The multi-hyphenate Roberto Zazzara, a writer/director/cinematographer, has become known as a chameleon when it comes to working on projects around the globe. He is based in Italy but has shot projects in the US and India. His stylistic approach of letting the atmospheres of his locations come out in the story has become a common thread among all his projects.
Roberto Zazzara
Zazzara’s latest film, The Bunker Game, for AMC Network’s Shudder platform is the best example of this. The horror/thriller takes place in an underground bunker outside of Rome, which Zazzara discovered when he was playing a LARP (live action role-playing) game there. After seeing the location and experiencing a LARP, he instantly knew he wanted to center a movie on it. He created the first concept with scriptwriter Davide Orsini, and a few years later, we have the final product.
The Bunker Game follows Laura, an actress in a LARP game in which participants play the survivors of an atomic war who live underground in a sealed bunker. After several mysterious accidents, the game is interrupted, and they soon find themselves trapped inside and in peril as they begin to die in mysterious ways.
There were many obstacles that came with shooting The Bunker Game. It was shot in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and there were no Wi-Fi or communication abilities in the shooting location (an actual bunker). Below, Zazzara discusses this and much more…
Can you talk about the challenges of shooting in the underground bunker?
Shooting inside the Bunker Soratte was very challenging, no doubt. It was January, and in Italy we were experiencing the second pandemic wave. And it was freezing, wet and full of dust down there. Plus we typically spent about 10 hours a day inside the bunker, with no sunlight. This stressed us out, but at the same time, we were working under conditions that were pretty similar to the ones in the story. So I feel that these difficulties helped us to reach a deeper level of representation of the bunker’s eerie environment.
You directed The Bunker Game, but you also have a lot of experience as a cinematographer. Was it hard not stepping into this role as well for the film?
I actually did step into the role. And why shouldn’t I? I mean, when an actor directs a movie, he has skills about acting that he’s going to share with the actors in the movie. I did the same with DP Marco Graziaplena. We speak the same technical language, so I believe this definitely helped improve the visual quality of the movie.
Did you tend to have more in-depth conversations with DP Marco Graziaplena about the look?
Yes, for sure. We had a great partnership during production. We would continuously share ideas, both about the technical arguments and the philosophical approach to shooting the movie. I have a very visual mind, so it’s always easy for me to speak with people who have my same approach. Also, in preproduction, we shared movies references, so we had common imagery from which to draw creative ideas.
Because the majority of the lights in the bunker are supposed to be part of the furniture, it was also very important to share ideas with art director Marcello Di Carlo. So we created two different styles. One was about the anti-atomic sector, where we worked mostly with a neon style. The other was about the older sector of the bunker, where we mostly worked with warm bulb lights. Then of course, there was the darkness; we decided to work on a bluish palette, something very cold and uncomfortable.
What did you use for the shoot?
We shot on Sony Venice using Cooke Xtal Express T2.3 anamorphic lenses. The most peculiar thing is that while we were testing camera and lenses, we discovered something that even the rental service didn’t know — starting from 40mm lens, this vintage series is able to fully cover the full-frame Venice sensor. So we shot in 6K full-frame using anamorphic lenses! This made the images incredibly gorgeous because we mixed the low-light potential of Venice and its full-frame look with the softness and beautiful distortion of a classical anamorphic look, making it even more distorted than usual.
There is a scene in the film that reviewers are talking about, when we see a model of the maze-like bunker and then characters that are digitally transferred to the actual location. This same trick was used in the hedge maze model in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Did you get inspiration from Kubrick for this scene?
Kubrick is always in my mind. I think the first movie I watched as a kid was 2001: A Space Odyssey. I didn’t really understand the plot, but I was fascinated by that symphony of images and music. And I continued to watch it in at different times of my life, each time finding myself equally fascinated, but for different reasons. So yes, while I was writing the script, I felt that it was a good idea to show the characters stuck in the bunker while they’re trying to find a way out — looking at a model of the bunker and then finding themselves inside one of those dark corridors. It’s not the only scene in the movie that was inspired by Kubrick.
Can you talk about the technical aspects of this scene?
