I grew up in the midst of cameras, or rather behind them. The credit, or the blame, to my Dad: he's a cameraman too.
In 2002 I took my first steps in his Studio Video situated in Franciacorta, an area in the North of Italy, where I worked on and off initially as a video editor and later on as a camera operator.
In the meantime, I was studying Graphic Design and I got the Diploma in 2005, after which I started to work in different industries.
I specialised in Film & TV Editing in Milan in 2009. Thanks to my excellent results, I secured a 3-month internship at Magnolia, the main TV production company in Italy, where I assisted 3 senior video editors during the post production of the first season of “Fuori Menu”, the adapted version of the BBC format “Recipe for success” hosted by the celebrity chef Alessandro Borghese and aired on Sky.
After this very exciting internship, I started to work for Brescia.TV, a well-known TV channel in my city. There I had my very first full immersion inside a TV broadcaster, and thanks to the company’s philosophy, I worked in all the departments at different times during the week, from the pre-production until the end of the airing. Through this experience, I learnt how to work in a TV studio floor and on locations, on board of the OB vans, filming very different kinds of programs, talk shows, factual news, sports, events, corporate films, commercials and promo using a wide range of analog and digital cameras.
On 17th July 2013, I moved to London where my career got to the next level. I first needed to make some contacts and experiences within the British Film & TV industry to be able to make myself visible in this over-competitive and exciting field. I started to work in a café in the City to pay the bills, while on the weekends I was able to help out the camera department working as 2nd Camera Assistant on a couple of a NFTS’s short films, Mirror & Scorpion, both with DOP Diana Olifirova and lots of music videos.
In the summer of 2014, I quit my job at the café and went full time freelance... things became thrilling.
I got the chance to be the Focus Puller on some commercials (Virgin Active Gym, Peroni, Rebtel), music videos (Kathleen - L.Stadt, Harper - White Lies) and feature films ( The Great Unwashed, Housefull 3). However, my main goal has always been operating the camera and so I tried to get in touch with directors and TV broadcasters who needed a cameraman.
I met Luca Vullo by chance. He’s a director specialised in documentary filmmaking, but he also does thousands of other creative projects. I have filmed three documentaries with him so far: INFLUX (available on Netflix), where I worked as Additional Cinematographer & Focus Puller with the amazing DOP Giorgio Giannoccaro, as well as DALLAS IN PRIZZI and CCÀ SEMU on which I have been Director of Photography and for which we won the prize for Best Documentary at the Taormina Film Festival in 2018.
Besides that, I work as Camera Operator and Video Editor on a variety of projects with Ondemotive, Pasinet, Psychic Bunny, D-Imago, RT UK, Bonne Nouvelle, (h) films, Sky Italy, Fox Sport, Mediaset, RAI.
Keep the camera rolling...
Visit www.danielebanzato.com
