To immerse us in the spirit of “Blanca”, a young blind woman who will put her gifts to the benefit of the police, the directors used unique and original visual processes. The interpreter of the character tells us everything behind the scenes!
The Italian series Blanca, which is broadcast every Saturday evening on M6, offers us a unique look at blindness. The main character is indeed a young blind woman who will succeed in becoming a consultant for the Genoese police.
His disability allows him to see what others cannot necessarily hear. Very quickly, Inspector Michele Liguori (Giuseppe Zeno) will call on his services to help him solve the most complex investigations.
To represent the blindness of Blanca’s character, the two directors, Jan Michelini and Giacomo Martelli, used innovative and original staging techniques that allow them to immerse themselves and soak up the feelings of the protagonist.
The series was thus shot in holophony, a 360-degree sound recording technique that reproduces the sound perceived by the human ear. This technique transcribes the intensity and details that Blanca hears thanks to her heightened sense of hearing, thus offering viewers a unique sound experience. But this is not the only innovative process used by the two directors.
To show Blanca’s ability to isolate sounds in order to focus on a particular conversation, the young investigator is transported to a dark room in which only the characters that interest her are present. To shoot these very special and unique scenes, the two directors used a theater stage, which allowed them to illuminate the elements they wanted to highlight.
“We were in a theater and everything was dark”, thus explained Maria Chiara Giannetta, the interpreter of Blanca, during a press briefing. “It was crazy because the directors had to create the scene from their imagination, because even though it was scripted, they could do whatever they wanted with the lights.”
There is also a scene from the second episode of Blanca which is particularly striking. As the young woman returns home alone in the evening, a man is waiting for her in her apartment to kill her. In order to put herself on an equal footing with him, and to be able to defend herself, Blanca then turns off all the lights, thus plunging the two characters into complete darkness.
“In the second episode with the killer in Blanca’s apartment, Jan Michelini did all the staging on the spot. Every time an actor touched an object that made noise, the technicians turned on the light on that object.”
“It was a very fun process, because the directors managed to create something in a place that was completely neutral.” A singular sequence which did not fail to mark the spirits.
Find two new episodes of Blanca this Saturday, January 28 from 9:10 p.m. on M6. Season 1 is already available in full on the Salto platform.