THE WORLD BEFORE THE STORY
Every story begins long before the first scene.
A forgotten civilization. A distant future. A hidden geography. A myth waiting to be remembered.
This workshop explores the art of worldbuilding through collective storytelling, visual research, speculative imagination, and experimental filmmaking. Drawing inspiration from cinema, mythology, literature, design, and contemporary culture, participants work together to imagine worlds that do not yet exist—or perhaps once existed and have been lost.
We investigate how a place, a culture, a symbol, a ritual, or a fragment of history can become the seed of an entire narrative universe.
Rather than beginning with a plot, we begin with a question:
What kind of world could make this story possible?
A forgotten civilization. A distant future. A hidden geography. A myth waiting to be remembered.
This workshop explores the art of worldbuilding through collective storytelling, visual research, speculative imagination, and experimental filmmaking. Drawing inspiration from cinema, mythology, literature, design, and contemporary culture, participants work together to imagine worlds that do not yet exist—or perhaps once existed and have been lost.
We investigate how a place, a culture, a symbol, a ritual, or a fragment of history can become the seed of an entire narrative universe.
Rather than beginning with a plot, we begin with a question:
What kind of world could make this story possible?
OPENING THE PORTAL
The workshop culminates in the creation of collective visual narratives inspired by the art of opening titles and cinematic introductions.
An opening sequence does more than introduce a film. It establishes a mood, suggests a mythology, reveals traces of a larger world, and invites the audience across a threshold.
Through image-making, collage, sound, text, animation, archives, found materials, speculative documents, maps, symbols, and visual metaphors, participants create fragments from an imagined universe.
These fragments are assembled into a shared body of work that may take the form of an installation, a story atlas, a visual archive, an immersive environment, a short experimental film, or a collective title sequence for a world that exists only in the imagination.
Together we build the evidence of a place, a culture, and a story.
Not the finished film.
The world that makes the film possible.
Mother – A Train To Hell
Special Mention Of The Biennial Artistic High Schools, 2018
P. Toschi Art School, Parma
Class V Audiovisuals Multimedia
Special Mention Of The Biennial Artistic High Schools, 2018
P. Toschi Art School, Parma
Class V Audiovisuals Multimedia
Immersive Storytelling Experience with “Real Objects & Digital Clues” designed & directed by Lazzaro Marco Ferrari.
The ability to transform evidences and traces in amazing stories.
Production of the Opening Titles sequence for the Film “A Train to Hell”, an original short story written by Giorgio Scerbanenco.
The ability to transform evidences and traces in amazing stories.
Production of the Opening Titles sequence for the Film “A Train to Hell”, an original short story written by Giorgio Scerbanenco.
Authors: Noa Ducati, Ionut Nichifor, Leonardo Riccardi, Fosca Pessina, Sara Ferrara, Adelaide Hoffmann, Veronica Tirelli, Mattia Leon Zanazzi, Anna Manfredini, Yolanda Briseida Franzini, Esmeraldy Mejia Nunez, Giulia Bergamaschi, Simona D’Alessandro, Ginevra Veneziano, Virginia Benati, Chiara Gherri, Lucrezia Lanzi, Alessia Mastrolorenzo
Production photos
Story map GamePlay
