nighttime exterior shot showing Tiziana from behind with a boom microphone against a sea of city lights. Following the project’s rules, the scene relies entirely on the cold and warm glow of public street lamps, with zero natural light.
11
Diego’s Kitchen (The Escalation)
The Vision: The tension between Diego and Tiziana escalates into a physical confrontation in the kitchen. Diego grabs her wrists with force, pushing her down onto the floor during a heated argument in the middle of the night.
Director’s Notes & Concept: A nighttime kitchen scene, rendered with a raw, industrial aesthetic. All overhead spotlights are turned off; the only illumination comes from a single, low-angle source of warm light on the wall, casting dramatic, high-contrast shadows on the floor as the characters clash.
12
The Dance
The Vision: Alone in a rehearsal room, Tiziana releases her inner turmoil through an intense, erratic dance. Her physical movements mimic the violent vibration of a heavy jackhammer, translating her trauma and psychological distress into a raw performance.
Director’s Notes & Concept: An interior scene set in a dance or rehearsal studio. To convey the frenetic energy and chaos of her emotional state, the camera uses a slow shutter speed to capture heavy motion blur, particularly focusing on the erratic movement of her arms and body. The lighting is cold and atmospheric, maintaining the dark tone of the project.
13
The Woods (The Climax / Outro)
The Vision: Stripped of all filters, Tiziana is alone in the middle of the woods as night falls. In a state of pure emotional release and frenzy, she violently moves her arms as if operating a heavy jackhammer, shaking her entire body in an erratic, desperate performance of survival and release.
Director’s Notes & Concept: A deep, dense forest exterior at twilight. The lighting is a flat, deep blue and gray dusk, with no direct light sources. The camera uses a slow shutter speed to capture heavy motion blur, particularly in her arms, capturing a raw, kinetic, and deeply unsettling aesthetic.