It all starts from the script. Very early on in preproduction, we started talking about the best way to film it. First, we had to build the model of the bunker. I didn’t take any inspiration from the real geography of the bunker; I wanted a bunker that looked like something between a maze and an Escher illustration. Also, the real bunker has many exits, but the model had to have only one, and it had to look exactly like the exit we see in the movie (you can clearly see it in another shot of the movie).
When the model satisfied my requests (and it took weeks), we were ready to shoot the camera movement that starts from the top of the model and enters in a tunnel. This wasn’t easy; the model was huge, about 6 meters large. So we had to find a tunnel big enough that the crane could make the entire motion in.
We also used a crane for the second part of the shot, the one where we find the characters walking in a tunnel, because I wanted to show them from behind — from a high point of view — so there is a feeling that a dark force is watching them. This second part of the scene was the first shot of the entire movie. I decided to start with the most difficult shot first.
The VFX part was done by an Italian VFX company called EDI – Effetti Digitali Italiani, which is based in Milan.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome once filming commenced?
I think the biggest obstacle was the communication between different crew members. Because there was no connection in the bunker, we couldn’t use smartphones or even radios. So this made things very difficult. Usually the set was in a part of the bunker that was far away from the headquarter offices, so it was difficult to update and ask the actors to come on-set. Then things got a lot more complicated when we started having a second unit. Two units shooting, a headquarter far away and no chance to talk…can you imagine? At a certain point, I started using a bike to move as fast as possible from one point in the bunker to another. I have to admit, it was pretty funny. Looking at the positive side, all of these difficulties were helpful because it meant that we had no connection to the outside world. So the crew was always very focused at work.
Can you talk about the editing?
The editing was done in Avid Media Composer by Brian Schmitt. He’s French and he came to Rome to work with me. An interesting thing about the edit is that we started it on-set. I requested that a junior editor (Tommaso Marchesi) be located inside the bunker so we could see a preview of the scenes day by day. It was funny for me to spend my lunch break inside the editing room, watching the editor scared from the scenes we had shot the day before. Cristina Barillari assisted us during the post production.
We also graded the shots from the Nazi dinner while we were still on-set, because we had to project them in the scene where a character screens the found footage. It was really cool to project the creepy, original WWII footage mixed with closeups on the ancient, dusty walls of the bunker where Nazis really used to live.
Who did the grade?
We did the color grading in a studio called Keylight, led by Davide Leone, who was also on-set as VFX supervisor and second unit DP. Starting from preproduction, Davide was very involved in the project, and he helped us in many different ways. The grading was done by a young, talented colorist named Elisabetta Giri.
Looking back on the film, would you have done anything different?
Some days I felt like I made many mistakes; other days I was very happy and wouldn’t change a frame. In the end, I think we were all proud of the result. We shot a movie about LARPing, we shot in a location that no one knew about, we worked hard and in uncomfortable conditions and we did a great job. We built a story, moving and intense.
From a personal point of view, I’m aware that The Bunker Game is not a movie for everyone; this was never my goal. I wanted to create a personal and visionary piece that spoke of my obsessions and made them vibrate in the spectators’ eyes.
I’m also proud because you have no idea how difficult it is to shoot a horror movie in Italy today. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the truth. We kind of lost that know-how. The other few Italian directors that have done it too should also be very proud. Maybe they are making a comeback in Italy.
Any tips for young directors?
Don’t be afraid to be extreme in your ideas. You don’t have to be liked by everyone. The ones who do like your work will be enthusiastic and push you to create more and more.
You are a live action role-player yourself. How did your firsthand knowledge of the game impact how the film was shot?
I’m a LARPer, and I first came to know about the bunker when I was invited to play a LARP game inside of it with one of the most influential Italian teams of LARP creators, called the Chaos League.
DP Marco Graziaplena
At that time, about three or four years ago, I was looking for a way to show the world of LARPS in a movie. I was fascinated by the idea of a system of Chinese boxes in which a character plays a character in a story, which then turns out not to be the real story of the film. So when I discovered the bunker, I said, “This is the perfect place to tell a story about LARPing.”
We created the first concept with scriptwriter Davide Orsini. I also invited him to play a LARP game with me so he had a better understanding of what it was all about. A fun fact that no one really knows: When we were filming, I invited the team members from the Chaos League to be extras in many of the LARPing scenes. It’s a kind of an Easter egg dedicated to LARP enthusiasts.
