From Academy Award-nominated Luca Guadagnino, the HBO/Sky series “We Are Who We Are” is a story about two American kids who live on a U.S. military base in Italy. The series explores friendship, first-love, identity, and immerses the audience in all the messy exhilaration and anguish of being a teenager.
Working on all eight episodes of this beautiful auteur series, the One Of Us team, led by Theo Demiris, delivered around 400 visual effects shots, most of which dealt with the environment of the base and the surrounding Veneto marshland.
Extending the limited set of buildings on location required the use of CG architecture, roads, street furniture, trees and plants. Guadagnino was very sensitive to the nuances of urban design, and only signed off our extension when the street plans had what he termed “architectural movement” – the sense of a lived space.
We Are Who We Are is an HBO-Sky co-production; showrunner, executive producer, writer, director Luca Guadagnino; executive produced by Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment and Mario Gianani for Wildside, both Fremantle companies, with Small Forward, alongside Guadagnino, Elena Recchia, Nick Hall, Sean Conway, and Francesco Melzi d’Eril; Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri write alongside Guadagnino. International Distributor: Fremantle.
Seasonal adjustments to trees, skies and weather were also required. This is the kind of visual effects work which, if done well, is invisible, and at the same time integral to the storytelling. We see the juxtaposition of the regimented artificiality of the American military base enclosed by the wild beauty of the Italian countryside; and this echoes the contrast between the order of military life and the turmoil of teenage emotions.
It is a credit to the team spirit, and the leadership of Theo and his wingman, Jacopo Landi, that they managed to produce work of the very highest standard under the constraints of lockdown. We are very proud to have collaborated with Luca and HBO on this original series and we are delighted to see it getting the critical acclaim it deserves.